Greetings, friends.
I dedicate this post to the brave people of Ukraine, for peace in their country and on this earth. May all beings everywhere be free.
Since my last report, of fateful encounters in The Land of Enchantment,
(https://www.seechangeconsulting.com/post/fateful-encounters-in-the-land-of-enchantment), I’ve covered close to 1000 circuitous and serendipitous miles.
An update is desperately in order, especially since miracles are involved…
Seductive Santa Fe is a place worth of poetry, enticing one to break into verse. (https://www.seechangeconsulting.com/post/courtship) And it was not easy to leave. But my one-month stint in the cozy casita on Calle Don Diego was up, and it was time to forge further west toward Colorado.
Though not without a few nights’ stop at Ghost Ranch, in the northwest corner of New Mexico, to walk in the rugged and inspired footsteps of artist Georgia O’Keeffe. That’s me, posing by her infamous Gerald’s Tree.
Crossing the border into Southwest Colorado, I watched the rising red rock mesas disappear in my rear-view and, like magic, the snow-covered, spruce-spiked San Juan giants appeared.
I have found these transitions, crossing borders, to be thrilling; but packing up and moving out is always difficult for Caroline My Crooked Spine. Thus, my trajectory through the mountain town of Pagosa Springs was a serendipitous gift of nature. At the visitor’s center, I hurriedly changed into my bathing suit, flip-flopped across the bridge, crawled my way over riverbank rocks, then sunk my gnarled bones into the boiling bubbling medicinal waters.
Yes, I admit, I was becoming something of a hot springs harlot - though all in the name of healing.
Body rejuvenated and relaxed, I was ready for my next stop, Durango, where I was invited by a good ole’ long-lost and -found friend, Donna Dallas, for a month of winter wonderland adventure. Now here’s a woman who surfs rivers and backcountry skis and had just returned from an 8-month Pacific Island sailing venture. She sent me an Amazon link to a pair of steel crampons and said “Buy these.”
How the heck was I going to keep up with her?
I wasn’t, and I felt the loss in my impatient, athletic bones. While she skied, I soaked in hot springs and attended soft, slow yin yoga classes at the local studio. But Donna’s introduction to, and my first session with, a wholistic bodyworker by the name of ‘Feeble Ilg’ shifted something. (http://wholisticfitness.com/)
His ceremonial chanting, swirling palo santo incense, and hands-and-FEET-on structural manipulations, combined with my panting, screaming yogini breath, opened my shuttered chakras and loosened what he called ancient, ancestral pelvic adhesions.
“The curvature in your precious spine,” he told me, “is a manifestation of doing wrong to others in past lives. Own that. Move upward from the past!”
I felt my eyes tear up knowing that I’d fought these inexplicable forces my whole life. And hell, yes, I was ready to move upward!
That’s what this journey was all about.
Over the next week, I felt the pain recede and body strengthen, allowing me to test my atrophied, numbed legs, again, on the hiking and ski trails with my on-the-go fandango Durango friend.
If New Mexico had set me on the woo-woo course, my time in Colorado took me deeper and further into the body-mind mystical. I took a yoga for backpain class with yin yoga therapy expert in which we gathered all the pain in our bodies and set it on a boat we visualized on the ocean; then we cut the anchor and watched it drift out to sea.
By the time I left the studio that afternoon, spine longer, steps lighter, I was ready to conquer Animas Mountain. I put my crampons on for this one, a 5.5 mile rugged hike, 1000-foot ascent to 8,000 feet, plodding through snow and mud and ice.
When I got to the top, I danced and pranced around with glee, climbing a boulder and moving through a yoga salutation of gratitude. Miraculously, there was no pain!
I'd made it up and back down the without requiring a single squat and rest break that, over the past months, my body'd required for a basic walk up the block.
I was ready take-on the canyons of Utah!
But not before a final stop, Cortez, CO, a couple of nights at The Retro Inn, Room 1979 (think Partridge Family and The Waltons), a hike through knee-deep snow to Lookout Point in Mesa Verde National Park, and a visit to the infamous Doobie Sisters Recreational Dispensary.
Now this is where I get into trouble!
Yes, I was back to feeling some mild low back pain and left leg prickling, likely from that Mesa Verde summit. Plus, I had a 150 mile 2-hour road trip ahead of me.
But the honest truth of it? I just really wanted to try one of those yummy gummies!
I opened the pouch and held the itty-bitty medicinal cherry candy between thumb and forefinger. Might just do me good as I traverse states, I justified, popping the little morsel into my mouth, chewed and swallowed its sweet rancidness down.
Talk about adventure…talk about cliffhanger...
Stay tuned for my next installment, 'On the HIGH Road to the Eye in the Sky.'
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