1,000 Palms Oasis to McCallum Grove oasis
These pictures are from a lone hike I took in the twilight hours yesterday, December 7th. A bit chilly, the last hiker on the trail - which is often the case for me and which I enjoy - saying thank you's and building good wishes and energy for myself, family, friends, my daughter, my community, the world, particularly in these trying times (can my $500 windmill stock investement, a gift from my parents last spring, actually be worth only $179 as of 11/30? How ironic, our area is so riddled with windmills, and my investment is almost worth nothing? think of the environmental price we, consumers, are paying - someone is getting rich - most of us are not - at least in terms of money), and remembering that I have it pretty damn good. A nice career, a job, a home, food, love, and the gift to express my own life's confusions, ecstasies, challenges, in words to share with the world.
I felt odd and off. It's "that time of year" for teachers - we run a marathon for 16 weeks, beginning in the odd auspices of summer, when here, it's still 110 or 115 degrees and sweltering with humidity, more often than not. The long, slow slide into cooler weather - though it's been a very warm fall, overall - and the pressure to wrap everything up - student grades, tenure reviews, committee reports, SLO-revisions, sabbatical presentation plans - in that short, 4 month span. But I am grateful for tenure, grateful for being able to say I can still make my house payment although times are tight and that I have a job.
I extend my "walk in beauty" of yesterday reconnecting with the desert, the earth, in an odd-lop of late day, tired Sunday solitude....a day of fielding my daughter's stresses and frustrations with her life.....the pressures of co-habiting with a young adult offspring, to redefine our relationship and boundaries more as "peers" than "parent/kid"- we are so close and love each other so much, and it's been a very hard past two years since Tarah finished high school (with high honors, I must add!)....a day of relishing all of the good things I've been up to but also unwinding from a very long and hard four month work pull at my teaching job AND with the desert anthology, along with numerous other poetry places, people and things - all my lifeblood, all so important, and all so necessary to balance.
Putting everything around me, in my life, in "right relation." Another Native American wisdom. I realize it has to start right now, with me, with my walk, my every step, and that I've done way too little hiking and earth-connecting this fall and must essentially get that back. Even when I look at the trail and realize that just since last year, the trail I walked yesterday is that much more "pounded," used, more signs, more blockades to not wander off-path, a bit of litter - I dropped my Hindu prayer beads - yes, I was doing a lot of chanting and japa - shout out to my dear and amazing teacher and friend, Swami Ramananda - and almost had a panic attack - but found them like a snake on the trail, reminding me to savor and hold gently and lightly onto those threads of sanity, healing, and nourishment we all must - for me, a walk of healing and goodness and renewal in the quiet, lonely, chilly twilight pink desert.
For the earth, for me, for this astonishing and life-giving oasis in a harsh desert environment, putting my steps into right relation, I share this walk in beauty with whoever reads this. It's a chilly and scary December this year - so many illusions have shattered - but the oases and the trail to and fro are generous, renewing, eternal, calm.
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