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And then there are the times where our travel plans are still not perfect and we continue on anyway. Adapt, reroute, readjust to move forward into our own manifest destiny. Penitent and humble, grateful and realigned with the liquid life coursing through our veins and the winds of change reawakening our skin. Palms, reaching towards the heavens. Face, tipped toward the sky.

The pieces felt scattered and still I was feeling called to create the corral, mapping out room for them to roam as the arrangements spilled late into the night, and closely into the day of my departure. Contemplation around whether or not these were signals to retreat gave way to energy arising like ocean swells in a storm; unpredictable, and yet moving in response to some larger force. The air above and the earth below. Books of photos I opened continually showed the page of Carmel California every time the wayfaring and wandering pieces of me worried about their homelessness, not yet having secured a place to stay.

As if that mid-way location between the west coast city I was to fly into and the land I was to see for both the first and not the first time would be the shamanic earthly space resting between the two worlds of sacred and secular.

The ill-logic of it all, the kind that they say happens when we are leading with heart instead of head, had ignited the perfectionist planner in me. The one that said I should have figured this all out months ago. The flight to San Francisco, the 3 hour drive south on Highway 1 to the Santa Lucia Mountains, those windy solitary roads in the night, so much to rationalize, so delicate to hold. Spurred on by the search to find a tribe of people who also understand the need to run breathless toward the magic of adrenaline-filled life, the kind that brings with it the bittersweet of broken-open when we arrive at our desired destination, still knowing it’s not the end. Landing alongside those who understand that all of the raw material of our life is being shaped like clay molded between our own two human hands.

I needed movement. Inside and out. I wanted the presence of Spirit to weave its way unquestioningly back into my ethers.

The night before I left, I stepped outside into the jungle of tall, then quiet sleeping buildings, windows like eyelids half closed and I smelled the salt air moving inside the city like I never had before.  No detectable stars in the purple black night sky and all my eyes could see when I wrote the wet inked words landing between the paper’s lines was the grey-black outline of a sinewy cypress tree curving against blue dusk night, ocean cliffs running rampant and the rugged raw-edged beauty of a landscape unwilling to fit into a predictable mold. Ocean, cliffs, trees, their effervescent timeless echo all the silent words they would ever need to explain themselves.