Something To Celebrate: Celebrate Something!!!

I tend to be a very organized person. Even if my desk and the one kitchen sink counter where I throw things on might seem a tiny bit cluttered…I know where everything is. I’m a list writer and a person that has everything marked on the calender and I look forward to crossing the day off each night. For the 100 Day Challenge I even decided to take my organization one step further and start writing lists and intentions for my days in a regular day planner. This is all good….until the summer inferno breaks and the most incredible, blissful weather takes over the desert. Then forget plans. Forget organization–I throw things on the counter and my desk just to rid myself of its needs…because every ounce of my body is screaming to be outside! There is so much I wanted to do and NEEDED to do this weekend…but instead Hansel and I took a trip out to Prescott, AZ again. He grabbed his fishing rod and I my trusty ol’ Merrell hiking boots!

Yesterday Hansel and I hiked for about 20 minutes together until he and I parted ways. I watched him make his way down the side of a rocky mountain cliff to fish beside a beautiful dell. When he was far away enough to become the size of my thumb I started on my four hour hike. I’m sorry to say that I forgot my camera. There were a few super moments that I wish I could have captured digitally:

I think its because I didn’t have my camera I started to resent that Hansel was off fishing instead of hiking here with me. If I had the camera–I could then share all these amazing sites with him, and it would be ok. Instead, it was only I that could record these beautiful moments, only I that could have them as part of my existence. Describing them would do no justice. This really began to irk me.

And then, after making my way up an escalating slope for about 15 minutes the trail evened off and shot out for miles into a landscape that many of us acquaint with the desert. A landscape as open and vast as the eye could see with rolling, purple mountains toying with the horizon. The trail that I hiked on for about an hour and a half now, filled with peaks and valleys, now rolled before me like a red carpet event. I felt like Moses parting the sea. Each step took me deeper into the sky…deeper into ochre, burnt sienna, a cloudy gold.

I would walk for a few minutes, then spin in a slow circle.

No one. Just me for hundreds of miles it seemed. The blazing sun that was hiding during most of my hike came out to smile…as my heart filled, like fresh lemonade into a glass, with the greatest of peace. All those agitated feelings and thoughts slipped from my soul like sweat. I got it. I got the message the trail was telling me.

This is MY JOURNEY…if I travel it alone, with Hansel, with a crowd of 2,000…it is still completely my journey alone. Only I can have this journey. If Hansel was here, and we were both walking hand-in-hand down this same trail together…his journey would be different. The sun on his skin would feel different to him, the vast open landscape might not be as inviting, the ochres and burnt sienna and cloudy golds might have been only dancing for me.

I was ok with that. I understood and could hear what the trail was telling me.

There are days, especially when I am swimming in a sea of craziness at school, that I wonder how and why did I get here. Why did I leave a life of 30 years, friends, family, streets and a home that I always knew, a landscape that was as soft and protective as a blanket, to live in the desert. I do not have many friends out here to occupy my free time. I have a job that is by far the most challenging I’ve ever had. I have a home that I know daily is only temporary and proceed by never getting too settled. I am surrounded by mountains and it is always sunny, and the latter can actually be a drag sometimes.

But you see my friends, I ‘m going to share with you what the trail told me. We are each on a journey. From birth to blessed death, then onto another we do not possess the words and syllables to describe it yet. No matter if you have a family to care for or you eat alone each night…your journey is completely and only your own. There are mountains to climb, valleys to find comfort in, areas with warning signs posted, and periods filled with large, open landscapes where you may seem you are the only one in existence.

You are.

I came to the desert, because in my existence, my soul needs the vast, open, landscape. I need to understand with my complete being that I am only on a journey and to take the time to look around at each aspect of the trail. And realize that only I can possess this experience of the trail and that is a celebration and a gift at the same time.

Find something to celebrate in every part of the journey.

I hiked for about a half hour in that vast, open landscape until I decided to turn around and head back. When I arrived at the area that Hansel and I went our separate ways I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled out his name….it echoed a couple times, and in return I heard the love of my life respond “Hello!”

I sat on the side of that cliff, waiting for his body to crawl through the trees and appear. We made our way back to the car as the sun set in vivid oranges and wild magenta. Hansel commented on how amazing it looked the same moment I thought the exact same sentiment. Sometimes the journeys mirror each other…don’t they?

We finished our day having dinner in a cozy Italian restaurant. Hansel spoke about the excitement of his time, and I told him about the beautiful things from mine.

Later that night, I woke up suddenly and crawled out of bed. I took out my healing art journal again. I needed a souvenir…a captured memory…from an amazing part of my journey.