Finding Sanctuary
It’s good to get away; it’s better to come home.
Years ago, we went through an incredibly financially challenging period of our lives. The smartest thing to do, on paper anyway, would have been to sell the house and downsize into something more affordable. We didn’t though. While many smart people would surely disagree with our choice, we kept fighting, we kept working the puzzle, and we changed our mindset until we could change our lives. Instead of resenting the house for the financial burden it represented, I decided that if so much of our resources were going to this one thing, then we should value it accordingly. I worked harder to keep it clean, even as the house was starting to wear down and things were starting to break. I regarded it as our refuge, our sanctuary. When the wolves of the world were chasing us down, as long as you can make it back home, get inside, shut the door and lean your back against it as you catch your breath, we are safe from the baying and howling outside. Inside, we were protected. Inside was sanctuary. Refuge.
And sometimes, if you think something long enough, regardless of the reality you start with, it can become true.
This house did become our safety. She took care of us when we could not. She provided calm when we couldn’t find it in ourselves. She held us together as our world spun out of control. Years later, the day before we were finally able to start the remodel that would fix serious issues like leaking and rotting siding and a recalled electrical panel that was itching for a fight, I put my hands against the wall in the living room and closed my eyes. “Thank you for hanging in there. Thank you for taking care of us, for providing us with a safe place to hide. We’ve got you now.”
Decadent edible rubies, there is no finer “welcome home” gift, Summer’s last bow as she prepares to exit the stage.
It changed my relationship with the house. Instead of an inanimate gathering of wood, sheetrock, plumbing, and electrical, the house became a living, sentient organism and it remains such to this day. The house and I exist in an energetic dialog, giving and taking, speaking and listening. Slammed doors deserve apologies. Wall dings from careless carrying need repair. Energy needs clearing. Acknowledgement of shelter is due. The work we do on the house has become our reasonable responsibility, a manifestation of care for this structure that has cared for us.
We came home from vacation a day early, deciding a full day of buffer between play and work would bring more peace than a last night and hasty morning’s exit. This morning, I sat outside with my book and the bumble bees and honey bees and hummingbirds and songbirds, Dorothy’s refrain on steady repeat in my consciousness: there’s no place like home.
As I watched the bees bumble through the lavender, I remembered that we are now in mid-August: plums! Luscious, sweet, and tart, these perfect gems adorn the plum tree like Summer ornaments. Decadent edible rubies, there is no finer “welcome home” gift, Summer’s last bow as she prepares to exit the stage. The yard borders on chaos as the plants and flowers thrive from months of the sun’s golden love. Holding the heavy globes in my hand, tasting the sweetness more divine than any candy, I can feel this house, this property communicating back to me, “welcome home; you were missed. Venture and play, but this is where you belong.”
The house and I exist in an energetic dialog,
giving and taking,
speaking and listening.
What’s Our Deal?
The Doldrums.
I think I’ve figured it out. This general malaise, this awful feeling of formlessness.
I remember learning the meaning of “the doldrums” in elementary school during our unit about the Spanish Explorers. Everybody would be out in the boats, sailing along, drinking their grog, then mysteriously, almost as if a curse had dropped upon them, the winds would vanish. They would sit on the water, dead air, baking in the fearsome sun, burning through supplies without any forward progress, waiting, praying for the trade winds to resume, carrying them forward for exploring, debauchery, and dubious destinies in foreign lands.
Those days and weeks without wind were the doldrums, an area specific to the plus or minus of the equator, where the winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would peter out and not quite meet. In that delta was only a swath of sea where sailors lost the propulsion of the wind entirely, no alternative but to wait for the currents to bring them back to the winds on the other side of the equator.
I used to think of the term “doldrums” as boredom or maybe being down, like a transitory depression, probably because my dad used to say to me when I was pouty, “are you down in the doldrums?”. In reality it meant, “ostensibly the entire world has ground to a halt; that smell you pick up in the air is the warning of your imminent demise, and you’re irretrievably screwed if things don’t change.” The doldrums.
I think probably a lot of us are feeling “down in the doldrums”, but not quite like my dad implied. I think this quarantine feels like it’s both dragging on endlessly and yet time is still racing, wasting. We are at once both static and losing traction, sliding away into the ether.
“We’ve zoomed through happy hours, I’ve distanced in the park with friends . . . everything should be fine enough. And yet, it’s not.”
And it makes me wonder why? I’m no stranger to working from home. For all of my recorded history, my parents worked from home. I could walk from my bedroom, down the hall, make a left, walk through a tv room, and enter the “office”, a converted garage, to hear the clacking of my mom’s typewriter or “word processor”, my dad would be on the phone, the wall unit air conditioner generating a pleasing white noise and welcome chill. It was comforting.
About 10 years ago, we shut down the office for our family business and all began working remotely. I was fine with that too. It felt like a return to what I had always known; my wife and I always on standby for our kids, able to pop down to the kitchen for a quick bite of leftovers. That too was comforting. That didn’t feel like this.
I’ve considered the whole stress aspect, that that might be what’s informed my out-of-sorts-ness, but I don’t really feel stressed. We are extremely privileged in that none of our friends or family have contracted the virus. We’ve been ok enough with respect to supplies and resources; while we’ve not been able to forgo all rash tempers, the household has generally been very harmonious. The kids have been understanding and patient. The neighborhood has been bucolic with the sounds of kids playing in the street, old skool style. We’ve zoomed through happy hours, I’ve distanced in the park with friends . . . everything should be fine enough. And yet, it’s not.
In my last post, I talked about the communion of a forest; how the network of actively communicating root systems beneath our feet and the branches grazing each other above our heads form a sort of living group hug as we pass through. That image of connection to place, connection to life, keeps coming to my mind. And I think I’ve figured it out.
It’s human connection. Not just within our own lives, the connection we have with people in our workplace, with our friends and family, with people in the grocery store, but other people’s connections to other people and their connections to other people still. It’s not just that we’re missing being connected to our own immediate network, I think we’re feeling the overall loss of connection in the world.
I think, much like trees, all connecting through an intense network that makes the sum greater than its parts, there is sort of a ripple effect created for humans. When people connect, there is an energy produced. And that energy lights up a certain distance, then the people within the outer reaches of that first circle create their own overlapping circle, and on and on until, like raindrops on a lake during a downpour, the entire surface is lit up with movement, with energy. I think that collective energy feeds us, that collective energy is holy.
Raised in a church, I well remember Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” Even though my faith looks a lot different now than it did then, I do think of this verse often. And in a deconstructionist way that would horrify my grandmother, I wonder if maybe we read that wrong? Right words, wrong meaning. What if, instead of a group of people magically summoning Jesus Christ, a gathering of people creates a sort of communion that in itself is sacred? There is you, there is me, and then there is the space between us that is intrinsically altered by the math of our presence. What if that “sum of energy” is itself divine?
If you’re a traditional person, buckle up for some woo . . . I’ve often thought that before we came here to this plain, to this existence, perhaps we were all one? Like a massive cloud of thought, the classic understanding of a collective consciousness, I suppose. What if we were all one, complex, complicated collective of experience and intentions, and we break off to come to this life? What if this whole life is really about finding our way back to that collective?
We spend decades doing things that really are at their core, about searching for belonging. Connection. And those with more contentment in their lives do indeed tend to experience life with a greater sense of connection. And I don’t mean quantity of friends, like some massive popularity contest, but actual connection, feeling seen and heard, feeling belonging, even if it’s just with a tiny handful of people. The better quality of that connection, the greater our contentment will be. And when I light up with connection, you light up with connection, you light your neighbor up with connection, and they light their neighbor with connection . . . on and on until it’s sort of an energetic version of the LA basin at night—an endless blanket of lights as far as the eye can see, turning the night into a sort of perpetual, glowing sunset.
“There is you, there is me, and then there is the space between us that is intrinsically altered by the math of our presence. What if that ‘sum of energy’ is itself divine? ”
But now, that sky is dark. Our connection to each other is broken. We may have the power of our individual household connections, like generators noisily humming away during a power outage, as the power fades and blinks with our individual bad days, with our frustration and boredom, and we all sally on, burning as brightly as we can for each other. But it’s just not the same as pulling our power from the grid. There’s a silence in the energy, similar to a silence in the air during a power outage. We don’t realize what sounds are missing, we just know that there was some indiscernible hum that has silenced. We’re all just, “off”. We are in this moment not a “sum that’s greater than”, we are just parts, remembering that something felt different not all that long ago.
What’s our deal? Why can’t we feel grounded? Why does this all feel so strange? Why is this so different than the working at home that I’ve always known? We’re in a massive power outage, the direct result of the loss of collective connection, and our world just feels dark. Still. A little bit desperate. Windless, stagnant air regardless of the weather report. We’ve lost propulsion and are left to just ride the slow current across the equator, waiting for the trade winds to find us on the other side.
The doldrums.
As awful as this is, how nice to be reminded just how important we are to each other. Just how much each of us are little points of light and heat that keep each other warm, or rather, grounded. Connected to the larger whole. Our problem is that we’re not just missing the lights, we’re missing the glow.
We’ll get through this, of course. And things WILL return to something that feels like normal. But I think now I know what I’m looking for—that collective hum that we feel more than hear—connection. We can only defy our nature so long, we will find each other again. We will regain propulsion soon. And until then, I’m just over here, shining bright, looking forward to the return of that perpetual, glowing sunset created by our light.
The Barlow Trail
The mountains are calling, and I must go.
—John Muir
On Monday, I have the pleasure of heading up to Mt Hood with my dear friend and client to find the perfect slice of land for her family’s forever home. She and her husband come from California’s Sierra Nevadas—translated as the “snowy mountains”—and after raising their kids in a bedroom community of the Portland metro with only sporadic snow, it’s time for them to find their way home, safely tucked into the shadow of a mountain, where they will be able to shovel snow once more.
After all this containment, I’m excited to spend my day winding through the Cascades on the flank of a volcano. Quick pause here to note that I actually live within an hour of a volcano. Every time this Southern California ex-pat thinks of that, it feels just as magical as when I was a child and volcanoes were found in a land that had pools of chocolate, trees bearing gumdrops, and unicorns casually chewing on mint-flavored blades of grass. On most days, I’m reasonably certain that unicorns are not real (but seriously, if a narwhal is real, can’t we admit it’s not ridiculous?), but living in constant sight of Mt Hood will always feel a little bit magical to me.
“Don’t tell me to smile.” —The Cascades
I’ll wear my rubber boots and be ready for tromping through property that features woods and streams and moss and ferns; the mountains may boast a moody beauty or they may offer the clear-hearted lightness that only mountains in sunshine can offer; either way, my decidedly not-fancy rubber boots will be just right for the task.
I’ve been up there many times before, but most notable was a family vacation over a long summer weekend a few years back in a cabin not far from Trillium Lake. We made a right off Hwy 26, our backs to Mt Hood, and burrowed into the woods. We stayed near the Barlow Trail, a site chosen specifically because we wanted to hike a portion of Oregon history and see some of sites in the area. The cabin was humble but sweet and they had framed posters full of history about the Barlow Road. It was a great trip and our little family had a wonderful time there, but years later, what rises to the top of my memory about that trip is, well, just how very haunted that whole area is by non-physical energy.
”Completed” (a generous word) in 1846 by Sam Barlow on a businessman’s gamble, the Barlow Road was opened for business as the best (and only) road that would deliver pioneers from the East side of the Cascades to the West. Travelers sacrificed $5, a dear and precious sum, to risk and often lose their lives in an effort to get through to the Willamette Valley, a land of veritable milk and honey.
No thank you.
In addition to the obvious dangers pioneers experienced on the long, arduous journey, facing down disease, injury, infection, hunger, dehydration, malnutrition, childbirth, all with little more than prayer and alcohol-laden elixirs to save them, the Barlow Trail revealed a special level of treachery with its steep and twisting ways. It was at its most dangerous on Laurel Hill, a stretch so terrifying that the pioneers’ anger and fear alone would have been powerful enough to create a psychic imprint to last for centuries. At one point, the only way down was through a rocky, narrow, and very steep chute. Pioneers would tie a rope to their wagon, wrap the rope around a nearby tree, and then delicately lower the wagons down, foot by perilous foot.
It was not uncommon for the rope to fail, for strength to flag, or for any multitude of things to go wrong. The wagons, containing all of a family’s worldly possessions and perhaps the family itself, would often break free and fly downhill like wingless birds toward a final nest of splinters, blood, and death below. Such a long journey, meeting such an abrupt and incomplete end.
Hiking along, minding your own beeswax, and then this. No wonder the pioneers pressed on when the journey grew difficult.
While on that weekend trip, we hiked a portion of the Barlow Trail, a stretch where the ruts of wagon wheels are still vaguely visible. In seeing it, it’s a wonder this area was ever settled at all. But what an incredible journey it must have been—rugged and treacherous, yet punctuated by breath stealing views of the majesty of Mt Hood, suddenly revealed by a clearing of boughs as with the drop of a magician’s cape. I wonder what it must have felt like; did they curse the fearsome beauty, or were they inspired to press on? My son and I were slightly ahead of my wife and daughter on the trail; we both heard a male voice, a female voice, and a dog and we almost certainly saw them, or at least caught a glimpse of them, the sense of them, just ahead of us. Yet as we came around the curve on the trail and our view opened wide, there was no one. We were alone in the woods, left to ask each other if we just heard that; yes, we had definitely both just heard that. All four of us had the distinct and unsettling feeling of being watched by eyes we could not see.
“In truth, we are all just spirits at different stages of our journey home.”
As we walked back to the car, tired and sweaty, we stopped at the Grave of the Pioneer Woman. Among the many who succumbed to the Barlow Trail was a mother of two who died from illness and was buried beside the trail. In 1936, she was found as construction workers carved a proper highway beside the old road. They moved her resting place to the shoulder and reburied under a mound of rocks, a great opportunity for smiling selfies over a century later. But for us, the air around the mound was heavy with the sadness of dying before the journey was complete, of being left behind as her husband and children continued on to make a new life in the valley without her.
The deep divots and hump that you can see in the shaded portion are the scars of wagon wheels. Yes, really!
At the cabin, just a few hundred yards from the graves of three pioneer children, the site was shared with an old cabin slowly being reclaimed by the Earth. Again, we felt that we were not alone. My son, daughter, and I peered into the deteriorating cabin through an open door and, thoroughly spooked but without anything specific to point to, we quickly beat feet back to the safety of our well-lit, modern cabin with no interest in a second look. That old cabin was clearly being used by someone we couldn’t see, but oh, you could feel it, heavy on your chest like a dog who has pounced on you, intentions not yet made clear. I remember feeling like we were moving in and out of something that weekend, like alternating between sun and shade.
Maybe it’s the angst of the pioneers, maybe it’s the echo of the indigenous people who used to forage in those mountains for wild huckleberries, jewels of the forest; maybe it’s the graceful and gracious trees, known in the Shamanic tradition as The Standing Nation, and the rocks, known as The Wise Nation. I’ve read some fascinating studies in recent years about the communication of trees, about their extensive network of intertwining roots beneath the forest floor, like children holding hands under a blanket. I’ve also read some interesting work about the concept of “forest bathing”—walking through the forest to reap the benefits of being among trees. It turns out that being in a forest can lift depression and reduce feelings of isolation. It makes a tremendous amount of sense that the woods would have a powerful energy all of their own since, in the forest, we’re basically moving through a giant “group hug”. Being in the woods, smelling warm pine needles and wood smoke, hearing the tempered roar of the river expanding and contracting with the seasons, it is a complex and profound balm to the soul, all of its layered energy speaking to us in a voice beneath our hearing.
Fortunately, my friend is the perfect company for this journey, as she embraces all the benign mysteries of our physical and non-physical world, guarding herself carefully against the less friendly forces. She hears beneath our hearing, sees with the mind and heart, not just her eyes. There is so much more than this physical world; it only makes sense to embrace it and learn what we can along the way. To be fair, the Mt Hood National Forest is expansive. For all the places rich in heavy energy, there are 10 more that are light and free, offering the ease and comfort that comes from knowing you are in a sacred space. I can’t wait to head up and help them find their forever home, spirits and all.
In truth, we are all just spirits at different stages of our journey home.
About The Journey Home
Orcas Island, WA, where I always feel like I’m home.
Well, I guess it’s happening . . . I’ve finally made the leap and created a blog.
I've thought about this for so long and have mostly been very successful at putting it off. But lately, some really lovely people have been encouraging me to go back to the one skill that I really think of as being truly mine.
There are a lot of things that I do, all with varying degrees of ownership and identity. Writing, for all of my life, has been the most "mine" thing of all the things I've done. Doing it with more intention and focus very much feels like turning down a road that you know will ultimately bring you home.
And in fact, the name of my blog is The Journey Home (it's t-j-h.com because the closest available choice was thejourneyho.me and I felt like The Journey Ho was just asking for problems).
Anyway, the blog is called The Journey Home because one of my most favorite quotes is by Herman Melville: "Life is a journey that's homeward bound."
All of our lives, we're angling for home. For a place where we're known and loved, a place that gives us belonging and identity, a place with people who miss us when we're not there. Home means a lot of varied things to us all and the roads we travel to get there are complicated, intimate, and sacred. Melville is so right--we spend all our lives journeying home. This blog examines that journey in all of its forms, both literal and metaphoric.
On Friday, I wrote a longer post on Facebook that I was excited about, I hit post, and then my computer, the internet, Facebook, or a vast conspiracy of the three, died and the post was eaten whole, never to be seen again. It was as if the Universe was saying, “stop posting long form on Facebook and just write a blog—I mean it!”
I channeled my frustration into the creation of this blog and now may I never turn back.
This will be a little bit real estate, a little bit life, and all the weird, wonky, wild ways that I look at the things, places, people, and life around me.