Upon my return to the big city, as I expected and seen happened before, I went into a lethargic state, a TV-show-day-watching, homemade-brunch-in-bed-at-noon-on-a-Tuesday temporary depression. Why? Because I'm in love and left my flame behind. That last afternoon, a few hours before departure, I went out to say goodbye. Ouch. How good does a lover instinctively know how to look her/his best when it's time to separate? Stepping out the door, the light stroke me first. That spring light shinning through the blue sky, softened by some still cottony clouds making everything color-saturated and cinematic. Not the summer eye-squinting crushing light which painfully overexposed and burns every details. No. A perfect temperature, a new life spring glow enhancing Nature's wardrobe. In awe with the heavy grapes of new born pink and white flowers weighing the neighbors front yards' fruit trees, I walked down the dead end road to a lush, young green, oceanic and mossy scented rain forest. For the past two weeks, I had had a hard time believing that trees and ocean could be so closely related. I guess, I had seen Big Sur's red trees slopes flirting with its local sand beaches, but the North West Pacific forest is a entirely new level. The plethora of ancient trees, redwood, pine, maple, and the plants at their feet create a magical density, a protective cocoon, which one can only move through by falling in the altered state of day dreaming. One cushiony step after another, after another, after another... Progressing on the sinuous narrow trail, I have no sense of direction or control. It seems dark but it is just very green. My senses are heightened, aroused, as the back of my hand is caressed by baby ferns, those little question marks erupting out of the wet black hole of a dead tree trunk.
I'm sent to fairies' land. Back to the back of my childhood memories, when Nature was invincible, when I let slugs crawled up my arms, when grass was sweeter than sugar and I sung louder than the louder birds. I'm in the dream where things are ecstatically alive. I walk and breathe, the chlorophyll rush carrying my pace. Mama red tree appears on my left, the mother of all, exhibiting her giant wood lips to the trail. I have to stop. I need to pay my respect to the matriarch and kneel to her open trunk to hug the antediluvian bole. "Mama, thank you" I said. Please give me your strength". I look down to discover a gem, a honey colored perfect little drop of sap in the middle of her long needles. Ha. "Thank you for the gift, big mama". Before I go, I firmly grab the gnarl nestled in the middle of her lips, to get a final taste of her treasure. Hamadryad is watching me and winks. I leave knowing that this mama has seen it all. The ridges of her bark showed more lives and lovers's touch than the ancient Inanna, Summerian queen of heaven, Goddess of love, sex and fertility. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and I'm falling hard for it.
A magnetic blue hole opens at the end of the green tunnel. A few more steps and there it is. At the edge of dangerously deep cliff, I discover the immense beauty of the Bay under that strange spring light. It's beyond magnificent. An infinity of flat blue water, surrounded by majestic trees and far away, crowned by a snow covered Mount Baker. I can't go now. Not yet. I have to sit for a minute or twenty, please. Right at the edge, challenging my vertigo, my hills locked on a tree root so I don't fall, my heart starts sinking. It's tempting to fall. But a warm human palm on my back reminds me why I came, why I'm here. I'm not alone with my lover any longer. I didn't come just to breathe and bath in Nature, I came here to meet a man. He showed me this paradise. He opened his door generously and took me in. I got in. I tried. But all I really wanted was to be out in the open field, licking the salt of the waves, flying with the bald eagles and devouring both meadow and sea grasses. We played, talked, cooked, fought and made love, but back home, I now realized why I came to the bay. At the end, it was for the land and not for the man.
How much I wished both worked equally well, merged together in an happy little ecosystem of love.... If it had, I would have never returned from that land, and had stayed with that man. Unfortunately, I have to say goodbye to both. Him and I sit at the edge of this cliff, contemplating the bay more than we do each other, and his hand on my back feels like a distraction, although it's a gesture of comfort. "Leave me alone with my true love, please!" I'm not going to say that. We have stopped talking words. I'm pulled toward the immensity of the calm ocean rather than his shoulder and have a hard time holding my tears. It's a really deep, unexplainable feeling. Universal somehow. "Waters, you are so beautiful, calm and clear!" I say. Then more break up tears pour.
The day before last, at the very tip of Galiano island, in the most beautiful outdoor bedroom one can imagine, the man and I had made love. Distracted by the open space, he could not fully connect, yet I was very aroused. I thought I wanted him, but in reality, I wanted Her. I had flirted with whimsical Nature for days: whispers and caresses to the fern, the leaves, the trees, now it was time to do it. So I let the man be who he was at this very moment. I stopped expecting his pleasure and I took mine with the smell of the iodic wind, the grass tickles against my thighs and the sun's heat entering my hymen. The man was disappointed, but held the space and enjoyed the view of our my pleasure. At this point, it was between Her and I. Mother Nature had taken me as the object of her desire, and her immensity seemed too big for the man's pleasure. She can be scary, yes. No walls, no curtains, just a large, naked world. Something bigger was in motion: a healing and a birth.
At the very moment Nature and I came together on the mysterious bed of Dionisio point, the wind whispered something in my ear. "You are mine again. You have always been in my heart and my arms, but you had forgotten me. You were seeing me but not living me like you used to when you rolled down the grassy slopes, kissed the slugs, and climbed the tree. This gentle man helped me bring you here to reconnect with me, and to heal you. If we live together, I will always protect you, and you'll always be happy, healthy and loved. Let me love you again."
Back to the my goodbyes to the bay. At the edge of the cliff, with his hand still on my back, I looked down at the ocean water's transparency. I had received her. Her waters were now in me, like every single DNA of Nature is always in us. I would be okay, then. And the man who was part of the land also knew that I was okay, that I was looked after, and that the immense generosity of Nature would always be here for me, in me. He allowed my love for Her to be. He allowed me to be me.
