With Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, SZA or Childish Gambino’s “Feels Like Summer” and the like blaring with three teenage boys over, after telling him I was bummed I’d miss some prison work while gone, Josh leaned over and told me he’ll be lighting a candle for me every night at sunset.
It made me feel so good, loved, supported…
“Every day at the same time, you’ll know I’ll be thinking about you and sending you massive love.”
I appreciate so much, the moments when the loudness of life mesh so naturally with the quiet or peace of it. Life as a whole is exactly that – dark, light, loud, quiet. Sometimes too quiet, sometimes too loud.
It’s exactly what I’ve been training for my whole life, and most definitely the last two months, with the guides and teachers I’m apprenticing for and learning from.
They haven’t been overt about any of this (what’ll be happening in the mind, I mean), but the subtleties they *have* shared or worked with us on, especially prior to each of our daily 2-3 hour “solo journeys” (tough! tougher than one would imagine) are not lost on me.
In constant display in July especially, I‘ll experience a seesaw of emotion. From the loudness in my belly, sans food and the loudness in my mind with all I hear at night, sans tent, I’ll be stretched.
I’m excited and healthy afraid. But not for one minute would I allow it to push me back off the mountain.
Healthy fear. My teachers told me if I didn’t have it, there’d be something wrong. Good news! Nothing wrong here! (-:
Beyond my business and branding work inside MGI, the work I so welcome that will greet me when I get home after those nine days (four of them fasting and on my own 6-7,000 ft up at Sequoia National Park) will be the prison reform effort we’re a part of, helping to arm those soon to be released, with the tools to get jobs and/or start their own businesses (this time legally), reducing the recidivism rate.
With the music continuing to beat downstairs, Josh and I had a call with our advisory board and it was a perfectly-timed call, reminding us of what’s important and why we choose to create “problems” or challenges like this for ourselves ~> so we can continue stepping to the line, again and again, to help others create their own new, good problems.
I have my 40-pound pack, 85% packed and ready to go. When we return from Mexico, I leave a day later.
Today I went to REI to purchase a ground pad. I’ve never slept out in the open with just a tarp (have always been in a tent).
Anyhow, as I’ve shared before, I’ll have no real creature comforts like a phone or a book or food or human company. But I will have water (lots), a sleeping bag, a tarp for overhead, warm clothes, ceremonial items, knives, one small camper’s chair, headlamp, flashlight, backup batteries, face and lip sunscreen, lip moisturizer (lots of it), unscented toothpaste, sunscreen and bug spray (no need to alert bears of my location), emergency kit, SOS whistle, a journal and a pencil. I’m forgetting stuff, but that’s what’s coming to mind right now. (Yes, OK, and these are creature comforts).
Up next, I’ll share one other funny thing I’m taking that won’t weigh much but will either offer me many laughs or actually protect me from mountain lions as I sit and journal — and can’t see behind me. Stay tuned.
Other shares about the quest: bit.ly/2Zzz39z.
