I flunked therapy…not the class, the actual experience of psychotherapy.  Yes, that is right, I am too crazy for the mental health community to “help”.  Today, I am going to give you a clear glimpse into my “crazy”.

I traveled from Seattle, stopping in Oregon then Nevada and down to California to visit Yosemite.  I spent a couple of days of camping and cycling.  Then I drove through Utah, spending some time at Great Basin National Park, before heading to Moab and doing some desert hiking and then to Colorado. I cycled in all of those states and I am getting more comfortable riding in new places by myself.

Cycling near Moab. Colorado River

I am starting to look forward to heading to Europe and even considering taking my bike when I head off to Africa to work.

Home sweet home

I also am getting more comfortable camping by myself in unfamiliar places and, in general, with the whole experience of living a very minimalist life. I am becoming pretty good at setting up and taking down my tent, I have had my first bear experience, my first injury by myself when I cut my foot pretty badly, and have been challenged by laundry, disorganization, and lack of electricity. My grooming has suffered and I am looking like the dirty filthy hippie I think I am.  I seriously could use a spa day and some waxing.  But that isn’t why I am crazy.  Now I just look as crazy on the outside as I am on the inside.

What makes me crazy is how I see the world around me around me.  In the last two weeks as I have traveled through six states and three national parks, I have seen some of the most amazing sights my eyes could have ever looked upon. Truly, I live in a wondrous land.

Ships made of stone

I have seen ships made of stone sailing on a sea of sagebrush.  I have seen stone sentinels, guardians of the ancient places where men long dead once walked.  I look in awe at stone monuments which allow me to understand how fleeting my time is upon this earth.  I feel the magic in these ancient places.

Sentinels

I have seen the bones of creatures long dead and pots made by women who gave birth and raised children in caves that could only be reached by rope ladders hanging hundreds of feet above the ground.  Can you imagine raising a two year old in a cave 200 feet above the ground, with no baby gates, and the only way out is up a treacherous rope ladder to the top of a mesa?  The only thought to why they would do that would have been protection, safety.  I allow myself to imagine the fear that it must have taken to drive these people to live in such a dangerous place.  These are a people who have long been gone from this earth, leaving no history except for broken clay pottery and crumbling ruins of caves.  We use their artifacts to recreate what we believe their lives were like.  Will someone do that with our plasticware and ruins of skyscrapers?

I am crazy because I look around the world and I see the textures of the land.  I see the contrasts in colors.  I see beauty everywhere. I believe you can find beautiful things even in the most “ugly” of places or people.  I see a land of valleys so vast they seem to be endless…the mountains that bound them so distant as to seem a mirage.  The mountains that ring those valleys are so high they are like great stone ramparts cast before the distant sky.  When you climb them, the decrease in oxygen is noticeable, your head hurts and your actions, even simple steps, take more effort.

There are barren valleys filled with salt, a world so harsh and desolate that it is amazing that anything can survive.

Yet everywhere you look, there are living organisms, creatures that eek out life in the harshest of conditions.  There is cactus, sagebrush, tumbleweeds, lizards, snakes, birds of all kinds.  And there are ravens.

When I was a younger, I had a rough time and was pretty messed up for a while. I had several Native American friends.  One of them said to me at one time that I would never find my true spirit until I walked with the Raven.  Whether that was said in a drug induced marijuana haze or if he really had a vision for my life, I don’t know.  I only know that I have long had an affinity for corvids and on this trip, everywhere I have gone, every time I have had a powerful physical or emotional experience, it had been punctuated by the presence of a raven.  Crazy huh?  That is a hard thing to admit. Here I am trying to do some pre-sabbatical solo cross country cycling/camping trip as a warm up for heading off into Europe and Africa.  I really am out of my mind.

I believe there is more to life than what we can see and hear and touch.  Isn’t that what faith is?  Believing in the unseen?  Trust is another one of those things that isn’t tangible, yet we do it anyway.  So every time I see a raven, I think of the prophecy. Who am I to say that it is too fanciful to be real?  I am beginning to believe this trip is really what my friend was talking about.

At this time in my life, I am dependent on no one.  This time, I walk freely with the metaphorical Raven, learning, growing, feeling, allowing myself to just BE.  I am struggling to define my new place in the world as a single woman, an academic, a writer, a grandmother, a cyclist, and a traveler. Crazy.