walking north

and a writing practice

There are places we walk that feel as though only deer have walked there in the past few hundred years.

It is in these places, where the deep breathing rhythms of earth can be felt, where I like to leave my offerings.

I suppose that all places of the earth need our offerings, especially today, when the earth and sky and moon are hungry for humanity’s remembrance, for our love and our reverence.

But when I find myself in these particularly quiet landscapes, these sanctuaries of old and simple, I like to give a pinch of tobacco or a beautiful stone or a song from my heart. I like to honor the survival and resilience of these places, through the ages of confusion and greed and destruction, that there still remain among us pockets of subtle earth whisperings, dimensions of ancient revelatory lands that remind us of what really matters and instill in us a sense of belonging, mystery and stillness. Long may these lands sing their songs of harmony into the Universe.

This morning I tucked my daughter into the pouch on my back and with our dog Zeus we walked north into the snow, into a landscape I had never been before.

We walked and walked until the whole sky was white, the earth was white, the sage and juniper were just silhouettes in the snow, and the air was filled with the silent slow descent of white crystalline water, appearing and disappearing amidst the pure white backdrop that surrounded us. Silence filled the everything of everything and it felt like we were walking backwards in time.

Deer tracks.

* * *
“Everything is your life.
Whatever you encounter, day and night, is your life; you should therefore give yourself to each situation as it arises from moment to moment. Use your life energy towards that purpose, so that from the circumstances that befall you, you may create a harmonious life with all things in their rightful place.”
~ Zen master Dogen (AD 1200-53)
* * *

I bowed to the hallowed silence of this space out of time and turned to walk home among the falling snow and deepening breath of my almost-sleeping daughter. A fresh stack of snow-sprinkled firewood awaited us at the front door.

Writing Practice

This month, I gave Chris La Tray’s single-sentence journal writing practice a go.

It entails gathering up the strings and subtleties of each day into one single sentence. While it seems like an easy practice, I was surprised at both how challenging it was and also how revealing. I’ve never really kept a daily journal, so it was surprisingly refreshing to get a sense of exactly what I accomplished in a month’s time! Below is November’s sentences. Some are actually not “complete sentences”, for all you literary wizards, but they seemed the best way to describe the day. I hope you enjoy ~
 

November 2023

1: The last of the Cottonwood leaves flap like leather gloves in the night.
2: Hammering copper and following a trail of blood, I realize we are two people taking care of 23 living beings up here.
3. I remembered how light and concentration can heal the body.
4. Blue-grey cabinets and a circle of elders remembering how to grieve.
5. Mending relations in the womb of Mother Earth.
6. Love prevails.
7. Amara learns rocking chair physics.
8. A herd of goats in the snow and Amara blowing her clay whistle.
9. Through the haze of deep sleep deprivation, I make it to the house of the village witch and I remember ancient feminine wisdom through her hands.
10. Crunchy feelings uprooting before ritual.
11. I heave waves of grief for the world, my ancestors, and the world’s children at the foot of the African grief shrine.
12. My heart heals in meeting a lineage of Light at the ancestor altar.
13. We lost the goats, my car got stuck in a ravine and we maybe fell back in love.
14. We filled the steel trough with water and flowers and light a fire under it to take a bath.
15. With my daughter strapped to my back, I carry juniper, cottonwood and aspen logs to the yurt for firewood.
16. I wake to the warm glow of the wood stove, the smell of coffee and juniper smoke and the soft pitter-patter of an unexpected rain before sunrise.
17. The kind of day when everything seemed to go wrong: I slipped and fell in the mud, stepped barefoot on a cactus and almost lit my hair on fire.
18. Relations, old and new, growing at the fall market.
19. A rainy Sunday, tending to the six million things.
20. In the middle of the night I went outside and was greeted by a surprisingly close pack of howling coyotes and three shooting stars.
21. The deep rich smell of inner earth finds its way into my nose and we belly laugh in the evening candle light.
22. Driving through the mountains from Paonia to Denver, I think of the desert, the way water moves through stone and my birth.
23. Feeling the existence of two completely different worlds existing side by side at the dinner table.
24. Everything moves in a peace frequency that lives under water.
25. Too much stimulation.
26. The full moon, the hot springs, my beautiful daughter; I am content.
27. Driving home, feeling my light returning, listening to teachings around the Cosmic Fire.
28. “People, we are made out of love.”
29. I took a walk with Zeus up to the place where, three summers ago, we gathered to build a water altar and sing and speak reverence to the free flowing waters.
30. Three water poets circle up to dream of the golden cycle of connected planetary water, the feeling of deep spiritual support and a realm of playful magic.

Wow! The journey of 30 days.

In other news, I want to recommend two women resources that I have resonated with in this past month.

The first is Shawna Bluestar Newcomb and her *Reverence Code* course, (https://www.shawnabluestar.com/changemakers). Also, Mare Cromwell, a woman with a very interesting history and body of work.  Specifically I want to share with you her free guided meditation anchoring us back to the heart of Mother Earth (https://www.greatmotherlove.earth/mothers-love-cord). I found it deeply nourishing.

All the best to you and yours,
Leah