Re-Entry

     Its a strange thing, re-entry.  We come home to a place we have lived over twenty years, and it feels and looks familiar, yet somehow a little alien.  We have been in such a different place for so many months.  There, its sunny, usually warm, dry, and prickly.   Here, its cloudy, cool, damp, and softly lush.  There, its high up---5,000 feet up.  Here, its low down, Lake level.   Interestingly, there is lots of sand in both places, and many kinds of rocks strewn about in the sand.  Some of the rocks are very similar to each other in both places.  Others are not.  I see the familiar place I have lived so long with new eyes because I have been gone for months.  I notice that Leo is not nearly as excited to be here as he was last fall when we approached Sedona territory.  He is a desert dog, born and bred out there, and his body feels it.  John and I talk about our reactions too.  John spent most of his childhood and life in the Midwest.  This climate, vegetation, topography, and altitude feel like home to him.  Sedona and the mountainous west resemble where I grew up in Pakistan and India---dry, sunny, the high altitudes of the Himalayas. Not surprisingly, my body feels more at home out west.  We realize how much our bodies are connected to and influenced by the land in which we live even though Americans are a nation of movers.  One study says the average American moves every three years.  And we are a nation of immigrants, still.   We come here from all over the world.  Many of us and our ancestors chose places to live here most like the "Old Country"  because of this felt fit between our bodies and our environment.  

    Though we are insulated in so many ways from the natural setting in which we live,  we cannot escape how it conditions and shapes us.  And when we consciously cultivate a more intimate relationship with the land on which we live,  we come home to our selves in a deeper, more profound way. We realize that Mother Earth supports us in countless ways every day.  Some say she is a vast Being or consciousness embracing us all.   While I am here in Michigan, I intend to put into practice what I learned in Sedona this winter:   many ways in which to appreciate, embrace, and consciously and gratefully relate to this beautiful place on earth in which I am blessed to live.  

More about that in subsequent blogs!