Anniversary Vignettes
connecting with our first year here
There are about 50 quail in the backyard right now, most looking plumper than I’ve ever seen. We’re continuing to see the effects of the heavy rains from a few weeks back with new blooms of little yellow flowers and green grass popping up around both our yard and the park. A rebirth after the last hot months, the changing of the season. This weekend marks one full year since we packed up our little family and moved to Joshua Tree full time.
My friend Nuria had a group of yoginis over to her and Gabe’s home on Friday as a reunion of sorts, a homecoming, but also a time for goodbyes amongst our cohort. We had all met also about a year ago for an intensive course on meditation and had kept up in different capacities since then as the studio disbanded and the seasons came and went. Nuria wanted to bring us together as change is afoot - a couple folks are on their way out to travel the world or try new towns, and that’s what happens in a transient place like this. We enjoyed each others’ company, reminisced on this past year, and Nuria guided us through a new moon ritual where we all spoke to what we were going to leave behind and what seeds we were going to plant for this upcoming season and cycle.
Nuria and Gabe lit a fire in their backyard and Nuria blessed us all with Juniper from their property. We wrote our intentions on small pieces of paper and after we shared, we were to throw them into the fire and pull a goddess card.
“I don’t think I want to leave anything behind this cycle,” I started with. “I don’t have anything to give up right now.” And this was true. I think I’ve been so focused on shedding over the past few months I don’t have much left to shed. I’m not quite depleted, but I’ve been shaking off the expectations, the burdens, the inner talk tracks, the limiting beliefs. “So I’m bringing in continued community here in the desert,” I shared. “The fall, to me, is a reminder of why we came here in the first place a year ago.”
“And why did you come here a year ago?” Nuria asked.
“For connection. And that could be to people, or to nature, to myself…” I trailed off. “So I guess I’m switching what I’m calling in. I’m calling in continued connection.” I threw in my paper and pulled the Venus card.
Matt and I sat in one of our favorite alcoves on a pile of boulders in the park. We have a few of these areas, but given our limited park visits during the hottest months, we had to circle the rock piles until we found the one marked with a rock that looks like the sole of a foot (toes and all). With a small cooler of beers in tow, we climbed up and perched with our legs hanging off of the edge to watch the sunset.
We asked each other questions - what is your favorite part of our home, what is your favorite meal of the desert, who do you wish you knew better here (if some friends are in full bloom, who are the friends that are still buds?)
“What was your favorite moment from this entire year?” Matt asked me. I started with “well, could anything compare with…” and he knew the exact moment I was thinking of, which was one of the nights we were at Jon and Rachel’s and almost peed laughing as we came up with our own names for climbing routes. Most routes are named by men and many can lean crude, so we tried for a redemption round for women climbers and came up with worse.
But before we got to that point of friendship with Jon and Rachel, where no parts of ourselves are off-limits or withheld, we had a friendship-as-a-bud-style evening in the park in the spring. And this was the true moment of the year, one that sparked something so beautiful while also embodying what we’re lucky enough to call a typical weekend.
The boys had been working on a route in the Real Hidden Valley and Rachel was adding to her collection of paintings for display in her upcoming show. I had some reading to do before I started a course. The four of us, with all of our respective gear, or tools, or reading materials, hiked to the wall and passed a rattlesnake on the way in. We set up in different zones, far enough to maintain space for the role each of us played, but close enough to hear each other. I took off my shoes and traversed the small stacks of boulders that hugged the crag, peering into each crevice expecting another snake to be hiding from the direct, and forthcoming, late spring sun.
As the least focused (and project-oriented) member of the group, I found pleasure in buzzing around to each of them like a little bee. I’d go to watch Jon belaying Matt, and Matt belaying Jon. I’d peek over Rachel’s shoulder, trying not to disturb her process. I’d occasionally share learnings from my book. “The radical changes in the female body alone were enough to trigger the hominization of the species,” I yell.
And we could have continued this for hours on end, but the sun started to set and we brought food to grill at the picnic tables. As Rachel wrapped up her painting and I felt free to roam about her space, I watched her clean her oil paint and brushes and peppered her with questions about working for herself.
We trekked back to the car to start dinner and didn’t realize we were in for such a treat until the gigantic yellow full moon started rising from behind the inselbergs. We didn’t need any lanterns or headlamps as the parking lot was completely flooded with light. We stood around and commented on how our shadows were giant, akin to daytime quality, and even more ridiculous as each one of us is at least 6 feet tall.
Eventually it was time to go back home. We’d only have a couple more weekends until Jon and Rachel took off to Wyoming for the next month. Despite the missing sun and the end of a beautiful evening, just as the moon continued to rise, we knew we’d have so many more nights with these two.
As we caught up with Chris and Kelley over FaceTime, and as a typical part of corporate ennui, we started talking about what we’d do with our time if money and knowledge wasn’t a factor. If you immediately had all of the skills you needed and were competent. Matt would own a Chipotle in the desert. Kelley would be an Olympic swimmer. I thought about my answer for a bit after we got off the phone.
The hardest thing about living in the desert is every time we have to leave it. The second hardest thing about living in the desert is filling up with inspiration and dreams and interests - a type of stored up, potential energy - and not always knowing where to start when it comes to acting on it. At the surface level, this is manual labor, trades, crafts. Deeper, wondering what your essence will morph into after being here year after year. But there’s something about being in the desert that makes you want to use not just your hands, but your whole body and spirit.
I had a couple of ideas, most of which included more intimate experiences with another human. A doula, maybe a family therapist. Then I landed on my real answer: a tattoo artist. This is where some of the best therapising has happened with a combination of art, skill and connection to both the artist and my being. I lay on a table for hours with someone permanently altering me but in a way that I associate with pure love and devotion to my body. As discussed with Shea back in March, when I got my most recent one, tattoos are a journal on the skin. You never regret what you write, you remember the snapshot in time for what it was. When this conversation with Chris and Kelley occurred, I was actually already signed up to learn how to hand poke at a studio in Yucca Valley, to start in October.
In the most extreme ways, we engage with our bodies by taking a walk when it’s 105 degrees or willing ourselves to climb to the very top of rocks, smelling the mix of sweat and granite on our skin. In more manageable ways, gardening and tending to plants, moving in a contemporary dance class, a conversation with a stranger at the diner. Laying in the dirt and imaging myself being able to sink deep into the sand and feel the warmth from above, but the coolness from below. In the middle-ground, for me, engaging is learning how to tattoo - becoming a conduit of this mind and body connection, imagining each line not as additive, but facilitating an etching away to uncover the art that’s been living in us all along.
I reflect on something I said in my first newsletter, the thought process before we decided to move:
After months of further exploration on my values, purpose, fulfillment and joy, Matt and I made the mistake of starting to dream. What would life look like if we lived somewhere we knew our anxieties could be alleviated to an extent - not gone, but invited to sit with us, have the option to change form, and maybe even become manageable? What if we could live somewhere with total expansive sky and sunlight and quiet?
To dream is to suggest a dormancy.
We were driving the other day and Matt and I started to discuss a single word to describe this past year. I said mine was connection in all its forms. He said his was probably more akin to an awakening, an enlightenment, illumination, or realizing what is possible. Even as we sit in the aforementioned potential energy and might be paralyzed with options, overwhelmed with inspiration in some moments, there is magic in knowing this potential exists. It’s right in front of us, and that’s good enough for now.
We’re not so sleepy anymore. We track the sun across the sky every day. We might awaken in the middle of the night to the sound of coyotes howling, but we welcome the life that occurs here in all its forms, at all its times.
At Nuria’s house, Matt pulled the Isis and Osiris card - the Egyptian creation myth. We’re not so sleepy anymore. We’re putting together the pieces.
Love,
Lily
maybe my favourite one, love.