Sometimes I think of us
walking down a trail holding hands
You in your light summer dress,
breeze flowing through your hair.
I in my element
feeling barefoot earth,
green all around.
Warm smiles
serene peace
joyous eyes
hearts afire.
Sun’s rays behind us
we turn to each other
look deeply into eyes
Our tender lips meet
and we melt together.
Snake River in Oregon. A deer crossed here moments before. My campsite was right on the river just around the bend for an incredible camping experience with incredible views. I’d take a swim in the afternoons to cool off, very cold but invigorating.
I left one of the most beautiful, surreal, and serene campsites I’ve ever been in — it was very private up a mountain, had several brooks and a creek meandering through the middle of it and had a plethora of life — butterflies, birds (hummingbirds too!), chipmunks, deer, etc. It was a perfect respite from hot days down in the valley,
I would often sit in the middle of a little wooden footbridge crossing the creek, soaking my feet in the cold, clear water and feeling the air cool as it rose through me. Natural air conditioning can’t be beat!
I was flabbergasted that such a place existed on a dry mountain in a desert valley.
It was a very sacred healing place and I stayed nearly a week in paradise until I felt the urge once again to wander onwards. It was hard to leave. I even had tears rolling down my cheeks — I was that attached to the place. But still, it was time to move forward and I bid a fond farewell, knowing it would be never forgotten, always in my heart.
I ended up stopping at Angel Creek & Lake in northeast Nevada on a mountain called Greys Peak, another stunning beauty and paradise of a different sort higher up.
That night I had a profound dream of walking in a meadow where I turned into a powerful beam of white light surging into the heavens. The light flowing through me was so strong, the thrumming so intense I put my hand around my throat to keep it from falling apart.
The dream abruptly stopped.
Later in the morning I woke up feeling exhausted, woozy, and off balance. I wasn’t sure if it was the dreaded dizzies again and I felt nauseous and so worn out. I was also wondering if it was the altitude but it wasn’t as high as other places I’d stay at without any issues.
Maybe I was coming down with something.
I left camp to lower elevations to see if it made a difference. It didn’t and by the time I arrived at Twin Falls in Idaho, I was thoroughly wiped out and I still felt woozy, which really concerned me since it’s unusual for me to feel this way for an extended period of time, even a nap didn’t help. I ended up going to bed early.
When I woke up, I felt slightly better but still heavy in the head and off balance. I knew I needed to meditate, that sensation was strong, a calling, an urging. I could feel a thrumming through me…
As soon as I slipped into meditation and just let go, allowing myself to sink into the thrumming, like an information download, everything flew into place — the reason I felt so sick, tired, exhausted and tippy was because that dream of light was another Kundalini rising experience and when I put my hand to my throat, causing the dream to stop, I aborted the process.
As I’d learned in previous research from prior Kundalini experiences, prematurely stopping a Kundalini process can be messy to one’s body, wreaking havoc with energy stuck and fissuring about trying to find release.
So I further released into the energy and opened the way to Kundalini to finish what it started the other night. Massive flows of light and energy started flowing up my spine and through my throat out of my head. As before, it was an intense and a bit of a painful process, much like throwing up spiritually.
I started feeling relief and while the releasing continued, I re-experienced the dream, seeing and feeling white light coursing through me and exploding into all shades of greens, purples, and blues as it flowed out of me.
I also had flashbacks to two things I saw the day before that were significant messages trying to explain what I needed to finish but didn’t realize at the time. On my way up the mountain to camp at Angel Creek, I came across a dead snake on the road. Snakes represent Kundalini…. That was one sign…
That morning after I woke up from the dream, I took a walk around camp to try and feel better and I came across another snake right in front of my path… and it would not move. I thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. It’s very unusual for a snake not to move out of the way…. Yet another very strong message I needed to finish the Kundalini process.
Looking back on all this, I was surprised I didn’t put it all together after the dream and seeing snakes twice, but I was so out of it and clueless.
Finally, after an hour of finishing up the Kundalini flowing and releasing, I felt much better and a different kind of exhausted - the kind that happens after Kundalini releases and eventually I recovered through the day and returned to normal with a little good kind of tiredness similar to from a hard exercise.
I’m so glad I honored my instinct in the morning when I woke up to go into meditation earlier than usual… it saved my ass. The trapped Kundalini was like trapped snake poison.
All this was also a reminder that we are very much spiritual beings with a human body, not the other way around. I also believe that beautiful campsite I mentioned at the beginning was a trigger, eventually releasing Kundalini at the right time and the right place — at Angel lake/creek of all places.
More magic Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada (I originally placed it in Nova Scotia, my mistake). You can camp on the island and walk over to the coastal side to these kind of views. It’s a very magical place.
This was one of the first things I saw after entering Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Most of the village is like this with worn-color homes of a quaint seaside nature. Beautiful place to visit.
I finally found the courage today to launch my kayak into a nearby lake. It’s been several months since I last kayaked.
I wasn’t at full strength and I was nervous, especially untying and unloading the kayak which requires quite a bit of yanking and lifting and grunting.
The thing about dealing with Mr. Lyme is our internal battery runs out a lot faster than we’re used to. So every out-of-the-ordinary exertion adds up quickly. Out-of-the-ordinary as in stuff not normally done in the usual day to day routine.
Like kayaking.
That’s why I was nervous — by the time I got the kayak situated into the water, I felt my energy going down.
Rather than freak out (as in the past because I was so scared of major setbacks to my recovery) I calmly got into the kayak, pushed off (ugh, another burst, more draining) and floated onwards.
Oh, it was so wonderful being able to feel nature again.
The gentle lap of the lake nudging the kayak.
The cool breeze caressing my face.
Trees and seagrass swaying to an invisible tune.
Sun shafting through leaves and branches.
Ospreys snatching prey out of the lake.
And of course, alligators lurking about.
That’s my kind of heaven.
I didn’t stay out too long — baby steps. Over time I’ll be able to do more and more.
More bliss.
By the time I got back and loaded the kayak up on top of the car (more grunts and ughs and battery drains), I was a bit tired but it was a good kind of tired.
Water always seems to rejuvenate me. I was born near the ocean and have always felt a lure to be near water in any form.
You could say water is the lungs of my soul. I breathe more deeply and freely around it.
I sure do miss it.
Baby steps.
View from this evening’s meditation on Hawthorne trail near Gainesville, Florida
Today will mark thirty three consecutive days of writing and posting photographs to my blog. Just over a month ago I wrote of an audacious challenge to post every day for a year.
The challenge was to get into a regular habit of creative expression to help find my voice.
Some days I have struggled to write, mostly because I’m not quite at full strength yet. Sometimes I’m too tired to think, much less write. I can only write when I’m inspired; I just can’t write something to throw on a pixelated wall.
My photographs have been a saving grace during those times — they’re very much part of the fabric of who I am and my creativity. I enjoy snapping and tweaking them afterwards to coax out the vision of what I saw that day.
By writing and crafting photos each day, I’ve started to notice the return of a very dear old friend of mine.
My muse.
She comes as a feeling deep within, magic elixirs percolating in a well of deep creativity that hadn’t been used in a long time.
She makes me feel warm inside, a comfy flame burning in the hearth of my soul.
Long forgotten parts of my soul are coming back to life, awakening in bits and pieces.
As I create, I feel her poking and prodding, challenging me to step out of my inertia and embrace passion.
It’s not quite a roaring fire just yet; she needs to be stoked more to be set further alight.
This challenge has reminded me creativity is a fire that needs to be tended to else she flames out. Coals of neglect become harder to re-ignite.
Like forgotten love.
I’m not sure yet if I’ll be up to the task of doing this every single day for a year — it might be more reasonable to set a goal of crafting a few times a week rather.
Still, I like what’s happening within. I like dancing with my muse again.
I’m going to try twirling her around each day because it’s a joy I’ve missed.
I had a vivid dream of the future where I was on a spaceship hovering above our planet.
We’ve all heard stories about time machines and such where we’d step into them and transport to a different time?
These ships were outside the bounds of time and space; they transcended matter, making our people’s stories of time machines seem quite crude.
I was inside the ship and I could see our earth, but in some sort of sophisticated holographic form that I hadn’t seen before.
I had this “knowing” to watch the globe (apparently communication transcended matter too).
As I watched intently, the earth started spinning faster and faster until it became an incredible blur of motion. Despite the blur, I could still “see” what was happening; it was a story unfolding in front of me.
I was witnessing the evolution of our earth.
The spinning accelerated, going from hundreds of years to thousands and then millions and millions.
By the time it reached the moment of our human occupation on the planet, we were gone in a blink of an eye. Faster and faster it went until it faded away to be no more.
Then the dream was over.
What stuck with me was how we humans were only on the earth for a very brief moment in time — a literal blink of the earth’s eye. And how the world marched onward as if we were insignificant in the grand scheme of the totality of its life.
Just like the dinosaurs — they once reigned supreme over the land and then they were no more. Poof.
Maybe we’re not so different from them after all; maybe we are just another brief fling of occupation upon earth.
This summer I’ve been swimming daily in the local community pool as part of my healing process from Lyme disease (my acupuncture physician suggested it and I’m amazed at how much better I feel floating in cool water).
I made friends with several folks there, including a young lifeguard who was on summer leave from college.
Over the course of my time there, the lifeguard and I mostly small talked. As her summer leave drew closer to ending, we had a couple opportunities for longer talks where we got to know each other a bit better.
She mentioned majoring in psychology and I suggested a couple books she might find fascinating (“Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness” for one, it’s a favorite). She asked what I did and I told her I had Gator Country and lived life as a nomad roaming across the land.
Her eyes widened in wonderment at the stories I shared of my journeys along with other crazy parts of my life travels before I became a nomad.
She was wondering if she could do something like that, at least travel to Europe and such. I could tell she wasn’t sure — perhaps life seemed to have already gotten in the way of it.
I urged her to find a way to make it happen.
That it was a once in a lifetime journey at a young stage in her life. To do it before she got caught in in the relentless march of “regular” life because it stealthily steals time from you as the years fly by.
She nodded, her mind churning and thinking.
A few days before she went back to college, I gave her my copy of “Brain on Fire” with a short note inside:
Life is short. Be bold with it!
It’s never too late, my friends.
I began the nomad life in my late forties and it has been incredibly life changing and deeply fulfilling.
I did it despite emerging from a chronic illness (and coming down with another in Lyme — it ain’t gonna stop me either) and a limited budget.
And I’ve just gotten started — there’s many more adventures and dreams on the way.
Whatever dream you have that brings you joy, do it.
Make room for it in your head and find time for it.
Turn that dream into reality.
Be bold with your life!
Ray
An alien from a different plane wandering the universe in a tiny camper
Along the Ray
Somewhere on a river...
North American continent usually
