She Returned, Ravenous.

After a long, weird, wonder-filled walk in the woods

But First,

She disappeared into obscurity and became a long low hum far from home. Under the drooping branches of the white pine, and the drifting eye of birch, she fell through the sedge, cattails, and crab apples, while waffling back and forward in time. She disappeared into bright moss and pockets full of stone, she disappeared into antlers in the mud, winter’s surly breath, and everything is alive and dying. She disappeared into the tiny burrowing ticks of early spring and the flying fire bugs of summer’s night. She became the downpours and the thunders, the jurassic amber lake, the snapping turtle, honey bee, and dragonfly. She became the shadow of a water snake that slips through blooming algae, and the thorn of the wild rose.

There would be losses. There would be gains. There would be hornet stings, haunted barns, and ice storms, and there would be daisy crowns in magic meadows, fire-dancing, frog-leaping, bare feet in the snow, and bare bodies in the waterhole.

The mountain chewed her slowly and swallowed fast. Vacuumed into the hollows and “Van Winkled,” she lost her place in time and her relationship to the working world. She bathed and slept and walked and watched and napped and ate and wandered and gathered and ate and bathed. Wind howled, candles burned, doors flung open and shut on their own. In Spring she became the squirrel turning spirals up the hickory tree and the rock-tossing bear in the backyard. In Fall she became the Northern Lights, the nightly stew, and the long creeping fingers of early morning fog.

She drank a lot of tea, she shoveled a lot of snow, she collected mushroom blooms.

She Became

The Mountains

…are full of Monks. Mystics. Seekers. Some are robed and married to their vows, while others are just wild, foolish people who have disembarked from the formula of ordinary life to capitulate themselves to the rhythms and ferocity of nature. They may be running from something, they may be running toward something, it’s hard to say. Eventually, they settle. They settle into neither for nor against. Neither here nor there. They become the howl and the hum. The shadow and the sun. They blend into everything.

The Renunciant

Stripped of her former life one death at a time, one house at a time, and one identity at a time; her hair fell out in streams, her flat belly collapsed forward into a an un-retractable pouch, her face blushed and bubbled and puffed, her hips grew spongy and broad. She lost her Southern Californian luster and became the dark glacial canvas of the Eastern Woodlands.

Attempts to surface from her subterranean lair were as frivolous as pawing clouds. She rallied hard only to collapse back into her day dream, her night dream, and her own shallow sight of what could possibly lie ahead. She was not forward facing, she was mud, ancestors, mycelium, and she was resolutely devoted to the undeviating illumination of nature. The force. The generosity. The continuity. The work. The spell. If you asked her what more she wanted, she wouldn’t be able to say.

and also

There was melancholy in the morning, a loud blink from the bed covers, a haze. She missed the words that once fell like waterfalls through ink and quill, the rush, smash, and splatter of poem meets page. She missed the creative sizzle, the call to risk her whole heart for the collective pursuit of good. And she missed the satisfaction of love under her fingernails, holding a microphone, raising a child, leading a charge. But she didn’t have words for the feelings, only a wispy intangible recollection of something close but far, something hers but not.

Ravenous

she was, but didn’t know it.

wanted, she was, but didn’t care.

she was just…there.

Unmade

A song without words becomes a hum.

A woman without a house becomes a home.

Home

pebble by pebble, prayer by prayer

She cleared, and patched, and dug, and ripped, and sanded, and swept, and painted, and planted, and raked, and watered, and mowed, and washed, and washed, and watched it all wash away.

again and again and again

she emptied and filled and emptied

as

the ashes

of her efforts

baked into the earth

and lifted to the wind

pebble by pebble, prayer by prayer

the forest rearranged

her

*

The Forest Rearranged Her

We don’t arrive anywhere in the woods. We continue. We soften. We strengthen. We yield. We don’t arrive anywhere in the woods. We watch. Feel. Listen. Discover. Change. We don’t arrive anywhere in the woods. We only leave things behind and bring things home.

*

I didn’t buy home.

I made home.

I didn’t arrive home.

I became home.

Hunger

The cathedral of the wild doesn’t give her secrets freely,

nor does she withhold.

She tests your willingness to be unburdened

by helping you feel the weight you carry;

and then she plucks every thread

until you fold

Her beauty is the lure,

but her medicine runs fathoms deep

enter when you are ready

to sow

what you reap

for

Mystical Experiences

On Summer Solstice, which at the time of this writing was yesterday, I woke up from a dream of a white cardboard box with large indigo lettering. It read:

                                           M Y S T I C A L   E X P E R I E N C E S 

The box was sitting in a shop to be sold, without instructions or price, and of course, it was empty. Although it may have appeared to be a novelty item, the dream gave no indication that it was some consumer trick, no, it read like an exceptionally accurate wink from the universe. Mysterious, but smiling.

You can buy the container but you can’t buy the contents. You can go to the woods, sign up for the retreat, collect spiritual accessories, but you can’t force a mystical experience. All you can do is create space and bring your willingness to engage with what is and isn’t there. It won’t make sense, and there will be nothing tangible to show for it, but it will mean more to you than anything ever has.

When the invitation comes, accept it. If the invitation doesn’t come, seek it.

It will meet you.

Be Ravenous, Be Permeable

Dear Reader,

Thank you for bearing witness.

My spell in the woods has been darker, lighter, and more redeeming than I ever could have imagined. To be witnessed in my findings has helped me funnel clouds into a snow globe — this snow globe — called, Substack. Although I went off trail a lot, and you may have wondered if I would ever wander back, this place has been an anchor, and more essential to my excavation than I could fully appreciate when my face was in the dirt. I often see the image of an old stone well, and me being at the bottom of it. There is a rope, and the light of the sky, and angelic cheerleaders hovering at the lip. They encourage me to go in, and when it is time, they encourage me to haul myself out.

The focus required to journey out of the well, or the womb, or the woods is sometimes, excruciating. I have to be deliberate. I have to be discerning. And I have to be willing…to let my heart be seen, by letting my voice be heard, word by word.

Word by word I am hoisted by some invisible power.

It’s like a dare,

to be myself,

out loud.

To let what is otherwise invisible, be seen.

Bring formlessness into form.

Spirit into matter.

Feelings into words.

And words into spells.

This is my work.

• To new and longstanding subscribers, or those considering a subscription. Thank you. Your curiosity, comments, shares, likes and donations are such a buoy after these long excavations. I look forward to returning with more regularity after having spent many months moving through many changes.

• Over the coming weeks there will be some renovating going on here. Just a few tweaks to my subscription formula, (more accessible not less), a slight shift in theme, and eventually an actual website. Please note, at this time, paid subscriptions are very welcome but not necessary. Recent articles are currently open to all, and soon older archives will likely be too. I’ve got some reinventing to do :)