goat runner

a path towards luminosity

Running.

Downhill in the snow, boots laced up my calves, head wrapped in thick fabric, right hand carrying one long skinny juniper branch, forked at the top with wild green mistletoe dangling off of it, leaping over undefinable snow covered lumps and shrubs, followed on all sides by my small prancing herd of goats, bells ringing from their necks, huffing and trotting and jingling alongside me, alarmed at my sudden sprint, downhill, running, jumping, galloping like a wild winter warrioriess herdswoman, strong, resilient and unstoppable.

From the cattail forest to the sagebrush meadow. To the slippery clay mud of our home base and I keep running ‘em all the way into their pen in the sunshine, boots near sucking right off my feet from the sloppy wet mud, and with a bit of salt and rice I entice the jingling herd into their pen for an afternoon rest.

I have been deeply reconsidering my life lately.

Miller Creek. Photo by author.

As a result of longterm befuddlement around my inability to fall sleep, I met with a professional friend of ours who sent my hair (and my daughter’s hair) into a lab to have analyzed.

The results were slightly alarming.

She encouraged me to begin monitoring my stress factors in life, reduce them, consider an easier way of life, simplify for a time, allow my adrenals to catch up.

I started imagining leaving the land here, our life and goats, the daily burdens of complete primitive living, off grid, in a tiny yurt with a tiny human and a tiny bit of electricity. I started imagining hot running water, washing machines, a paved driveway, easy access to community, mamas, children, events. Electric heat.

And then I returned home and looked out at this freaking amazing mountain, so sexy half shrouded in cloud mist and fog, dancing with the constellations like a primordial snow goddess, so regal and unmoving, so much so that I just couldn’t imagine actually leaving here… It’s like the threads of my being are woven into the luminous fibers of this land and I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Not really.

So I’ve been monitoring the stress factors, going slower, moving gently, having conversations with my partner, family and community. I’m changing the way I operate (instead of PUSH THROUGH, I am flowing with), keeping a keen sense of what triggers the overwhelm and also what triggers the good feelings.

Half frozen, spring fed waterfall on our land, forming icicles off the roots of an old Cottonwood tree. Photo by author

I realized I had come so far from cultivating and tending to my own good feelings, that I kind of had forgotten what it felt like to be expansive and open and light. I mean, we’ve been busy. There’s endless work. There’s endless coddling of tiny human, considerations, organizing. Hauling water. Hauling firewood. Endless fire building. Endless dish duties. Endless clean up. Endless folding, prepping, gathering, putting away, covering up, tying down, drying out, dusting off. Endless, endless, endless.

So you can imagine the somewhat shocking effects of putting the breaks on the thing. The whole reevaluation of the situation. The slowing down. The consideration of prioritizing feeling good over getting done.

Because my health requires it, I’ve started re-orienting my attention towards the yummy feelings in life and a few mornings ago, I revisited my Kriya Yoga practice for the first time in over a year.

When I say revisited, I mean that I woke up very early, before light, and, not wanting to wake the tiny human beside me, I remained laying in bed, began the breathing technique and then imagined myself doing the entire practice, start to finish.

Ceremonial fire pit. Photo by author.

I felt freaking great afterwards. Even just imagining myself doing the practice was amazing, so revitalizing and cleansing.

So this morning I did the entire practice in real life, in front of the fire, slighlty having to fight off the tiny human and her best friend, the dog, and also pause here and there to stir the blueberry goat milk oatmeal cooking on the stove. But nonetheless, I did it. And I felt freaking great. Spacious. Like an energetic massage.

I was initiated in this particular branch of Kriya Yoga in 2020, after a major illness in January where all I could do was sip chicken broth and read Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi in bed. During my reading of it, I had a major experience with some kind of blue being that was healing me from head to toe and I knew it was connected to this saint and his book and so I immediately looked up where I could get initiated and found the soonest retreat, which was in Encinitas, CA, a few months later.

Paramahamsa Yogananda, from this article

After I was initiated, I practiced every day, twice a day if I could.

It was something special then. But now it is something deeper.

I can appreciate this practice in a way I never could have before the whole farm wife-baby-off grid dream birthed into a reality. It is a beautiful practice. The simplicity, the breathing, the simple breathing magnitude of it, the simple perfect cleansing of it, the gentleness, the effectiveness, the shiny good feeling afterwards. The prayerfulness.

So I completed my practice and then in gratitude of the remembrance of the good things in life, I put a little cedar on the woodstove and swirled my little green dragon ball that rang out into some quiet enchanting realm of subtlety, carrying with it my prayers of thank you, my smile, my light.

Mama Leah in her snow getup. photo by author

And then.

I got to take the goats out on a glorious hike.

I haven’t been walking them so much because of our tiny human’s needs and her ever-increasing weight on my back. But it felt good, so good, to just be out there in the snowy expanse of it all, luxuriating in my solo mama time, twinkled at by the blue and green sunlight reflecting through orbs of snowmelt dripping off juniper branches.

The universality of it all. The forked walking stick. The woman with her goats, knocking mistletoe off branches for the little herd to eat, like some old witch woman, gathering and chuckling, living beyond nation or ethnicity, just life on life. Running. Downhill. In a flurry of bells and sloshing utters.

Goat walk. Photo by author.