Reflections On A Journey

As warmth returned to our Arizona days, I realized I've been here for nearly three months. That's two months longer than I expected or intended to stay at Lonesome Coconut Ranch. Funny how time has a way of slipping by when you're occupied with other things! This time I really mean it when I say I'm taking off this weekend. I'll be making my way to Santa Cruz, CA where I have another WWOOFing arrangement and where I hope for a chance to get lost in the redwoods for a little while.

Facing immanent departure, I've been taking inventory this past week and been surprised time and again by the many roots I've grown without meaning to. You need only to look at the greenhouse/conservatory to see a significant physical representation of these: what is now a complete building, roofed and sealed, was barely four rows of bottles high when I arrived in November. But there are other ties as well. This land has it's own stark, sweeping beauty and the people who live on it are good people. I will miss the lively dinner conversation, evenings spent quietly clustered together, the visitors to the farm, the little dogs crawling into my bed with cold feet to escape frozen mornings. I will miss the sunsets and the cliffs along the dry riverbed. And while I know I can find sunsets and dinnertime conversation everywhere I go, nowhere will it be the same.

When I travel, the driving mechanism isn't, as it seems to be for many, a hunger to connect with new people, (though that connection is a welcome if challenging side effect). Rather, I push myself onto the road when I'm afraid I've grown too comfortable. Stuck with a place, person or occupation that stifles my vitality, I can feel myself collapsing inward and it scares me. For a long time, (months? years?) I was stuck in this unhappy vortex. I was drowning and thought I didn't know how to swim. I reached for lifelines, kept my head above water, but exhausted myself without seeming to find a way out. Last year, a conversation at work with Robert Black (my high school architecture teacher) led me to this poem by Mary Oliver. I copied it into the collection of poetry that travels with me (the journal that I rarely use for actual journaling) and as the months passed I felt Oliver's words sinking deeper and deeper into my core.

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

When asked by the people I meet why I'm traveling, I can rattle off any number of true, location- and job-specific answers, but I think the truest answer lies in this poem. Events in my life had reached a critical mass where I just knew what I had to do. No notion of destination, no idea what came after the next step until that next step had been taken. I am learning how to listen to that voice, the one that comes from the deepest part of me, learning to feel the truth of what I must do in my gut. As my journey has gone on, the clouds that once obscured the next week have receded but not gone. I suppose to some extent they will always be there; my lesson is in coming to know their nature and welcome them as a part of my life. I cannot predict what will happen and will disappoint myself if I try, if I become attached to a predicted outcome. Accepting uncertainty and that inner voice as my compass, right now I am doing the only thing I can do, living the only life I can live. I've been feeling off-kilter lately--a sure sign that a change is in order.

I know I've promised several people an account of rocket stove progress, and that will come eventually. I have never promised that these posts would be regular or frequent--I tend to write when the whim strikes. Progress on the rocket mass heater has stalled often, to our many frustrations. My report will come once I've gotten a bit of distance from those metaphorical brick walls we keep running into! 

This has been an introspective entry. Here, have a pretty picture!