Toward the end of each California Wilderness program, each student has the opportunity to do a "solo"-- a span of several days spent in solitude. Lily Westphal writes about her solo experience, and how time alone helped strengthen her connection to body, self and nature.
I don't ever want to forget the way I feel today - the way I
feel right now.
I want to scoop it in a jar and drink it when doubt feeds
the belly of the beast that tells me No.
I want so badly to share it and at the same time I'm hesitant
to even try and explain. Words might fail its preciousness. But I am really
going to try! Maybe my words will draw merely a smudgy idea of this feeling and
maybe that is good enough for now.
Almost two months deep and we are steeped in the beauty of
the Yolla Bolly Mountains. Oak and Pine trees sprout upwards on either side of
us, holding the Eel River in place. Our footsteps are the first of the human
kind to move across this land this year. This wilderness in particular seems
playful and mischievous, yet so warm and welcoming. The past four days have
been spent on solo. Four days spent with our wild selves in this wild nature.
It is amazing to think that before solo I had never been alone for more than a
few hours before seeing another person. It is also amazing to think about
how in the people-filled buzz of our front country lives it is possible, and
very likely, to live an entire lifetime without really spending good, deep
quality time with your person, yourself, alone.
My spot, my nest, is a series of pools spilling down and
down and down and down into more pools of deep turquoise and emerald greens.
Big rocks grow from the riverbed and I hop from rock to rock, scrambling in my
play, insistent in my search to find the one that fits. Finally settling in,
pressed against the warm rock, its curves fit my curves and we are one rock. My
soft body against hard body rock, belonging to each other. I belong here. I
belong in the slowness and the stillness. I belong here in the raw spaces and
with the brightly colored river stones. I belong with the turtles and the frogs
that share my pools and the bald eagles that glide through open sky. I belong
to this body. This journey, and the four days of solo in particular have been a
process of re-learning what it feels like to be inside my body. It has been a
journey of reclaiming all of my senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and
hearing.
Being in my solo nest I can hear the chatter of the river
deepen into a thick pulse. It is the heartbeat of this place. I plunge into the
water- again again again. Sinking heavy and deep into river and self. Shedding
with every dunk and plunge, the dead skin. The bits I have collected from here
or there. The bits that hold no worth, only weight and yet I carry them with me
in my pocket and my heart. Fears, insecurities, worries, selfish thoughts, and
dirt - I peel them off. No thank you, not today. I want to keep this newfound
lightness with me, because nothing is actually as hard as I once made it out to
be in my head. I want to keep this stillness in my busy body and this
playfulness in my young female body. I want to feel my own fragility and
smallness and celebrate it!
Since the beginning I have learned to come home, over again,
to so many different landscapes. I have learned how important it is to continue
to be amazed by things. To surrender to the river and let it move me both
physically and emotionally. I have learned about the Old People before me and
my mind has been filled by the words of nature philosophers and story tellers.
Out here it is easier to hear my wants. The shoulds and the shouldn'ts are
silenced.
Later in the evening I lay wrapped in my down cocoon looking
up. I watch sky fade to space, the barrier between me and it is dissolved by
starlight. I feel clean, balanced, refreshed, rested, content, sun-loved, and
so full of life that part of me is worried about moving in case I spill over. I
don't want a single drop of this experience to go to waste.
-- Lily Westphal