My days took on as much of a routine as there was – in a place that felt worlds away from anything like routines.
But there were morning hikes, and breakfast, and working long hours while I gazed from the deck at the amazing views of the lake and mountains. There was practicing my Spanish each day, and community meals.
Meeting more people. More of that unique Colombian brand of warmth and open-heartedness, filling me with it’s presence. I found myself enjoying the weekends, now.
“You need to learn to kite!” my new friends would tell me.
“You’re here for three months, take advantage of it!! It’s a perfect opportunity”
And I found myself watching them on the water one weekend, the kites soaring in the wind, and I had a sudden longing to be out there. So free, as the kites soared and they flew across the lake.
I heard it was tough to learn. Do-able, but a steep learning curve.
So I watched. And I worked. My business was expanding, fast, and I continued to work away at it through the timeless days.
New Moon Magic
Things were changing. I felt my internal world shifting, rapidly. All the connection with people I was experiencing was re-arranging something inside.
The New Moon was coming, in my rising sign of Scorpio… the domain of total transformation. It was time to call in some magic.
My New Moon Ritual was two fold….
The first piece was anchoring in some new income and revenue goals. That part felt pretty easy. I was getting really good at manifesting money, and my new goals already felt like a done deal.
The second piece was much more challenging, and where the crux of the energetic shift was at for me… I knew I was ready to call in a partner.
Sometimes you just know. It’s time.
I had always fine being alone…. and in fact I was really, really good at being alone.
But I was ready to be with someone, now.
And so I put it out to the universe, and asked whatever needed to shift in me to shift, so I was ready.
Manifestation
Set the intention. Do the energetic work. Turn it over to the universe.
From there, the pathways are in place… and whatever needs to shift and transform in me gets to change.
…and the universe sends whatever’s needed, to facilitate this.
Sometimes, that’s where we get hung up.
Because the stuff that comes back is exactly designed to release the things that need to shift. And sometimes that’s the stuff that’s hard to feel. Hard to be with.
…sometimes we get thrown off track, because the energy that comes back from our own magic is so intense.
(But that intensity is where the power lies).
Do the magic. Turn it over to the universe. The pathways I need to create the energetic shifts will come.
Oh, hi.
Three days after my New Moon ritual, S. showed up.
A nomad photographer and videographer who’d been traveling for three years, he was there for three weeks to kitesurf, work on creative projects, and take a bit of space to journal and plan.
We quickly began spending all the time together. He was funny, and I laughed till I cried, over and over and over again. I felt like I’d laughed more in a week than in the past 10 years.
He teased me, mercilessly… often about how reticent I was to answer questions about myself. It was true. But at the same time, it was somehow easy to talk to him. The connection felt magical, easy, light, and more fun than I could remember having in ever so long.
We sat on the dock, watching the sun set over the water. Dinners with the group were filled with laughter and connection.
Lying in his bed at night, our bodies pressed together, the panoramic view of the lake below with the moon shining across the water, I felt completely present and connected and totally blissfully happy.
Three -Sports Days
S. had a theory: A day in which you do three different sports in a single day could never be a bad day.
So, we’d choose three: hiking. paddleboarding. swimming. he’d go kite-surfing. sometimes, we’d close out the day with ping pong.
On a magical day, we took a boat tour around the lake, stopping to climb rocks and cliff-jump. Waterfalls appeared, suddenly, towering in front of us.
The guys wakeboarded masterfully from the back of the boat. I tried to get up on the wakeboard but couldn’t quite do it. I made a good attempt though.
Meanwhile, S. managed to skillfully film with one hand while wakeboarding and holding the line with the other hand, and I was awed.
The beauty was immense, speeding on the boat across the expansive stretch of lake, surrounded by the mountains and endless sky, waterfalls appearing out of nowhere.
And then it was evening, and we were back, and we still wanted to do one more sport…. so we paddle-boarded across the lake, finding mini-caves on the other side as the sun set rapidly (as it did on the equator).
And, it was dark…. the moon reflecting a shimmering path across the water, as we paddled all the way back beneath the night sky.
Clarity
It had been an extreme day, and the muscles were sore in all the places.
The paddle-boarding had me exhausted, but in the most fun way imaginable. And the adrenaline rush from the boat and the cliffs was a blissful high.
A day in which you do three sports in a single day can never be a bad day.
Except, it was….
Because reality jolted, and time was short, and suddenly tears were streaming down my cheeks, with the awareness of how soon he was leaving.
And when I asked,
“… is this only about these three weeks together?”
he said, quietly,
“I think so.”
And it cut like a knife: the crystal clarity that I hadn’t known was missing from the blissful fog.
Sadness
The next day was heavy, long. I woke up into deep sadness. It felt familiar. I didn’t like waking up into that depth of sadness. It reminded me vaguely of much darker times, when extreme feelings felt desperately scary and hopeless. But this was different, much different…. and I could move through the feelings, now.
This was different. Because I was different than the days when dark feelings were really, really dark.
This was simply a cocktail of hormones, strong emotions, and oxytocin withdrawal. Intense, but totally do-able.
I went through the day in the dual experience of waves of sadness followed by breathing, resourcing my way through, and coming back into being completely okay – and in awe of the connection I’d called in, that felt so magical.
I texted my friend Josephine through the day, whose compassion and rock-solid wisdom held me through a sea of emotions.
It had all happened so fast, so magically.
Time was different here.
Nomad Dating
Connection, true connection takes time. Sometimes feelings go fast. Often, one persons feelings are faster (and I was not used to being that person).
Here in nomad-land, time was accelerated in multiple ways, and connections were intense but fleeting, and there was an all-or-nothingness in a way that didn’t exist in the regular world. And the feelings had to match, and quickly.
Maybe it simply didn’t mean to him what it did to me…. and that was that.
“It sounds like it’s his own fears” my dear friends Josephine and Helen told me.
Our astrology charts said that deep and immense healing was up for both of us, through this connection. And our charts also said that the connection was as light and easy and beautiful as it felt. The paradox was real.
Navigating multiple levels of emotions: fears of rejection, sadness, longing and loss, sudden endings – feelings both present and past, here to be met and felt – I breathed my way through.
He was still here for another week and I needed to decide what that meant – for me.
I was swimming in a sea of emotions. “Maybe this is partly about creating healthy boundaries for you” my wise friend Josephine texted.
Alchemizing
The feelings were enormous. How to move through them was the question.
As always, I turned to hiking and nature for solace. I needed long hikes, though, and intense ones. Fortunately, the Colombian mountains were happy to oblige.
I hiked up the steeply winding roads and trails, drinking in the sights. Passing the occasional traveler and the many animals.
I passed an elderly man on crutches, who was wearing a My Little Pony backpack as he made his way up the hill. He smiled at me, a sweet and toothless grin. “Buenas Tardes”
I passed the dogs, who came running out of the houses and circling me. I passed the chickens. The occasional cow who’d gotten loose, wandering casually down the middle of the road and dragging a long rope behind.
I hiked until I was level with the Macanal sign. (The town of Macanal sat across the water, opposite us on the lake, but higher). They’d recently put up a “Macanal” sign – just like the Hollywood sign.
Now the sun was setting and fast, and I made my way back down to the guesthouse, just as the rain began.
Sleeping in my own room that night, I listened to channelled light code recordings from my friend and colleague Robyn, and my energy shifted as I fell asleep.
I woke up feeling different.
And when I woke up, I suddenly knew: It was time to learn to kite-surf.
Kite
“Juan…” I asked at breakfast… “puedes enseñarme hacer a kite, hoy?” Can you teach me to kite, today?
“No, not today… “ he said (it was a full house, for the weekend, once again). “But this week we can do lessons”
“You need two hours a day.” Juan laid down the law. A soft-spoken, sweet and gentle soul, he was nonetheless a strict taskmaster when it came to all things physical fitness and learning to kite.
“…it needs to be two hours a day, every day this week.
“And it needs to be in the middle of the day, when the wind blows”
Full Moon Magic
That night, the full moon rose over the lake.
Each full moon is like a mini- harvest of the intentions and energy put into action at the New Moon.
We sat at dinner, laughing and laughing some more… learning about the national Colombian sport called Tejo, which involved throwing rocks at a target surrounded by gunpowder.
Somehow, the laughter with S. was incredibly light, still. And somehow it was all easy and perfect. The long hikes had helped to re-balance my brain chemistry and all was good.
I felt myself expanding….physically, emotionally, relationally… and having a new nervous system capacity to hold it all.
The transformational work that I’d done in recent years was here to hold me. An old version of me would have shut down. But there was a new version of me, now…. an entirely new nervous system that could sustain and hold the extremes. All of the extremes. And feel it all, like the wind flowing through.
The expansion, past and present, was undeniable.
(and, the nomad journey I’d set out on was making more and more sense.. and I could feel a new clarity forming, and almost here, about exactly what I was doing and why).
Only two stops in, and I felt transformed.
My heart was open.
Tomorrow, we’d look for whitecaps on the water.
And I knew that the wind and the kite had more to teach me, still.
Leave a Reply