Hello dear ones,

Have you taken a breath with full-body awareness recently?

There is time and space, if you'd like to do so here and now, exactly as you are.

We return this week with 2022-Rebecca deep in a depressive fog texture, a year after moving to the Desert.

We never know what tomorrow will bring.

May there be tiny delights in your day: beauty, awe, laughter, nourishment.

Rooting for you,
Rebecca

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[If you’re newly joining, this is part 12 of an ongoing journey. You can begin with part 1 here.]

April 30, 2022 Saturday
I need to pendulate the fire, too much has happened in the last two weeks. Working at Crater all morning on Tuesday the 19th with no idea it was acres away.

The visitor who thought I was a ranger, who pulled over near the fee booth with their window down and said “You know there’s a fire like almost on the trail, right?”

Must be a prescribed burn, I thought. They would have said something at our safety meeting that morning if there was anything to be aware of.

I walked over to Ann in the fee booth. “Ann, you know about the fire?” I asked through the window. 

“Oh yeah, it’s a bla bla bla”  she rattled off jargony words and numbers, and my body didn’t register any danger from her energy. 

I’d finished repairing the light outside of the booth, work order completed. It was ten to noon. 

I felt a pull to turn back and have lunch here at Crater with Kai and Bry, who were working a minute away. It would be fun to be with them, safe people.

Duty overruled. Or was it my guides?

You need to get used to working without Kai when he’s at CDL school for 5 weeks. Plus you’re now a WG7 with your own worktruck. Drive to Pinyon and do the mold test. Get another work order done.

So I drove towards highway 90, feeling the energetic pull of Kai and Bry behind me.

Suddenly, there was a loud siren on my always-silent cell phone. I pulled over just before the highway to read it. It was a fire alert. An evacuation notice.

Should I turn back?

Part of me wanted to. Go be with the safe people who know what to do.

But something pulled me to keep driving to Pinyon.

I’m still not sure which direction was ego/fear and which was intuition.

I turned onto the highway. Not a mile down the road, and there’s HUGE wildfire on both sides of the highway. Burning the homes I drive past twice each day. Kai’s dear friends live down that road. And his sister on the other side. And all the farm and ranch animals.

The heat. The smoke.

I could feel the danger deeply in my body. Heart pounding, buzz, buzz, buzzing all through me.

I was shaken by the time I arrived at Pinyon.

I couldn’t make sense of the mold test directions, and the wind was blowing like crazy.

I was safe, but separated from my whole crew. I kept the radio on in my hand, and texted around to locate crew members. 

Are you out? Do you know about the fire? Did someone go tell the conservation crew?

I sat by the tree behind the shop, and soon I was sobbing into the Earth. I turned my left ear and poured out all my worries and let her hold my tears and fears.

Then, I turned and placed my right ear to the Earth and listened for her response. Receive.

Coming home to an empty house was crushing. I wanted to cook dinner for my friends who were now evacuated out of their park housing, to a park an hour and a half north of us. I wanted to help.

I brought a radio home to listen to updates until I went to sleep.

The very next day we convoyed with police back into Crater ——which had been burned and was still on fire / smoking——to move our vehicles and equipment that survived to Pinyon.

Trees and stumps were still ablaze. The smoke was so thick.

The connexes were totally burned up. Where I’d just been the day before.

Our office was still standing, but unsafe to enter until the utilities were checked. Once we received the okay, we grabbed computers. What will we need from here? I took the postcard from my friend and picture of Kam at my desk.

By that evening, my house had new occupants: Bobby and his scared dog, and his 14-year-old daughter who comes on the weekends.

The poetry workshop at Pinyon on Saturday. Once year in the Desert. My birthday that Sunday.

A week later, I was adapting to the changes of everyone reporting to Pinyon (our other two locations still closed for wildfire), Kai gone at CDL school, but definitely hadn’t yet processed the week’s events. Bill said someone from our crew needed to go to Crater in the 450 dump truck to move wood from the fire with a firecrew.

I volunteered, even though I’d have rather not. Kira offered, but I felt duty since I’m higher rank than the others. I stopped at the fee booth before I left Pinyon and double checked with safe Alec how to dump in that truck. 

Skies were clear this time at Crater, but it was strange to see the houses empty. Jim’s dogs and kids weren’t in their yard. The ground was still burning in places.

I back the big dump truck through the trees, weaving between trees and burning stumps in front of people I don’t know.

The fire crew of about 30 are all covered in soot. They load big stumps and logs into the dump truck.

Mike from archeology hops in to show me where we’ll dump it at an empty campground 2 minutes away. I operate the button up front, so I can pull forward when we need. Mark signals for me to keep dumping. Beautiful! He says.

We go back for the second and last load. I thank the crew as we leave, my words feeling impossibly small to express my gratitude.

Again I’m at the button and Mark is in back.

After the load is dumped, I help him close the heavy tailgate. And then I look down. 

Oh no. 

The hitch is severely bent downwards, not coming out at 90 degrees like it did before. Did the logs bend it?

I remove the hitch and give Mark a ride back to the fire crew. 

After dropping him off, I swing by the offices to stop on my own and assess damages. The whole rear hitch mount is CRUSHED and unusable. We were supposed to finally get back to crack sealing on Monday now that Pueblo is reopened.

Fuck. I snap a picture and call my work lead. The call gets disconnected, as service is terrible here, so I send him a picture.

I pull over just before highway 90, the same place I got the emergency alert the first day of the fire, and text Kai.

“How bad of a fuck up is this?” I send with the picture, as my body is slowly realizing the gravity of this.

Two park law enforcement rangers have walked over as I am texting, Jim and Nick. Friendly familiar faces, but not safe for tears/what I'm experiencing right now.

How are you? They greet me.

Not good… I think I fucked up the 450, I say, holding back tears.

Where? Let’s see.

I show them around back. 

Yup, here, I”ll get you an Incident Report, Nick says.

Incident report??!

My body flashes back to my accident in 2018 in RMYC. The report I’d had to fill out twice, because the first time I never wrote the sentence “I hit her car” when retelling the event in writing. 

They tell me with smiles not to sweat it. 

I drive away and immediately begin crying as I drive towards Pinyon. Deep cries.

I’m going to have to call my supervisor. My body feels like it’s dying.

I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up.

I pull in at Pinyon and face my work lead and Don. Call Bill and tell him, Don says sternly.

My voice cracks and I forget the word “tailgate” when I call him. My body is in so much fear. I’m not in my body. He says not to beat myself up about it, equipment gets damaged.

You always need to chain the tailgate when dumping, Kee shows me. 

Alec didn’t even know to do this, and he’s a WL7!

Kira says that she’d had the thought to remind me to chain the tailgate before I’d left, but she didn’t voice it. Why the fuck would you tell me this now?!

I should have let her do the task. But I hadn’t been able to withstand the discomfort of being a 7 and sending a 5 to do the equipment-task.

Don instructs me to call a place that will fix it, and drive the 450 across town to drop it off. I don’t have capacity for any of this, my body’s still in shock, I need to process but there’s no space here, and the last thing I want to do is get back in and drive that truck. But this is what’s asked of me by superiors, so I do it.

In the afternoon, my coworkers tell me about times they’ve broken things, Kira among them. Trying to ease my distress in the only way they know. Their words don’t even enter in my ears.

Later that evening, Kai texts “Shake it off. Welcome to the club.” Nowhere to cry at home, with two new adults there.

I walk into the woods and burst into deep sobs.

The trauma in my body.

The pain of feeling so unseen when everyone tried to minimize and say:

This isn’t a big deal,
You don’t need to cry/get upset.
Welcome to the club.

My body is experiencing big things! 

I know intellectually it’s okay and I am safe.

And, my body really needs to cry right now! 

And I can FEEL your judgements and ideas about these tears, my supervisor who – days earlier – had said “Oh, so you’re a perfectionist Type A, aren’t you?” when I courageously had the meeting to tell him I’m a HIghly Sensitive Person, to see if I can get a Maxi-Flex schedule in order to take HVAC classes at the local community college in the fall.

Why did I volunteer to drive the 450? 

Why hadn’t I remembered the chains – had I ever learned that?

Crying in the woods, I felt so nauseous and lost my appetite. I sobbed into the Earth once more. Woke up with dark lines under my eyes Thursday.

Thursday afternoon (my Friday) I leave work early for an appointment with the naturopathic doctor. She has my cortisol (from the saliva test) and blood results. 

She asks if I drank caffeine the day of the saliva test. 

Nope, I had followed the instructions to a T. 

Well, my cortisol is off the charts–literally doesn’t fit on the graph, it was so high.

And that had been a relatively calm work day when I’d collected saliva at five different points throughout the day, since cortisol levels change with the sun’s rhythms. I wonder where my levels were at the week of the fire, or yesterday with the 450.

On my way back from the appointment, I stop at the library.

Do I have energy to grocery shop, since I’m already in town?

No. I’m wiped. I’ll go home.

On my drive home, I see it’s only 4:30pm, not yet 5:00.

An idea flashes into my mind, to close a loop of the lingering oil change. Valvoline is right on my way home, so I make a quick agreement with myself: If there’s no line at Valvoline, I’ll get an oil change.

There’s no line, so I pull in, knowing I’ll be glad to have this task behind me.

I feel my energy drop with the stimulation of all the workers and the yelling they need to do. I pay. They reset my gauge. Then they signal for me to drive forward off the tracks, as they always do.

I have the brake and clutch pressed, but I can’t push up into first gear. I feel clumsy and unskilled.

Am I doing something wrong?

I try again and again.

“She can’t get it into gear” the young guy at the computer shouts to the guy signaling me to pull forward.

We turn off the car. I get it into first. They push-start me. Now where to go?

I miss the first turn and am going behind the Wendy’s. I try to shift into second gear. Nothing.

But now I’m stuck in neutral. I pull up the parking brake. Fuck fuck fuck! 

What the fuck is happening? I drove here just fine, they changed my oil, and now I can’t shift into first gear. Elereen can’t drive. 

Three workers push me up the hill to the back of the parking lot. My body is pulsing with fear and I don’t know any of these people. I need to cry. I need to process.

“I work for a tow company, want me to call them?” asks Tony, the young one. “It’s $85 for a tow, is that okay?”

Is this a ridiculous rate? I have no idea. Does car insurance pay for a tow? No idea. Can’t make thoughts. [It would be years later that I’d realize I actually had AAA at this time, free towing. But that thought did not surface in my panicked body.]

“I guess so, yeah.”

“Where do they tow me to?” I ask, no idea how this situation works.

“You choose,”  he said.

Thank god there’s a Honda dealer less than a mile away, and I know it’s there. 

I’m now left alone at my car and there is so much fear and panic in my body.

I debate calling Kai, who was going to help Kira with her SUV at Pinyon after work. I call Bry (who lives at Pinyon) after deciding not to bother Kai. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone on their ‘Friday’ night.

“Hey what’s up?” Bry answers.

“What are you doing tonight?” I open awkwardly.

“Uhhh…” he says.

“I’m behind Valvoline and I’m getting towed”  I say.

Here come the tears, the tight throat, the cracking voice.

This is the first time I’ve spoken and my body has had NO time to process. I feel so pathetic needing help. 

He’ll be able to pick me up from Honda, he says.

Now the Valvoline employees are here again, I can’t cry.

Then the tow truck comes.

I pay him before we leave the parking lot because he asks me to and I have no reserves left to say why don’t I pay after we get to Honda.

It’s chilly, the sun is going down. I have no coat. This is the day I randomly chose to stop wearing bras. No water bottle. I’m thirsty, hungry, cold, I haven’t processed the wildfire. I haven’t processed the 450. What’s happening?

Then I’m at Honda. I see Kai’s truck and it’s a comfort. The tow truck lowers Elereen into the lot. Kai and Bry come over and energy starts to shift slightly in the direction of settling. Kai slides under my car, a seasoned mechanic that he is, and it feels like we’re at work.

“What’s this?” I ask. “What did you move just then?”

Like always, he patiently tells me – with a smile – what he sees and what he’s looking at.

“Yeah, better take it here,” he says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the clutch.”

I search the door for an after-hours drop box and am looking for a pen to fill out the form when the front door opens.

“I was waving and waving but she wouldn’t look up,”  the man says to us.

“I’m out of it,” I say. Meaning, I’m still not in my body.

Dropping my keys inside, already full of very uncomfortable sensations, I finally ask Bry if I can use him as an emergency contact for things. Those freakin doctor’s forms and the retreat I wanted to register for all have that dreaded line. Each time I see it, not knowing a single person I can put down, I’m flooded with tears, tight throat, constriction, deep sadness. I’d been thinking to ask Bry for the last couple of weeks, but it had felt too big a stretch.

“Sure,” he says. 

He and Kai give me a ride back to Pinyon.

“Anybody hungry? Can I treat you to dinner somewhere?” I ask, uncomfortable to receive this favor without giving something in exchange.

“No thanks,” they both say, content to get back and continue with their Thursday evenings.

At some point the thought does arise: What are the chances my clutch breaks when I’m at a car-esque place with someone who has a second job working for a tow company, just a mile from Honda service? I know the whole thing was divinely orchestrated; I’d had no plans to get an oil change when I headed to the doctor that afternoon. But I can’t soak this in. I’m still in it, and there is no safety in my body.

Back home, tears well when I think about tomorrow. How will I get to therapy at 11? I need this appointment.

Panic overwhelm. Too much, too soon, too fast.

Kai says, “Keep going forward.”

So many stretches from the last two weeks:

• Asked Bill about a maxi-flex schedule to do school in the fall, uncomfortably shared reference page from HSP book: “For Employers of HSPs”

• Birthday slips of paper

• Asked Don/Bill for support

• 450 incident

• Clutch, getting towed

• Wildfire

• New energies and sounds and smells in my home

I need somewhere to break down.

I need to pause time for two weeks to process the past two weeks. I’m too weak to hold it all.

Which one of you doesn’t empty out the lint?
Which one of you leaves cheerios in the sink?
Which one of you leaves the front closet open every day?

Temporary, you’re displaced. 

So I empty the lint, empty the sink drain, close the closet door. 

This makes me feel better in my home.

April 23, 2022 [Poetry Workshop at Pinyon]

The fallen tree:
sign of death
and life

“Find beauty in the broken,” Kai says
Beauty in the cheerful alcoholic,
Beauty in the waves crashing down on me,
Beauty in tight throat and tears.

Expand the bowl.
Stand wide and tall.
See the strength of mountain in feeling my waves.

Not all can feel the waves.
Accept the gift, the tight throat, the tears,
the wind’s gentle reassurance and nurturing:

Trust, and trust again.

April 24, 2022
[Do You Have Latitude? -Molly Caro May Workshop]

Prompt 1: Notice the Microshifts

We are in the Pinyon parking lot, looking at the sidewalk project. I’m very aware that Kai is having his own conversation with Alec, and Bill is noticing, wondering how to rejoin.

Then Bill walks up to me and asks if I’ve given any more thought to what schedule I’d need in order to take fall classes at the local community college.

I said I hadn’t – because of the wildfire – and talked authentically. 

Then I shared something I’d forgotten to say when we’d met on Tuesday: how much it affects my body to drive an extra hour off the clock to get to/from Crater each day. 

He said he hadn’t even thought of that, and I could report to Pinyon and do maxiflex hours! 

Omg! It was a relief to share my truth and felt miraculous that he said yes. I felt empowered to try talking to him again on Monday with Don.

I’m also proud of myself for asking Evan, Alec, Bobby, and Bry to write something they like about me on a slip of paper at my birthday celebration.

It felt vulnerable (I cried when expressing how much it meant to have them over for pizza) and I asked for what I needed while letting go of the outcome.

Whether they felt pressured or did it joyfully, that’s on them. It’s not mine to carry. I’m giving myself the celebration I need: kind words from others. Seeing myself through the lenses of others.

April 24, 2022

Dear Rebecca,

Happy birthday! I love that you are here on this Earth and in the spirits. I love that you’re celebrating and seeking joys. This is the way.

It has been a hard several years for you. I see it and know it. That’s hard. I give you a hug, and know I’m always here with a nurturing hand on your shoulder. When you need extra strength and when you feel safe with friends, I’m here sending you love and strength.

You know how to follow the river of ease and heart. Your intuition strengthens each day. Self-compassion will transform further. Body is golden, and you know it. Thank you for taking care of and listening to her.

Nature/Mamma Earth is always here to hold, to listen, to transform, to guide.

Play and joy,
Rebecca

May 1, 2022

Prompt: What feeds your life force? Write in 3rd person.

She had been hiking for two months straight. Grey tennis shoes with those purple tie-died gaiters, shorts from Goodwill, teal tank top and trekking poles.

She felt at ease while walking, knowing her instincts were good for finding safe places to sleep, that she had enough food and water. Enjoying her company, she could let thoughts surface naturally, or listen to a podcast with one ear un-budded, listening for rattlesnakes, or be with the abundant life around – grasses and cacti and pine trees and birds and lizards.

Joy in the body. No worries in her mind. Fully here, now.

~ ~ ~

After two days in a row of being activated into deep trauma-responses, now three years after that hike, she needed to get to therapy in town by 11 but her car was in the shop. Towed there last night in situations that felt too much, too fast, too soon.

She’d called her therapist to ask if they could simply do a session via phone at their regular time, but for whatever regulatory reason, the therapist couldn’t do this. She had to be there in person, or cancel the appointment.

She woke up at 3am feeling unrested and emotionally exhausted. After her usual Friday morning pancakes, it was 8am. The night before she’d googled walking times from home to therapy. Three hours and 8 minutes. Just over 9 miles. In her body, she felt a knowing that this was what she needed to do.

She needed that therapy appointment, space to start peeking at all the trauma she felt that week. Walking on a Forest Service road so close to home, which she hadn’t walked down before, past an AZT trailhead – the trail she’d thru-hiked three years earlier.

She grabbed a backpack and threw in a water bottle. Notebook, pen, books. Wallet. Keys. Phone and charger. She left at 8:30am, giving 2.5 hrs for this 3-hour walk. Her joyful pace was usually faster than Google’s “average” person’s walking speed. She called her therapist to say she’d make it after all, and began putting one foot in front of the other. 

She saw a group of three ultra-runners coming from the opposite direction. She waved at a car to ask for a ride further down the road, but they simply waved back and kept driving.

Was she going to be ridiculously late for this appointment?

That was the only car that passed on this road. Tears came, and finally there was some space to allow them. The road turned – who knew all this was back here?

Suddenly the road straightened out and opened up. There was a large rustic sign in the distance, a 25-mph speed limit sign, and the dirt road became asphalt.

“Pinyon Canyon Ranch”  the sign read. And there were a few farm houses and ranches spread out with large fields and yards. How peaceful! I didn’t know people lived back here!

The Ranch transitioned to a human-made lake with private property signs posted all around this pristine private community. Her body felt the joys of discovering and traveling by foot!

Her body felt safe.

She hadn’t had to feel a burden to friends or make a stranger uncomfortable by asking for a ride.

This was joyful, safe, natural. Her body knows and loves walking.

The private community morphed into Country Club / golf club land. She felt out of place staring up at all the huge houses and the short manicured lawns.

She smiled and waved at the labormen working in someone’s driveway, replying to the men’s “Hola!,” remembering the kindness and big hearts of all the latinx families she’d gotten to know teaching English in the midwest to farmhands. She smiled at their shared interests, certain these men would be surprised to know she had reflexively grabbed for her earpro, which sits around her neck at work each day.

And then she was on 5th street. She put her arms out wide, celebratory, not caring a bit about the traffic at busy intersections seeing her.

My feet have me, I know my body, we’ve still got this.

She was 20 minutes early to therapy, and able to figure out a car repair plan during that time—reaching out to Kai to ask what he thought of the dealer’s price estimate.

Feeling stronger, the walking was clearly more healing than the session which hadn’t yet begun.

Walking gives her energy. She knows this, but doesn’t yet weave it into her days as consistently as 9+ hours of sleep. And that’s okay.

She knows it’s medicine.

She knows it’s healing.

She knows the rhythm, the pace, the comfort and familiarity.

One foot in front of the other.

Just walk.

Walking feeds her life force.

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