Wilderness Quest 2011 - Part 4

Awareness.

That is the word that I wanted to embody during my solo time in the desert.  I wanted to be completely present to everything.  In the moment.  Alive. One with the land and my feelings and my body's messages and, well, everything.

That's a big order!  But I knew no reason to limit the possibilities.

Before leaving for our solo time, we stood around the circle of rocks you see below, and we each said our word, giving voice to our intention.  Then, one by one, we walked into the middle of the circle and received blessings from the guides.  

May this woman be safe.  May she recognize that she is one with all life. I wish I could have had a recording of all the sweet words that the guides said to me, words that gave me the strength and courage to carry me through the next three days.


But I guess the words don't matter.  They did their job. 


As I walked out of the circle, heading out to the place I had selected for my solo, I felt very alone, but I also had a sense of exhilaration.  The sandstone and junipers seemed very alive, radiant, and welcoming.  I was going home.


Previous Wilderness Quest Posts:   1  2  3

Wilderness Quest 2011 - Part 3

I never did see that friendly scorpion again.  But then, I never looked for him, either.  I just didn't expect him to bother me, and he complied.  I wonder how he's doing now, six months later.

(Eek!  I just read that, depending on the species, scorpions can live to be between 4 and 25 years old!)

The first two full days of the quest are mostly spent doing three things: Learning about the lay of the land, learning about rituals that are conducive to getting the most out of our solo time, and spending time looking for our individual solo spot.

After much angst and inner worrying that I'll never find my solo spot, I found a pretty good place.  I could imagine it being my home for 84 hours of non-stop alone-ness.

Fast forward to the evening of day three.  After dinner, we talked a little and made sure that everyone had what he or she needed for this journey.  Quests really are a journey.  We enter the desert alone, leaving all behind.  We go in wonder and open-ness.  Open to hearing the message of the land, the whispers of our hearts.  We don't come back the same.

Soon, we entered silence and all went our separate ways for the night. 

When we woke up the next morning, we gathered all of our gear and wandered silently into the base camp for the ritual that would take us over the threshold into our time of solo.  After the ritual, we would be on our own for three days and three nights.

I am always struck how, during this time, I feel like I am walking into my own death, never to return.  There are usually tears as we hug each other goodbye.  It's amazing!  If we were in a Walmart parking lot and found ourselves hugging each other goodbye, knowing that we would see each other again in 84 hours, I swear it would not be so poignant.  (But I'd probably be crying for other reasons... Don't make me go to Walmart!!!)

After hugs, we stood in a circle and, one by one, said the one word that we wanted to take with us on our solo.  We knew that each of the other questers would be holding our word for us, also.

My word was...



Previous Wilderness Quest Posts:   1  2 

How I Became U2's Marketing Guru

Last night, I went to a small, dark bar, very intimate, and U2 was playing.  The place was only sparsely filled.  After the concert, I was speaking to Bono and The Edge, telling them about how they needed to do some marketing.  They asked what to do.  I told them that the way we built our massage practice was to do door-to-door flyers and it worked well.  They thought it sounded like a good idea and decided that they would do that.  I told them that it's not easy.  It's a lot of walking - not easy walking when you have to go up and down driveways.  They were very impressed that I was so wise about marketing. 

Then I realized that, hey, they can fill stadiums for goodness sake! What's the deal with only drawing a very small crowd in a bar and the need for marketing?  Their reply:  Yeah, they could fill stadiums, but the small venues were harder. 

I started having a "thing" with Bono.  The last time I remember having sex with him, we were in some closed small space.  We knew his wife was outside the door.  That was somewhat uncomfortable.

Later that day, I needed to make an appointment with a woman who was connected to the band somehow. While we were doing our transaction, Bono's wife walked past me and into the reception area.  I felt really bad and asked the receptionist if people looked down on me for having an affair with Bono.  She told me there was no judgment.  Whew!

I wonder how many women have had dream sex with Bono!

(Disclaimer - I have never had CONSCIOUS fantasies about sex with Bono, and even though he's a famous rock star - and kind of sexy - he's not my type.)   ;-)

Wilderness Quest 2011 - Part 2

The desert is moody.  Cold and indifferent one day, hot and intense the next.

Our base camp was set up before we arrived the first morning.  Water in the smaller containers was still frozen from the night before.  Wind drove the cold air into my bones.  And it was too late to head back to my warm house.  I was committed to being on this exposed land for the next eight days.

Forget about warm housing, I didn't even have a tent!  It is suggested that no tent be used on a quest, allowing us to be less separated from the land and life of which we are a part.  There are many things that would give me great comfort in the desert, and a tent is at the top of the list.  During the upcoming nights, my home would be made of a ground cloth below me, a sleeping bag around me, and another tarp above to keep out any rain.  No protective walls to keep out any boogeymen or four-leggeds that may find me out there in the middle of nowhere.  Even though I always approach quests with fears of tentlessness, I usually end up sleeping without the top tarp some of the time because I find that it separates me from the AMAZING, gargantuan night skies that reach into infinity.

The first night out this time around, dressed in long underwear, fleece shirt and pants, and my down coat, I snuggled into my blue down sleeping bag, and by the light of my headlamp, I began to journal.  (Yes, with all of that insulation, I was pretty darn comfortable.)  Grief about my dad's dementia and physical deterioration, along with confusion about how his care was being handled leaked out through ink onto paper, through tears onto cheeks, and through cries into the night.  As I was indulging quite nicely, a scorpion crawled from under my ground cloth.  Hadn't he ever heard the sound of a wailing woman before???)  He was about four inches from my writing hand.  Yikes.

Did you know that during the day, scorpions find shelter from the hot sun by hiding under rocks, but you can't fool a scorpion into thinking a headlamp is the sun, so you can't make him hide - or go away?  What to do, what to do?  He moseyed on around so that he was about a foot away from where my head would lie - if I had the nerve to go to sleep knowing that there was a scorpion hovering nearby.  I watched him as he would walk a short distance, then hang out for a while - getting nowhere slowly.  I watched to be sure that he was going to go THAT way, not THIS way, toward me.

After about a half hour, when I realized that the scorpion had more staying power than I did, I just decided to quit my supervising and hope that if that little stinger guy came any closer, he would choose to go underneath my ground cloth again instead of joining me on top of it.  Sometimes, you just can't worry about what might happen, so I cocooned myself into my bag and slept like a baby.


To See the First Wilderness Quest Post:   1  

Yesterday's Hike

Ground accepts bare feet

offerings on a fall hike

earth, friend, mother, life

No, it wasn't snowy all the way.  Most places along the trail were warm (somewhat) from the sun. 

What the heck???  A pink plastic spoon taped to a tree with black tape.  There must be some kind of cosmic significance here!

Wilderness Quest 2011 - Part 1

On the second to last day of April, I traveled in a yacht-sized black SUV from Denver to Moab, Utah with a complete stranger/new friend. .  Terry is a friend of a friend - a wild man who is unafraid of challenging himself in the physical world.  While I am more reserved when it comes to bodily challenges and feel more at home challenging my inner life, we still had fun getting to know each other as we rode through rain and snow, finally landing in the sunshine of Moab seven hours later. I was not only entering the stunning canyon areas of Utah, I was walking into the unknown territories of my third wilderness quest.

In Moab, we met up with the people with whom we would be spending the next eight days - three days together, three days on solo, and then another two days together.  With a history of shy introversion (painfully tongue-tied in the past, but getting somewhat better with age), the days of togetherness with strangers was more challenging for me than the hot days I sat alone with only this crazy mind for companionship.

After dinner out with the fourteen other beautiful people from the U.S. and Germany who, along with the desert creatures, would be my companions for the next few days, I went to my motel room with my two room-mates - a couple from California that I knew from some workshops we had taken together.  And do you know what we did that night in preparation for our great spiritual adventure into the desert???  We laughed and laughed, and we watched television!  I, a non-television viewer, watched TV as I entered into the abyss of the wilderness quest.  My companions' choice?  A "re-run" of the day's most televised event - the beautiful, proper, glamorous wedding of Prince William & Catherine Middleton!  Can you believe it?  What an archway into the austerity of the desert!

Pondering the "F" Word

I stood on the sidewalk holding my "Peace" sign and watching the young man at the bus stop while he danced pirouettes to keep his hacky sack in the air.  Sitting on the stone bus stop bench, a woman who appeared to be in her early twenties read a book as she drank her Starbuck's from a paper cup.

The bus pulled up and a car across the way stopped for the red light, its windows down and Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" pouring into the air.


Hold me closer, tiny dancer...

How can anyone ever say that life is boring with all of this entertainment?

After a while, someone hurled the words, "Freedom isn't free!" across five lanes of traffic and into the ears of our group of Women in Black vigilers (and anyone else within a two-block radius).  I always ponder such outbursts, unoriginal as they may be.  I probably spend much more time pondering such phrases yelled at us than does the person pronouncing such profundities.  But I could be wrong about that.

Below is how my imaginary dialog with Yelling Man (YM) could go:

(Since I don't know what YM would say to my inquiries, I can't put words in his mouth.)

YM:  Freedom isn't free!

Me:  What do you mean by that?  Do you mean that freedom costs money?  Do you mean that freedom costs lives? The lives of our citizens who are sent to war and the lives of citizens of other countries?  Are you talking about money or lives or both?

YM:  Freedom isn't free!

Me:  Do you feel free now, knowing that people are dying all over the world while we spend trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on war?

YM:  Freedom isn't free!

Me:  I experience freedom whether or not we have people fighting in other countries.  Is freedom truly freedom if it's based on conditions?  Conditions that could change in an instant?  That doesn't sound very free to me.  I experience freedom while you yell at me, I experience freedom while our government watches me on cameras.  I experience freedom while I pay taxes.  On my best days, freedom isn't contingent on circumstances outside myself.  On my worst days, I suffer and think that my suffering is caused by others.  At some point, though, I usually wake up and remember the source of true freedom (or, sometimes, I have to ask for help in order to get my head on straight again). Then, I am no longer a victim.  Maybe when you yell that freedom isn't free, maybe you're forgetting and not having one of your best days?

Everything can be taken from a man but...the last of the human freedoms - to choose
one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. - Viktor Frankl

True freedom is always spiritual. It has something to do with your innermost being, which cannot be chained, handcuffed, or put into a jail.  - OSHO, Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

The truth shall make you free. - Jesus, John 8:31

I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it. 

– Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

My Boyfriend

I'm in love with this guy. 

I guess that you could call me a two-timer - or maybe a three-timer - because I was seeing this guy while Buddha was still here and, well, I AM married, you know.

I'm usually attracted to big men with dark hair, so this is quite the deviation from my normal attractions.

But there is just something special about this guy.  I think he feels the same about me.

We get to spend some quality time every once in awhile.  His woman isn't even jealous.

Neither is Mr. CFP.

Something about him makes my heart melt.

Oh, Chipper, if you didn't already have a woman and some prissy, little female four-leggeds to live with, I'd bring you home in a second!

Kneel

My favorite Dilbert cartoon.  I must have pulled this off of my Dilbert calendar in the late 80s or early 90s.  I don't know where it's been all of these years, but I ran across it the other day. 

(Click to embiggen)

Still cracks me up.

Maybe I'm just easily entertained.

Love Means...

As autumn approached, we spent a few days in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Dogs are not allowed to hike within a National Park, and since Buddha was no longer in our life, we were now free to hike many trails during our time there.

Real LOVE is when we can't stand to leave our best dog behind, so we don't hike a close national park for years and years - and we don't feel like we're missing out on anything, because having a best dog friend is way more valuable.

Elk above timberline

(I love all of the colors in the hills.)

Before Mr. Boodie left us, he was getting weak in his hind legs, so in order to give the guy some more traction, we bought rugs for areas of our home that have wood floors.  The rug in the bedroom is a plain, light color.  Buddha hairs showed on it like iron filings on a magnet, like the gray hairs popping up all over my head.  

When Mr. CFP did the first post-Buddha vacuuming (which didn't take place until more than a week after Buddha died, because knowing that I'd never have Buddha hairs on my rug again, I forbade the cleaning of that rug), the first thought that came to my mind after entering the room was, "I love the look of a clean floor!"  But real LOVE allows for hairy rugs, because having a dog buddy who thinks we're a god is way more valuable than a clean rug.

Today at the nursing home where my dad lives, I got to give Todd (the resident dog) a morning neck massage.  We both loved it.  A lot.  Maybe sometime, a different four-legged best buddy will find its way to this home and this heart.  I don't need national parks and clean carpets anyway.