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And I think sometimes we are all just searching for who we already are. I sat there that night, on an hour and fifteen minute cab ride, to my left a 300 lb man talking about the testosterone level of bull sharks, and to my right steep, rigid and winding cliffs with edges that rivaled the torn holes in the knees of my own blue jeans.The sky ahead darkening into dusk and then night, and all I wanted to do was write.

When I finally arrived, it was to an hour and a half evening long session spent in a white yurt with the salt-laden ocean softly serenading me from outside the window, Nag Champa incense filling the air inside. We hadn’t, once, yet picked up our pens. I had run to the land’s edge to try to catch what I could of the setting sun before the sound took place of any visible sea. And as if without being granted a moment’s reprieve, there was someone behind me, asking me where I was headed, ushering me inside.

I think we realize, again and again, how easy it is to look outside ourselves to be chosen by someone or something when the true spokesperson for our own greatness, the one to turn to time and again for permission to unabashedly let shine what is wild, weird and wonderful about us is ourselves.

Just the day before, I had been sitting at a cast iron table outside Boloco, dreaming into this trip. After washing my hands in their employee sink, one of the women reminding me I was like family.

Worth, Water, Wind & Words. I knew California had brought me there for a reason, one that was still lurking somewhere around the edges. As we drove that night back to my base camp over rugged and winding land, I thought about how Clint Eastwood was the former mayor of nearby Carmel; how that offering from my mind somehow provided comfort for my body underneath redwoods who had gained their own wisdom through time and experience, alongside an endless vista of wide open fields that had sat for unknown years underneath unrelenting sun, on a winding night drive that felt like two hundred miles instead of eighteen.

The only other animal visible on the road was the owl whose dark eyes caught our headlights, who didn’t fly right away but lingered and stared, reflecting the light back to us. Those totem animals they say represent the land out there, spirit guides assisting us humans as we reclaim our still unearthed parts.