EQ Rising

I am timidly skirting the boundaries of the desert—a wary coyote, cautious about taking the treat extended by the stranger. Curious, I advance and retreat, circling ever closer—a spiral dance to the far off, hypnotizing sound of Kokopelli’s lyrical flute. I am being reeled in. Magically. An enticing scent: the slowness of pace, the languid elusiveness that is so much a part of my nature, the multiplicity of forms revealed in shape-shifting sands, hot, flat surfaces—perfect for unhurried dreams, and the mud swirled arroyos exposing the gold and sand colored stones I pay a healthy price for up north as turf for my aged turtle. Enticing, yes, yet offered up by obviously challenging terrain—challenging to both mind and body. Muscles taut and body low to the ground, I advance, ready to spring back at any sudden movement in distance.  My brow’s attention is fully drawn, and my target clearly in sight, but still I hesitate. 

Why? 

Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown, maybe avoiding commitment, responsibility, or deadlines: bindings. Perchance I fear success, fear piercing the bull’s eye, however, most certainly a sink or swim feeling, making this crossing into uncharted territory—alone.

In the desert there is nowhere to hide, no academic institutional cocoon to crawl back into, no friends or family to divert my attention, the end of empty-nest syndrome and birth into my own body—unfamiliar territory, even despised, full of forbidding and forgotten landscapes.  I tremble before its blank pages. A pathway I must etch myself. Perhaps I fear being ambushed. There are no familiar trails to traverse, no footprints to follow, covered by the shifting sands. The desert’s dryness shows in the folds and wrinkles of a landscape mottled with age spots.   This is a land that speaks to the passage into Crone-dom.

Moved from the safe canyon womb of my recent rebirth, I now sit, waiting in this transitional space, a water woman, a woman of old growth forests insulated by moss and ferns. Parked in a place between two worlds, between easily discernable fertility and abundance, and what on the surface is scarce and barren.  Last year’s final quarter heralded a high learning curve, re-membering how to be a Conestoga woman: maneuvering the wagon in all weather conditions, dealing with frozen pipes and days with no water, rude awakenings to the earth quaking, pumping slow leaks in an air mattress, unable to communicate via technology, exorbitant fuel prices, skittish glances by folks leery about this woman traveling solo, and toilets throwing shit in my face. If it weren’t for the expansive views that beckon dreamers such as I, the absence of sound and visual pollution, the slowed pace, the spattering of lights created by woodpecker holes in the sky’s midnight fabric, the lullaby sung each night by Great Horned Owl over my coach, the coyote packs haunting howls after an evening kill, or the deep, mystical connection and love-affair I am having with the land, I would certainly have tucked my tail between my legs and headed home by now.

Home?  Like turtle, I now carry my home on my back.  Home is where I find mySelf.

  Recalling with fondness the moist, spongy humus my Maiden seed took root in; so fertile a nest that much grew. Now after years of pruning and training, the foundation is laid. My espaliered fingers branching out in all directions: north/south, east/west, above, below.   And now, it seems, there is waiting…waiting for that which has been pruned to spring into life and blossom.  The silent stillness of the desert is a double-edged sword: both the stranger I fear and the warm place in which to nurture and grow my hopes of becoming a published writer.