Beloved friends,
My body let out a long, contented sigh as I typed that opening. It is good to be writing to you once again, and to be home after my summer holiday. Above is an image of one of our more than human neighbors, a lovely doe, lunching out of a yard waste bin while her fawn checks me out. They had a wonderful time while we were gone, eating all of the crocosmia blossoms I'd been gently but persistently shooing them out of before we left.
Every summer one of my dearest organizes a campout in Northern California. We rent a beautiful place with numerous rambly houses around a small lake and space to pitch tents under old-growth redwoods, and 75ish people gather for a week of frolicking. We swim and paddle and dance, feed each other communal dinners, and share yoga in the mornings. After 15 years of this, the people who were small children when we began are young adults now. It's a place in my life where I feel the passage of time in community, feeling it with intimacy, pleasure, and sorrow.
For a lot of the past decade, I've had an annual cathartic sobbing fit there. I think the first was the year we lived in Berkeley, which was a gentle bridge between San Francisco and our sailboat Rejoice. I was sitting on the sprawling porch of the big house that faces the lake, feeling the day fade into dusk around me and watching the talent show. Feeling my love for my friends, the beauty of the communities I lived in, and the profound grief of all that I was giving up to go dream new dreams.
It wasn't that James and I wanted to leave our people when we took to sea. Oh, how we love our people! But it was time for change. We were middle-aged, did not have children, had accomplished the dreams we came to San Francisco with. The city was changing, and so were we. We were yearning to leave the city, to live in wilder nature, but uncertain of what should come next. We headed to the sea to dream new dreams, which was wonderful, but oh, letting go of living enmeshed with our familiar people was hard. I sat on the porch, thinking, "This may be the last time I see all of this glory and beauty," and sobbed softly, face in hands, trying not to disturb the joy of the talent show.
The next summer, though, I was there again. We were now on our boat and just a few weeks from sailing out the Golden Gate. Again during the talent show the weight of time hit me, all of that loss and change and oh, how I wept. The next summer, though? There I was again. James and I had sailed to Mexico. Such adventures! Our boat was tucked up at dock for hurricane season and we were in the SF Bay Area house sitting for friends and working to top up our savings so we could continue to sail. In the end, there was one summer during the pandemic where we couldn't make it work, but otherwise, the ritual has held. Now we drive down from Washington, camping along the way.
My favorite experience from this year's road trip down was the night we spent at Castle Lake in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. We arrived in the early evening, pulled on our swimsuits, and hiked right up to the lake. There was a woman sitting on a rock gazing at the changing light. We could just make out a couple of people on a kayak or something on the far side of the 47 acre lake, and that was it. What a blessing!
James, standing shoreside in the cool-and-cooling air, looked at the water and said, "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to get in." "Okay!" I replied, "I'm going!" I did. And so did he. The water was wonderful, cool and refreshing. Castle Lake is a tarn, a fresh water lake that sits in a cirque, a big hole made by a glacier. The ring of mountains, including Shasta, is breathtaking. We chatted with a duck that swam past happily gulping bugs out of the air. We marveled at the beauty and our good fortune in being there with near solitude. We loved it so much that we set an alarm for 6 the next morning so that we could get in again before the final leg of our drive. We hoped that going so early would mean we'd be alone and could swim in skins instead of suits.
The next morning we drove from our campsite to the lake so we could hit the road right from there. A couple of young men stopped to chat with us about our truck
Stevie (for Ms. Nicks), is a 2006 Toyota Land Cruiser. Our first summer together we lived out of her for 4 months as we drove 8,000 miles deciding where to put town roots as we returned to the United States and land life. We love her so.
and we had a lovely conversation about camping vehicles and our journeys in them as we walked to the water. We split up at the shoreline; I'd decided that they would probably be just fine with it if I swam in my skin, but it seemed polite to take some space for that. After we all got in the water one of them called over, "I'm going to make a big noise to test the echo!" He let out a big "AHHHOOOOOOO!" and it rang on and on and on amongst the mountains. It felt like such a primal human moment: naked in the water with kind people who have also been drawn to the place, playing with the land. Ahhhhh.
Later, at the campout, I had my annual tears. This year it hit me on the dance floor. I was bouncing away to Pink Pony Club, of all things! I thought, "Oh I love this song!" followed by "It is so good to dance with these precious people to this song!", then "How is it that this is the first time I am sharing this song with these people?" and then the grief rose like a tsunami. I staggered over to a chair behind the DJ, put my face in my hands and sobbed for a minute.
The thing about grief is all grief is one: we grieve for loss; we grieve for change. When one thing pulls on the thread of grief, the whole fabric of it arises: OH, LOSS! Also, though, all grief is rooted in love; we could not ache so without profound care. The grief wave caught me as an ache for the loss of the intimacy of living daily with these people but turned in moments to joy at being with them now and I bounced back to the dancefloor, giddy and damp.
Every year in this precious place I grieve for the existence of time. Life is endless gain and endless loss; each in every moment. In my experience, this grows more powerful and poignant with the accumulation of our living, which ever approaches our dying. Allowing my grief helps me to feel my cherishing and love, how precious and miraculous it is to exist, here, now. Yes, even this here and now. I have been carrying this tiny fragment of my own poetry for a while, waiting for more lines to come; perhaps it is simply meant to live here.
It is vital
to allow our hearts to break
so that they do not shatter
or harden.
I am glad to be home again, sinking my roots into this land and community and the beautiful relationships that are growing. I spoke by phone to a neighbor this week who I hadn't met before; she was thinking of coming to yoga at the warm encouragement of another beloved neighbor. At the start of our call the woman I was meeting anew asked which house I lived in of the few dozen in our neighborhood, which sprawls over a ridge on the other side of the peninsula from town. Then she asked how long I'd been here."You're new, right?" I said we'd been here two and a half years. There was a pause; then she said, with a tone that conveyed much about the depth of time and intimacy here, "Well. That's new." I'm excited to share yoga with her soon. There is a bowling trophy affixed to a post at the end of her driveway which has made me smile every time I've passed it for these two and a half years, and I've been so looking forward to meeting her.
Last night I asked the woman who checks us out most weeks at the Food Co-op about her summer while she swiped things along the scanner, and after a wonderful story about her annual trip to the Oregon Country Fair, she said that her wife is due to have a baby next month. As we loaded up the car, I shared with James my intention to pony up and ask next week if they are going to have a meal train when the baby comes and we might have the honor of bringing dinner at that precious time.
Life flows. That is the nature of life.
I take a break from the internet for the week we spend at the lake each year. This year the return to news of the world was so painful; the hypernormalization of the loss of democratic norms and what we used to call decency to fascism and billionaire worship wore off. It was all shocking anew upon return. But I am buoyed by having rested well in what I value most: people and the life of the Earth; relationship and spiritual practice. This is the way forward. It helps to nourish my hope that the profound horrors of this time will push us toward a greater revolution for good on the other side. I hold the candle of my hope with care.
My summer workshop finishes this Saturday. I'll be opening registration for the autumn workshop soon. Yoga, meditation, and personal practice and counsel continue to be available online in the meanwhile, and all of that plus bodywork for local folks. I'd love to weave with you in practice and in living.
With great love,
Dahlia
Resources
Song
Another highlight of my summer was seeing Damien Jurado perform his album The Horizon Just Laughed in an old barn that's been a music venue for a long time. Warmest of recommendations for this album, which is like a soft hug and had me dancing in my seat, both. We played it in campsites from Washington to California.
Dance
My dear friend Todd Elliott is a gifted DJ. He recorded his set from our campout and it's on Soundcloud if you'd like to shake to it! Thanks to Todd
Poetry
If you practiced yoga with me in recent weeks you probably heard me read Marie Howe's Singularity. If you came on retreat or practiced yoga with me in the past, you may have heard me read from What the Living Do, which is one of my favorite books of poetry. I shared the animation above of this piece in an early version of this newsletter a few years ago. It came to me again in the pages of The Universe in Verse, a gorgeous book which uses poetry to elucidate scientific concepts. Yesterday I found a small film of Marie reading the poem which focuses on her physical presence. I had the honor of studying with her as a young poet and had not seen her since. It has been over three decades, and oh, what a thing it is to see the woman who has been in her early 4os in my mind for 30 years now at 75! Luminous. The images on the first video are sweet, but I quite prefer the reading in the second; you can feel the years that have passed in her relationship with the work in between. Thanks to Calah
Resistance
Workers Over Billionaires
Demonstrations will be taking place over Labor Day Weekend on this theme led by activist and labor organizations. Keep your eye out for details on what's happening in your area and when!
Feeding the Teacher
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