A River Runs Through Me

Repost from July 2010

This past week I was with my family camping in the Rockies. In the days before we left I was feeling bored with day to day activities and also a little stressed trying to prepare for a week away with a one year old. The trip was long as we stopped numerous times for road construction and to ease Rowan's fussiness. By the time we reached the mountains I was exhausted .With my regular de-stress routine out of whack with travel and unsuitable conditions for doing yoga I had little hope of relieving my fatigue in usual ways. After setting up our camp we walked to a nearby river to show Rowan this majesty of nature that she hadn't seen before. As she clapped and squealed for the fast moving water I noticed the tension in my neck and spine begin to melt. My fatigue lifted and a renewed sense of aliveness was present. Certainly, having arrived at camp and prepared our "home" lifted some of the weight off me but there was something very noticable happening as I sat by the river. I felt everything in me beg to be afftected by it's flow. Like my whole being wanted to take on it's characteristics - that of fluidity, crispness, clarity. My mind gave in and all concerns about the past or future became washed away by the sound of water rushing over rock and the crisp feel of misty air. I've been by many rivers in my life, never before had I been so receptive to letting it run through me. Not just past me, or near me - but through me. And for a moment I wasn't the stressed out mom or bossy wife I had been moments prior. I was the vibratory echo of one of nature's most beautiful gifts. I looked west to the grand mountain that rested above the river and again felt magnetized to let it in, to be affected by it's immensity. I felt it's solidity, groundedness and mass and it brought me into a deep feeling of earthiness. The sun radiated it's illumination right into my very pores. It enlightened the darkness of my stressful mind while the soft breeze of the day reminded me to breathe. There was an intimacy with the scene that I had nothing to do with. The deep, forgotten elements of flow, groundedness and illumination within me were called forth by nature to meet themselves again. In the midst of this joyful reunion I noted how uncharicteristically my mind let go to this process. Nature's call to balance was so huge that my egoic mind had no chance of holding on to the negative thoughts and anxiety's it had been grasping, and so it surrendered.

This experience was so uncontrolled, so wild, that when it started to fade I knew that because I hadn't created it, I couldn't hold on to it either. However, an indelible imprint that stayed with me is how my rigidified, clouded, fixated energy can be dislodged by yielding to rivers, flowers, wheat fields. Each with their own character. Each with qualities that my humanness aches for without even knowing. I can let the soft, delicate way of a daisy mirror the lost softness of my own nature and call it forth in times when I feel myself hardening. I can allow the vast expanse of a wheat field open me out of my constriction. I can exist not only alongside nature but allow it inside me, reflecting those qualities of my being that ache for rememberance.