Place of Power

Write about a place of power, she said,

Where peace and beauty surround you and quiet your soul.

My mind went soaring to the mountains, the ocean, the stars.

Where is this power most sacred for me?  

Is it one spot or does my spirit soar in all these places?

The Rockies, those young, sharp peaked 14,000 foot mountains have me swoon.

I soar out there.

I twirl to catch a glimpse of the sun off their snow capped peaks.

I long to live in their shadows and walk in the glow of their alpine flowers.

There is power there for me. 

THere is peace in the arid mountains of the Himalayas. 

At 17,000 feet, my heart pounded, my lungs ached, and my spirit wished to never come down.

I absorbed their power and I felt peace.

Moonlight across the water.  Growing up on the ocean I danced in its shadow monthly.

Is this the place I find the most beauty?  The most peace?

Or is it sitting in the earliest hours of morning with the stars offering an opening to the universe.

The Milkyway, sacred white buffalos, storming across the black sky

There is peace here.

Every morning I seek it, stand and speak my prayers, dissolve into it.

Or do I feel true peace in the canyons of red rocks?  

The sandstone carved, rounded and softened by wind and rain creating structures that tower over the land; here an old Hag hovers over me, or is it an Indian princess, a warrior with a spear?

I can hear the sweet melodic music of Indian flutes, the chanting of Ladokh Monks.

 I feel a strong spiritual power in these red sandstone cliffs and caves.

Is this where there is peace for me? 

Yes.  

And No.

For the real Power lies within me.

Not outside of me.

These places offer unique and beautiful views different from my everyday..  But do they fill me with peace?

Or are these places a trigger for the peace that resides in me?

I feel I am the one that must fill my vessel with peace.

I must know the power that exists within me, regardless of what environment surrounds me.

I am learning to understand that the Spirit that flows through me also flows through every other being; the trees, the flowers, the rocks, the waters, the mountains, the universe.

The energy that exists in all of this also exists in me.

It is this understanding, this knowing, that I am connected to all that surrounds me, that fills me with power and offers me peace.

And when I truly know this, understand this, I need never seek to find it outside of myself.

I need only to turn inside and feel the power, the beauty and the peace of my own spirit.

The Lake

 The Lake

It’s cold in Maine.  Really cold.  The wind is blowing the dusting of snow  into funnels that swirl upward towards the sky until it disintegrates, loses its shape and blows a small cloud across the frozen lake.

Today I dressed for this cold; three layers of wool, ultra thick tights, scarf, hat, down jacket, battery powered liner gloves turned on high and shoved into large outer mitts, sunglasses against the glare of the snow, hiking poles and small ice grabbers pulled onto the bottom of my boots.  After putting a jacket on my dog, Rosie, we are ready! 

The trail rolls over several hills for one and half miles where it turns into a cross road for the Interstate snowmobile trail.  There are few sleds out there these days as there is very little snow covering the rocks.  In the summer these trails are best for ATVs as they are more of a stream bed vs a road.  But, usually, in the winter they are smoothed by the local snowmobile club's groomers to make for easy passage of sleds or, for me with xc skis.  Today I walk with added boot spikes to grab the ice that acts like grease under the dusting of snow.

Descending a steep, long and very icy hill I come to the stream that is the overflow of our lake.  To my surprise it’s flowing strong and open today.  After so many days of below 0 degrees few of our streams are left without a thick layer of ice on them.  But this one is singing and gurgling as it flows past.  From here I turn towards the lake.

I’m on the most distant shore from our house on this side.  The lake looks like a frozen tundra; an expanse of white and blue lay in front of me.  Stepping out onto it I know that this ice is several feet thick and strong enough to support Rosie and me without fear of crashing through.  Still, I always step a little gingerly onto this surface at first; testing my boots, the ice strength and my desire to walk across it.  

The wind has blown the snow into deeper drifts along the shoreline with larger bald spots in the center of the lake.  Coming out of the safety of the trees I can now feel the strength of the wind. While trekking in the woods I only heard its roar from the trees overhead.  As cold as this wind and day is, the sun is brilliant, the sky cloudless and a perfection of the color blue.  

The sun is warming the expansive ice body and creates enough heat for the ice to expand.  This expansion and contraction of the ice creates the most amazing sounds directly below me.  It moans and groans at times.  Today it sounds exactly like a distant thunder storm with deep rumbling and booming.  There is one loud crack directly under my feet that has me stop in my tracks and my stomach to clench.  Rosie hears it and begins to leap straight into the air several times; bunny hopping this way for several feet.  It’s hysterical as I realize these sounds have her thinking there is something underneath her and if she jumps at it maybe she will catch it.  She comes up empty every time but for the mile long walk across the lake to home she will continue this dance often.

I’m a Northern girl and I love this cold, white and blue world.

These woods, mountains and frozen lake offer me the solitude and peace in a world that now holds fear and danger for too many.  I have stayed away from the news.  I do not support the regime that lied to all of us with a hand on the bible and stated an oath he and all the money behind him will not keep.