I loved going off to camp when I was a kid. Packing everything I’d need for a week into a duffel and heading off into the woods. My very favorite thing was the smell of the pines upon arrival. Nature just smells good. I also loved setting up my own spaces outside to live in, like in the old doghouse, or a dilapidated shed full of black widow spiders. When I read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf in college, I’m pretty sure I was shouting “YES!” and “Exactly!” with every turn of the page. I think we all need our own spaces to wander, dream and be inspired, to recharge and fill up in quiet space.
I had a dream a few weeks ago about driving along a canyon road too quickly, hitting a puddle and flipping my car, which is a recurring dream for me about moving too quickly, and also maybe a reenactment of a car accident I was in as an infant. What it teaches me is to slow down, and being guided by The Chariot in tarot (my maiden name was Carr for crying out loud) this is a lesson I really try to listen to. In the dream I found myself in a little hut in the bottom of the canyon, there was no where else to go but in. I poked around the empty house like Goldilocks, trying the food and admiring the curtains. A little old woman came in and smiled as I touched her many magical, moving plants as I asked her how to get home. In the end, I tracked my way out so that I could find my way back when I needed a quiet recharge.
The next day I created this little space in my back yard with a nod to the East and the Grandmothers with some downed juniper poles from this land and some vintage tablecloths:
It’s been a quiet little place to take naps, look up at the sky with Miles and Ivy and step back from the hustle inside the house. I saw some clients in there and hosted a Beltane circle inside, too. I found that I wanted to be outside more often than not. Big surprise, right? Winter makes a hearthlover out of me up here!
So I expanded my vision and created a little Dream Camp. It turned out to be a mini version of SouLodge Medicine Gathering because a) it doesn’t happen for another month and I’m too excited to wait, and b) it gives me a chance to really sink in and honor what we do at SMG, which is make medicine which carries us throughout our lives and keep us on a spirited back in relationship with the Earth body. This little space around the Medicine Wheel has held me all week and I wanted to share it with you knowing that we all need quiet rooms of our own sometimes.
There is a woman coming to SMG who just filled out her form for us and what I loved MOST about it was her note about alllll of the many things she loves, “EXCEPT GOSSIP.” She’s 70 and I love her already. No gossip at SMG, we promise.
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