My idea of living in nature had always been that there would be harmony and beauty all around me. Here in the forest of Big Sur, where I landed with my infant son, his father, and a group of other people running from our pasts, this was the certainly visible. Stunning beauty all around me, far from the influence of the outside world (or so it seemed), I was so happy to be out of the grind, and on to the dream.
As it turned out, the dream was still there, but it soon became obscured by the harsh realities of pioneer life: a total lack of all modern conveniences may sound romantic until you have to live it.
It rained every day for the first winter. We had arrived on February 14th. You could call it the death of romance, since the truth was that we spent all our time out in the rain cutting firewood to burn in the stove so that we could get our clothes dry again. We were crammed in like sardines. There was no privacy except out in the woods. And more. Doing the laundry by hand, performing backbreaking labor every day, we were out of touch with the rest of the world, which soon became more appealing, even though nobody wanted to go back where we had been.
Cabin fever became a menace that visited often. I went out in the woods to yell and throw things until I was exhausted, out in the storms, and then went back inside to keep going, returning to my sleeping infant. Somehow, I still believed in the dream. I still knew that nature was a guiding force for me, and let's face it, I am one stubborn woman. I found little projects to do that comforted me, with the small amount of materials I had. Needle and thread, crochet hook...these became potent tools to maintain order and consciousness. I began to understand the struggles of my fore-mothers in a new way.
People began to burn out. When spring came, we all moved out to different tents, and barely spoke to one another unless we had to.
I wrote letters to people that I remembered from earlier in life, and to my family. We had no phone, so I only called people from pay phones when we were out on town runs. I wrote little poems about the beauty that I still saw and felt in my soul. Nobody saw them. I tucked them away in books to protect myself from the anger and cynicism that my group was showing more and more often. People argued constantly, with vicious insults hurled and relationships disintegrating.
Little books with pictures in them became my refuge. I took my son on nature walks, and explained carefully to the baby what plant I was picking, and what it is used for. He tells me that he still remembers those walks, now, as a father.
Whenever a book came my way, I read it. I cruised the local free boxes for cloth, books, decorations, to ease the stark reality of the poverty we were enduring. My earlier life was a distant dream to me by then. The struggle to survive had narrowed my world, and my options. Now, I could draw and I could write, but who would ever really know what I was feeling? The miracle is that today I am writing these words and you are reading them.
What was it that kept me going? It can't be all stubbornness. I had HELP! Every day, nature and the unseen let me know that you can NEVER be truly alone.
I always knew that I was held and protected by a Divine force, even in the worst times. To this day, I am grateful for all of it, because I know that everything that I endured can be the way to help others. I have never forgotten the beauty and the idealism that sustained me, the grace of being so naive that I was shielded from the big picture. It's all useful. That's what life is all about. When you take something difficult, and make it useful, you transform its very nature, the difficulty fades away, and the gift remains.
Do you have something you want to transform? Let's talk about it!
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