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yesterday i was in felton— it is a place i love but it can also be painful— it’s where i spent the beginning of the pandemic shutdown, held my dog as she died and was evacuated from after the unimaginable and intense night-long dry electrical storm that ignited the czu lightning complex fires and displaced me from santa cruz for more than 4 months
i feel close to shadow, my dog who passed, when i’m there on the familiar streets and the beautiful trails in henry cowell where i walked with her so many times
sometimes i feel an uncomfortable sorrow when i think about leaving santa cruz for a new home base and i won’t be able to connect with her spirit and memory that way— i don’t want to think about leaving her behind
i parked on gushee st near the few-years-new felton library and noticed an art installation along the fence of the discovery park and trail
it was a photography series by local artist devi pride and her reflections in a poem about the experience of and healing after the fires
each of the 12 panels had a word and statement that the image represented
my favorite was a charred stump that looked like a jagged mountain out of mordor in lord of the rings— the word REST was followed by the statement “in the nothingness, we discover our greatest growth”
i have definitely felt like i’ve been in a lot of nothingness these past two years
but i know i have also experienced a lot of growth
so much growth happens in the dark before we can see the results— the baby comes into being in the womb, the seeds begin to sprout under the soil, some awesome process is happening inside the tree before we see the new green shoots pushing out
this growth and healing comes from some place beyond our rational understanding— we don’t decide our cut finger is going to heal— it just does— fire scarred land recovers with time because the earth just grows things— our pain/anger/grief/overwhelm transforms eventually as we salvage/clear/reimagine/rebuild our spaces and our lives
many of us had huge portions of our lives blasted away— that left a heart-wrenching void that something comes in to fill
when i had gardens, after you prepare the beds and plant and water, a lot of weeds sprout up along with whatever it is you are cultivating
it’s a gradual process to pull out these opportunists as each successive wave arises— i notice this same process in recovering my life— not every inspiration or direction is a keeper— i need patience and perseverance as i navigate finding my new normal, listening hard into that nothingness for my inner knowing
i think a big part of all this is having faith— believing that i can recover and grow— trusting that process that i can’t see but is surely happening
as devi says— “we all need to hear our own words sometimes”— words we use to reflect, to refine, and to redeem what is worthy and good from the chaos
a peaceful place to ponder the way forward
