Slowly

This morning I sit quietly, after a slow departure from the cozy comforts of sheets and blankets. My body satisfyingly tired, mildly aching with the lactic acid and fatigue generated in the day before. My dreams were strewn with the comforts of healing after this long hard journey I have been on – my heart broken open, partially closed for maintenance for a time, casting itself slightly forward again towards a softer opening. Sacred rooms, glass walls, rich carpets and friends-turned-shamans populated my sleeping hours.

Yesterday I climbed a mountain, the bundled gifts of ceremony wrapped together in the lid of my backpack, the dog at my heels (and darting off in search of squirrels). From the valley across the rolls of this meadowy subalpine terrain and up into the rock and wildflowers of the alpine. Asters, Paintbrush and Spreading Phlox still clinging to the small cracks of shelter formed in the shadow of jagged rock outcrops. Our feet crunched across scree – the remnants of volcanoes slowly crumbling beneath us. Lakes spread out in azure-tinted shades across their varying depths below the mountains' long sloping shoulder. A long walk for a young dog, and even for me, used to longer treks and possessing a habit of tenacity across extended journeys of time and terrain.

As I moved, I thought about time; when to turn back, how I was faring so far on the invisible arms of my watch. Making good speed, a clip of 3-4km an hour, slower on the ascents but steady, unwavering. Looking up when I could afford, only tripping once and mildly, on the tired descent home. Pausing once in a while for just long enough to take a drink, and share a snack with the dog, to let him sniff that thing or the other. I wait patiently for this at times, not so much at others. He is such a sensory being, not savouring the views so much as immersed in his attuned world of smells and movement, always ready to make chase, literally leaping all fours off the ground into a pounce at a moments notice. I lament a bit that he is such a hunting machine and I celebrate his ability to find water. I keep him close and on leash as we move into the territory of the Ptarmigans, for fear he might run himself off a cornice and into oblivion in the obsessive blindness of pursuit. Although he has surprised me before in his ability to see without seeing, to find the precipitous edges in the world and avoid them.

It seems without knowing it I have traversed into the land of aging, the transitional marks of womanhood flowing in and out of my life in a way so subtle it would have been easy to miss. As in other things for me, it has been easier and with less drama and pain than most. It is a good reminder that there is more going on underneath the surface of things than what is perceived. Many things are inexpressible in words. 

I moved quickly enough over the trails yesterday, not so fast to cause burn out, but efficiently, attending to the right pace – the one that my body knows intuitively in order to keep going over the  distance and the gains and losses in elevation. Wanting to drop off my bundles, to reach that arbitrary summit but willing to compromise if time and darkness threatened to converge upon me.   

When I arrived at the top, the air was warm, almost still, more so than on the wide ridge below. I mark this time; I came to the area a week ago with some intention to write, to move across mountain landscapes, to reclaim something that has been cast off in the arc of betrayal and loss yet again. Not to find myself, for I have not been lost but fully in residence, but to travel through some terrain not yet fully explored. I had company; the dog and two souls who appeared for some days in between to wander a bit with me, our days full of good story telling and philosophy. Soulfulness and the metaphysical eking it’s way into all our conversations. And then the others, the ones who have come in dreams, or the chance meetings on the trail, emissaries of the deeper journey I find myself on. Some haunting, delivering indecipherable messages for me to ponder as I move. I wonder if it is about knowing when to let go and when to accept the fact that I never will. Being able to feel loss while simultaneously being full of joy and kindness and the love of and for others. I will not miss out, but I am learning that a life fully lived contains strains of regret, of ambiguity, of completions that leave nothing but benchmarks to keep me a on true course. I strive to move more slowly so I can recognize all these moments as they come, knowing that I may never know their full meanings until all this is over.  

Near the summit I left something behind, with it my trust that all will be well, and all the yearnings of my heart will come home to me again. Some in this lifetime and others in another lifetime or a form unknowable to me now.