June 17/New moon

Today, June 17th, begins a new lunation, which will comes to an end on July 17th, when the next lunation will begin. That will be the day we gather together to scatter my Dad’s ashes in Puget Sound.

Josh and I just returned from our annual, adjacent-to-the-BWCA camping trip. We take the Gunflint Trail to the end and camp there in Superior National Forest.

Last year, after returning to the grid from our trip, I had a message from Becka to call as soon as I could. Dad had died.

This year the man in the site next to ours was camping by himself. He had two trailers, one for his boat, another for his camper and he loved to swim in the lake. As we arrived, he came out to talk to us and Josh said, “He talks just like your dad.”

After that, I noticed the soft, serious way he delivered his words, the gentle way he talked about personal subjects, how his eyes watched you while he talked, and moved to the side. Now that he had a senior pass, campsites in the National Forest were only $11 per night. I imagined he was from the Northfield area. I started to feel as if Dad was visiting me through this neighbor.

He told us that his wife didn’t like to camp so he came out on his own. His daughter would come visit on the weekends.

And it reminded me of our summer camping trips as a youth when Dad and Uncle Chuck would take Grandma, Becka and me to the Kalaloch Campground on the weekend and leave us there while they went back home to work for the week to join us again over the next weekend. They’d leave us there with all the things we needed and Grandma would make a right, homey camp. Tarps above, camp stove below, woods and sand and sea to explore.

Our neighbor told us in his swims he had happened upon a spawning bass. The fish attacked. Biting him again and again. The bass had no teeth, so it didn’t hurt, but it shook him up anyway. It didn’t stop him from swimming again the next day.

While I was there, I was lonesome for Dad. Upon returning home, I have been consumed by imposter syndrome. Not sure if that is related, but I have doing my best to take the Buddha’s antidote of touching the earth, see evidence in the spice drawer below.

This is the view from one of our campsites. Our teardrop trailer makes it easy to to sleep around the campground, picking up and moving each day, just to get a flavor of them all. That’s Josh out there on the paddle board. Behind me was an eagle’s nest and we watched the family go out hunting at dusk, calling to each other with sweet screeches.

The Endless Search

I have been in search mode since Mom’s service. It has been evident in my posts. In the picking up of new projects. The following and floundering of the threads of what is coming up. I continued to edit Mom’s Cruise Journal this week by recording me reading it out loud. I haven’t sensed any urgency for it out in the world, so I haven’t gone further than that. I will continue working on it each week. There are decisions to be made around here about how and when and where it goes. Part of my search is this, I know it is my job to make this decision but I desperately want your guidance. It’s not clear to me what to do yet. I welcome your input. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts or reply to this email, whatever way that suits.

Page 164 from my copy of Mark Nepo’s book, Drinking from the River of Light. The poem was what I needed and that line, “There is no grater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality.”

Mark Nepo’s book, Drinking from the River of Light is a guide and exploration of spiritual expression. I found him in this episode of Insights at the Edge podcast with Tami Simon in 2019. When I got this book, I took a traditional approach to reading and began it with the beginning. Nepo suggests taking the book slowly. And so, I would get as far as I got and then abandon it to other activities. Only picking it up where I left off to continue for a while again later. And so on.

Nepo also suggests there isn’t just the one way to approach the reading. So this week I picked it up, and looked through the Table of Contents. The ending sections appealed, so I skipped ahead to “Breaking Surface” and it resonated. I wandered straight into a quote about how the moon practices are all I really need to find the way.

Inherently, will and surrender are the oars that steer the soul, workable gifts that return us to the heart of what matters.

In the moon practice “will” is inherent when we set intentions at the New Moon. “Surrender” comes in with with forgiveness at the Full Moon. These activities of applying your will and then forgiving can be neatly timed as to synchronize with the primary phases. If you bring in these themes to work alongside the greater energy of the cosmos, your skills at bringing them in whenever they are needed will increase. And this swinging rhythm of effort and release will take us where we mean to go with less baggage and ever more clarity.

From there, Nepo continues, explaining that we are drawn into ever more noble searches as our mandate to seek unity both leads us and provides our means to revelation.

And along the way we are drawn into the search for whole-mind thinking, which is revealed through the life of metaphors; the search for belonging, which is revealed through the life of stories; and the search for authenticity, which is revealed through the life of poetry.

So my searching paid off this week and I have found validation for my current path and for my moon instructions. Is that an end to my search?

Obviously not, but I feel so much less fraught.

Update on Death-cleaning

Spice drawer has been cleaned, reorganized and spiffied up with hand-me-down spice jars. Thank you very much to my dear friends Claudette and Renae. Staying on the path with concrete actions. One tiny jar at a time. These are big important moves even if they seem small.

We are the beneficiaries of a friend’s downsizing and made use of the spice organization tools she set free. The inside of this chaotic drawer has never looked so good.

Travel Plans

This revelation of the moon will bring 2 more weeks of writing from home and then a few weeks of travel commencing with the full moon.

I will become a travel writer then.

We take off pulling the Vistabule behind us and travel west to gather together all the Daughters of Stan and Shirl for his ashes scattering and a biennial reunion. I will share photos from the road. Is there more you want to know and see? Ask me your questions and I will respond in kind. Always more ways to engage!

Also, tell me where you are going and what you are doing this summer. What kind of trips did you take as a kid? Do you miss them? Did you do similar things with your own kids?

I am linking that to last month’s primer on setting intentions in case you want to check that out again. I am going to use it this week to set mine.