Trees and skunk cabbage before the trail
The wooden trail out through the muskeg which leads to wooden steps and up, up, up over the mountain
Skunk cabbage leaf mirrored in clear pool
Yesterday was a day out of the blue. The sky was brilliant - only a few wisps of cloud to be seen - and I decided to spend the day walking around taking photographs. I walked up to the Gavin Trailhead and crossed into the muskeg. Muskeg is a marshy, boggy area with pools of water, growths of skunk cabbage, long reedy grass and stands of small, shrubby pine that grow taller as the pines near the places where the Sitka spruce and hemlock grow in abundance.
It was a time so sweet with remembrance and longing - there I was with the distant, spruce-covered majestic mountains in the bright sky, the stands of pine, the sweetness in the air, and a bright blue companion - a beautiful, shining dragonfly, his length nearly equal to the length of my outstretched hand. The time was blessed with wing over water and the power of place in my heart.
As I walked home yesterday I suddenly realized that I do not want to live in Sitka. And it was a great realization. I had made the choice to leave (in '06) by default, simply returning home after the end of my job stint. I was terribly depressed upon leaving Sitka. I felt heartbreak at leaving this place, and I often thought of it with yearning and longing; however, it was here that I had experienced a long, dark winter depression complicated by the stress of a difficult job; then after I returned home I dealt with the death of two friends. It was not an easy time. It was so difficult to let go of Sitka, and I was kind of concerned about returning to Sitka on this visit. Sometimes you can't go home again. Would I feel a big sense of disappointment? Or, conversely, would I still love it and thus feel the heartbreak of another separation when it was time to leave?
A new chapter in my life began when I originally came to Sitka to take the library job in 2004. A cycle of healing began here and continued upon my return home to Illinois, and it has continued during this visit. As I've been reporting, I experienced an immensely deep and healing time here. It feels as if during this visit that I have experienced a completion. Perhaps it is a completion of the cycle which began when I first arrived. SOMETHING has been completed, although it may take me some time to realize just what it is (if it is ever to be fully revealed). Perhaps the longing I have felt for Sitka was a signal that I needed to return in order to complete my spiritual "work" here and to experience the sense of completion that I now know.
A place has been held for me in this place of deep remembering. From the very start in Sitka something was born in me, came alive in me that, perhaps, could only have come alive here. And during this visit I have experienced wise counsel, healing prayers, massage and body work, being in the beauty and bounty of nature, seeing friends, being remembered by the people and the place, and all of this has contributed to a very powerful experience which has been a part of the completion that I sense. "Sitka, the Inside Passage" is written on many postcards. It has certainly provided an inside passage for me into a deep and powerful part of my spiritual journey.
As I rested on my bed last night, doing Sudoku, I realized that I am at peace with leaving Sitka. I am not torn by doubt and grief at leaving this blessed place as I was previously. So this trip has been a great blessing in that I fell in love with Sitka all over again, and yet I am not heart-broken to leave her. I am ready to say goodbye to Sitka and to say "yes" to the new adventure that is to be made manifest. In fact, I am even eager to return home. I do not know if I will ever see Sitka again in this lifetime; but know this, dear Sitka, if you call me, I will come.
