Nine Muses Retreat Center, Idaho

I would like to remember this moment, poised between space, eternity, and light. I sit on a cream wool carpet inside the circular yurt. Six Shamanism students lie on sleeping bags, journaling or art-making. A view of sun-streaked grass, dandelions, and a red brick path out the front door. Laughter in the background, a dog barking. Douglas firs stretch upward behind the bones of an undressed sweatlodge.

By the pond, a swallow dips down from a pendulum flight, sapphire back gleaming, to crunch on a tiny water-borne insect. Three orange fish emerge into view from muddy depths of the pond. Hazy reflections of trees, sky, and air ponder thoughtfully upon the water's surface.

I sit here alone, longing for sky and earth to hold me again. I remember when I was little and talked with apple and maple trees in my Iowa backyard. I remember rolling myself in long swaths of dry grass underneath a country sky. I long for an open dream of space upon which to alight, like an insect finding itself in a world so utterly huge it has no choice but to be here in this instant and breathe.

I desire to be small again, to hold myself in a miniature cocoon unseen by light or flavor. I delect in the painted cloud canvas, atop turrets of trees subsuming waves of grass.

I remember who I was one year ago. I am afraid to admit that I may not be any better now than I was then. I cast off the illusion of growth and betterment for the truth of immediacy and homecoming. Why continue bartering with myself over issues of self-worth when time and sky are intermingled like cupcakes and icing? This place is not a judgement room, but a seminary of the soul.

Illustrious sky beings come to press their faces against the curve of earth's atmosphere. Their breath coalesces in pungent airdrops, forming clouds and rain. There was a time when no humans lived here. It was all trees, grasses, mud. Other beings have left their footprints and still live on in light and shadow.

I have forgotten how to walk up and over a mountain. Today, I feel the journey is not so as to stretch my limbs but to taste the circumference of my own destiny. As I walk, I circle closer and closer. This way, life is not a conquest but a meandering through beauty.

Nature brings me to tears when my body re-enters it. Something fills me like a glass vase that can never be broken. Soft, nonlinear, round, flexible. Going this way and that, meandering like a stream.

Realizing I am not alone is a marvelous thing. In the country, my walls crumble and I come to touch the skins of other beings who know the vastness of time and space. I am more attuned to the gentle nature of hugs. My thoughts don't scream quite so loudly--the din calms and I can sense the flow of waves again. Softness is an all-encompassing feeling of place: the trees affect it, the birds sculpt it, the soil holds it, the waters cleanse it. I am most alive in places where the unknown unleashes itself on landscape without plan or reason, where the mystery sculpts my flow and rocks me into a closer openness than I have ever felt before.