And so, my journey comes to an end....

On November 12th I drove back up I-5 and returned to Bainbridge Island, after exactly 10 weeks of travel. What a journey! The following poems summarize my inner journey and its end:

Homecoming
As if in a dream
I re-enter these rooms
after ten weeks of sleeping outdoors
in wild and majestic places.
Everything familiar
yet strange.
My previous life
has faded like a shadow
I can barely remember
And this place is full of vestiges
of someone I no longer am.
Feeling like a stranger here now
Even the cats do not seem to recognize me.

Changes, changing
This place that
Stayed while I wandered
Also changed.
All of us are new now,
Unfamiliar to eachother,
The cats, the woman I was,
the bed I slept in.

Restless, wakeful,
All night I wander the rooms,
Tending,
Saying hello,
To floors, sills,
dishes and shrines,
Bringing who I am now
To this place I once was.

(photo taken at Meditation Hot Springs, Oregon)
Late November
Days of rain
Cleansing, nourishing sky drops
For mother earth
Soaking dead leaves
Fallen from now-bare branches.
Each step I take squishes
As I walk in quiet meditation in the deep forest
Listening to the overflowing waters
That have filled the dry gullies
Streams singing as
The rain-water dances its way
down the hillside.

Mushrooms of all sizes and shapes
Sprout magically from the wet decay.
Some say these humble, slimy fungi are
The neural pathways of mother earth’s intelligence.
I see many whose short lives have already passed,
Beaten by the rains,
Collapsed into the moisture and rot
Of autumn’s forest floor,
Feeding it with their soft bodies.

Everywhere nature reminds me
Of the transience of life forms,
The inevitable ebb
That follows flow,
Loss that follows gain,
Emptiness that follows full,
The relentless chewing,
Dissolving and transformation
Of one thing into another.
The perfect beauty of it all.

I too am being transformed.
The leaves of my past have fallen and
I am stripped bare
By weeks of living outdoors
Dissolved by water’s erosion,
My core hollowed by lightening fires,
Reshaped by the clean winds of wild places
Humbled by ancient earth giants.

Today I walk in silence
Empty-handed in this dark season,
At peace in this tender place of mystery,
So much I do not know.
Merging with mother earth,
I create rich compost
For the new growth
I trust is
Yet to come.

The sun sets in the west, creating colors to delight me as the light of day slips into the darkness of night. Similarly, the bright colors of autumn leaves fill me with joy as the season slips into the stark, bare time of winter. My own hair turns grey as I head into the autumn of my life. The wheel of life turns round and round. All good things come to an end. In the emptyness that remains, the next good thing gestates. Blessed be. It is done.

(photo taken looking north-northeast to Mono Lake and the eastern slopes of the Yosemite area, California)