Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch #1

Nature, Body and Place

Summer has officially arrived. For those of you not living in Southern California, it’s worth saying that - yes - we do have seasons here, even though the shifts are way more subtle than in Austria where I grew up.

The shift from Spring to Summer is easy to perceive as it is directly connected to what is called “June Gloom”, a persistent marine layer that keeps mornings cool and overcast and burns off later in the day.

Sometimes it’s more May-and-June Gloom, which makes for pleasant temperatures but stunts the growth of my vegetables and makes us whine about getting Seasonal Affective Disorder - as if!

Then sometimes in September there is an almost imperceptible shift in light and a freshness in the morning air with hints of sweaters and cozy socks. But not yet, first come a few more scorching weeks until suddenly the water levels in the creek rise - the sign that the trees have decided it’s time to hibernate and pull less water from the ground.

Finally, there is Winter - yes, it’s California Winter - which doesn't really count in parts of the world where by now snow falls or several layers of wool and down are required to leave the house.

But, it’s winter nonetheless - we finally get rain. After many months of no cloud in the sky we have cool temperatures and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

In my neck of the woods this means neighbors excitedly comparing their rain gauge readings and everyone having the official watershed rain totals bookmarked on their browser. After years of drought, praying for, celebrating, and discussing rainfall is a mainstay of social interaction.

But why am I telling you all this? Because it’s Summer and I live on a small ranch, far enough away from the next village to plan carefully when shopping because “quickly getting some milk” necessitates a proper outing, which I’d rather avoid.

This means I get to live in and with nature. No light pollution, no sounds at night, except the hooting of owls and howling of coyotes. I can track the path of the rising and setting Moon and Sun throughout the year. I’ve learned the rhythms of the nesting crows, when the locusts come to eat my vegetables and the time of the year when tarantulas on a mating mission casually walk through the house. (Now that is a story worth telling another time!)

Being able to detect these subtle shifts and getting intimately connected to all aspects of this piece of land has been a great lesson in how the body and nature inform each other.

I write about this in my book “The Wild Woman’s Way”, in the context of “Rewilding the Body” - the act of connecting back to the wisdom of our bodies, our own rhythms, our own original nature - the place where body, heart and mind can align.

Coming back to who we are, connecting with our body’s wisdom, our spirit’s determination, and our natural intelligence, we tie back into what has been available to us for millions of years. We access the “World Wide Web” of the natural world, with more information and wisdom available than we could ever acquire by ourselves.

We connect to our body of knowledge. And in turn, who we are can unfold, and our unique gifts be given and shown. It’s not just about being with nature, though, but also being connected to instincts, cultivating a strong decision-making capacity, and trusting ourselves, each of us expressing as the unique and beautiful flavor that we are.

Excerpt from The Wild Woman’s Way

Beyond the rich explorations around embodiment and nature, there is also a consideration around “Place” - the instinctive sense of belonging, the connecting back to those who lived before us, both our ancestors and the original people of a land.

Earth - both as the element and as the land - never forgets. Dig down and you’ll find strata of previous existence - layer upon layer of lives lived.

Whenever our body, nature and land align there is the potential for deeply felt mythological, magical, ancestral and shamanic unfolding.

Connecting to “Place” takes many forms - for some it’s the place they grew up in, for some it’s their ancestral lands, for others it’s the country of their myths.

For me it’s this land, where my body gets to connect to nature - all parts, not only the sublime.

It’s a harsh place at times. When it is Summer here the temperature fluctuates between barely tolerable and scorching, which means that whatever grows or lives here needs to be watered. All the time. 

Then, just when the temperatures drop in the Fall, the wind kicks up. Crazy, dangerous wind coming down the mountains. Whipping up dust and fanning any random ember into a flame. Downing trees, fences and sometimes power lines.

When it rains, it doesn't just pleasantly drizzle, instead we get an insane deluge aptly named “atmospheric river”. It’s drought or deluge and we’ll have to deal with it.

But that’s the thing - nature here makes me have to face things, earn things, overcome things. There is a deep satisfaction in having managed to grow my food and flowers under difficult circumstances. A sense of adventure in having to go out and dig trenches to divert the flooding pasture. A pioneer spirit of sorts when I have to grab a chainsaw in the middle of the night during a storm or defend my chickens from marauding coyotes by building a higher electric fence. 

There is a strong sense of aliveness. A deep sense of connection. I can feel the people who have lived here before me having done the same. I can also feel my own ancestors, who even though they didn’t live in California, had to persevere through nature's endless challenges.

Place takes us to the Archetypal, to the Eternal, to the Mystical where humans and the natural world have always intersected. Place connects us to epic adventures and abysmal catastrophes. 

Place is where we take our seat - our part of the human experience and within it is a deep sense of home, of belonging.