Hot spring mineral curly hair.
I'm home and feel like I just came in from the wild for days and days. Although it wasn't quite like that. My authentic self, I can feel her.
My bones ache to tell a story.
Maybe it was the days of beautiful air beating against my face, outside, on the snow, coming alive. Maybe it was riding up up up in the chairlift with my husband when I inhaled deeply and told him how I smelled brine. I smelled the sea so far away from the sea. Maybe it was the charge of watching my almost seven year old continually choose a steep and narrow run that not even I could manage to maneuver my snowboard down, his non-fear of fear spraying me in the face with tiny particles of ice until my mouth froze in smile, little corner slips, upward. Maybe it was feeling my muscles again, even if mostly aching by day's end. Maybe it was Sully's honey-sweet smile when I walked up to the ski school fence and we saw each other after a day of sunshine and sparkling mountain peaks and gondola rides. With each other but not with each other. Maybe it was slipping into water speckled with little flakes of black, of earth, rich, steaming up my mind until I saw swirls of beautiful memory. Of my life. The hot waters of Washington, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon. And now Colorado. Waters I have walked to sometimes with my back full and sometimes empty. Waters I have soaked in very alone, treading back to my old red Subaru wagon at night and going to sleep in the bed I made for myself, tucked on the side of a dirt road in the middle of national forest. Alone. In Pray, Montana. And sometimes with the best people ever. All these places I have lived.
It felt wonderful to be back outside, snowboarding. To move my body again. To have my strength come back to me along with the stark, glorious reminder of my current age. But it was the hot spring that did it to me. That put me right back in my truth. It is was the water mingling with the earth. It was how alive I become in minerals and salt. I came home this week and I waited to shower. I wanted to smell hot spring water in my hair and fresh air and in my hair for as long as I could. I held the soft flesh of my hand to my nose and inhaled my past and future. I saw.
Hot spring mineral curly hair.
I'm home and feel like I just came in from the wild for days and days. Although it wasn't quite like that. (But it was.) My authentic self, I can feel her.
My bones ache to tell a story.
