Dear Land

Even when it's right, it hurts

Gawd, it’s a heartache. You have been my longest home—fifteen years.

You showed me how to be ‘from somewhere,’ to invite that particular earth into my cellular structure, to make offerings over and over again to the same tree, the same soil, the same patch of moss. Remember when I resisted? I was 30 years old and we were building a yurt and I bolted everyday to drive three exits on the highway simply to feel “on the move.” Me, the child of moving across oceans. I couldn’t land; you whispered, Get down on your knees, Molly, crawl under the hawthorns in the snow, get snagged, happen upon newborn elk and owls and a few large bears, eat the rosehips after the first frost, find the raspberries, hold the still-warm heart of an elk just felled for meat by Chris, and then bring children onto the land and show them, raise them with reverence. They now speak to you the way I have spoken to you. They have never spoken of you as “property,” a word many people toss around. They ask first if they can take a flower, a leaf, a berry. They know you are alive.

Daily Walk, First Pregnant, Saying Goodbye

When I told Bo Neve we were moving, she sobbed: “But I don’t want to, mama.”

We stroll on your forest path, past the snowberries she knows not to eat, past where her umbilical cord was buried next to her sister’s. The fall breeze wrapped around us as the elk herd bugled in the distance. Reality landed one more layer into her body.

“Oh, but but but, the sister trees, the mama tree… I’ll never see them again. What about the apple tree?!!!”

“I know, sweets,” I respond. No fixing, no making it better, just being with it.

I had already spent three weeks grieving you on my own, walking your trails and weeping, preparing for holding that center for our daughters.

We have grieved you, Land.

But you aren’t going anywhere. You are eternal. You aren’t grieving us and that makes sense to me. I’ve always wondered who walked on you before us, and well before us. Did First Peoples perch here in preparation for the hunt and who built a fire ring up top?

You have been wept on, celebrated on, loved on, made love upon, peed upon, bled upon, danced upon, screamed upon, laughed upon. My breastmilk has spilled into your soil.

Remember when, on impulse, I climbed so high in the old Doug fir that my hands and hair were covered in sap and bald eagles were soaring past my face and then, eek, I realized I had to climb down?!

Remember when Chris and I held a very youthful vision and carried wood and clothes and food up and down your hill every single day?

Remember when I carried my skis up your slippery snowy hill in the dark and skied around the top under a dark moon with Bru? We both shivered with predator worry. I had wanted to push my own edge and I did.

Remember the 5,000 times I carried my children barefoot across your hill?

Remember all the moments I lied face-down on you to speak prayers?

Remember?

Land walks, Land sleeps, Land look-outs and Land Soil on firstborn's toe

Remember, when I got frustrated with trying to create my next work vision on my computer so I climbed the hill to sit under Doug firs. You said, LIE DOWN. I listened. For three hours, I let go of my agenda, sank into the soil supporting my back, stared at the sky and dancing tree boughs, and thought of nothing. When I sat up, my future work poured out of the sky into my heart and my hands: the name is Story Mammal, the curriculum is this, the timing is that. A gift given to me. No over-efforting, no planning or strategizing, just listening and receiving and thanking. I didn’t need to read a book or take a class about how to do that. I have learned that this way is The Way from you, The Land, time and time again.

You watched us as we watched you.

You taught me: Winds can be brutal and we know how to bend and adapt to them.

You told me the trees of this valley are connected by a prayer river.

You told me to look for the trees in our new home, to ask whether we are welcome.

I found them.

I asked.

Thank you for the introduction.

Your last message was the owl. I couldn’t believe it and yet, of course—a long-eared owl never seen by us or most people during the day seemed to go out of its way to land on a branch right in front of me. Broad day. Ten minutes of eye to eye contact. It could have been longer but I had to break away.

Our last family walk up to the top, The Wind Tree majestic

P.S. I’ve heard from so many readers and friends who are grieving alongside me. They have become attached too! They are grappling with this change—some of them do not like it at all. They have identified me with you. Now that I no longer live with/on you, their own world wavers a little, opens a little, and, goodness, they are seeing other possibilities for themselves. They have had a lore about you, Land. I want to say to all of them that YOU CAN STORY ANYTHING. It doesn’t have to be “land” or involve wild animals or massive trees; I have storied a white trailer that housed me in New Mexico and a tiny walk up apartment in Manhattan and a haunted office in a former elementary school and even the small stone backyard and hibiscus plant of my first life memories in the Dominican Republic. Our places deserve our reverence.

I have learned this week that once a house is emptied of the people and the things, it is like a body without the soul. It is a shell. Life gone. Just like Bru-dog’s body when he died. He blew his last breath onto Bo’s nose with our hands on his head and belly and his spirit flew. I could truly sense him running alongside us as we drove his body to the top of the hill to bury him. It snowed that May night and a friend who didn’t know of his death yet dreamt of Bru surrounded by white snowy butterflies. Of course. Nothing is not connected.

But you, Dear Land, require no human presence to be alive.

That is why I miss you most.

I can still feel your heart beating…

even as I sit in my new home, under the gentle gaze of these younger Doug Firs, looking across the valley back at you now.

I will continue to bless you every day of my life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

May we humans relate relate relate to these lands, this earth.

Love,