Over this past difficult summer I spent a lot of time away from the land I love, visiting friends and people whose company I enjoy. My friend John took me on adventures when he was in town visiting. One day we went all the way to the gulf, to the end of the day and the end of the land.

For the past few months, I’ve been here, trying to spend as much time as possible with the land, knowing one day soon it will be the last day in my life to sit with it, and be with it – like a friend you know is slipping away from you into death as you hold their hand. 

Just a little while ago I was walking around the back lines looking for a lost little goat. It’s beautiful back there. I have spent so much of my life walking there and seeing it transform. It made me feel so sad, and I reached out to the yellow cherry trees (my favorites) just in my heart, saying how sorry I was to leave them, and suddenly it seemed like the path opened up in front of me, showing me the way is clear and I finally have found my way out of a bad place and I can be free.

This is the new path opening before me now….. over the summer I cleared my head. I realized that I have felt called on this new journey by Spirit to let go of the material things I have held on to too tightly while my heart and my soul were suffering, and reach for something richer and more beautiful. The physical choices I had been concentrating on were not the real thing to focus on – I needed to look beyond that and let the dark things that have weighed me down fall away so I can find my True Path.

It’s so hard to let go….it’s so hard to trust and let yourself fall away from things that have been the foundation of your days and nights for so long. It’s so hard to see the things in this old place crumbling as I focus my energy forward, on something new.

But it is also so hopeful, so powerful, to watch the new seeds of planted dreams begin to grow. I’ve come through the dark, dark underworld of change and sorrow and death, and the power of a new rebirth is pulling me forward. I wake up each morning, feeling full of the light and strength of the sun, like a star inside my heart beaming with joy and promise. I know that challenges face me. I know it will be so, so hard – the physical work of building, the mental strain of doing it all correctly, the pinch of not having enough, the challenges that invariably stand in your way. But I feel ready, charged with that powerful potential you feel in every living seed – the small seed that grows and grows into a tree until it holds the nine worlds in it’s roots and branches – the seed of Yggdrasil.

This is the new place I am planting my feet – fence-post diggers and measuring tape in hand. And a self-portrait, myself and my work together, heading forward to a new life at age nearly 40. I’m ready. I’m not afraid. I hope I am worthy of the destiny that calls me.