The UnKnotting Process

Life on the Road, Installment 9

America, she be beautiful. America, she be kind. America, she can cook up some bodacious Southwest foods. America, it’s been good gettn’ to know you. America, our time together is helping me understand myself. What I like, don’t like, what I can do and don’t want to do. What I’m confident and clueless about. When it’s time to move on. When it’s time to stay put, investigate, regenerate. 

For the last two weeks, I’ve been traveling like crazy. Eastern Oregon, Southern Idaho, and Wyoming (a rainy drive-means-to-an-end-get-to-the-destination-drive-through), Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park, Steamboat Springs, Boulder, Niedenthal, National Sand Dunes Park and New Mexico. Two weeks may seem like a long time to vacay, but it’s not nearly enough time to genuinely explore. It’s more of a let’s see-what-we-like-for-the-next-time sightseeing experience. Good, but now I need to slow down, reflect, take out the watercolors and connect to the land. Hike. Bathe in a stream. My normal kind of camping.

Yesterday, while I overnight glamped at Humming Desert Alpaca Farm via my Harvest Host membership, I witnessed the Ring of Fire Eclipse alongside the owners and a father and son who had traveled to Albuquerque to experience the phenomenon. The dad, Dan, knew all about what to expect and forewarned us about the otherworldly shadows and coolness that would occur once the process started. Sure enough, it was as he predicted. The birds stopped chirping and the chickens stopped clucking. And the Earth seemed to pause as we collectively looked up in awe. 

Not everyone did. Not everyone cared. Not everyone had the ability, like the Amazon driver dropping off a package to the next-door neighbor. He had to work. Other people were infirmed, sad, having babies, watching TV, worrying about how to pay the electricity bill and all the other real-life realities most of us must deal with. But for those lucky folks like myself who were able, and had the desire, to stop for an hour and be still and witness Planet Earth’s marvel, it was eye-misting, grin-worthy, giddy, little kid clapping, humbling. 

Inspiring. 

And different from what I imagined. The Earth didn’t go black. It polarized. 

Had I been alone, without the helpful scientific interpretation of my fellow campers, I would have likely willed myself up into the heavens and been suspended in wonder. Instead, I was an informed witness not a participant. 

My entire life I’ve been The Doer, the behind-the-scenes, and sometimes in front, creator, the builder, designer, motivator, and caretaker. I’m still those things, but these days I’m taking a backseat, untying the necklace knots of my life. 

If you’ve ever waged war with tangled jewelry, you know it takes patience, agile fingers, good eyes and light, and a willingness to discover the origins of the tangle. With the help of something pricky and prodding, like a safety pin or paperclip, the de-knotting process is a little less dicey. Still, oftentimes I get so frustrated with the mess I created that I’ll leave the silver glob on the kitchen table in hope that someone else will come to the rescue. Rarely, does anyone take the bait. I have to figure it out myself. 

That’s the way this Pacific Northwest/Southwest Sojourn has been for me. 

Thoughts, regrets, hope for the future, bubble up. I can choose to ignore or address. I talk. I write. I walk and sing. One morning, the sun gets tarped. It’s 27 degrees overnight. My toes are frozen, so I cover my Target fuzzies with my new pair of pink alpaca socks. I bid farewell, head to my next stop, which doesn’t feel right, so I drive another four hours to a moonscape Arizona rest stop where I spend the night in my cozy apartment-on-wheels alongside long-distant truckers. 

The right to chuck the yellow highlighted Rand-McNally map and listen to my gut.

That’s what’s happening. A re-awakening. A stillness. A Georgia O’Keefe bleached skull in the painted desert. A dry blue day.

This day, the Sun isn’t going anywhere. But I am. Instead of going South and tourist-visiting another National Park and Monuments, I decided to re-route and head West to a place I’ve been to once before, Sedona, where I will unpack my turquoise chair, take out the paints, and pour a glass of Central Coast wine I’ve been saving. And savor. Absorb. Everything. 

This unknotting process is taking time. Maybe even the rest of my life. But being in Nature, having the freedom to have ongoing conversations with myself, is helping.  As is prayer, and Grace, and love and wit, and silence and dark, rainy days, and the moon and her community of stars that are so close, I’m sure that if I closed my eyes and asked, I could join them.