STAR GRASS & BITTERROOT

Humming together from near stretching far in this shared space—a lifetime it feels like with many miles traveled by you and by me through the spacetime dimension.

From oceanside through old stomping grounds (and a momentary reunion with dear friends) to the mountains, through the mountains and finally, a drop down south over a simple line we call a border.

What a long, strange and wonderful trip this has been.

The desert Win and I find ourselves swaddled with in this present moment is a sweet salve quenching a thirst I knew I had deep down somewhere below ground level—the knowing older than time itself means that somehow or another I knew this place and this place knew me before the ways we are learning one another now.

Most of our hours are spent adding footprints to the layers of ones that came before us, soaking in seemingly dry landscape and a complex collaboration of plant life. Observing how forest fires have scarred the land, how the pandemic has traumatized her people, how we continue to forget in some ways and continue to remember in others that we are all our relations.

We drove a few hours from slightly south of Santa Fe to Carlsbad yesterday and what is remarkable is how much warmer the arid sun is down here as it meets the naked skin of my arms and how the cactus plants seem to have shifted into new shapes almost larger than life.

When we're not walking or driving, we are busily sitting still with a sky that reaches out across generations, for sunrises and sunsets are intense and powerful productions and it feels impolite not to stare.

Even with the great love found in being with this land, there are desperate moments of convincing loneliness, where it feels impossible that anything will ever make sense again, when my mind veers sharply in a direction away from my heart, where my frantic search for answers eclipses the liberation of my endless curious questions.

What brings me back to my heart is more motion, more stillness.

What brings me back is remembering how much the land remembers—that her memory is older than eternity and she has seen it all and so when I feel too alone, I lean into the earth and to the sky.

Time is like the ocean—each hour, each minute, each second a sacred offering from some other source.

The road is made of time immortal and yet in its infinite there is an ultimate.

These days, there is endless sky and sunsets that ask for attention and stars that take me beyond what I know to be true.

I stand in awe beneath a glittering yawn in the cold desert air.

This is writing.
This is one breath to one breath.

There is so much to be learned here but here could be where I am and here could be where you are.

There is so much to learn, to forgive, to continue.

Desert scapes and turquoise and history reaching beyond the depth of the time ocean.

We do this heartwork from where we are.

The land and her beings are our constant companions and every moment is one for gathering stories, for practicing this delicate thing of both holding on and letting go.

Embodied reciprocity is an essential part of where we are heading, the future says.

Just keep allowing it all in.
And allowing it to change us.

I don’t know anything, really, but right now in this moment from the land of enchantment I am working on this: it is a profound service (and an intentional meeting the universe) to follow your heart (even if your heart claims they don’t know anything either).

These are some loose notes from the road.