When we last checked in with our protagonist, she was in Marble, CO at the Kiva contemplating the play “Our Town,” and the character Emily Gibbs asking, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?” And she was sure that there were people who did. Thornton Wilder may have been one. Buddha, Jesus, the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, the avatars in India. She longed to be like them, to fully realize life and her soul’s true purpose.
Today, we find our beloved heroine standing in the middle of the North Star Nature Preserve near Aspen, crying. Elated and saddened at the same time, she feels so alive with the energy and beauty of natural-majesty all around her, yet feels her spirit being bludgeoned by this repetitious pattern of having to take meaningless jobs where she caters to people’s superficial egos and meaningless desires.
She is standing in the middle of Creation, at the edge of a pond, searching the protective peaks all around her, pleading with Jesus and all the ascended masters: "how do I create the reality that I want to live, the one where I am like Anne Labastille in Woodswoman, or like Drunvalo Melchizedek, who gave up mundane society and walked off Into The Wild to live in the mountains and forests? How do I get back to the Garden?”
Ever the rebel and freedom-fighter, she’s not even remotely interested in the never-never land reality of some glamorous second-home-playground to the rich and famous, but is soulfully and ardently enchanted with the thought of living in harmony with nature, in living simply, in living off the land, not taking any more than she needs, and enjoying the roses along the way -- like Henry David Thoreau. She knows in her heart she will be living her Truth when she is learning how to navigate wild terrain, living off the land, chopping her own firewood, because she never feels more alive than when engaged in a nurturing dialectic between Mother Nature and her own Wild Nature. How many times has she envied women who know all about herbs, berries, trees, and all the wild plants of the earth: which are edible? which are not? which are good for tinctures and medicinal uses? which make the best pies? To be able to read animal tracks and habits, to understand the cycles within cycles and seasons within seasons the way tribal peoples do. She has been longing for a teacher, a soul-mate, a miracle, a deus-ex-machina to appear and lead her to that cozy little log cabin in the woods that she yearns for. Not a log-home Mc Mansion, but a rustic one-room cabin, with a woodstove and enough room for herself and her fellow mischief-maker; a place of simplicity and clarity from which to learn the ancient ways.
She recalls days in childhood when she was taken to the woods to cut down trees for firewood, calling “Tim-berrrrr!” at the top of her lungs; the gorgeous scent of pine-soaked days making her ecstatic; days spent gathering sap in buckets to make syrup; days in the forest picking blueberries; endless hours spent traipsing through the woods following myriad paths, seeing miracle after miracle … these have been her happiest hours on Earth.
She hikes into the unknown with reckless abandon, exploring a new and mysterious path, and suddenly her "baby" shows up after been "on assignment." She grins as she slowly sizes him up while he approaches; he radiates warm sunshine, and she is ecstatic. He winks at her and says, "Hello, my Love. Did you miss me?"
Like her, he is a journalist/photographer: an imaginative Intuitive, a creative-writer, an visual/abstract thinker. He longs to live in a log cabin in the woods, where together they can pursue their love of writing, and their desire to photograph and be-one-with-nature, with full fervor. After sharing the trail and baring their souls over countless hours, he stops her dead in her tracks and tells her that she is his best friend and ally, and asks if she really wants to be free!?! And if she does, will she go with him and really do what they’ve been talking about doing? She doesn’t even hesitate. She smiles that secret smile. In her mind, they're already gone. They are already deep in the beautiful wilderness, miles from anywhere, building their dream homestead, and they are oh so blissfully happy.
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