Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

Ten Silver-Lining Lessons of 2020

8. Embracing Is Key to Letting Go; Letting Go Is Key to Becoming Whole As the months wore on, the year’s true toll became clearer: so much suffering, so much sadness, so much mourning. On my healing sojourns in nature, I came to understand the necessity of accepting and embracing the wounds the year had inflicted, the fatigue and exhaustion and despair it had engendered. I realized a simple, soulful truth: We have to embrace it to let it go. This was a multi-part journey. It began on a May foray to Stinson Beach, where I wrote, “I sat and stared, sat and stared, for a half-hour or more. I told myself not to demand anything, not to expect anything, but just to let it be. I felt myself quiet and quiet, slow and slow—and then, when I had lost track of time, I suddenly felt something reaching out to me. The sea was wrapping me in its watery embrace. And then I felt something inside me stretch and sigh and break. “All the trials of the past half-year flowed through me—not just mine, but those of our whole human tribe. All the death and suffering, all the sadness and loss. “I realized how many wounds I had accumulated in the past months, how many wounds we had all collectively absorbed. And I realized how many of these wounds, mine and others, had simply been ignored. “And then I was filled with a suffusing sense of peace. And I heard a voice that wasn’t mine, but somehow spoke inside me, say: Go with the flow—this is nature’s way. “At that moment, I let go. Let the wounds wash back into the sea. And then I sensed a great balm of healing, a great cleansing blue-green balm flowing over me.” A month later, that lesson deepened at Muir Woods. There I literally hugged an old-growth redwood, “my first outside-the- home hug in three months,” and near the end of an afternoon of hiking, temporarily became one of those venerable trees:

“I sat there for an hour, and let all the trials, tremors, and tribulations of the world I had left in the parking lot drift away. I felt grounded, calm, quiet—earth-bound, forest-embraced. “In another hour, or two, I would walk back to the main paved trail, where other pilgrims would be exclaiming in awe at the sacred sequoias, just as I had earlier that day. “But for now, I was content to root right here, on this blessed bench in the middle of nowhere, or rather, in the middle of everywhere, the wind whooshing through me, bird-chirps strung from my boughs, toes spreading under scratchy pine needles into hard-packed earth, sun-warmed canopy reaching for the sky, aging trunk textured by time, deep-pulsing, in the heart of Muir Woods.” In autumn, that lesson expanded inward and outward among the wild wonders of North Beach, on the Point Reyes Peninsula. The day began with an unsettling visit to Point Reyes Station, where masks and social distancing “reminded me relentlessly that the carefree, serendipitous spirit I always cherished here had been pandemified this year. Much as I loved this special town, I did not feel carefree or serendipitous now.” As I stood there disoriented and dispirited, something told me to drive to North Beach. There I walked to a stretch of sand where I was absolutely alone, and then I stopped and stared at the waves. Expectation and disappointment roiled inside me, and I realized I had lost my way. Then I opened my journal, and wrote: I need to let go of everything I can’t control. I need to focus on the world right around. Now, here, I need to erase the shell that separates me from this place. I need to embrace the wild wisdom that fills this space. . . . I surrender myself to the infinitude of the sea. I embrace the sea in the wild heart of me. Those words opened a new road before me, which I described in my Wanderlust story: “I wrote those words, and something deep inside me stirred,

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