Home is where the Heart is....

Here I sit- on the verge of embarking on another cross country journey (in winter no less), another move (the 5th in the last two years), and another resettling, resetting, creating, crafting, dreaming of my life.  I'm going home.

For many years I hesitated to call the desert land I lived in for almost 10 years home.  I told myself that I didn't want to stay there forever.  But, I did everything I knew how to root myself deeply in that land- learning the wild medicines, the wild foods, the plants that stood sentinel in the desert valleys and mountain peaks, drinking the rain water, returning to the same tree and same exposed mountain top to outpour my sorrows, and to receive the life flow from the Earth.   Because as an Earth daughter- that is what makes me whole, this is what keeps me sane in this insane time.

And then I left it all behind- for love, for learning, for a journey that would take me deep into the depths of despair, take me to the breaking point, and that would leave me totally empty and drained- and that would fill me up with new loves, the sweetest friendships, the beginning understanding of all the ways I can share what I love with the world, the ways that i have the power to create everything i need and want- the miraculous embrace of green, wet, fertile earth and tree guardians all around.  Sweet birch trees- sexy, gentle, vibrant ladies of the wood - insisted on living inside me, in my head all the time.  Wild secluded river sanctuaries begging me to bare skin and surrender to cold, cleansing flow.


And as I sit today- all my possessions, all my medicines packed away in giant box to be shipped cross country,
I'm crying for what I am choosing to leave behind again.  I know that none of it is lost to me, I carry it in my heart.  This is home too.
But I long for the land I am native to, that grew me into the plant whisperer I am today, that holds my life history, my heart history.
To some it might seem silly to feel attatched to a place.  I could make my life wherever I choose.  In time.

but i'm choosing- because its what my heart cried out for for months and months on end. I belong to the Earth- no matter where I am, but my soul longs for that deepest, wildest connection with the land I love.
But- I know that my heart is in so many places- all at once.  it lives in the wild trees of eastern forests, it lives on that ravaged and rewilding piece of land protected by hawthorn and fae in maine, it lives in the most precious friendships i've known, it lives in desert peaks, it lives in saguaro flowers and cactus fruits, it lives in a wild southwestern canyon, in lives in the lovers i have known, near and far, old and new, it lives in the moonlight that shines down on the fecund body of Gaia each night.

I almost don't know how to hold it all...how to breathe with my heart living in so many places, so many people, so many lands, so many rivers, so many plants.  So i guess that means my home is everywhere....maybe it really doesn't matter where i go.  my heart is of the earth...it lives everywhere that i have loved, lived and been authentically me.

I shall build a temple

to every land I have loved with my deepest heart

to every water course that has caressed my skin

to every fallen trunk I have straddled between my legs

to each wild tree that has beckoned me to press my breast

against their firm body

to every lover’s skin I have tasted

to each steamy breath exhaled in reverence for beauty before me

to every anguished cry uttered to the wind to carry away

to every ardent kiss of warm sun on my body

to each rock that has begged to be touched with tender lust.

I shall build this temple in bones

with walls of muscle and sinew

with fountains overflowing with fertile blood

with my voice in song

and passionate drum throbbing of my heart.

My tears to purify, my breath to stoke the sacred fire

Each moment of blissful ecstasy the daily prayers

each agonizing moment of grief the offering and sacrifice.

I shall build this temple in my living body

that each cell become a testament to holy presence

that each morsel, each thought, each memory

be sanctified in its consumption.

That when I die my temple will live on in the fecund Earth

live on in the song in tree leaves

live on in the mystery of blooming flowers

live on in the magic of rapturous lovers in the moonlight.

I shall build a temple to a sacred

Life.