new maps

a simplicity of heart connection with the more than human world

I was recently in Mt. Shasta for a creative retreat where I gathered with others to listen to and learn from the mountain, its water, stones, and soil.

Since returning home, I’ve let myself bask in the bountiful, delusional space of between, and now find myself somewhere else entirely. Not really a “somewhere else,” but a tremendous re-seeing that allows me to feel like where I am is an entirely different “place.”

We are all always traveling.

From one state of being to another. Between dreams, memories, and their dissolving. Through the placement of our feet on earth someplace far from where our feet usually stand. Going “far” is not of distance measured by longitude-latitude, roads, or itineraries.

I went to Mt. Shasta because I knew to go. In a similar way to how I knew to go to Bergen, Norway last June. I found a bridge from Bergen to Mt. Shasta. And a bridge to Table Mountain, in Cape Town. A surprising triangular map. I found it from listening to my body. Allowing my bare feet on soil to root me, imprint me, show me where to go, open me to what I might release and resee.

I’ve been reading The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, a book that my soul knows, yet I only recently discovered through reading Ways of Being by James Bridle.

I love Abram’s framing of the “more than human world.” It feels less dichotomous than other names for describing what’s not human. There’s no human vs. nature, inanimate vs. animate, ethereal vs. matter. It’s all nature. It’s all animate. It’s all matter. Spirits and bodies, outside and within.

Our collective blood, fascia, bones, cells—all are sky.

A raven knows when to swoop or stay,

seeds know when to fall and how to hide.

We know where we are when we listen to our body’s map.

I am awed, inspired, and laid flat-out bare

by the aliveness of it all—

the rupturing, the laughter, the surprise,

how the tiniest nuance opens the most extraordinary views.

Play of wind, carvings of stream,

spiders threading webs,

dandelions in skirts of pointed leaves.

Moss on stones on lava sand.

I stand on these stones, and I am sky.

This is not travel of imagination beyond what is real.

Imagination is real. Moss is sky. Inside is outside. Now is always.

Above and below are not opposites.

Dung beetles know where they are by the stars of the Milky Way.

So do we.

“The sky lives in our own skulls. Our skulls are even shaped like skies. […] This isn’t metaphor. It’s the fractal realities of bodies.” (Joshua Michael Schrei)

Our bodies are our bodies and are more than our bodies and are not at all our bodies.

Body. Map. Miracle. Magic. Breath.

So many words are opening to mean more than they used to mean.

Words are opening and we are opening.

Breath is flight and breath is soil.

We are the clay and the sculpting and the story.

And it’s all always magic.

It’s all always synchronous, connected, infinite,

and tangibly real.

How we perceive what we can touch, the ways we listen, and how we know is opening from our hearts as we are guided by the more than human world—always animate, alive, and connected from their hearts.

A small and enormous imprint opened for me while I stood, walked, wrote, dreamed, and remembered on the land near Mt. Shasta:

A connected carving, formed unraveling, softly rooted etch.

Petals dancing as cascades of crystalline dust.

Pockets beyond before or after.

Toes are wings from all dimensions at once.

I am this imprint and its imprinting and the map upon which it lives. It’s alive for me to read, listen to, and live into like a question.

This imprint gifted me a wild rush of piercing clarity, like the bold dancing waters of Faery Falls when they met me, mist to face, flutter, embrace, and I stood in awe, simply and delightedly soaked.

It’s all much simpler than we think it is.

It’s much simpler than we talk like it is.

Simpler than what we tell of what “else” we “need” in order to “get there,” find what’s “missing,” what might “finally” allow peace in ourselves, in the world.