I remember the moment I knew I wanted to live near the mountains. I was standing on a spot at an ashram in Gold Hill, Colorado, looking east (it’s called the Sacred Mountain Ashram). I had never seen anything like the views that were before me, and I had never felt such a kinship with nature as I had at that very moment. She flowed through me, and I felt a sense of home I had never experienced.
I had been to Colorado quite a few times before. I had been to Colorado Springs and meditated at the Garden of the Gods. I had been to Pueblo, Denver, and Fort Collins. I knew how good I felt here, and how nice the people seemed compared to what I was used to back East. Nothing, though, prepared me for this moment when the
mountains whispered to me through my feet, and nature called to me through the center of my chest.
There had been much transformation for me in the years prior to that moment, and there would be much more in the years afterward. I knew there was little hope that I would live in this environment. I was married at the time, and it seemed we had set roots that weren’t going to be disturbed any time soon. Yet I said a silent prayer and set a sacred intention that my soul’s voice would be heard and that, one day, I would call this place my home.
As things happened, those roots would not only be disturbed but also completely altered. In less than 5 years I would be divorced, and path would take me to the Jersey shore (the Universe does work in mysterious ways). Then I would have a heart episode that nearly killed me. Then I would have a stroke that nearly ended me too. Yes, in those 5 to 7 years I would learn more about and fall deeply in love with me. 7 years, most notably the last two of them, would do more to change my life for the positive than the previous 40 had. Actually, those last two years were the culmination of the previous 45. Suddenly, the lessons, the experiences and the challenges all started to make sense.
One day the former (ex seems like such a harsh word right now) asked me if I wanted to move to Colorado nearly 3 years after our divorce. There’s a whole story there, but the moral of it was that the Universe had answered my soul’s call and presented me with an opportunity to be where I felt most at home. I replied with an exuberant “yes!” without giving it much thought, and then prepared to move.
I had no idea what I was going to do for employment. I barely had an idea of where I was going to live. I sold over half of my belongings, loaded up a moving truck, sat next to my son and started the trek to my calling. The former was in a different truck heading in the same direction, with my daughter. It seemed like a dream, but it was my dream and I didn’t want to wake from it.
Welcome to Colorado!
Within a couple of weeks of landing in Colorado, a new career presented itself and I took it. Things started to open up professionally and personally. My children were happy, and their new schools were perfect for them. I started to explore, challenging my body and my mind to take me places that would have seemed impossible only a couple of years before. I saw things that inspired me, that created a sense of awe, that opened me up to growth I would never have imagined possible. I always believed growth was possible, but what I once thought was limited seemed boundless, and I still have not seen the ends of this wonderful universe.
I have hiked to great waterfalls, sat in natural hot springs, meditated next to rushing streams and have written while sitting on boulders as old as the earth itself. I’ve seen dinosaur footprints, talked to moose and elk, white-water rafted and climbed a 14er. On the 4 and a half year anniversary of having a stroke, I climbed, crawled and scraped my way to the top of the Manitou Inclines to celebrate recovery and ability. I’ve had interesting conversations with people from all over the world, not to mention mountain goats who have eyed me above the great treelines of high places, and with chipmunks who have followed me back down those places. I have discovered the presence of nature within me, and that expansiveness has allowed for an explosive growth. The physical and mental challenges I’ve faced coupled with the communion I’ve felt with my natural self has provided me with more than I could known without it. My soul knew exactly what it was calling for.
That growth, along with experience, has shown me that my flesh is not a boundary, it’s filter. A filter that works in multiple directions. I can feel things differently, see them more clearly, taste them from a place deeper. I can hear the beauty of a Universe begging to be known in the songbirds, in the rush of a spring runoff, in the falls of a glacial stream. I can smell the fragrance of life in every single breath.
That big move actually happened, but it also a wonderful metaphor. Big moves aren’t always grand gestures. Sometimes,for me, the biggest moves have come in the small footsteps made without falling, in the sight of my children after blindness, or in the embrace of someone who loves me just as I am. Another big move has been in challenging myself to find peace when I don’t get my way, and to find patience when it scares the living hell out of me to wait.
Sometimes the big moves don’t involve moving at all. Recently, I’ve been blessed with dreams and visions that have helped me answer questions, find a path, or discover a new way at looking at something. I’ve experienced the power of Reiki just by laying motionless and allowing what happens to happen. I’ve experienced the truth of meditation, that wonderful stillness that sustained me as a child even before I knew what it was, and reminds me of who I am as a much wiser adult.
There has always been a benefit for me in both recognizing and learning from the those big moves. The largest benefit, however, has come from making them. Nothing actually happens without my participation, even if that participation only involves acceptance ; an acceptance that allows me enjoy the ride regardless of where the wave takes me.