Sanity…actually (a water-wind-stone-moon bath)

is running off to the wilderness for 3 days with a four year old to backpack IN a river and camp on a beach in the full moon light.

 

 

Not even joking.

 

 

When life gets to be too heavy, when the list of to dos too long, the people chewing at your heels- both literally and psychically – too many, when staring at the same walls and day in and day out routine makes you want to tear out your hair.

 

 

 

 

 

Time to head into REAL life.  Where your skin breathes with the wind, your eyes soften to the touch of red stone cliffs, where your inner child grabs the cattail fluff and watches it explode and blow away into the wind just for fun, where the simple game of throwing stones into water with a child becomes the event of the day, when even passing your waste becomes intentional.  That place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ritual is sitting around the fire sipping from a tiny flask with your friends and sharing a sticky chocolate bar.

 

 

 

The treasures you come home with are beautiful gifts from the Earth.

 

 

 

 

When plant friends are just friends- not something to be gathered, processed and

shared, but just to be enjoyed, to jump up happily and caress with love when their green countenance appears before you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 years, or more, since I backpacked into the wild, with only what I could carry as sustenence and supply.  Why did it take so long?  I asked myself many times this weekend, and there are logistical answers- cars, time, money- but the really the answers are excuses- why haven’t I fed my soul enough of this deep nourishment of moon baths, splashing in the river, playing with children, sitting and doing nothing but listening to the wind in the trees and the river burbles echoing off the cliffs?  And more importantly, when am I going back again?

I’ve been hearing its time for a solo quest for a while.  A walk alone into the canyons.  Myself, a fire, spirit. Winter is the time.  Not for harshness, but for silence, for dormancy, for clarity.

There is a disconnect for me right now.  There are too many things around me to hear clearly my own heart. Too much expectation, too many people’s needs, too many tasks, too much busy.    It became so obvious when the first thing I did upon returning to the city, my truck, my home – was cry.  Overwhelm. Longing. Grief.

I need more of the Earth language, that sound that plants sing and rocks speak.  How do rocks speak?  “very softly” says Jack, my 4 yr old friend from this weekends journey.   Yes, very softly indeed.  You have to sit still, and for a very long time, in this way.

My body aches to lay sleeping again on the raw earth, to be covered in moonshine, to feel the soft breath of children and friends asleep at my side.  Where the only expectation is to be present in moment, experiencing living, on this planet, in this moment-breath.

We are fed from this eternal spring of Earth – water -stone- wind- moon.  When was the last time you let yourself be nourished this way?