The Power Of Place

After two days, I arrive home.  It is early evening and the light of day shimmering over the water is my welcome.  Unloading my bags, I rush to change clothes so I can take advantage of the light that remains.

Two days conducting a seminar within concrete walls and floors with artificial light and air have impacted me more than I would have imagined.  Even yesterday the need to breathe natural air despite the cold and rain was compelling.  Sneaking out of the meeting room I find an open door.  I stand on the landing for a minute breathing in the cold air as if to assure my lungs that all is well.  Ah, to breathe.

Arriving home the epiphany unfolds. I really have changed.  I have been changed by this place I call home.  Up until this moment standing on the deck overlooking the bay I didn’t know this.  I know this now in my body and soul.  I feel the essential nature of myself connected to the earth, to the sky and to the water.  In the last two days I was uneasy as if I had left something integral behind. On the deck I experience a new sense of belonging to an imaginal world bound to this natural aliveness.  And I breathe.

The cool breeze plays with my hair whispering a chill into my ears and caressing my face.  The seagulls sit lightly on the water nearby, floating over the gentle waves as they make their way to the shore.  Across the bay the western sun shines on houses reflecting light as if an SOS signal were being sent directly to me.

The sun is lying low in the western sky.  It reaches out warming me as I look out over the water.  The warmth calls and I turn to face it, smiling a thank you back.  I missed this place so much even if for two days.  And again, I realize, I am changed.

This disconnection from the earth, sky and air has left me feeling starved, malnourished.  For years I lived in buildings with walls and corridors giving the illusion of life with its plastic plants and manicured walkways.  I never gave it a second thought.  It didn’t affect me even as I woke to darkness each morning, commuting in my car to corporate mazes only to return in darkness at the end of the day each day for years.

But today I will drink heartily of the air.  I will walk down to the rocks and touch the water assuring myself that I am home.  Two days have passed, only two days.  In that time new driftwood sculptures have arrived on the rocks, magnificently stripped of the roughness of their bark now smooth and elegant fingers of wood in unusual shapes.  I gather them up, a gift from the bay.  A tear escapes my eye surprising me. I am overwhelmed by the gratitude I feel just to be alive and a part of this place I call home.

Yes. I have changed.