Chicago River
This morning, I biked eight miles to a boat launch and kayaked for two miles, then biked eight miles back. It feels good to use my body this way. When I push myself physically and enter flow state, I think of lines from Natalie Diaz’s poem, “The First Water is the Body”:
“This is not juxtaposition. Body and water are not two unlike things—they are more than close together or side by side. They are same—body, being, energy, prayer, current, motion, medicine.
The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. An ecstatic state of energy, always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement.
Energy is a moving river moving my moving body.”
The poem is breathtaking and multilayered and thrilling—and the above is taken out of its activism context—but it reminds me of the sacredness of water, the sacredness of our bodies, and how we can mirror that elemental force in power, stillness, and flow.
During kayaking, we spotted ducks, turtles, and a Great Blue Heron perched atop a branch. It looked so regal and patient as it stood on one leg, still enough to be mistaken for a statue.
I savor my encounters with wild life and look for meaning that can be applied to my current circumstances in order to give my mind space to identify a direction of flow. Maria Popova of The Marginalian writes of the significance of omens with more eloquence than I can muster:
“A bird is never a sign, but it can become an omen if our attention and intention entwine about it in that golden thread of personal significance and purpose that gives life meaning.”
In the winter, I would trail run around the Skokie Lagoons. It was peaceful and mostly unpopulated by people, allowing frequent sightings of deer and, once, a wounded coyote. It limped across the path in front of me and paused to lock eyes before moving on.
When my son was young, I planned on traveling east with him when he hit puberty to visit the sage friends and relatives I had scattered across New England—a transitional period augmented by community and insight.
We had taken extended road trips when he was 15 months old and when he was in preschool. Once, a trip to the northeast and another time to the southeast, traversing multiple states each time and dividing the days between reconnecting with old friends, spending ample time in the sea, and learning to adjust to a temporary way of living that centered around just the two of us, never separate.
When the day came to commence the journey celebrating growth, we were in the middle of the pandemic and the trip had to be delayed. After a long period of ennui and spinning wheels, a nadir had been reached, and those depths sparked movement.
Combining the original intention for the East Coast trip with photography work to build a portfolio of images for an upcoming solo exhibition, my son and I headed east, passing through Michigan then up to Canada before crossing into upstate New York.
Driving on the highway from Montreal to Marcellus, we picked up a hitchhiker on our windshield—a polyphemus moth as large as my hand. At a rest stop, where we thought the moth would fly away, it crawled into the engine and then into a narrow nook that we couldn’t access. Its wings were tattered, its life unknown to me, and I considered that it was ready to move on.
Due to their life cycle, moths and butterflies are often seen as symbols of transformation, and, in retrospect, it feels fitting to have encountered this one during what turned out to be a seminal roadtrip.
Later in the evening, there was a torrential downpour which resulted in the most magical walk through a ravine in Fillmore Glen State Park the next day. Water streamed down the walls and ferns growing in the striations were glossy and abundant. Everything felt charged with vitality and the experience was healing in ways that can only be felt in nature.
Beautiful willow trees swayed alongside the Hudson River in Winchester County and hydrangea season graced the coast. Admiring their beauty at my friend’s bakery in Scituate, I sought them out on Cape Cod, along with a salt marsh where we watched crabs ranging from dime to quarter-size scuttle around trying to infiltrate occupied holes.
From there, we continued onto Boston/Cambridge, then my friend’s cabin in the woods of Connecticut, and finally an overnight in Mill Hall, PA. The next morning, we stopped at a lovely coffee shop housed in a former church with high ceilings and vivid stained glass windows. The cafe was called Bloom Sum, which inspired the name for a photo I shared at an exhibition the next year: Bloom Sun. The show was dubbed Regenerate, which felt like a truth personally and universally, metaphorically and literally, as every cell in my body seemed to undertake the process of metamorphosis—kickstarted by the long overdue roadtrip with my son—and the world was (is) in a state of dissolve that was (is) necessary for a new era to be ushered in.
All that to say, the animals, the trees, the water, the earth live and breathe our interconnectedness. We can look for omens in nature to provide tangible symbols for our own lives; then, we’ll wake up and find the meaning that aligns us with the current.
