I am moved to share an experience that happened in April 2019, during the full moon, while I was camping alone in the desert just outside of Sedona, Arizona. It isn’t something I thought to share until now–as the opening line of the account says, “This was for me.” But a lot has happened between then and now. Humanity has been stopped in it’s ceaseless outward activity and forced to wait, and wonder. Will this virus kill my loved ones? Will this virus kill me? What is going to happen in the fallout?

I want to share this account for many reasons, but the primary reason is to offer it, the way a wild strawberry offers itself to you as you pass by on the trail.

∞∞∞

This was for me.

Yesterday I awoke just as dawn was glowing in the east–still dark but, with the full moon, light enough to walk. I put my sandals on and stepped outside the tent, which had been wide open all night on both sides. I thought I’d go pee then come back to the tent and figure out what I was doing, but instead of peeing I kept walking slowly along a trail I’d found the previous morning. Rounding a bend I came face to face with the moon. She was right there, large and bright before me, and I thought of all the pain I had caused in my life through my own bad choices. I cried a little, strong but brief, cleansing, and asked to release and be released. I have been over this ground many times. We make bad choices based on bad options and faulty knowledge. I took responsibility as best I could, did the best I could, trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be until I just couldn’t anymore.

I stood there facing Grandmother Moon and let her see these choices, and I asked for forgiveness and to let them go. I cried, grieving for the pain and confusion I had caused others and myself. Tears streamed down my face and in my hair, but I did not wipe them away. When the tears stopped flowing I walked on and soon came to a place where bouquets of white flowers had come up in profusion overnight. They were all over the trail and up a little hill to my left. I felt certain they were telling me to go that way, so I followed the flowers up the hill to a small campsite, unused for a very long time, where someone had built one of those cairns you see all over Sedona. This one had fallen, and I stopped and rebuilt it before realizing this wasn’t what the flowers were leading me to.

I stood up and saw the “Weathertop” hill I’d climbed the previous morning, and thought maybe that was what Spirit intended–for me to climb that hill again to witness the sun rise. I was wearing sandals and this didn’t sound good to me, but trusting I was being led I started walking toward it, down the other side of the knoll I was on. Soon I came to a blasted juniper–very old and its trunk split in two. It reminded me of Bob and I, our marriage split apart. I stopped to talk with it. I touched its green fronds and told it I brought greetings from the north, from my tree friends the maple and my new tree friends in New Paltz, though I didn’t know what kind they were.

The juniper and I did not really connect. I felt no hostility, but no friendly warmth. During the time I was visiting the moon went behind a cloud and I looked around and saw that there weren’t any white flower bouquets nearby–I had left them when I came down the slope. I had gone off course.

So up I went again and there were my guides, showing me the way. Left again, and straightaway I came upon another very old juniper–this one was also split, but not in two. It was split into four and all were growing individually, intact. It was a clear message to me that ending my marriage did not have to destroy my family. We could grow as individuals, together. It also reminded me that codependency is not healthy. Togetherness at the cost of my own being, my true nature, is not something that Life asks of me, or of anyone.

I greeted this juniper, thanked and blessed it for its message, and followed the flowers again, farther to the left and down another slope, where I saw a large, round boulder. It made my heart leap and tears come to my eyes again. Tears of joy. I immediately walked toward it, and just as I reached it and realized it was a large mother “keystone” of a semicircle of smaller stones, coyotes began howling and yipping all around. At first I thought to be afraid, but then I touched the boulder and let their voices move my spirit in gratitude. When they stopped, I looked at the boulder. Near my face, where my hand was touching, was a heart. A very clear heart, in red stone, in an otherwise light composite.

Just about that big, in that orientation.

I touched the heart and set my intention. It was automatic, like I knew exactly what to do. I asked to live my life with intent. Conscious, clear, from my heart. I said it in more words and images than that, but the essence was–I wish to live the remainder of my life from my heart, with clear intention. I wish to give to the world what I have to give, from my true self. Then I was crying again, cleansing tears of joy. I pressed my forehead to the heart and gave thanks, then pressed my body against the boulder, hugging her and thanking her, allowing my tears to enter her body. She smelled good, and I told her so. I pulled back and gently stroked the heart with my fingertips, kissed it, then continued on around her, into the semicircle of stones and beyond, giving thanks as I went. The white flowers led me up again to the old campsite, and on back down to my own camp, where I finally squatted and peed, feeling that I was releasing much more than yesterday’s water.

*One last thing about my dawn walk:

It was Magic. I was sure of this, certain of this. And the Moon told me: do not lose this. Do not forget.

Magic is real. Life is Magic.

Don’t let this go.