This morning I awoke with a crunchy back. Crunchy, my term for my back not allowing me to stand up straight. It is this way some days, not all days. Once I get up, move about and take a short walk, it eases and I stand up straight and the discomfort passes. Today, I fell into a pit of despair. I had been looking at the route I will drive next month to attend my 50th high school reunion. I knew that I would not do the eight hour drive in one day as my back no longer tolerates long car rides. I have been getting excited about where to stop on the way to explore new and old places. I want to camp so that I can be in the woods and take hikes. I spent many years doing just that but it has been a long time since I camped. This past spring I had camped for two nights with my daughter and grandson and my back took longer to straighten after a night in the tent. I felt like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

All this came up and I felt the worry that I would not be able to camp and enjoy the trip. I have been more diligent of late, doing my back exercises and caring for myself. Yet, here I am, crunchy! I went out to my son, who was getting in his car to go off to work. I cried and asked for a hug. He responded that we need to get me a new mattress……perhaps a good move, worth a try…..but in that moment I needed to be witnessed in my despair. He did that and soon I went off for a long walk with a friend and felt so much better.

The trip is three weeks away and who knows how I will be feeling by then? I went into despair because I was projecting my present self, who was in pain, into the future. Afterwards, I reminded myself how I had floated through the twenty- eight hour plane ride to Western Australia, last spring. I had visualized myself getting off the plane feeling great and that happened. I can do that again, see myself feeling wonderful for the entire trip, enjoying the campsites and hikes and arriving at the reunion, feeling wonderful and strong. Whatever happens, I will be alright. I can stay at motels, I can rest when I need to.

We are all of it, weak and strong, despairing and optimistic, sad and joyful. The friend I walked with this morning was describing a forty-three year friendship she has and how they totally accept one another in all the guises that we wear. How if she expressed an opinion one day, her friend would accept that she might express the opposite opinion the next day. She marveled at how freeing it was to be so accepted. So honored for being who they each were in their shared moments.

Allowing ourselves to be inconsistent, to change our minds, to be up or down. We were trained with such a narrow scope of behavior that was deemed acceptable. Consistency, following things to the letter, these were our training wheels. And yet, our humanness is a wild thing, we are mammals and at times we live that nature without the veneer of conditioning.

Nature demonstrates this over and over. I am sitting in the library, looking out the bay windows at a maple tree outside. A batch of leaves near the top of the tree is living autumn with its oranges and faint reds, the rest of the tree is singing summer songs of green, green. One tree, different songs. We are more complex than we have been led to believe. As more light pours into the planet, the veneers are being blasted off and more of our essence is being revealed. Who are we? Who am I today, this moment? Time is dissolving as are our known markers. We live more and more in a sea of uncertainty as the structures are collapsing around us. The outer reflecting the inner that is coming undone. Notions of the person that I am, unwind as more of me shines through. I look in the mirror and see a playful five year old, the next time I see an ancient crone staring back at me with eyes of infinite wisdom. All me, all here.

The wildness is stirring and asking for greater expression. Perhaps that was me this morning, crying in front of my son and asking for the hug I needed. Not my usual behavior but that was me at that moment. Allowing more of me to be and express. That is why the camping is important, sleeping on the ground, being immersed in the night sky, hearing the quiet of the trees. My heart is in need of some wilding. My body leading me onward.