This is an essay my girlfriend Ali wrote after an eventful visit to Serenity Valley this past winter. I thought it was a very powerful piece of writing, so I asked her to share it here on this blog. –Ryo

***

You draw us into the wilderness of our own hearts

In the quest for truth.

Enthrall us with your serenade of love:

That, turning away from shame and self deception,

We become lovers of all the world

And join the choirs of your hymn

That soothes and heals this planet.

Music of the Spheres,

One Who Touches Our Innermost Being

You are the Lyric of Love’s Song Unknown

Song of Sophia

Mary Kathleen Speedle Schmitt

 

I went up into the mountains to face my demons. Of course I also went to be with him, to spend time with him where he lives, not the apartment he rents in Menlo Park, but where he really lives. In the hut he built with his own hands surrounded by acre upon acre of wide open land;, trees and rocks and snow and bones, wild land, free land.

The last time I’d been there it was summer and the days were beautiful. I’d wake before him and do my morning yoga practice in the open space below the loft where he was sleeping. Then, energized and inspired, I’d grab my drum and head out into the woods and create sound. Using my voice, my hands and my sacred drum, I’d unleash from deep within the awe and the longing and the sadness too, but all of it was beautiful, or at least that’s how I remember those first days spent in Serenity Valley. When I’d return from drumming, he would be close to waking and we’d slowly move through our morning routine. He’d go outside and tend to the solar panels, check on the garden, yawn, stretch and feel the sun on his skin. Inside I’d be humming and boiling water and brainstorming on how to organize this tiny space. We’d have breakfast and then go about the day, which would be filled with chores in and around the huts, interspersed with meaningful leisure time. During my first five days with Ryo in the woods, we put in a sink and a kitchen shelf and planted butternut squash (named Fuzzy Wuzzy) and melon (Meloney) in the garden. When we weren’t working we took walks through the woods, I played the guitar while sitting on stumps beneath the fiery afternoon sun, and Ryo taught me how to use a gun at the shooting range he constructed nearby. Throughout the day, I’d tidy up the hut while he worked on the computer. We’d lay in the hammock if there was even a hint of a breeze, or retreat up to the loft to rest when it was too hot to do anything else. In the evening we’d make dinner together and eat by the glow of the solar powered lights inside the cabin, or take our food outside, feasting on fire roasted sweet potatoes, onions and squash and get lost in the changing colors of the sky as the sun settled herself down behind the mountains for the night.

There were some struggles; there was a healthy colony of mosquitoes in and around the cabin and their population was most concentrated up in the loft, which made sleeping comfortably somewhat of a challenge. I ran into the expected, minor frustrations of living away from the modern comforts I was accustomed to but for the most part it was like a dream. Ryo and I had recently grown closer and this was the first time we’d spent five consecutive days and nights together, as well as away from any other human beings.

There was a peace and rightness about life in Serenity Valley that made it easy to imagine raising children there together, away from all of the toxic, mind-numbing, soul-sapping influences of urban life. I was learning new things, like how to work in a garden, use a jigsaw and shoot a rifle. I felt closer to Ryo than ever before, and closer to myself because I was living close to the land. There was no pavement between my feet and the soft, red earth. My voice, this voice that I so often censor and stifle because I’m afraid of being misunderstood or judged or rejected or laughed at, this voice got a little taste of freedom out in the woods. Trees don’t have the capacity to misunderstand or reject you. When they laugh it is in delight at the sounds you are making, never because they don’t like you or think you are foolish or because they are afraid of what you are saying. There were no billboards or commercials poisoning my mind, planting seeds that whatever anxiety or sadness or insecurity I felt would disappear the moment I bought something: a beverage, a pill, cosmetics, clothing, electronic gadgets, so much stuff sold to separate us from our stuff. Instead, when my stuff came up, my anxiety or sadness or insecurity, I had Mother Earth, the sacred woods, to give it to in the form of song, drum, dance, walking there, sitting there, crying there, breathing there. Then, when I’d gotten it out of my system, I could go back to enjoying being me and appreciate once more the rays of light filtering in through the trees and the sight of Ryo, clad only in his khaki shorts and camo hat, up on a ladder fixing something on the hut. It was life in its simplest form, uncluttered by problems that have nothing to do with living and everything to do with trying to escape.

That was seven months ago. In the space between that trip to Serenity Valley and this most recent one, I did a lot of trying to escape; from anxiety, uncertainty, responsibility, pain. Modern life offers so many ways to do this, every one of us gets caught up in it at some point, in some form or another. So I decided to cast off some of my demons while I was up there; I’d stop drinking coffee and eating sugar. I knew these two substances had way more control over my mind and mood than I wanted and I was determined to take back that control. I thought that being out in nature, and far away from the alluring traps of coffee houses and convenient stores, I’d be able to purge myself of these two detrimental proclivities and hopefully leave the woods feeling more balanced and in control of my life. I thought that the change of scenery would also lend me a new perspective on things that I had been struggling with: confusion over which path I should be on, frustration that I keep going in circles and making the same mistakes, exhaustion over swinging back and forth between confidence and insecurity. I figured I’d feel a little uncomfortable during my first day without coffee or sugar but I expected to recover quickly, aided by the magic of the woods, the way that being in nature always smoothes out the jaggedness of my fluctuations and cravings.

Of course, things did not go as I had planned.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that it was winter and I am less tolerant of cold than heat, so I spent less time outdoors than I had when I was there during the summer. Perhaps it had to do with the lack of space. During my first trip, we’d moved the stove out of the cabin so that I had more room to do yoga and move around and with the much needed (and appreciated!) stove inside this time, there was barely room for my mat. Perhaps it was purely neurochemical. Without the caffeine and sugar my body was accustomed to, my serotonin and endorphin levels plummeted. I felt irritable, depressed, groggy, very impatient with the hardships of a simple life and with my own mental murkiness. I frequently went into the woods, found a sympathetic log to sit on and cried. I tried to be proactive about dealing with my emotions. I kept up with my yoga practice, I journaled a lot, I exercised, I sawed wood, and I rested when I felt exhausted. These things definitely helped to take the edge off, temporarily, but the edge would quickly return. Like a thin layer of dust on a shelf, the moment I had completely wiped it away, new specks would start to accumulate, making it harder to breathe, and to see what was beneath the dust. I didn’t sing, I didn’t chant, I didn’t talk a whole lot about what was going on. Ironically, my voice felt even more constrained in Serenity Valley than it had back in San Francisco. Nothing I had been hoping for, based on my previous experience that summer, was happening for me and I was growing more despondent and frustrated by the hour.

We’d arrived Thursday evening and were planning to head out early on Monday. By that last morning my nerves were frayed. I awoke feeling anxious and angry and not really knowing why. Okay, I thought, Yoga will help, I’ll go do my practice and then I’ll feel better.

The previous morning I hadn’t started the fire before doing yoga and by the time I’d cooled down after my practice and got it going I was extremely cold. It took my fingers and toes a good forty five minutes to warm up. I remembered this and I was pissed. I just want to do yoga, goddammit I don’t want to have to start this fucking fire first. I grabbed some logs from outside and some smaller sticks for kindling and balled up some magazine paper. I cleaned out the grill and placed the paper, twigs and wood into the fireplace and grabbed the matches. I rubbed the head of the match the way that Ryo had showed me, to warm it up, and then struck it against the box and attempted to light the fire. It wouldn’t light. I’d only done this a couple of times on my own and I was irritated and groggy so it seemed really hard to get it going. I went through half a dozen matches and moved things around angrily and made some frustrated grunts. That woke Ryo and he peeked his head over the edge of the loft and asked if I had enough paper in the stove.

“Never mind!” I muttered, “It’s not that cold.” With that I pulled on my boots, coat, hat and my stretchy pink gloves and left the hut. The frustration had become rage inside my body and it had reached its peak. I knew I was on the edge of a major explosion, and I am not the type of person who has major explosions. My skin was crawling, my jaw was clenched, my heart hurt from the anger. I only had one thought in my mind. Run.

I began to go in the direction I normally go, into a part of the property I nicknamed “Skinny Tree Forest,” in honor of an imaginary land my sister and I had created as kids. Then I immediately turned to the left and headed south, into a part of the woods I didn’t know as well. I didn’t run very far, my lungs and heart hurt and the pain was sharp and it stopped me. The hut was still within my sightline when I stopped running and I was still pulsating with fury that was about so much more than not lighting the fire. I sat down on a rock and had a good cry. Or maybe it was a bad cry, I’d had a few of those over the past couple of days, the kind that go on too long so that rather than purge the toxic emotion, the cry just exacerbates it and gives one a splitting headache and a swollen face. Whichever kind of cry it was, it stopped when I saw something move in the brush a short distance away from me. The something was gray and about the size of a large rabbit or a fox. My attention was immediately refocused on that spot, on the fact that there was another living being near me, a mammal, with red blood coursing through its veins just like mine, a being I had never met and would probably never encounter again. Then I began to look at what was around me. Snow had fallen during the night, coating all of the branches of the trees, the skinny and spindly and the thick and sturdy, with white dust, and some of it was sparkling in the bits of sun that were peaking through the clouds. This is amazing. Its absolutely beautiful and alive and every bit of it is conscious.

I felt pulled to the spot where I’d seen the animal, although I was sure it was gone by now. I stood, kneeled and crouched in that area that was an open circle and felt like sacred ground. Something about that moment was different than any other moment since we‘d arrived. After days feeling foggy minded, frustrated and lethargic, I was suddenly pulsating with energy. The woods had breathed life into me and I was delighted by all there was to see and feel there. I felt soothed by this circle of wood, earth and snow around and beneath me, and by the soft, muted sun above me.

My focus shifted from my own misery and was redirected out to the living, breathing woods and what it was telling me. Stories I knew I’d never be able to relay, wisdom I couldn’t translate into words. It showed me the folly of being caught up in misery by revealing itself to me and making me feel how connected to it, all of it, the land, the snow, the air, the trees, I really am.

I noticed two tall pine trees a short distance away. They were standing very close together, almost touching at the bottom and spaced further apart at the top so that they formed a “V.” I felt my body moving towards them.

As I approached them, they told me, in the space of one breath, their story. The pine trees were like Ryo and I, so close to one another yet unable to touch, never fully merging into one tree but growing strong and tall, side by side. Even though they seemed to move away from one another as they grew taller, there really was nothing either one of them was closer too, other than the dirt that gave birth to their roots. And they complemented each other. The tree to the left was wider and slightly taller and appeared to be stronger while the tree to the right seemed more intricate and delicate, gentler, more feminine. I stood between the two trees, my back against the stronger one and my gaze fixed on the softer one. I got lost in her patterns and the layering of her bark, at least as intricate as my own mind, and I was comforted by the sturdiness of the one I was leaning on. I gave these two together-trees my loneliness, my gaping, bleeding sense of separate-ness, and they took it, breathed it in as I breathed it out, and I felt the serenity this valley is named for. As a child, I’d befriended the trees on the playground when I felt like I didn’t fit in with the other kids. I’d created in them entities who mirrored my struggles and gave me what I needed. As a child, I’d imagined, or created, or perhaps received, solace. Where does projecting end and receiving begin? Are they really two separate poles or is give interspersed with take, create interwoven with consume?

I looked back from the direction I’d come from and my eyes saw the brown siding of the hut peeking between the trees. Another constellation of trees drew me further in, or maybe it was one tree that caught my eye, or perhaps just a single branch, bent like a wise old woman’s finger, beckoning me nearer. I moved away from the together-trees and did some more exploring, some more imagining, some more listening. The next time I looked back towards where I’d come from, I couldn’t see Ryo’s cabin anymore, nor could I pick out the two together-trees or the brush where I’d seen the gray or white rabbit.

I knew, generally, which direction I’d come from, or at least I thought I did. There were trees and branches and clusters of dead bushes and snow all around me and none of it looked familiar or at all distinguishable from the rest. I had lost my way and that I wasn’t sure how to get back.

I set off in the direction I thought the hut was hiding and tried to find my footprints in the snow. That should be easy, just follow my footprints back the way I had come. When I tried to do this, the prints just led me back in a circle to the spot where I discovered I was lost. I don’t know how to account for this.

For a moment I thought I spotted the hut again, but I quickly saw that it was dead leaves peeking through trees. I realized what I had thought was the hut the last time I’d looked probably was not, and I was further away than I initially thought. I felt the panic that had been gathering around my edges all of a sudden go deep into my center. I’m lost!

I had heard more times than I could recall that the best thing to do when you’re lost is to stay put, avoid getting more lost, and wait for someone to find you. The woods are very extensive, they go on for miles, it would not be hard to get very far away from Ryo’s property without realizing it. I knew I’d gotten myself into a pickle, a potentially very dangerous pickle, and I also knew that I couldn’t stay still for too long in the cold. I decided to head back in the direction I thought I had come from, even though I couldn‘t find my footprints. I had lost all sense of direction and I could not figure out which way I had actually come from.

I was not equipped to be out there. Running into the woods in a moment of blind and overwhelming frustration might very well be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I was so angry at myself. I had been safe. Nothing had actually been wrong that couldn’t have been fixed right there in that hut. In a matter of moments I mindlessly forfeited my security and my power and put myself, and by extension Ryo, into a state of extreme vulnerability. He prides himself on being self sufficient, on doing what he’s doing without needing any help, certainly without needing anyone to come in and rescue him, or his emotionally unbalanced girlfriend. What would it mean for him, and for our relationship, if he had to call for help to find me? So bitter was the remorse I felt for the situation I’d created, and biting like the cold that began to cut into my skin if I stayed still too long. This desperate, pathetic longing to be able to just undo it all hampered my sensibilities. It had been over an hour since I’d run into the woods and I was wandering aimlessly, getting myself more lost, maybe, I couldn’t even tell anymore.

It was as though the woods had swallowed me. I’d come up against the edge of my self and fallen over and no trace of me was left. I walked and I walked and I walked. Before long I found myself in very unfamiliar terrain. I found a stump to sit down and as I did the desire to just give up overtook me. I’d gone past the flesh and bone of hopelessness and I was into the marrow now. I don’t know where I am. Who is going to help me? How will I ever get out?

In the midst of the hysterical chatter of my mind, a voice came into my head that distinctly different than my own. It was the voice of a wise yogi who left this Earth years ago after bringing hope and healing to many. I’d never felt much of a personal connection to this particular guru although I’d trained with yogis who very nearly worshipped him. There’s a lot of controversy around this man, some say he’s a saint, some say he’s a criminal. I don’t claim to know the truth about him but I know what he meant to me in that moment. My brain chose him to offer guidance because he is known for not putting up with anybody’s crap and not sugar coating anything or coddling anyone, and I knew that self pity would get me absolutely nowhere in my current situation. So, from somewhere deep within my mind, or maybe even slightly beyond it, I heard Yogi Bhajan’s voice.

You create your own hell. Now walk in it.

The first line was not new information. I’ve long understood there to be no separate hell below or heaven above, it’s all here on earth, its all our individual and collective creation. I knew, during the months before this trip to the mountains, that I was making myself miserable by not doing my practice, by reaching for sweets to alleviate anxiety and coffee to give me the energy I was wasting by swallowing down the things I needed to say. I was allowing my emotions to control me rather than just give them a little attention and love and move past them. Ending up exactly where I was in that moment was the natural manifestation of everything I’d been creating in my head. My tangible, physical situation had become an extension of my mind. I’ve felt lost for awhile now and I’d been avoiding dealing with it. I was doing everything in my power not to confront the massive uncertainty surrounding where my life is going, how I’ll get there, if I’ll be all right. Before I knew it I’d forgotten my power to choose a path that will lead me where I want to go. This mental action needed to find a much larger form or else I’d keep running around in the same small circles, getting smaller and smaller, decaying, rotting, forgetting. Losing my way forced me to look at how I had abandoned the way I know to keep myself healthy and strong.

Things were going unsaid between Ryo and I. I’d been secretly wanting him to be exactly who I needed him to be so that I could feel safe being myself. My uncertainty and insecurity about who I am in his eyes, in his mind and in his heart had led me to build walls of silence and avoidance between us. I’d been feeling powerless in my life and this contributed to the persistent, irrational desire to have him take care of things for me. To take care of me. I felt like I needed him to make me to speak when I couldn‘t (which, of course, he never would), to teach me everything I don’t know (which, of course, he never could) and, when its too hard for me to learn things, to do them for me. What this desire says about me as an individual, as a woman, was too much to confront and so I ran from it. I ran right into woods where I couldn‘t run from it anymore. It was all here now, bigger than me, bigger than us, as big as the woods and I had no idea how big they really were.

Now walk in it.

I have experienced the concept of karma, and I know, logically and intuitively, that we have to deal with the messes we make. Either we clean them up or we drown in them. I know that no one is going to do any of this for me. But for awhile now, I’ve been wanting someone to. This fantasy of the knight-in- shining-armor or the prince on the white horse with the castle in the clouds takes on many forms. Ryo can do a lot of things that I can’t, at a very crucial level, he knows how to survive out here and I don’t. I’m able to have experiences with him that I can’t have on my own and I think that this activated the damsel-in-distress/helpless maiden stereotype that I was fed as a child watching Disney movies and listening to fairy tales. If he is strong, that must mean I’m weak. If I can’t do something and he can then he is more diligent, more creative, smarter, better than me and I’d better do anything I can to keep him. I’d better hide how deficient I am and not tell him when I feel weak or else he will find out he’s too good for me and leave.

But maybe one tree isn’t stronger than the other. Perhaps the tree I’d been leaning against was actually no stronger than the one I was facing. If I had stopped looking at what I thought was me and leaned against my own image for a moment, what might I have seen in the tree I’d had my back to? That he is vulnerable too, that he makes mistakes too, that he has doubts and insecurities too? If I had simply turned around and allowed that which was holding my gaze to hold my body, would I have felt my own strength supporting me? Would I have found my way back to the hut then?

You created your own hell. Now walk in it.

Hell. My hell, was entirely psychological. Nothing was happening to my body. I got a fabulous workout and a couple blisters on my toes. I knew enough to keep moving so that my fingers and toes didn’t get cold and to eat just enough snow to stay hydrated but not take in too many potential pollutants. My hell was in my mind. Everything I hate about myself, everything I hide from myself and from others was there to meet me in the woods, it was all out in the open and couldn’t possibly be hidden anymore. I fucked up so bad this time. There is no good way out of this. The best case scenario is that Ryo will be able to find me, and then he’ll certainly break up with me. This time I went too far. He couldn’t possibly be with me after having to clean up a mess this big.

Walk

I called out for Ryo. I yelled his name into the trees and they swallowed my voice, the same way they’d swallowed me.

I walked and I walked and I walked. After about an hour and a half of wandering through the woods, I found a dirt road, covered in snow, not driven on in at least several days, and certainly not the one we had driven in on. I followed it down a steep incline and then stopped because it seemed, from the view of the mountains in the distance, that I was getting further away from where I knew the hut was. I turned around and went up the road instead and when I got to the road there was a fence and beyond the fence were railroad tracks. Technically, I was out of the woods, but I still had no idea where I was.

I remembered that Ryo had mentioned walking all the way down to the fence and the railroad tracks on occasion so I knew I couldn’t be that far from his cabin. I decided to walk along the fence and call out for him, thinking that if he was still near home, and not off someplace else looking for me, then he would be able to hear me and come find me. I would periodically walk a short distance into the woods, keeping the fence in sight, to call out. I climbed a tree, trying to spot the hut from way up high but it was all branches, snow and dead leaves. I’d debated climbing trees at intervals but decided against it since my boots were in bad condition and I knew it was unwise to risk falling and injuring myself.

I walked along the fence for awhile and then came to a point where it turned, and then kept going and going and going. I was pretty sure that the side of the fence I’d started out at was due south of the hut but I couldn’t be certain. I walked back to the road again, down a little ways, a little further then before, and then back up again, back to the fence, walking, calling, hoping I’d be found, fearing I would not. In between moments of franticness or determination or hopelessness, I’d crouch down close to the earth, and I’d pray.

Hail Goddess, Full of Grace

Blessed are you and blessed are all the fruits of your womb

For you are the Mother of Us All

Hear Us Now

And In All Our Need

Oh Blessed Be, Oh Blessed Be

Amen

This prayer is a liberated version of the “Hail Mary,” a Catholic prayer I knew as a child. The meter is the same, the words are more inclusive. It was a gateway that led me to speak directly to Her, to say how scared I was and to ask for the strength and wisdom that had one missing inside of me.

No Divine Force From Beyond, no God, or Goddess, was going to intervene. It was the act of calling out to Her that saved me. Since childhood, whenever I’ve needed help or been really scared I’ve always asked God to save me, even after I stopped believing in him. This time, it was not the Father Above, but the Mother Within, whose presence I invoked. Even though I felt like I was entreating a loving, compassionate mothergoddess far beyond me, what I actually did was call upon the my own power, the power of the creative feminine, She Who Knows the Way.

But I wavered a lot too, I tried to invoke her, invoke my own power, but my mind kept telling me it was hopeless to try to find my way out on my own, that I was lost and would always be lost out there. In addition to squatting near the earth and calling on the Goddess, I prayed to Ryo as well. Crouching in the snow I spoke to him, as though he were right in front of me, and told him I needed his help.

Come to the fence. You have to come to the fence, this is the only way because I cannot get home on my own. Ryo, come to the fence, come to the fence by the railroad tracks.

I affirmed again and again, that I needed him to save me, that I couldn’t do it on my own. And I kept going back and forth between the fence and the road, between Hail Goddess and Ryo Please Find Me. My experience walking the fence went in waves. I’d get a burst of confidence, of trust in my self, or trust in the Self-from-which-All-Selves-Spring. I’d decide to head one way and keep going, as far as I could, see what was there. But I’d get only so far and then turn around and head back in the direction I’d come from. I was stuck.

Hear us now and in all our need…

My voice started to loosen in the woods near that fence. Praying and yelling out to Ryo again and again began to open me up, to bring me so fully into my experience of needing him and everything that means. Thinking he can do it better than me (drive the car, cut the onions, start the fire, build our home), or knowing that, in many cases, he actually can do something better than I can, somehow morphed into my needing him to do it all for me. This need is the gaping wound of self mistrust. The only way to begin to heal such a wound is to be thrown into a situation where you have to trust yourself in order to survive.

At one point, after calling for Ryo, I just had to scream. I screamed loud, not to be found or even to be heard, but to let loose the anger, the childish frustration and remorse, the deep, dark fear about my own survival. So much raw emotion came out in that scream, emotion that has no label or category or flavor, that was neither anger nor joy, grief nor bliss, simply the intense experience of being human. It was human emotion unfiltered by mind, uncluttered by chemical modifiers and not held down by reason or fear. Such pure emotion has enormous transformative power. When it was kept inside it stayed stuck in the form of fear and shame but the moment it found voice it became my power again. Life let loose when I screamed and in that moment I was free.

I remembered Ryo talking about a road leading to the neighbor’s property, and now and again, during my fence walking, I had thought I recalled him saying that dirt road started at the fence. But I quickly wrote off this memory as fantasy, as something I was making up because I wanted to believe I could get home. Suddenly, it seemed ridiculous not to at least try it, to take that road down as far as it would go and if it led me nowhere, I could always come back to the fence. Ryo had showed me his neighbor’s property the other day and I had wondered, at the time, why he had done this. The neighbors weren’t there and I thought there were probably more interesting spots in the woods to visit that a chunk of land with some trailers, a guardian angel statue and a bright orange fireplace.

I began walking back down that snow covered road, seeing all the familiar landmarks; the overturned tree stump that looked like a piece of machinery from the distance, the point where the road bent to give a better view of the mountains in the north. This time I went past the point I’d gone before and started to see different trees, different piles of snow and sticks, a different angle of the sky above. I kept walking and I started feeling a cheerful. The little voice inside me warned not to get my hopes up, to brace myself for disappointment and a long, steep climb back up to the fence. The big voice inside me said, Screw the little voice, we’re going the right way, you‘re going to get home.

After a bit, I came upon an enormous water tank, far bigger than the 305 gallon one we’d strapped to the roof of the car and drove from Redding to the hut a few days before. Near the water tank were posted private property signs. I knew I was on somebody’s land now, but I didn’t know whose.

I kept walking and soon I saw some trailers. Are these the ones I saw yesterday? Probably not, but could they be? I couldn’t be sure. I kept walking. Then a beam of light hit my eye, blinding me for a fraction of a moment as a streak of sun emerged from behind a thick wall of clouds and landed right on that bright orange fireplace. That was when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wasn’t lost anymore.

From there I took off towards the dirt road that leads up to Ryo’s land. I flew so fast that I missed the guardian angel figurine but I don’t think she missed me. She was there as I turned onto that familiar red dirt road and saw the tracks of the car and the chain and lock I’d unfastened to let us onto the land a few days ago. Then I saw our footprints in the snow. Shivers scurried up my spine and my chest began to feel warm and wide. Seeing our footprints was almost like seeing Ryo himself, it was a physical sign that we were both alive and had been walking together, and would be soon again. I started running and calling out for Ryo, unaware that he had just been calling out to me, I guess we were still too far apart to hear one another. He was about to set out a second time to look for me as I dragged myself up the final stretch of hill and we saw one another at last. I ran towards the biggest smile I’ve ever seen and the warmest arms I’ve ever known. I’d made my way back, back to Ryo, but not rescued by him. I had brought me home.

Through this experience, I was able to put a chink in Prince Charming’s armor. The learned helplessness and lack of self trust that many women learn at an early age has not been entirely vanquished. The helpless maiden is still a part of me and maybe she lives in all of us for a reason. She is often who we believe we have to be in order to be loved, cared for and protected by our fathers, and later on our lovers. She is part of our heritage, she is who our grandmothers had to be to survive patriarchal oppression and she is still the only acceptable female form for millions of women around the world. We are them and they are us and until we are all free, that image of the feminine will remain within us. But there are other archetypes that live in all of us too. During my three and a half hours wandering in the woods I struggled to find my own strength. And through the action of walking through my creation, my hell, as it were, and through the act of deciding to find my own way back I embodied Diana, the fierce warrior princess, confident, capable, self-sufficient and strong, goddess of the trees, huntress of the elusive love within.

I learned that self reliance is a state of mind before it becomes an action. Running into the woods was a reckless and dangerous thing to do and if I had known how to compute my direction from the angle of the sun, if I’d been able to find my footprints, if I’d brought a GPS or a whistle or a map of the area then I would have found my way back sooner. If I’d continued to wander aimlessly I might have gone much further away from the area and not found my way out (or have been found) before night fell, and then my chances for survival would have been slim. In this particular situation, I had all of the information I needed to get back home stored in my memory and I was never that far away. I remained lost because I believed I was lost and that my mistakes doomed me to suffer. As soon as I decided to use what I information I had, and to risk being wrong, and to forget about feeling helpless for a minute, I found my own way out of those woods.

I was fortunate. The risks out there are very real. But so are the risks in here. Every self defeating thought we give our attention to paves the way for disaster. Its only a matter of time before we create the negativity we perpetuate in our minds. This experience was a wake up call. I was reminded how lucky I am to be alive, and that I have a responsibility to walk my path and not let fear keep me stuck in one place for too long.

The morning after I found my way out of the woods, back at home in San Francisco in the warmth and safety of my own bed, I awoke with the words of mystic poet Rumi running through my head. “People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”