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If you begin to think of each step you take, each errand, each journey, as a pilgrimage, an opportunity to reflect, feel, breathe, and arrive, there is a sacred energy that may permeate your day. Start with an intentional outing for creating reflective space in your body and mind. We show up first for our body with breath and movement. Then, our mind has time to run it’s course and quiet down and relax. Consider the conditions perfect for exploration and sensation.

Our ability to make play with others and our environment opens the door for profound experience, emotion, and learning. When we play, there is an opportunity for deep integration of personal, communal, and universal understanding. Games are a classic way to teach children important lessons about their own bodies and emotions, how to relate to others, and build skills in creativity. Play, however, shouldn’t be reserved just for classrooms and recess activities. Adults need to harness this diverting-of-the-self quality of being and get lost in a sense of curiosity and possibility.

Without a sense of humor and a facet of revelry, we are subject to losing a piece of our spirit. The spirit is a delightful creature of impulse. If you don’t practice intuitive or spontaneous behavior, chances are you feel a little dead inside. But, do not fret! For if we lift our heads up, raise each foot after the other, and lean into the space in front of us, the spirit gets very enthusiastic and can be the best of all partners for an adventure! Once your spirit is provoked in this way, you’ll probably find that other people and their spirits become magnetized to you. The more the merrier! Go forth, together, on multitudinous mini-pilgrimages to the street corner, to the park, to the river-side, the grocery store, to a whole new place, to your favorite tree or patch of clover, to a night of music and dance, or just around the block, go.

The last months have been something of a ‘forgetting’. Each new day seems to blur my periphery, increase my inability to get anything done, and requires concerted effort on my part to muster energy. Maybe it is the summer heat reaching well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, allergies to ragweed and dust, or the overall emotional labor of living in my deceased father’s home and inventorying his belongings; the belongings of a hoarder. Maybe it’s the trauma that rises up from the walls like waves that crash down and leave a wake on the hours, the days, the weeks, my sleep… Maybe it’s the memories that seep out of the walls with no clarity like an oozing black tar, from every crevice and baseboard, dark and sticky and impending. It is all of the above, perhaps, but something is off kilter and I can’t quite pinpoint it.

On the way to the market with my mother for groceries I’m making a list on my phone so we don’t forget anything important like water or coffee because lists are the only way I can get anything done these days. I’m likely to forget the simplest thing if it’s not written down. I start the list and naturally water is first, so I type it in. Next, on the list: Return. I type in the word, start a new line, and then realize ‘return’ is not ‘coffee’.

Oh, you sneaky and outright Freudian slip! What ever are you saying to me?

I immediately feel a longing within me for connection to something that’s been missing. It’s part of the lingering hours in sleepless nights when all I wish for are dreams deep enough that I won’t remember a thing when I wake up in the morning. It’s a missing quality of how I perceive the world around me. An essence that’s evaporated in the heat of summer. I’m grasping daily at the few things I can depend on: coffee and a bed to return to each night in hope of a nourishing circadian cycle.

It’s lack leaves a pervasive loneliness. I’m lonely even when I’m not alone, even when I’m surrounded by some of the most important people of my life. When I’m physically alone, it’s worse. I’m paranoid, I’m ill, I’m overflowing, I cry every day. I get a puppy, I refocus my energy on her. I train her and love her and feed her and she follows me loyally filling whatever crevices in me that are not saturated by the sadness with tenderness. I worry I’m not happy enough to fill a puppy with the same unconditional love it so easily gives. I begin to complain that summer is a drain and I am a creature of the fall and winter when I can breathe and bundle because I want a reprieve from the brightness and suffusing quality of the sun; I want to feel the roots of the flesh of the earth. I want to escape the heat and suffocation of my own skin.

And that’s just it; flesh. It is porous, sensing; a perceiving organ that wraps around us, our souls interwoven with it. It is easy to forget how intelligent skin is and how powerful of a receptor it can be; the way our hair stands erect in it’s follicles when we are in a state of hyperarousal: a key element to our evolution and survival. A state that is an energetic response turned physical. It alerts us, “Hey, this place isn’t safe”, “I’m aroused”, and sets the stage for a response.

But, it’s not just skin that is our flesh; it’s the sinew, the bone, the mucosal membranes, and organs that are like clockwork with no real effort on our part to keep us alive. It is our sensing, perceiving, sentient bodies that exist in a sentient, perceiving world. This body of mine had become so saturated with my current ‘circumstance’ that I’d nearly drowned in empathetic absorption. Somehow, in the drone of this place, I’d forgotten how to self-care to the point where my spirit was lost wandering these narrowing hallways and claustrophobic rooms. The sadness of the world had become so heavy that I began to lack interest in even living; if one more thing goes wrong I don’t know I can keep this up. And these weren’t even my words, originally. I can trace them back to two separate conversations with two separate individuals, and yet, they had become my own words uttered with such sincere conviction that I felt a sense of relief: that I can choose.

If we don’t stay aware of what is our surroundings and what is our self we can get lost in the spaces where two separately named oceans are interchangeable. With water, there is no real separation so this can become extremely difficult and I’m not suggesting that we separate the oceans. To do so would work against the idea interconnectivity which is an essential concept of our existence here on Earth and within the entirety of time in the cosmos. The point is if we can’t feel and listen on a level of intimacy with ourselves that promotes our well-being we become overly affected by the outside world, which for the most part we cannot control. We need to identify the internal response to external stimuli and where this stimuli is arriving from.

Through all of this ‘lack’ I can trace my finger on the page to the reasons I hurt. I smear the picture every time I trace back from that to here and here to there and eventually the page is a burnt-black charcoal mess. One big, soft, dark cloud of pain. Suddenly, the pain is a blanket and it is the only medicine that will help me heal, because I’ve identified the poisons I can administer the remedy. I can move forward and leave it all behind on a page I can burn in the fire or hang on the wall to remind myself where I’ve been. To do this I have to correct my posture and breathe deeply. I return to my body, to my flesh, to my core.

In my core there is an exceptional place I’ve grown, built, and molded; a place I go for peace and quiet, for reflection, to refuel. I hadn’t been here in quite some time. I touch it when I dance with my eyes closed. I sing of it in lullabies. I dream of it to ground me and it is ever evolving. I erect new forms and paths within it and it grows with time. I imagine one day it may look nothing like what it looks like now.

It started first with a large, sun-dappled rock covered in a thick, soft moss. Beside it there is a stream, towering trees, and white moths flitting around me. Eventually, a waterfall dug out a pristine, blue swimming hole. Creatures come and go. Some return time and again, the interactions evolving. A red fox, a stag deer, a hovering light, a tiny mouse. Always moths. Always ferns. Soon enough, my mossy rock is the point from which I climb a tree or walk downstream, following the sound of rock knocking rock beneath water. My woods open up to a cliffside at the ocean. I walk down stone steps, across the sandy beach, into a warm clear water. Or sometimes I find a natural hot spring and a glowing sunset. But I usually begin at the mossy rock. It is my core and from there I can explore this inner terrain. Sometimes I end up in a desert or a cloud… it’s a separate reality. I can do whatever I like.

This place has been a way I find balance and remind myself what makes my skin tingle. When I return from a daydream of here, where ever I am is swathed by the magic of my inner world. This is a prompting to be present and to a healthy enchantment. If I visit this core enough, I don’t even have to try hard to feel what it brings me. Complete calm, contentment, regardless of the joy or sorrow that I feel. One deep breath and I can harness it in my flesh and move out into the world with a knowing that somewhere deep within me, in a tiny atom, is an entire other universe of safety.

We are inundated by external stimuli and the only thing we can truly begin to control are our own minds, habits, and hearts. Some times it takes training, but all the best things take some work.

I’m reminded of a friendly, little armadillo I crossed paths with in the nature preserve where we held the memorial for my father. It seemed hardly phased by the presence of myself, my partner, and his dog. It pushed around leaves by the path with no bother to our presence. It says, “Wear your spiritual armor and set clear boundaries to protect yourself; be yourself in the presence of the unknown”. I try little armored one, I do. I think I finally got the message.

Another dream.

I’m gently bathing a roadrunner. I can feel the weight of the bird in my hands and the softness of it’s feathers. I am careful to lather and rinse it’s bosom, beneath it’s wings, around it’s fragile neck. It’s larger than a normal roadrunner; the size of a small peacock. It’s plumage is a soft white rather than the common speckled brown. It’s calm in my hands as I massage and wash it’s whole body. There is a kinship, an innocent love, a familiarity.

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Animals, plants, stones, and seasons return to us as guides over and again in our lifetimes. Just as we know our human friends through continual support and gaining amity, to truly know an ally is in the return, the reoccurrence of contact. Sometimes, perhaps, it occurs just in symbol or thought that the magnetism of an ally’s character can help steer our choices or actions.

I grew up very near the desert southwest in Tarrant County, Texas where the roadrunner was the mascot of my elementary school. It wasn’t uncommon to see these quick birds in the backyard or crossing quiet roads, though, it always felt there was a touch of luck in catching a glimpse. One minute there, the next quickly disappearing behind tall grass or some weathered lumber.

As a child, I prided myself on being fast like a roadrunner; sprinting to win races on field day. I found satisfaction in the accomplishment of a blue ribbon because I had been born with asthma. First place in a sprint somehow symbolized a control over my respiratory illness. Through my dedication to get to the other side of the field I felt I won a battle against disease. While the asthma has faded, my competitive nature still thrives and my love of crossing land with nimble feet endures.

Native peoples of the desert southwest have viewed the roadrunner as a sacred animal, bringing good luck and protecting against wicked energies.  They are strong and resilient birds whose diets can include, on occasion, venomous rattlesnakes and scorpions, alongside the more consistent meals of insects, lizards, rodents, fruit, and other birds. Perhaps the most interesting thing to note is the zygodactyl shape of the roadrunners foot; an X. With two toes facing forward and two facing back, the roadrunner’s tracks inspire a touch of bewilderment and inspiration. Imagine trying to follow which way an ‘x’ track is going; hence, from a mystic angle the roadrunner is considered a defense against malignant spirits.

Another common name for the roadrunner is chaparral bird. Enter plant ally Larrea tridentata of the Zygophyllaceae family. Chaparral, or creosote bush, is a very resinous, drought-tolerant shrub. Chaparral uses it’s cloning capabilities to propagate as we’ve seen with the oldest known creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, named the King Clone. It is nearly 12,000 years old. Talk about perseverance! This is a powerful energetic medicinal; an adaptable spirit able to regenerate in it’s singularity, clone after clone. Larrea can support us in enhancing clarity and fortifying boundaries to moving towards our higher capabilities.

Like many resinous plants, it has a strong resistance to bugs and other prey. The volatile oil it naturally produces creates boundaries that protect it. When we use chaparral medicine as a guide, we can imagine our own regulating qualities that support and preserve us from unwanted attention. Just like the X tracks of the roadrunner, we can cover ourselves with veils. And, just like the roadrunner that can travel between places with this protection, the pervading scent of Chaparral can easily move through the air via the aid of water.

After a rain, Larrea‘s aroma permeates the air. If you’ve lived in an area with Chaparral, you know this experience. Imagine the influence this would have just like any other familiar scent that sparks remembrance. Scent takes us on a short journey from the present to another time that is familiar and cleanses our mind of whatever was currently shuffling around up in our noggin. Rain cleanses us, scent cleanses us, and the two together is an opportunity to distill a crispness to our experience, a periphery to elevate perception.

In places of drought, water is cached away in edges, crevices, vegetation, and beneath the soil. We can find it on the fringe of the day; catching dew from plants before it is evaporated by the sun. These borders, where water is gathered and dispersed in cycles, are where we can seek lucidity with our intuition. In Celtic shamanic tradition the mist is a dynamic place of portal between this world and the other. It’s in the foggy margins that we are propelled to seek nourishment and deeper knowing. In the desert southwest, the magnetism between water and heat makes waves in the air, pools of sweat on our skin, a seeking with a thirst. The mirage of water prompts us forward. The heat in the desert can suck us dry and draw out of us a new perception, if however, a bit hallucinatory. We can keep our wits about us and hunt out where the water hangs. Near the cottonwoods we build our homes, we drive our cattle to the creeks. We build swimming pools and lakes. The birds build their nests close to that of the beavers and the toads. Life is drawn towards water, exists because of it.

So, what does the heat pull from us? We seek shade. We are propelled to move until we find it. What is the quality of that movement? I go outside and I seem to dance the flow of water. The heat makes my energy somewhat low, but I am moving what soothes me, currents of the water in my body echo out with the insects. I dance water in places that feel hot and dry. I cool myself off by engaging with the heat, becoming an edge, a taproot of water; it is smooth, direct, working away at my borders. What sort of energetic shift does it take to become an animal of the desert? How do we preserve water in our actions? How do we conserve ourselves against the heat? I imagine the roadrunner, camouflaged in it’s terrain, speeding from bush to bush in it’s seeking of sustenance.

The dichotomy of fire and water are wrapped up in the potentials of Chaparral, as well. When I take a few drops of Chaparral essence, I sense a rooting into my sternum; a place of knowing and strength near the heart. The moving waters of my emotions are coiling around the fire of action. This is a deep clarity and a calmness that moves me forward with a grounded sense of purpose. Elongated breaths that expand and contract. Like the terrestrial power of the roadrunner who is fierce in it’s movements, Chaparral’s essence seem to echo this intention; from here to there with confidence.

With Ephemeral Movement, grounding into the self doesn’t always come before grounding into a place. Sometimes, I let the movement and the improvisation settle me into where I am at physically and then where I am internally unfolds. I make an agreement to listen to the place and the body, see my surroundings, and move. But, in the return to a place I’ve danced before, there is a familiarity and comfort of the known. The same confidence we can gather from knowing our internal landscape can also come from a pilgrimage or interaction with a familiar landscape in the world that offers an assurance of where/who we are.

The landscape I danced around as a little girl is filled with memories, sensations, and familiar flora. Crab grass, henbit, crepe myrtle, blackberry, bull thistle, yellow bitter weed, burrs and stickers; plants stereotypical of my childhood that I haven’t seen in years. Returning to them has a significance, like seeing an old friend. I adore all these plants and the way they persevere in the landscape and in my memory. This landscape is an ally to me now. I notice that the plants that are the most hardiest are the roughest, prickly ones. The kind that get stuck to your pants when you brush by or need gloves and a sharp blade to remove when overgrown. Their boundaries are clear. This assuredness of boundary is kin to that of chaparral and of the roadrunner.

These guides are a continuation of the examination of the symbol ‘X’ and the shield we build in our communities. In the previous post about Gebo, the X was an exchange focused more on reciprocity. Of course, it is essential that give and take should be balanced. However, if you do not know how to say ‘no’, how can you truly ever say ‘yes’? Becoming sure of what truly feeds us, what we need for ourselves, what our highest motivations are, is crucial to the gift-giving power of the X. Just as the X shows an exchange of energy, it also illustrates a boundary. This symbol is powerful in supporting our needs for space when we stand behind it rather than beside it, like the shield of the hero who can take rest behind it’s partition.

If we are the roadrunner, we clearly lay out a trail that says, “Don’t follow me.”; If we are the chaparral, we show through our self-sufficiency that it is a time of self-guided direction. If we are a bull-thistle radiating out to the sun in a familiar backyard, we say, “Hey! Don’t step here!”. There are times in our lives where we must be more bristly; when our boundaries are a bit farther out than normal so that we may ‘clean house’ with the rinsing waters of space and time. If you exchange too much without feeding your inner desire and drive, you offer up a pathway for discomfort and disease that can harm in subtle but lasting ways. Take the time to bathe the white roadrunner of your spirit, smother yourself in the smoke of burning chaparral, let the rain cleanse you, let aroma take you on a journey, sprint with direction to a landscape that feeds your soul, put out your bristles when you need alone time, move yourself through the heat of high noon with a force. Seek and meet allies that support you. Say ‘no’ when you need to and ‘yes’ when you want to.

My only request is that you say ‘yes’ to sunscreen and ‘no, thanks’ to stagnancy, because we all know still water is a birthing ground for mosquitos.

Keep discovering new edges, expanding your periphery, and establishing healthy boundaries.

Happy Summer Solstice!

I woke from a dream some time early last year with “Gebo” circling in my head like a white moth of memory.  Naturally, I typed in a search for any place named Gebo and behold, it is a ghost town in Wyoming where 20,000 people used to live, work, laugh, and love. Apparently, now what remains of the once teeming mining town is a few standing buildings and a cemetery where the majority of graves host infants and children.

Gebo is also one name for the Norse rune of exchange. It’s shape is an X. The crossing lines suggest the transmission of energy for energy, a gift for a debt, giving and receiving, like a hug, or like our well known ‘x’ as a mark for a kiss. This X marks the spot. It marks an essential nature of a well functioning relationship.

Gebo, WY was named after a money-minded entrepreneur and not after the Norse rune for a gift. Perhaps, Gebo, WY is nearly wiped from our memory as a substantial location in human history regardless of it’s standing as the largest town in the country at it’s height in the early 1900s, due to it’s lack of true exchange. As with most mining towns, community was based on the inherent ‘taking’ culture and not on giving. People swarmed in to make money, to mine precious earth, and not on the vital guidelines of human trade culture: to give and create as much, if not more than we receive and consume.

How in our lives are we taking from our relationships and forming shadows through lack of exchange? Scan yourself, your relationships, and your community for any lack in reciprocity. You must start first with your own body. Use a simple inquiry to begin: are you hydrated, nourished, rested? Drink water. Give yourself healing vegetables and herbs to eat. Are you comfortable? Stretch if you must and feel in-between your joints, ligaments and fascia. Sense into your bones, into your spine and pelvis. Are you rooted and at home in your body? Do you feel yourself guarding or pulling away from anywhere in yourself? Are there pockets of memory? Don’t run from the memory. Where does it lead you? To someone? To an instance you shared? To a place? Was there an exchange, a true exchange? Or was there a lack of reciprocity? Do you need to forgive? Do you need to be forgiven? What do you need to release your grasp on? What do you need to hold up to the light?

Did you find channels of love and inspiration? Memories of laughter and salubrious conversation? Whose faces do you see standing around you, living or in the afterlife, lifting you up to your highest potential and supporting you as you reach for the fruits of your labors? Whose lives do you see weaved together like a beautiful basket to mutually carry each other towards a bountiful and benevolent future?

These searches within ourselves can help identify marks on our body maps that need to be excavated, regenerated, or commemorated. Sometimes, these places emote fear and pain, but all the more reason to heal them. We can journey physically and psychically to places of need and give back in nourishing words, medicines, and acts of kindness. Most often, the scariest things you’ll face will be the most potent medicine. Sometimes, regardless of the outcome you must walk towards the dragon’s lair with a deep sense of trust in yourself and in the journey. Most times, we are all learning how to give and receive more honestly and fully. Remembering and honoring the affirmative qualities of our self and those of our collective can serve as one of the most powerful tools in our voyage. This is our shield, our boundary, our ability to get closer to the goal without suffering a fatal wound, a partition we can take a moment behind to regather before we continue on.

In my own body, I have experienced great loss in the last year. Daily, I am searching myself for any place that needs healing, needs to be ripped open and experienced. I was betrayed by a friend, I was manipulated by another, and then when I was in the middle of a physical and emotional transition, I lost my father to cardiovascular disease. In times of trauma, it is all too easy to dig holes and root away our feelings so that we can appear strong and capable in the world, so that we can just plainly function. I’d like to believe that I did a rare job of experiencing every emotion as it rose in me and rode it out like a wave. I did a fair job at it, allowing myself to weep whenever moments of memory or reflection nudged me on. I crocheted doormats for my grief out of rope and jute and torn fabric, making space for the sorrow to move through and out of me. I listened to songs on repeat that forced me to cry every time they played. Through it all, there was a great deal of love and community that surrounded me and held me like a child in it’s embrace. My friends, coworkers, family, and even plain acquaintances held me up when all I really wanted to do was dig my head into a hole like an ostrich. I had to toss what no longer served me to the wind, bulldoze the abandoned buildings, and level out my body for a new foundation to build upon. I am in the process of exterminating pests, filling in the compost pile, and planting seeds I wish to watch germinate, grow, and nourish myself and community.

Someone asked me what the gift was of my father’s passing. This is an uncomfortable question, but like most meaningful and sincere questions it had me working out an authentic answer. I have to pilgrimage time and time again to my body, first. Then, time and time again to my father’s home. It is a like a ghost town, a reflection of his body, an apparition of his life. My family is called there now in his wake to exterminate pests, throw out the refuse, sort what’s left behind, and make meaning of our relationships to him and each other. We have been ushered into a momentous time of exchange and reconciliation. The meaning-making of life-altering circumstance is a fertile time for redirection. Now, he is our ancestor. He lay down paths and wisdom to follow. What stories live on of him as time spins us forward?

Without saying too much about my father, I can say that there are patterns, cycles, and stories we are coiled into together. He is ever-present in me. I am made from his stories, his truths, his jokes, his walk, his keen eye on the world. I couldn’t escape him if I tried. We cannot escape our pasts just as we cannot remove ourselves from our lineage, our resilient fore-bearers, the multitudes of faces, hands, and feet that walked and worked this earth before us. Some of the stories we don’t want to hear. We don’t want to be kin to the injustices and horrific pasts. We are a product of atrocity, but don’t forget, we are the product of survival, love, and creativity as well. We can weave fertile myth around the truths to form lessons and paint fantastic pictures of our heroes and heroines.

The lasting image of my father is of a rather groovy man, who loved his family, was inspired by patterns in the natural world, wavelengths of sounds and rhythms. A man who loved animals, to laugh, and to see every object, creature, and plant as a unique and singular entity, something to be admired. Every landscape was something to be praised.

The opening statement of my thesis on Ephemeral Movement in 2013 was a memory. I’m standing in the driveway watching my father scatter seeds in the yard. Time passes and that patch of earth is covered in a vibrant and joyous congregation of black-eyed susans. If there is something you want to see in the world, scatter the seed and tend to the growth. If you want to see flowers, plant them. If you want to dance in the moonlight, get out and do it. If you want to walk from one coast to the other, start walking. If you feel a yearning inside, a truth that can’t be denied, use action to manifest it in the world.

If there is one overarching gift my father left me in his wake, it is an undeniable need to seize my truth and reconfigure my life as a work of art, directed with enthusiasm, and fueled by compassion. To funnel the Mars energy, the hero, the masculine vitality; to show up and work through difficult passages with commitment towards the end goal. To see the target clearly, pull back the bow, and let the arrow fly. This is my exchange with my father; the years he supported me, raised me by example, and always edged me towards my gifts. This life’s work, Ephemeral Movement, is only a beginning, a path, a series of questions that continue to nudge me towards locations in my body and in the world that need to be filled with new movement. It is an exchange with a locus, a conversation with bioregion, history, the present, and the future.

Gebo, WY marks a place on the map I’m lured like a fish to hook my lip on. I will journey there because the call was sent. Just like I will journey into the halls and rooms of my fathers home. If you are afraid of apparitions, you may tarry at the edge of a ghost town or a haunted house or the memories in your body and mind. Perhaps, it is a fear of possession or a lack-there-of. Maybe, you’ve seen things that were difficult to behold in the liminal spaces. But, if I’ve learned anything from my run-in’s with the thin places where our rationalized reality crosses with that of the unknown, it’s that with a strong sense of self and boundary, we can transform experiences of discomfort into understanding and release. We can use the protection of the shield we wove in our community, step out into the dawn with our clarity and purpose, and walk into the world with an open heart, ready to give and receive. We can be pulled towards an emptiness or void so that we may occupy it with admiration, if only for a moment, so we can dance with the spirits of children past, family who has left, and for the spirit of the land we stand on.

This project is fueled by my overwhelming urge to move in exchange with location in a new intelligence. It is aimed to evolve and therefore, difficult to pin down with words. The idea is to unravel, rewind and unravel again the ligament of what’s possible and to uncover the journey. It is with a humble vulnerability that I offer it up and out into the world.