I have been away. Or at least AFK. I feel a bit like the teenager that used to apologize to her journal for neglecting it. I think every entry I ever made started out with an excuse. An excuse and an a apology for being a terrible friend to my imaginary audience then knowingly confess to the sin of only writing when sad. Well I am not sad. I mean there is crying. But not sadness. This is not that kind of comeback. It's just that I found it.I found it in the rental car I was driving listening to Lord Huron on the roads around where it is.
I know it's a white lady thing. The privilege of looking for something. It has always made me feel strange. We look in love, we look in kids, we look in our community. Where is it? Erikson would call me on battling my 7th crisis. Sorry, social worker humour. Look him up. It might be worth it. Just shows you that you are always growing. I find that hopeful.
So yes, in the car, crying. But a cry I have rarely felt. A cry of happy. A cry of relief. A cry of having resolved a battle I did not know I was waging. Marcel, one of my dearest loves, once said he felt like I was searching for something, and I agreed, but I didn't know what it was. I knew what it might feel like, but I could not imagine where it could be located. I was crying in the drive of The 100 Acres (plus 42) Woods.
A few months ago, the other dearest love of my life and I were exploring. We were exploring where our future might go. So we went on a hunt for some land. I have always wanted to be in the forest. I have always wanted to live in a tree. When I was a kid, I would go to sleep away camp. It was my perfect place. School was a shark tank of abuse, but camp was like the heaven they tell you they send dogs to. Romping through the woods, getting your hair petted and swimming in lakes chasing after things. Running with your pack.
I found a listing. The agent seemed to think I was nuts. "That's not what you want," he said, "It's a wild mountain, you can't do anything with it." He didn't even come. Just told us the back door was open and we could check it out. We did.
I love this land like I love a person. I love it with that kind of crazy, desperate, hopeful love that you only find a couple of times in your life. It makes me calm when I am with it, and anxious about its safety when I am away. I love it like my daughter. Without judgement and with the kind of fear that comes along with the knowledge that the world it lives in is not always out for its best interests. I love it like my lover, it turns me on and makes me want to breathe it in and explore it. And I somehow know it loves me back.
Walking the land, my friend who is a wonderful builder and dreamer and lover of the wild, showed me where its old logging/ATV road was washing out and how we would need to do maintenance to keep the road from becoming impassable in a few years. I noticed after buying it that I was hamster braining a bit about how to afford fixing and keeping it in order. Last weekend I came up and was walking the trails seeing all the ways the sand and rock were sliding. Marcel who was with me said it's because there are no trees to keep the sand in place.
Suddenly I knew what I was going to do. I thought, it's just trying to heal itself. The sliding would just return it to its mountain state before we cut its body with motors. I said I want to let it do that. I don't want to fix this mountain, I want to be the one that gives it freedom to heal. We can walk where it wants us to walk. Make trails that it wants to show us.
There are a 142 acres. My lovely "wife" jokingly said, the 100 Acres Woods. And then Tigger said, plus 42. The meaning of life. We are a funny family. All chosen. And there is a place for all of us. My daughter and her friends summoned ghosts and played asshole and today, her dad saw his sweet and PTSD'd dog leap across the creek and bound into the woods. "She's figured out she's a dog," he said smiling from ear to ear.
So there I was today, crying in the car after driving through the rolling hills with mist rising through the trees on the way back to the woods. I had found it. The thing I didn't know I was looking for. I can't pay a debt that is incalculable. I cannot repair the critical wounds that we have inflicted.
I can however, put a towel draped welcome sign at the bottom of my hill to greet other kind visitors with a cheerful "DON'T PANIC!" and tend to the woods.
