Hiking with Rocks

How will you remember this year? Will it be a lost year, forced in a cocoon against your will, resisting the changes around you? Or will you tell the story of finding yourself, transforming in to someone new? Perhaps you found your wings once you let go of so much that you no longer needed. Will you choose a year of pain and emptiness or a year of healing and rebirth?

This is my year of hiking with rocks. Rather than assuage my loneliness by filling my empty spaces with hands I do not wish to hold, I have held rocks while hiking. There is something reassuring in wrapping my hand around a piece of the earth that changes oh-so slowly over eons without resistance or fuss.  Rocks share stories of courage and wisdom, making me feel braver and wiser.

This is my year of listening to wind. Sailors know that only those who listen deeply can read the wind, and this is my year of truly listening. I have heard emotional pain and laughter, often my own, that, like the wind, do not always need a solution, but always need to be honored.

This is my year of messages from feathers that appear suddenly at my feet, showing me that I find what I crave when I stop looking for it, and that anything I chase flees from me. This is the year I remembered that seduction is more powerful than aggressive pursuing. This is the year I reclaimed my own wildness and remembered that my security is found in my soul’s freedom.