Driving Through the Split Sky
The lingering high desert winter has been dogging our little family. Monotonous sunless skies and a relentless bitter chill have worn us all down. I never really felt the gloom of seasonal affective disorder until these last few weeks. I’ve still been kind to myself and the kids, it just feels like I’ve been dragging around twenty pounds of knotted rope everywhere. Tadg has been down as well. A wrist injury made gaming hard. Lunches sucked. School will never end.
Bleh.
Our winters have always had at least a few days of sun pounding off Cascadias glossy white peaks, blowing out the darkness and reminding us that winter also means stunning beauty. Every pine needle is dusted with prismatic crystals, trees dump heaps of fresh snow as you round the bend to an open meadow of horses nuzzling aside fresh powder for a few nibbles of frozen grass. Those were sledding days, and frolicking dog days, and outdoor firepit nights.
We thought Spring had finally found us when temperatures crept into the 60’s. I scheduled an outdoor cookout at the cob oven at Truly’s school, but the cold swept in again along with some light rain. Our feast was well attended by our guests, we made our own warmth, the kind that comes from the sincere generosity of cooking for others. It was a long day, but nourishing and filled with mirth.
Still - winter, bleh.
On our drive home a low fog nestled at the feet of the Three Sisters, rolling out to the East. They’re still richly adorned with snow, it stops right around the treeline. Stretching across everything, a canopy of storm clouds threatened to dump on us again. But a band of clear sky cut all the way across the horizon, slicing the grey in half. It felt like a warm salutation from eternity, a welcome for any travelers willing to make the journey.
Nature obviously holds dominion over life here. It does so everywhere but I think it’s easy to forget that in some places. Large cities, lands made barren by farming or mining or just time wearing away everything that’s vital, allow us to forget that every moment of our lives we’re held in the web of life. It governs our breath, our bellies, our ability to make families, cook and celebrate being alive.
We are remarkably fragile creatures.
In the high desert it’s not hard to remember who is in charge, even when She’s being generous. Natures gestures are frequently startling, revealing treasures you never imagined possible. Like when you’re driving home, tired at the end of a long cold day, and you suddenly realize you might be sailing your car directly into eternity. You see that just outside the gloom you’ve been bound in for weeks, glowing tangerine clouds float down a turquoise sky-river ignited by the setting sun. You and your companion might just shoot through that opening in the dimness to find yourselves soaring through an ecstatic world of pre-planetary radiance.
It’s always been there, just outside the hooded darkness.
The sky has been holding its secrets all winter long. Profound glories were unfolding while I muttered at my computer, or hid under the covers for five more minutes before getting up to shovel off the car again. All this cold grey was just a momentary blindfold covering our eyes until it was time to see her gifts again.
I’ve had a fascination with hidden worlds ever since I was a child. My earliest memory of such phenomena was in a restaurant at a grand old hotel. The walls were lined with mirrors, reflecting centuries old wood posts with sconces that once held oil lamps for light. During lunch I became convinced that another world lay on the other side of those mirrors. I was obsessed with the idea that there was a completely different universes to travel to, if I could just remember how to use the mirrored walls to journey through.
A crisis in my twenties led me to deepen my interest in other worlds by training in shamanism. I learned to take shamanic journeys using a variety of techniques, as well as many other healing practices associated with shamanism. I had been experiencing spontaneous journeys in my dreams and even in my waking life, learning to journey intentionally saved my sanity. I took to the practices as if they were my native tongue, taking it upon myself to journey daily for years in addition to participating in shamanic drumming circles and other healing practices.
Now, stumbling upon these passageways into other worlds holds special meaning for me. They are doorways gifted by life, invitations to explore the profound experience of being alive. These places always feel uniquely sacred, as if each one is a poem and a prayer and an incantation all at once. Sometimes they are small doorways many of us take for granted: a dried chrysalis spinning in a streams tidal pool, warrens of snail trails left by slimey lovers finding each other through tall grass, villages of crevasse dwellers diving deep into the faces of cliffs that make up the local climbing crags, a double rainbow in a storm. The world is humming with gateways we’ve learned to ignore as we grew up into citizens of a single reality.
A reality we can feel trapped in, if we don’t remember the many passageways out of it.
This morning I woke up to find snow on the ground. It was May 1st. Bleh. Our dog Dandelion looked up at me skeptically. “Nope, not goin’ out there.” It won’t last long, but it’s there. Still, I’ve been given a tantalizing reminder of the world on the other side of grey.
Once you’ve been given an invitation like that, it doesn’t really go away. Any breathtaking moment when a sacred doorway opens up can still be found. You just have to crawl back into bed, close your eyes and dream your way through it.
May your Spring be filled with many invitations to the sacred.