The Return

As we trudged up the final bank of granite covered with gravel, lungs heaving with fatigue, brows drenched with hot morning sun, a coyote call went up from our guides waiting around the threshold circle of twigs, lichen, and pine needles. As I was sage-smudged back into our communal world, a sob rose into my chest in recognition of how much I had held inside, unplugged in the wilderness for three days without friends or food. We broke fast together with avocado drenched in olive oil and salt, and waves of bliss cascaded over me, followed by pacing myself through two exquisite bowls of miso stew with rice, mushrooms and purple sweet potatoes. That day we took it slow, comparing notes on how our bodies felt coming back on-line, squealing with delight in the cool, clear waterfall pools, basking exposed on the granite slabs, and swearing at the big black ants and biting flies that devoured us. We showed off our swollen ankles, sun burns, and scabs. And we all agreed we gathered before dinner to tell our stories that we had no words.

How does one tell the story of a time spent deep in inner and outer wilderness, where the only mirror for us is the night sky in all its phases? I dozed on a granite slab above my camp watching the last rays of the setting sun withdraw, the colors drain into black and white pulsating images of gnarled tree tops, the brightest stars joined by ever subtler clouds of nebula interspersed with satelittes, the rising half-moon washing all other light from the sky, a strip of turquoise under purple cloud brighten in a distant southwestern corner, the still, pale blue of dawn circumnavigating the sky, and the ridgeline of trees dipped in the rising sun. I called out all throughout that night, between sleep and waking, for the image I was born with, and what came to me was a disjointed, vivid replay of each episode of my life without the wound, punctuated by sillouettes, colors, and celestial bodies.

How does one understand an ancient rite of passage when the experience is all stitched up with the usual preoccupations of the modern mind – things done and undone, what should be done later, what is best to do with what is happening now? I wrote and rewrote letters in my mind to past loves, I designed a workshop, I planned for international travel and graduate school. As the fast progressed, I broke out into random quotes from movies and lines of song I hadn’t heard in years, tickled to discover that bippity-boppity-boo and hickory-dickory-dock have the same tune. I mumbled myself through the landmarks on my mid-day trek to our stone pile when I could no longer picture the path – up the slab, across the sand softened by ant hills, over the rotting log, past the gnawed spine of something as big as me, through the mosquito ferns, and up to the giant stone carved with smooth melon-ball gouges to turn the pile of stones into a circle so my buddies would know I was okay. “Give me the strength to carry my burden,” my mantra went. “Help me break fast with my friends.”

And what meaning does one assign to a hundred synchronicities that simply are? The hummingbird who came up right next to my head three mornings straight while I was napping. The black ants who became more reticent to climb on me by the river or at my camp once I told them that anyone who climbed on me would get flicked to one of my favorite baby trout: the one with the black spot on its head and the other with the extra bright red splash down its side. The chant of power that came to me in the early dawn; working its way into a ritual supported by the forest, sun, wind, and water, each yielding up elements needed for me to enact the shedding of other people’s stories and claiming my own path.  The surprising grace of my days of fasting when I have always gotten sick fasting in the past, and the fact that I finally made it to the meeting place at the end of our solo time at the exact moment my friends decided to come look for me. My housemate told me that while I was away the birds around our home were much more active that usual during the days I was on solo – singing at night, coming up right next to them, and one even coming into the house. And the dreams on my last at home and first night back were deep, vivid, and numerous.

I do not know what any of these means for my practical life. I do know that my quest began long before I went into the wilderness and continues as I reintegrate back into my life. I know that after pledging to shed layers, I have become more acutely aware of all of the mental patterns that don’t serve me. I know that out in the wilderness I felt no fear, despair, or grief, and that in that space my calling to grad school to learn soul work was certain, I understood more deeply how crucial tribe is for me and how to recognize it, and I received a new vision of wandering the Mediterranean, which this quest prepared me for during nine days of living with nothing but what I carried on my back, sleeping outdoors, and fitting into a new community of kind, but all very different people. And I know that once I returned to basecamp and started sharing my experience, new realizations came to me about what will be necessary for me to live these visions: making my inner world more life-affirming, integrating more play and sensuality into my daily life, and developing more dynamic friendships that encompass more than just support each other in our wounding.

One of the keys to all this is control. I can’t control my job, my relationships, my feelings, the process of my unfolding career path. I dream of hanging onto a steel bridge at a dizzying height, and while I am distracted from my own fear by saving some children stranded on a school bus, it doesn’t change the fact that the bridge is coming down and we are all going to die. Wandering in the wilderness inside and around me infused in me a deeper level of faith and fuller participation. I want to understand where I have come from and where I am going. But what is waiting for me is simply dusk and baby trout and nebula and salty avocados and songs I don’t have the words for.

Nancy

“Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.

Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces

of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.”

– The Return, Geneen Marie Haugen