I moved to the ranch to get away from the people and pollution of the city, and to find the pieces of myself I left in that house with all the trying and achieving. I moved so I could breathe again. My fifty acres sits off the beaten path far enough that you might get stuck here in the winter, but I like that about it. I learned to have enough wood ready. I learned that I don’t need very much to be really, really happy.
“Good morning!” I say, reaching down to scratch the pups behind the ears. We move over to the window seat, snuggle up and look for the horses. I can see them grazing, flicking their tails, peaceful. I feel that way inside too, the lack of agenda giving my heart a little extra space to graze.
The house is small, all wooden and makes me think of the California town I grew up in. Big deck and lots of color sitting in potted bursts around the edges. There is enough room to have company but that mostly happens when I gather my healer friends for my special weekends. I keep the space clean and cozy and simple. It’s filled with things that make me smile and inspire me to write and paint.
Today I have to go fix one of the fence posts about five acres past the tree line. It was damaged by a storm. Sipping the last bit of coffee, I pull on my boots and pull on my over-shirt and smile at the dog, who is looking up at me wagging furiously. She knows we’re about to take a W A L K.
It’s cool today, making the shirt I picked perfect. It’s soft liner feels good against my skin and the cool air feels good on my face. I step out the back door onto the small porch and the smell pulls my breath in deep. I close my eyes against the sun on the exhale and let everything about the moment pummel me with gratitude.
The pooch and I walk a long the fence line for a while. The horses have spied us and are following from a distance. I can see a tiny bit of snow on the mountains on the skyline. When we reach the busted post I survey the situation and see if I managed to bring the right tools with me. Luckily the small shovel is in my box.
Kneeling down near the post I begin to dig a little bit around the edge, hoping to reset the post somehow. The tree that knocked it over has long since been removed, but I procrastinated about the post, thinking I could do it myself. I’ve learned a lot about how to fix things since I moved here.
The “Clink” of metal on glass startles me. I look down at the dirt and begin to spread the loose stuff off of whatever is down there. Maybe an old bottle, I wonder as my fingers feel around the edges and move the dirt a little faster out of curiosity.
I discover a steel canister…not glass, with one of those suction top flip over hinge things that keep it air tight. It’s not a thermos, although I imagine someone could have left their lunch when they were building the fence so long ago. I finally pull the whole thing free and realize it’s about ten inches long and four across. There is something loose inside making noise as I move it. On the bottom there is a label and I can make out a few letters…Targ, and a red bullseye mark.
Plopping my butt into the grass I set my tools aside and pop the lid off the canister which sticks a little from the grit around the edges. The pooch has found me in the grass and comes over to stick her nose at the canister. “Look what I found girl,” I say to her, but she doesn’t seem interested and trots away again.
Inside, perfectly clean and crisp is a piece of paper that looks to be art paper of some kind…like the kind you would do watercolor on. I turn the canister over and out falls a purple stone – amethyst, smooth and flat with the most beautiful hue I’ve ever seen. It feels warm in my hand and I let my fingers rub the edges for a minute before going back to the canister where the paper is still stuck.
I have to reach my thumb and forefinger in carefully to get to the edge of the rolled paper and twist it, coiling it small enough so I can pull the whole thing out. It’s a note, written in really curly, neat cursive. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a real letter in cursive…my son never learned that art. I still can’t believe they stopped teaching it in school.
Here is what the note said:
“Who knows when or if you will find this. I hope you do. Your survival depends on you knowing the truth. It’s 2015 and I’ve taken a hike out into the wilderness to bury this note, to leave you a clue, to somehow feel better about everything that is going wrong in the world. If you find it that means something went right. You figured out how to save yourselves, and your planet. I am smiling thinking about how you will find this and how maybe it will mean that this wilderness still exists around you as you read.
Right now we are killing ourselves and the planet. We are literally smothering the air we breathe, and poisoning the water we drink and the food we eat. There are so many people here now that we are creating fake food that our bodies can’t digest. It’s causing disease and we are creating drugs to fight the disease that cause other diseases. The beautiful creatures are dying off. We are still fighting wars and the hate that pervades is getting harder and harder to heal.
It sounds hopeless, I know…but if you are reading this, something went right. Maybe enough of us mattered. Maybe the world woke up and realized what it was doing. Maybe everyone cried enough tears to heal themselves of the hate and violence and got better at existing along side each other. Maybe love prevailed.
I hope so. I hope that from that love came the solutions to cleaning our environment and making the planet a safe, healthy place. I hope that you are carrying on with the healing, making it a way of life, and creating the heaven on earth that was meant to exist. I hope that the people around you have created a lifestyle that serves themselves and the planet and that peace and love is their mission.
I hope that the vision we held of a new world and the warriors that prayed for awakening and made their lives about teaching it…I hope it mattered. I hope you are living as a result of that vision and that our decades of fight was worth it. I hope that love and happiness is how the world revolves now, that your leaders figured out a way to make this their agenda and create a self-sustaining abundance that serves every human and creature.
It’s a big hope. But somehow I know, if you are reading this, we are closer to it. The secret is to not give up on the dream; to let your indomitable spirit be how you live your days. I wish you every happiness on your journey. Every bit of love. Every bit of magic.
Yours, with love,
Laura
PS. About the purple crystal. This amethyst was given to me by my mom one year. She knew I loved purple and it happens to be my birthstone. It was charged by the full moon and blessed with the spirit of the heavens. It followed me everywhere, til the end. And I now pass it to you to keep. When the full moon comes, put it outside and let it recharge. Feel it’s edges and it’s power. Believe in miracles.”
I sat in the grass and remembered to breathe. I looked around me like maybe someone was watching. I could barely imagine it being 2015. Today is February 10, 2115, my birthday. I stared at the note and read it a dozen more times, imagining the woman who wrote it, a healer, a lightworker, like myself.
I looked up into the sky and said out loud, “We are still fighting the fight Laura,” and a tear dropped out of the corner of my eye and onto the note, making the word spirit blur a little.
