the gulch

by forestgumption

I returned a week ago from my trip out west to visit Arthur and Twiggy in the midst of a pandemic. My first solo plane ride. My first time away from Miki without John. My first time drinking cactus tea since becoming a mother. I am still basking in the memory of that trip, that trip is constantly unfolding again and again within me. I strain to access it more and more as another day passes, but I rest assured that it’s within me now, for good. And my body remembers.

I have this hunger whenever I go out west – the food is great but it’s more than that. It’s a hunger to hunt and gather, to remember, to digest, to purge, to see and see and see. Maybe the west connects me with the wildish woman inside of me. Twiggy gifted me this book, “Women who Run with the Wolves”, and it is describing in such eloquent detail all the feelings that have been unfolding within me – noticeably since becoming a mother, but more realistically since I was born. It hits the nail on the head of why this trip within a trip (cactus tea) to the russian gulch and hiking to the heart (the falls) resonated so deeply within my soul and gave me a sense of returning home to myself in a place i’d never been before. I am beautiful. I see things more clearly now, even in my memory. I believe the things people have said. I also recognize that I am so much more than the lines I’ve drawn around myself. I am not just what I appear to be, or what I’ve said, or what my parents have told me I behaved like when I was younger. I am not limited by others’ understanding of me any longer, and this feels quite nice. Actually, this feels like everything.

Everything about the trip, from the moment I stepped outside of the airport and breathed non humid non Philly air, to the hour later when I held a newly formed monarch butterfly in my hand and released it to the world for its debut flight…it was all so intentional and so perfect and so wholesome. I know, it can sound almost sickeningly sweet and maybe cliche. But I deserved this time and I am sometimes known to be sickeningly sweet, but the brighter the light, the darker the shadows. And I’m not as afraid of those anymore.

I have seen myself in those waters, felt at home in a temperature that should have repelled me. I felt balance. I felt a release of fear, and the weight of acceptance of those parts of the story which I have not yet read. I am a phenomenal woman. As are all women, at their core. I’m just lucky enough to have the guides, the loves in my life, to lead me there to see her. To see me.

 

g.g.