This will be the third year in a row I will go into the Boundary Waters solo. I’ve done a lot of solo journeys like this, but in 2011 I started to become very intentional about these journeys. I was initiated into a lineage that required that I take a journey to mountain peak every year in order to keep this energy current alive in me. It is a way to honor the connection I hold and to strengthen it. It is also a place to make prayers and dream the world into being – for me, for you, for our world.
In 2011 I began making these journeys intentional, but I’ve been making these journeys for much longer. I have always sought solo time in nature and in foreign lands in order to reconnect with what is true for me, to reset. In this life I have done it, and in many, many other lifetimes.
I know that I have been making very, very long journeys for a very, very long time. Eons. I know because at various times throughout the year, I need to go. Mountains are calling. Ocean is calling. The woods are calling. The lake needs me and I need it. One week I am merrily going about my life here in the city. I am doing my work. I am paying bills. I am waking up. I am cooking dinner. I am being with those that help me, and those I help. Then a force rises in me that I cannot ignore. This is the force of a billion lifetimes of making journeys, of initiations. It is the result of eons of dreaming the world into being. To not go would be to dishonor the lifetimes of work I have already done. And so I go. I know not listening to this call is no longer an option.
I know many of you reading this feel this, too. And that’s because you were there with me those many, many lifetimes. You dreamt this life, this body, this moment into being. This moment right here. This moment is the result of eons of journeys towards waking up.
I have this to say to you: There will never come a point when your life will be tidy. When all your loose ends will be tied up. When all the dishes are done and you have the “free time”. No. I’m here to tell you it’s a myth. If the sacred is what you want, then you must seek it. You must make the time. You must hear the ocean’s call. You must call back the names of all the trees you’ve known. You must thrum your throat the way the lake’s waves have done for eons in your dreams. You have to make the journey. You have to leave all your ends hanging loose and go. You have to leave your home an unkept mess. You have to disappoint people. Because the good ones, the soul friends, they know why you’re leaving.
Every year it’s the same arguments I make against myself: “I can’t afford it”, “I don’t have the time”, blah blah blah. And every year, I take these arguments less and less serious. Because what I have to tell you is also this: when you make the sacred a priority, it makes you a priority. When you honor and make space for the sacred, you are held by the Universe in ways you never imagined. You are supported in ways that few ever experience. I have seen this in my own life and it feels like a miracle. Since I began taking these journeys more and more seriously, my life has opened. “Luck” does not begin to describe it. Life has blossomed in ways I never knew possible.
If you hear this call, there is work to do. There is a current you must link to. There is a dream you dreamed a very long time ago that wants to reconnect with you. Do not dishonor it by choosing the dishes instead. Go.
(Note: Picture above is from my 2013 BWCA journey. Prayer ties are strung up around my campsite. I spent 3 months tying 1,008 of them in preparation for the journey and burned them in a fire ceremony on the third night. A profound and sacred dream was gifted to me that night.)
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