Ease.

He went back to the house over by Evergreen, the place where he found safety and love once before.  He stared at the empty sketch pad. He knew going in this time there were no lists, no agendas, nothing for him to do but experience. He thought, “I’d like to draw but I have no talent; I’ll just close my eyes and rest. Wasn’t rest one of the intention words?”  He closes his eyes and feels the restlessness stir within him.

So many colors to choose from. Those voices, so tiresome. He starts to draw his house in the mountains, but as it takes shape, he realizes it was the old stone house he was drawing. He drew its walls, the stone fence. He thinks of the rolling hills and the feel of dewy grass under his bare feet. Such an interesting and fascinating place to him as a child. What made it that way?

Unlike his own tribe, its people were not insular and self-protective, there was warmth and curiosity. There was love. There was political debate. There was bacon. He realizes the medicine reached him when he thinks of Knud and his blueberry pancakes and bacon and he harbors a desire to apologize to the pig.

Five years earlier, when he left the wreckage that was his marriage he moved to the mountains his idea was to create a space with the energy of the old stone house for friends, acquaintances, lovers. Come, spend the afternoon on the couch with a good book. Have some coffee and conversation if you wish. Come write surrounded by nature. Share a meal. Stay the night should you like. Sleep in the quiet that is Blue Valley. Where if you listen, you notice it isn’t all that quiet.  The wind speaks its story and reminds, “You are part of something larger. These aspens may bend with reverence to my force, but they will be here long after my current ceases and you are gone.” Come, sit under the evergreen with me and watch the sun rise over Santa Fe mountain. We can shed our clothes one layer at a time as we feel the sun warm the ground beneath us and we long for its kiss against our skin.

He awakens the next morning after his visit to that place by evergreen. Wound. Tight. Anxiety with its vise-like grip on his being, like a snake coiling around its victim. He thinks back to the yesterday and recalls the word ‘ease’. He remembers being told, this is something accessible. It can be nurtured. He rolls his shoulders, loosening. The dogs have sensed his movement and snuggle closer beside him. He locates the ease within him, there is a loosening, sourced somewhere between his pectoris major and trapezius muscles. As he lays in the quite of the morning he continues to roll his shoulders, inviting this looseness to descend his torso.

His boyfriend awakens to the movement of the dogs and he senses his guests are stirring. He sneaks into the kitchen and begins frying bacon and assembling blueberry pancakes. Chris, Emily and his boyfriend are drawn to the kitchen by the aroma of coffee and bacon fat.

The sun has risen over the hill and floods the kitchen with light. He thinks, here lies the mystery of path he is on. Somehow without planning he has guests and the makings for blueberry pancakes and bacon. Love. Safety. Ease. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to fix. No objectives. No brokenness. Just softness and ease. It’s here in his cabin in the hills, as it was at the old stone house in the woods, as it was in the arms of that lovely one over by evergreen who reminds him, I have you. I love you. Just lay here and listen to my heart. You are safe.