July 1, 2025
The wildness in her soul can no longer be calmed, quieted, subdued, appeased, hushed, quelled, stuffed, or repressed; it must journey deep into the wilderness to meet its match. Perhaps somehow, scientifically, mathematically, or even magically, the paired energies of the wilderness and her own wildness will diffuse themselves, cancel each other out—two negatives devolving into one unified positive.
Maybe her wildness will just disappear, she hopes. But in her more naked moments, she prays desperately that it will not. And in the deepest, most private chambers of her heart, she knows that all she’s ever truly desired is the total, unashamed embodiment of her one wild and precious soul.
Much to her amazement, half of her life has been lived; the other is yet to be discovered. Yesterday’s tears have all been cried, the sum of her losses grieved. She has raged against the unjust, mourned, and accepted all that never was. All that will never be.
And now, she must go.
In this feral state, her beloved mountain home no longer feels primitive enough. The once-spooky forests have all been explored, the animals befriended, or at the very least understood, and the pitch-black darkness is now only occasionally feared.
She has a deep knowing that the time has come to push away from the edge of the world as she knows it on a raft made for two. Of course, she would never journey without him—the yin to her yang, the mate to her soul—so they will journey together…and yet also independently.
It is IMPERATIVE that she severs, surrenders, and untethers from anything and everything that binds her. No choice remains. Her lungs have grown frantic, greedy even. It is no longer enough to live in a house ON a mountain; she must live AMIDST the mountains. She must know for herself, in her bones, what it means to sleep under the stars, nothing separating her from the world above or below. She must know, firsthand, how to differentiate the subtle fragrant underpinnings of the forest. Pine and musk she knows; these have grown easy and obvious. And while she once avoided anything fearful at all costs, now, she aches to experience that visceral fear to feel truly alive, to co-exist among life’s constant reminders of congruent decays and rebirths.
She is wild-eyed, ravenous, and parched, and only an unlimited expanse of time and space will suffice. Will she ever feel satiated, she wonders? All she knows is that she must go. She needs to melt into the earth, meld with it, become it. She must, she must, she absolutely must!
So, with a spontaneity that is continuously growing ever more familiar and with very little preparation, she sheds her clothes and shoes like a too-tight snake skin, dropping them carelessly on the banks of civilization. Ignoring the raucous, multitudinous voices demanding her reconsideration, she fills her lungs, steadies her gaze, then decisively steps into the rushing river.
Already, she knows she will return. One day.
But, she will not return tame, oh no. Rather, her matted hair will be strewn and speckled with nettles and weeds, having loved wildly in wild places. Her sun-leathered skin will no longer be tender and easily pierced like an uninitiated maiden, for she will have earned her place in the Scar Clan from the distant land of the crones. Her skin—now fully inhabited, resilient, yet somehow still supple—will inherently know who and what to let in, and who and what must remain outside. She will no longer trust blindly, simply because she’s “supposed to,” simply because of one’s role, rank, or title, or simply because that’s what women should do. She will no longer admit cloaked, dagger-carrying rogues into her heart, solely for the sake of “Christian charity.” And she will never, ever again silence her deep inner knowing.
When her wilderness initiation has run its course, she will return, stepping from the same river she only recently entered. She will emerge—recognizable, but also not, fully herself, but somehow more so—having been washed free from an overly sanitized culture. Droplets of water from the River of Life will cling and then fall from her tresses, evaporating down the curve of her back. Released from their beaded form, they will return to the air from where they once fell, completing yet another life cycle. Similarly, parts of her will have died, other parts willfully released. In their absence, something new and yet ancient will have been birthed.
There on the bank, her old, too-tight clothing will lie limply on the bank like an old, vague memory. Stepping over them, reminiscent feelings of compassion and fondness will surface, and she will cherish the moment while offering prayers of gratitude for her new holy garments—remnants of sunshine and earth—a second skin from which she will never again part.
Never again will she allow herself be riven from herself, to be forced from her own skin, concealing it like a mythical Selkie of old. Never again will she dim her light for others’ comfort.
That day is coming. But for now, all she knows is that she simply must go.
For now, all she knows is that she must push off on a raft made for two.
*
January 16, 2026
Six-and-a-half months after writing the previous words, I awaken, not to the birdsong and whistling wind of the Canadian wilderness as I’d expected, but to tromping footsteps, slamming doors, rattling old windows, rushing cars that never stop rushing, sirens upon more sirens, barking dogs, and various-pitched voices that drift endlessly from the street below. The sum of these unpredictable, jolting sounds set me on edge. Living in the Colorado mountains, NONE of these noises are common.
Rolling out of bed in this new-to-us rental, I stumble down the long hallway toggling light switches; we’ve only been here two days, and I’m still mentally mapping out which switch turns on which light. Everything here is foreign, and despite living forty-six years in my body, I feel alien even to myself. All my movements feel thick and clumsy, like I’m wading through too-thick pudding, or maybe a little like Dorothy—sucked up in a tornado and dropped off in the middle of Oz, or in our case, the middle of one of the largest pulsing, thrumming, metropolitan cities in America.
How in the world did we land here? I wonder.
Toward the end of the hall, I notice a faint hissing sound—kind of like a water leak but more like a misting water spray—and follow it to the kitchen. I suppose you would call this thing a radiator?? I don’t really have the vocabulary for this different way of living. The house that we’re in is not really a house, but it’s also not an apartment—at least not like the ones I’m accustomed to. I guess I’ve seen places like this in the movies—old brownstone-looking buildings with shared entryways and long, squared-off wraparound staircases (the kind where the panting, desperate woman peers over the top railing only to see her soon-to-be murderer racing up the stairs far below), and there’s a different domicile on every level; ours happens to be on the top floor. This building was erected over a hundred years ago (which means no elevator), and we’ve been instructed that if it snows too much, we’ll need to climb the narrow, ramshackle stairs up to the flat roof and shovel the snow off.
Everything here creaks, groans, and leans. The stairs slant; most doors don’t shut tightly; I have to open the pantry cabinet to allow enough room for the dryer door to open—a dryer which, interestingly, vents back into the narrow laundry room, which is why we have to crack the window while doing laundry.
So it is here that I find myself, learning the language of a new house, a new city, and a new way of life.
Six-and-a-half months ago, Arin’s business was on the verge of selling, and I—despite our eighty mountain acres—was feeling claustrophobic. Pieces of an unexamined past were spontaneously erupting into the present, and for whatever reason, only the Canadian wilderness seemed vast enough to unpack all my internal baggage. We had big plans to buy an off-grid, tow-behind camper and simply vanish into oblivion, “boondocking” our way through the Canadian national parks from September through November of 2025. Our plan was to head north through Casper, stopping for a day or two of fly-fishing with our son, then continue on through Montana into Canada, circling back down through the Pacific Northwest, then Utah and New Mexico as the weather grew colder.
But none of that happened.
Rather, the sale of Arin’s business fell through—not one but three times—so we never bought the camper. We never went to Wyoming, Montana, Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Utah, or Mexico.
We never went anywhere at all.
But, thankfully, I still managed to sort through everything that needed sorting, with the help of my dear husband and a few good friends.
And in the absence of our Canadian adventure, something surprising and new emerged. But it was also something old and something not at all surprising.
Twenty-seven years ago, when I first met Arin, he wanted to be a traveling preacher. When our first baby was born, Arin was the pastor of a small country church. When our second baby was born, he was serving as a chaplain in a state prison. When our fourth baby was born, Arin was working nights and attending seminary. After graduation and the birth of our fifth baby, we moved back to Colorado, where he intended to pursue his Ph.D. in church history at the University of Denver.
Then, life hit—hard—along with all the bills and chaos, and my husband got swallowed up whole just trying to survive and support his growing family of seven. So he sacrificially disappeared to the oil field for many, many years. And there was never a time during that season when he felt a singular ounce of fulfillment.
But little by little, the seed that was once planted in him kept working its way toward the light, until at last, he could not contain what had long been gestating.
And so I awoke this morning in what I suppose could be considered a suburb of Boston, if such delineating words like “suburb” even exist here. On Tuesday, Arin will start classes at a Greek Orthodox seminary with the likelihood of one day being ordained as a priest.
This is not at all the Canadian adventure upon which I only recently imagined embarking. There are very few towering Ponderosas here and absolutely zero open spaces (cue the photo below of our new view). Silence is as nonexistent as clean air, and wildlife is severely lacking, though I have certainly encountered several feral-looking creatures.
All in all, Boston is nowhere near the wilderness I was expecting, though it is entirely wild. Yet somehow, despite everything, I have the distinct feeling we are exactly where we’re supposed to be.
*
I once read a Maya Angelou quote that simultaneously puzzled and slightly enraged me. She wrote, “You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all.”
I’ve chewed on this quote over the last decade or so—mutilated it, really—but could never have claimed to have understood it. Belonging has always been a topic that interests and evades me. For whatever reason, I’ve never felt like I belong anywhere at all. Over the last few years, I’ve gradually accepted this statement as factual, making my peace with the idea that perhaps I’m simply nomadic, a roving gypsy-at-heart, if you will.
But all the while, Maya’s quote has never ceased running through my mind.
This morning, I sat in a chair—entirely unfamiliar and unformed to my body—rereading one of my favorite books of all time, Lilith by George MacDonald. Like the children in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, the narrator in Lilith finds himself transported to another realm through a mirror. Encountering a talking raven, the following dialogue ensues:
“Oblige me by telling me where I am.”
“That is impossible.” [replied the raven] “You know nothing of whereness. The only way to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home.”
“How am I to begin where everything is so strange?”
“By doing something.”
“What?”
“Anything; and the sooner you begin the better! For until you are at home, you will find it as difficult to get out as it is to get in.”
Here, my brain starts churning in that same uncomfortable way as with Maya Angelou’s quote. There is something in both that resonates with the other, something I am meant to grasp, yet that something resides just beyond my reach.
Their conversation continues, beginning with the raven:
“Tell me, then, who are you—if you happen to know.”
“How should I help knowing? I am myself, and must know!”
“If you know you are yourself, you know that you are not somebody else; but do you
know that you are yourself?… Who are you, pray?
“I became at once aware that I could give him no notion of who I was. Indeed, who was I?… Then I understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not another…”
I sit, staring off into an antique-looking canvas painting of a river, acutely missing the actual window-framed landscapes of home.
How strange, I muse, that the man asks the raven where he is, and the raven responds by asking the man who he is, telling him, “The only way to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home,” and, “For until you are at home, you will find it as difficult to get out as it is to get in.”
How especially strange are the raven’s words when placed side by side with Maya Angelou’s seemingly contradictory quote, “You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all.”
Suddenly, revelation comes trickling in—slowly at first, then torrentially. Memories, images, places we’ve lived, the girl and young mother I was, the woman I am and am becoming, our mountain home, our failed Canada trip, this apartment with the slanted stairs, Boston and its noises that never sleep, seminary, the possibility of the priesthood…everything is swirling together in a deeply intimate pool, until at last…I see. I feel. I understand.
After a decade of pondering Maya Angelou’s words, I get it. It’s true; She’s right; I belong nowhere. I am a sojourner on this earth. In this city. On our mountain. In the wildness of the Canadian wilderness. In seminary. At church. Among people.
And yet…I belong everywhere. In this city. On our mountain. In the wildness of the Canadian wilderness. In seminary. At church. Among people.
Both opposites can be and are true because, at last, after many, many years—a whole lifetime, it seems—I have learned that I can simultaneously belong nowhere and everywhere because…I have learned to belong to myself.
There is an old adage that states, “Wherever you go, there you will be.” I’ve always understood this to mean that you can never escape from yourself or your proverbial demons, that they will follow you more closely than your own shadow wherever you may roam.
But perhaps there’s another way of understanding this saying. Perhaps, assuming we learn to befriend ourselves, this saying is a comforting promise of companionship and fealty. Perhaps it means that, like a carapaced creature, you will always belong, for you carry your home wherever you go.
On July 1, 2025, I wrote: All she knows is that she must go. She needs to melt into the earth, meld with it, become it. I was right in one sense; my need to unite with the earth was real. Is real. But I was headed in the wrong direction—outward, not inward. In hindsight, I don’t believe I would have been “permitted entry” into the Canadian wilderness, not really. Because, in the words of the raven, “For until you are at home, you will find it as difficult to get out as it is to get in.”
The quest I sought was union with a wilderness, to be sure. But it was my own. And the melding I longed for was not one with outer dirt, but my own inner earth—the vast, infinite cosmos within. Yet I felt confused about how I could have received the benefits of journeying without ever leaving our mountain.
But now I know.
Since moving to the mountains, I have been (knowingly and unknowingly) seeking refuge within nature. Within the safety she’s provided, I’ve been traversing the wilderness of my own unexplored wildness—the forgotten memories, the repressed emotions, the unspoken injustices, the unexpressed rage. I have been voyaging the frontier of perimenopause and my changing, aging body, which can only properly be referred to as extreme adventuring. Above all, I have forgiven everything and everyone I had inadvertently failed to forgive. And somewhere along the way, I silently but miraculously began to feel more at home with and within myself.
So it is that I find myself sitting in an unformed armchair in a city that I can only describe as a foreign planet, and myself as a bewildered tourist. I feel disoriented, a little overwhelmed, and I really miss the mountains.
And yet…even still…
I am home.
I am my own home.
I have journeyed without ever leaving and returned home to…me.
*
There on the bank, her old, too-tight clothing will lie limply on the bank like an old, vague memory. Stepping over them, reminiscent feelings of compassion and fondness will surface, and she will cherish the moment while offering prayers of gratitude for her new holy garments—remnants of sunshine and earth—a second skin from which she will never again part.
Never again will she allow herself be riven from herself, to be forced from her own skin, concealing it like a mythical Selkie of old. Never again will she dim her light for others’ comfort.
