November Part 3: My Girls

Oakland, November 15 - December 2

How lucky was I to have two weeks+ with my girls just when I needed it most? Kiva and I camped out in Ariel and Chad's small apartment, trying our darnedest to be low impact/ high value guests. We cooked, shopped, cleaned and did errands hoping that they might actually miss us when we left.

Having those two weeks convinced me all the more that my top priority is to live close to them and be an available part of their lives. With Kiva in Australia for perhaps 4 years while Beau gets his BS in Osteopathy, Ariel is the magnet that will draw me to the northwest. Don't know exactly where yet, but it will reveal itself.

I'm a big fan of Oakland. I know, everyone talks about the crime and racial tension, but much like Chicago, it's a city of extreme diversity that is striving to be a great place to be. I'd like to know the recipe for improving a city without the negative effects of gentrification. It's an essential dynamic that needs to be figured out for all of the struggling cities and towns in the U.S. But the walkable neighborhoods and good mass transit create some key sustainability ingredients. Plus it's sunny a lot of the time! And living on the Hayward Fault Line just adds that adrenaline high that is so attractive.

El Capitan, so massively, solidly there.

Ariel has a lot of work obligations as a manager at the San Francisco SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), a huge non-profit in the Mission district of SF, often keeping her there until 8:30 at night. So Kiva and I took off for two days to Yosemite for my first visit to the Cathedral of National Parks.

Approaching Yosemite was not a happy trip for me. The landscape looked awful- logging, fire-burned , the effects of the Pine Beetle, all combined to thoroughly bum me out. I felt fearful of what we would find in this legendary place, how much human-caused devastation would be there? But the Valley is just a place unto itself, seemingly immune to the Pine Beetle and just full on stunning. There were other visitors there but not in any way that diminished our enjoyment of the Park. It was cold, crisp and blue, just so uniquely huge.

Kiva next to the Merced River

Site of the prayer and the eagle.

There was a transcendent moment there, when the past week's angst came to a head and was healed. Kiva and I walked to the Merced River edge. I stood and looked up at those millions of years old rocks and prayed out loud. "Please protect this place that is so vastly strong and so frighteningly fragile from us humans. Help us in this particular time in our country's evolution to find the way forward in love." Tears streaming down my face, Kiva hugging me, she says, "look Mom." And there, rising from the crests I had been praying to was a bald eagle, soaring on the air currents, circling before us.

Sunrise in Yosemite.

That bird was the catalyst for a deep shift in me. I let go of trying to figure out my future, trying to answer all of the obvious questions: where, what, how, etc. I embraced the experience I have had on this trip of discovering what was in store for me moment by moment. The eagle watches keenly for opportunities from the big picture perspective- sharp eye and instant change of course as the present unfolds. I am channeling that way of the eagle as I walk forward.

On the Mist Trail with Vernal Falls 

There is so much more to say about Yosemite and my time with Kiva- another reminder of my fragile body as I fell backward climbing rocks to a waterfall ending up breaking the metacarpal of my left pinky finger, the Mist Trail hike to Vernal and Nevada Falls, lunch at the foot of Yosemite Falls, being in the valley of environmental heroes John Muir and Ansel Adams.

Lower Yosemite Falls, site of picnic

Top o' Mt. Tam overlooking the entire Bay area

Highlights of the time in Oakland: Thanksgiving in Lake County, hikes/walks in the neighborhood woods of Oakland, visit to Mt. Tam,

The Homeroom with nephew/cousin Matt Hodgson

dinner with Matt at Homeroom mac & cheese restaurant,

Crazy, memorable day on the top of the double decker bus.
Trip across the Golden Gate Bridge was wonderfully ridiculous!

double decker bus tour of San Francisco... in the rain, movies, food, coffee, and best of all, Trivia night at a Berkley pub- so fun as each of the four of us pulled a variety of answers from thin air.

A stop at a Napa Valley winery. Melanie has
learned her lesson and has confined herself
to no more than one beer or one hard cider.

Precious, precious time. We missed Ben, feeling the lack of his unique energy, but carrying on with the closeness that can come from great loss. The love is deep and rich.

November: Part II- filling in the gaps

Serenity is not Freedom from the Storm, but Peace Within the Storm

Colorado & New Mexico- November 10-15

I can safely say that during this time I was far away from serene. All of a sudden I didn't want to be traveling and untethered AT ALL. I wanted calm stability, surrounded by loved ones. No decisions, no aloneness, just a nest with other nest mates. It was another level of digging deep to find the inner core of strength and resilience that I've cultivated since Ben died. I had to figure out how to breathe away the pit of anxiety I had in my stomach.

It's a lucky thing Colorado is so dang beautiful. Traveling through the mountains I was mostly cut off from cell service and radio stations. I had to rely on the spectacular scenery to bring me back to my 'present' state of just-fineness. Traveling south toward Durango was its own kind of meditation, at which I floundered and to which I returned as I was able.

My safe place- Jo and Carolyn's

But a refuge appeared after two nights on my own. Jo and Caroline are friends from Maui who live in Durango. They folded me into their arms in the most loving of ways, inviting me to stay with them for two nights. The balm of being in their calm, restful space helped me recover my center and equanimity.

Please imagine living in these conditions... if you can.

I took a day trip to Mesa Verde National Park to see the pueblo cliff dwellings. There was perspective to be gained there. The Anasazi lived in these extraordinary dwellings, climbing up or down for any supplies. But along with the challenges of this vertical living must have come the most immeasurable degree of community and togetherness.

I doubt if we can sense at all what living so closely and interdependently would have done for the human psyche. I am currently reading Sebastian Junger's Tribe, which looks at the long-forgotten human need for living communally. Does it take conflict and hardship to remind us of this need?

A kiva from pre-cliff dwelling times, about 750-1000 AD

Earthship structure in Taos, NM, one of many. Recycled tires
rammed with onsite earth and adobe skin. Amazing
low cost, small footprint housing. Off grid, uses
the region's 6 inches of water per year 3 times!
Perhaps this is the modern day version of pueblo living.

November: Part I

May You Live In Interesting Times

When I think back on pre-November 9 it all seems dream-like. That naive assumption that the status quo (Hillary), the semblance of sanity, the known quantity would conquer the day kept me optimistic and unprepared. A personal sense of being untethered and directed by the wind is one thing, having that description applied to our country is a totally new depth of insecurity ranging on panic.

In the more innocent times of the first week in November I rode into Colorado on my blue steed, galloping over the barren flat lands of eastern Colorado to reach the Rockies once again. How I had missed them since Montana and Canada. And suddenly I wasn't camping anymore. Beautiful, warm days in the 70s gave way to cold nights in the 30s. Call me a wuss but the early dark and cold found me searching for cheap hotels and hostels.

Hannah and puppy, Juniper. Great training
going on with this pup!

In Boulder I had the wonderful good fortune to stay with Hannah Tirrell-Wysocki for 3 nights. I so wanted and needed to be with someone I knew over election day and night. Turned out to be the ideal spot.

Elk chillin' in the fall grasses.

From Boulder I could go for a day trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, blithely trusting the universe to arrange itself in an orderly fashion. I don't think I thought about the election until the drive back. I could be in the moment, which is arguably the greatest gift the National Parks offer us- the breathtaking grandeur that supersedes the mundane cares of our scrambling lives.

La Poudre Pass Lake- origin of the Colorado River.

RMNP was marvelously uncrowded in early November. A year ago at that time the Trail Ridge Road through the park had been closed under a foot of snow. This day it was blue, clear and cool, but pretty nearly perfect. The photos tell it best.

The humble Colorado River running through Grand Lake, CO

What will forever stand out for me on election night 2016 was participating in the evening Hannah designed that transcended the shock and anxiety of the national scene. Hannah has a Masters degree from the Naropa Institute in Boulder. Some of her Naropa cohort joined us for soup and bread and conscious conversation. With the growing awareness that the election would result in an outcome other than most of us had assumed, we turned our attention to the larger perspective. Hannah had prepared some questions for each of us to answer, questions like 'how are you feeling right now?', 'what do you have to offer in times like these?', 'what sustains you in times like these?', as I recall. The act of sharing with these thoughtful people took us above and beyond the hub bub of politics to the larger scape of human connection and positive intentionality. It was such a gift. I will hold on to those memories in the weeks to come.