OPERATION LOST BORDERS: Day 1

Elevation 4300. 35 degrees

I breathe fresh air for the first time in weeks and start coughing up ash kin from within. I go to sleep under a Milky Way canopy & wake up in Lassen Forest. It’s near freezing & I feel alive. I descend into a stunning Valley.

The local high school mascot is the Grizzlies. The paw prints are impressive. The town is named after the daughter of a white settler. Nearly half the adult population works at the three prisons here. No mention is made of the Maidu people.

America, if anything, is consistent: AutoZone, Dollar Tree, Ross Dress for Less, TacoBell, and of course the Golden Arches. Pumpkin patches & Erasure. Everybody knows Starbucks is the real civil religion.

But one cannot live on consistency alone. Were we built for what’s around the next bend? Fortunately, the road always reveals surprises: fighter helicopters on pedestals; a lake of honey; holy panoramics unconquerable by the eyes; a man walking down a desolate highway in nothing but red underwear—he looks determined. He seems to have taken Ross’s advice, and saved a bundle.

On the radio, the ratio of sermons to rock songs shifts considerably. A hybrid called Christian rock tries to bridge the gap with unmitigated failure.

“It’s time to begin with the judgment of the household of God & the purifying fire of divine grace.” Beck warns of the forces of evil in a Bozo nightmare. The café here says support the troops, but they don’t say which troops. ‘All we have to do is look really hard at Christ & take a glance at ourselves and we will know.’

It’s a confusing world out there boys and girls. Grab your juniper juice and gin and get sober AF. The Grand Dance is just beginning.

You can walk yards in any direction, get lost or find your sagebrush liberation. It might be same thing, says the jackrabbit.

If you’re a rancher, you love Trump, white Silverados, & big flags. I draw conclusions. The cows, on the other hand, seem uncommitted. They seem to have a glint in their eyes & I swear I hear whispers of bovine revolution..

I’m at Hallelujah Junction, about to cross the threshold into Battle Born Nevada, a fierce sun & giant day stretching out before me. My time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite. Perhaps I’ll stumble upon the right questions.

At the Trailhead

The trailhead can be a magnificent moment. It is a threshold of sorts—the threshold into the unknown. A crossing from one world to another. An excitement and curiosity runs the blood hot regardless of the weather. What beauties and mysteries does the trail hold? How will this rewild me, what aspects of myself will the mountain help me re-member, re-claim?

The threshold also marks our trepidations, our fears, for we know we will be changed by the trail, by the mountain—we will return a different person. With new gifts, new perspectives, yes, but also perhaps new scratches and bruises. The trail may stretch us into a different shape. Truth be told, it is a risk to set off into the unknown. Am I up for climbing this mountain? Is my body capable? Am I prepared? What about my old life, habits, patterns—which of those will the mountain kill off? They may be silly habits and patterns and ways of seeing, but they are my silly habits and patterns and ways of seeing. They are comfortable.

But you cross anyway, because you’re not going for just comfort, but for the Big Life, your Whole Self, because your whole life up to this point has prepared you for the journey. You may not know what is around the next switchback, but you know you will greet it with all you have—you are on the right path. It might not be THEIR path, but it is YOURS. You step from the trailhead onto the trail, with dedicated feet and an eager heart.

THE WOUND AND NOT THE STORY OF THE WOUND

National Writing Month DAY 28: THE WOUND AND NOT THE STORY OF THE WOUND
(Word Count: 1435)

From that high place it appeared a lake, pinkish-white and round with promise—a beautiful mark on the land walled in by red rock and a giant sky.

It asserted itself on me, drew me like a fish fishing the man thrashing.

You’d think a part of me would know about mirages in the desert.

But I needed to touch the wound and not the story of the wound.

So I began the descent. With no dragons or wizards, no wise old ones or magic amulets. Only lizards and a relentless voice that carried my heart ahead of my legs.

My sole companions: Death and all my loves. In our work it is called a Death Lodge, a self-ceremony created to have those final conversations as if you really were dying.

Mine took the form of a walking death lodge. We said the unspoken things that needed to find a purchase in the open air, so it could finally float on up and meet the sun.

“To far, too far.”

“No. Go the distance. This is what you came for.”

“This is foolish.”

“This is the end. This is the beginning.”

Which powers in me were having this debate?

I climbed down, sliding over sandstone, through shadows and old stories, found and gave forgiveness, empty of stomach but full of purpose.

It was too late to turn back now—I must touch the wound, not the story of the wound. I must find the gift inside its pain.

I arrived at noon, my thirst stretched out like dune devils as the sun hovered an inch from my forehead like a rune foretelling troubling things.

My feet found cracked mud—it was no lake. It was not pink, but white like a skeleton—dusty evidence of the gash.

The only water came from my face, forced by the startling realization: the stories, my god how much I’d wasted with stories of the wound, and not the wound itself.

I blessed it with the final tear. I blessed it!! Thank you sacred wound.

Dry and new, I turned towards the arduous ascent with a swollen tongue and a swollen heart.

And I ascended hand over fist with my companions: Death and all my loves, including myself.
(Vulnerable Mountain Heart)

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For #NaNoWriMo2018, we (Katie and Ryan @wildnatureheart) are each writing our memoirs, our Wild Nature Heart stories so-to-speak, sharing a glimpse of our progress throughout November. We really believe what the organization says: the world needs your story! Everyone has a story to tell—What’s your Wild Nature Heart? We look forward to sharing this journey of vulnerability and self-discovery.
Ryan and Katie
#mywildnatureheartstory

ONLY THE WIND AND MY OWN BREATH

National Writing Month DAY 8: ONLY THE WIND AND MY OWN BREATH

The ranger had said, “it’s like falling out off bed,” referring to the drop from the High Divide to Hoh Lake, then from Hoh lake down to the River.  Now a decision: try to walk out of here or wait for more of a clearing? The problem is more the cloud/mist. I can’t see very far. If I knew the trail was snow free….but if not, and I can’t see where the trail continues, I risk getting lost.

I start two miles along the knife-edge winter wonderland off the high divide. I walk along hugged by the clouds, a whiteness I’ve never experienced before, snow below and in front of me, pure white in every direction. The trail is almost completely snow. Up, up, up. Wait, wasn’t I supposed to be descending?! I keep fearing I missed the junction. Is this a metaphor? 

I let go and absorb the beauty wrapped in this mountain cocoon of whiteness.

Heavy breathe, heavy pack, heavy clouds—yet amidst it all somehow a comprehensive lightness fills me.

Silence. Then, Only wind and my own breathe. I begin to hear my own truth.

Suddenly, a clearing of clouds reveals the first of several lakes in the 7 Lake Basin far below. The sun mysteriously peaks out from time to time, just for a matter of minutes, allowing the blue sky to crack through, only to close up again. But enough—as if a reminder—that life outside the cloud and ground 10 feet in front of me exists. I was beginning to wonder.

I spent 3 days and nights in the clouds, blocking everything beyond 25 feet. But now, amidst this mountain cocoon, I could finally see things clearly.

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For #NaNoWriMo2018, we (Katie and Ryan @wildnatureheart) are each writing our memoirs, our Wild Nature Heart stories, sharing a glimpse of our progress throughout November. We really believe what the organization says: the world needs your story! Everyone has a story to tell—each unlike anyone else’s story. What’s your Wild Nature Heart? We look forward to sharing this journey of vulnerability and self-discovery with you.

#mywildheartstory

Exploring the First Nearby Faraway

I’m writing a book called The Nearby Faraway: My Year Living in the Threshold and recently the seed of this poem came to me while I was facilitating a Wild Nature Heart activity about childhood memories in nature. One of the memories that lives in my body is exploring the groves that were at both my grandparents’ farms in Iowa. There’s something about how we relate freely and physically and innocently with the world when we are young–and how that lives inside us still. What are some of your first nature memories? The google map image is of one of the farms as it exists today.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Grandfather said, “Look out
for rattlesnakes and rusted nails”

but we went in anyway
embarking on a bold adventure

without provisions of any kind
or shoes even

for what do they have to do
with an explorer’s heart?

not in defiance, mind you
but only because we couldn’t bare

not to let our bare feet
have an original conversation

with the soft duff of the pine grove
watching us…waiting for us…

we went in anyway, and later,
when we’d mapped all the new territories

when we’d squeezed a lifetime
from the rind of dawn to dusk

when the slant of the sun warns
of the docking of the day

when the reds and the browns
and the greens of the world

had covered us from shin
to shiny face

and the exhaustion of our vast
explorer bodies starts to buzz

we anointed ourselves in the cold creek
flowing through the inexhaustible wilderness

watching us…waiting for us…

where we were the First Builders
Masters of tree forts, architects of forest villages

The Original Hunters
chasing raccoons and ravens

Primordial shamans burying owl feathers and dog bones
to ward off those cursed rattlesnakes

that were just around the next tree
watching us….waiting for us…

We were the First Explorers
lost for days within a single day

adrift on an evergreen raft
fueled by wild nature hearts

because we went in anyway
charting endless bright lands

on a small Iowa farm—
the first nearby faraway

watching us…waiting for us…

The HeartSeer at the Edge of Always (Rainbow Home #6)

Gasp! I awoke with a gulp of air the size of my lungs. Above me an endless blue sky. Below me, hardness.

Solid ground!

I was either safe on land, or else on the bottom of the afterlife.

I looked around – a tiny rock island that sloped gently up towards a ridge. I rolled over onto the green, orange, brown, and yellow lichen-covered surface, exhausted, water-logged, and with a deep throb in my left foot.

Suddenly I remembered being hooked and grabbed my heel–blood oozed from a quarter-sized wound. The water slapped the bottom of the rock with monotonous rhythm. But above that I heard humming.

Getting my bearings, I hobbled my way up the slope and peered over the other side.

And then I saw her. A woman lingered at the base of the rock in the shallow water, soaking in the sun.

Jet black hair hung down to her waist, and glistened in the noon-day sun. Her bottom half, partly submerged, reflected iridescent turquiose, blues, greens, and purples, from tiny overlapping fish scales. She was twisting in the water, seeming to rather enjoy it.

She was dark-skinned and bare from the waist up and held a large spiral shell up to her mouth, the source of the sound that had pulled me to the Edge of the West and had lured me out to sea.

I sat entranced for who knows how long, charmed by her beauty and movement and melody.

Something about her told me I did not need to worry about being lured to my death. I saw, or rather felt, a shining, beyond the brightness of the sun on her skin and scales. I worked up the courage to say something.

“Hi. I don’t mean to startle you.” What do you say to such a creature?

“Hallo two-legged,” she answered, smiling. “You didn’t startle me, I saw you swimming for the past 4 hours.”

Her voice rang like pure water, flowed like liquid sunshine.

“I have been seeking you for many moons. I was beginning to think the HeartSeer was a figment of my imagination. ”

“No, the HeartSeer is not your imagination. But I am not HeartSeer. My name is Miramar, she Who Mirrors the Sea, Ambassador of Oshun and Translator of the Many Songs.”

My heart simultaneously lept and sunk. I finally arrived at the Edge of the West, I finally venture out into the ocean, nearly drowned, met a stunning creature of unparalled beauty and liquid voice–but she’s not the who I’m looking for!

“You almost drowned out there,” she said, stating the obvious. Even though she had put the shell down, it felt like I could still hear its murmur.

“I almost feel like I did drown,” I said, “All this is just too strange to believe. Did you save me?”

“We have a saying in the Great Sea, only he who has hooked himself can unhook himself,” she said.

“I didn’t hook myself. Those sea plants grabbed me and a fisherman’s net…”

“As you say.”

“But, you did. You saved me. You brought me to this rock?”

“I merely guided a floating Two-Legged on the edge of the death to shore. The end of your own struggling saved you.”

“Thank you, thank you!” I came closer. “I am in your debt. I’ve come who knows how far from the Redwood Forest of the East to the Edge of the West to find someone called the HeartSeer. I’m looking for my Rainbow Home. Can you tell me anything about it, or about the Obsidian Key on the Golden Ring at the bottom of the Great Sea?”

“Why you be searching for all these items? We have a saying in the Great Sea, ‘Stop chasing, starting creating.’ I think perhaps you could save yourself a long and difficult trip,” she said with a splash with her tail.”I know only of the Great Sea, which is my home. And have not heard of what you seek. What is a Rainbow Home? Do you live in the sky, with the winged-ones? Is not the whole world your home?” She gestured to the ocean, as if that made any sense.”

She continued, “What is a key?”

“That’s a lot to answer. A key is for the lock that was put on the Rainbow Home,” I answered.

“What is a lock?”

“It’s a…a…thing that…without which, you can’t open a door.”

“What’s a door?”

“It is an…an entrance, umm…a threshold….that can be open or closed,” I could see that this could take a while. “I would be more than happy to explain all of it to you, I just want to know if you can tell me where to find the HeartSeer. from which I am to discover a clue to the whole thing. Some villagers seem to think the HeartSeer is a mermaid. You are a mermaid, aren’t you? You must be the HeartSeer!”

“Why have you misplaced this Rainbow Home? And if it is so important, why put something on it that requires another thing in which to enter or open?”

An interrogation-I didn’t know how to answer. “I lost it long ago. But it is where I want to live now. It is my true abode. My village is suffering from a curse, and I want to make medicine to lift the curse.”

“Aghh! A curse?!! I have heard of such things. The Landed-Ones tell such tales. We have not curses in the Great Sea.”

“Yes, we are afflicted with many things, often of our own devising.”

“I am ignorant of such things, but it sounds serious,” she said.

“And I too am ignorant of the ways of the Great Sea. I live among trees and soil and mountains and…”

“Trees! Such mysterious Earth-Footed Ones. Mountains!” She chimed, splashing as she did a hip roll-up on the rocks. “I have longed to visit mountains of the Waterless Abode, having only seen them from afar. They are like giant waterless islands. They are the end of the known world, the Edge of the East.”

I laughed. And couldn’t help be enamored with her way of seeing as well as her beauty.

“I’m sorry for finding that funny. It is not waterless. We have lakes and rivers and waterfalls and rain and ponds….And the mountains are not the edge of the world. There are whole lands over the hills. In fact, I come from a place that is entirely flat many leagues beyond the mountains, full of fields and wide open skies. Not unlike your sky here,” I said, then added, “But I guess islands are like underwater mountains.”

“What are fields?”

“I guess you would say, fields is earth where we grow our food.”

“But how do you live without the Great Sea?”

“I…umm…don’t know…But I could show you. I will take you to the mountains! I can tell you all about them. And fields. And trees,” I was excited at the prospect. For the moment, I forgot all about the pain in my foot and the hunger in my belly. “I am in your service. I will…”

“Alas, I cannot leave the Great Sea,” she interjected. “But maybe you can bring them here?” Her eyes widened with hope. I could almost fall for her in that moment.

“I see your heart’s desire. I will find a way.”

—–

“Aha!” Miramar lighted up, as if coming into some great idea. “I know where be the HeartSeer. Not very far. Come.”

“You know the HeartSeer? Why didn’t you say so!” I said exasperated only momentarily, being overcome with anticipation.

“Come closer.”

Then I remembered: The gifts!! My heart sunk. I forgot the gifts I was to bring as an offering to the HeartSeer. I felt as much embarassment as regret.

“I forgot the gifts,” I admitted to her. “The 7th Born, I mean the Bunny..er, I mean somebody I met in the forest, said I would need to bring gifts: a gift unmade, a gift unbought, a gift unplayed, a gift uncaught. But I don’t know what all that means. I didn’t know what to bring. And what I had with me I lost swimming out there….”

She was only smiling. “I must go now. Be here tomorrow at dawn and I will accept your gifts to offer to the HeartSeer.”

“But I told you, I don’t have any gifts. I can’t…”

But just like that, Miramar disappeared beneathe the water.

And there I was, alone on a rock miles out at sea, under a setting sun, without my gear. Without food. Without my Sea Staff. Without gifts. Without a clue.
________

Only from extreme exhaustion from the day’s events was able to sleep through the night, though it was cold and windy. Dawn on the sea is quite a different experience than dawn anywere else. It comes earlier and comes on slowly, like a creeping consciousness, a progression of slightly larger breaths.

When the orb of the sun was fully above the horizon, Miramar appeared from below.

“Good morning! It’s so refreshing to be able to say good morning to someone, as most of the Great Sea community does not go by night and day in the way of you landed folks.”

“Good morning.”

“Do you have the gifts? I am eager to show you the one you seek.”

“If you are eager, I am doubly so! But I have been here all night, I have no gifts. How could I possibly get gifts? You just disappeared without…”

“hmmppph…” With that she splashed me with a whip of her fish tail. “You must reach deeper into those pockets of yours, Two-Legged. Meet me at dawn tomorrow.” And disappeared once again.

I was stunned. What am I doing here? How can I possibly please this Ambassador of the Great Sea. Could I trust her?

I spent the day alternating between exploring the perimeter of the little island, sleeping, tending to my foot wound, trying to hunt little crabs and fish, and fighting the urge to swim back to shore. I could see the lighthouse at the village. Warmth, people, food, all of which seemed as strong as the siren song that pulled me out here to begin with.

Once again dawn arrived. My gut hurt from eating only uncooked molluscs and dried seaweed in the last three days. I felt delirious and was worried that I began to not be worried.

Soon Miramar surfaced, eyes wide and full of light in expectation. I could see a brightness shining in her. But I could also see a darkness shining in her. The shape of her wound, behind her ribcage, a shadow shining like a rainbow ray, tender sacred wound. And I could see that it was beautiful and it was painful. It was the source of her shell magic, her song, her melody, her smile, her light.

It didn’t make sense, but that is what I saw.

I loved her–in a way I have never loved a person.

But in that moment, I knew that I could never take her to the mountains. Nor could I bring the trees to her. I knew what I had to do.

I stripped naked, stretched out both my arms with fists faceup, and opened them.

“I bring you my gifts: in this hand is Trust, a gift unplayed and unbought, and this hand an Open Heart, a gift unmade and uncaught.”

Miramar merely smiled and motioned me to come closer, then swam over below the sharp drop-off. Wearily, I inched up the rocks until I was at the very edge, and pulled my body up and looked over. Several feet below she re-appeared.

“They are but one gift called Acceptance. And hey are beyond beautiful. Now, watch where I’m going.”

Her gaze pierced mine, a gaze nearly too much to handle.

“Look closely, for When I disappear, the HeartSeer will appear.”

And with a splash she melted under the water.

When the the ripples settled, the surface became clear as a mirror. Looking over the edge, an image began to form.

A man reflected back at me.

I was looking at an image of myself.