When friends ask me how my summer in Maine was, I reply, “It was the best summer in my life.”
The next question is usually, “What made it so pleasurable?”
“Sleeping in my L.L. Bean pop-up tent during July, August, and September,” I reply honestly. “The best way I can summarize my outdoor adventure is that I no longer belong to myself or the universe in the same way as I used to.”
Before anyone asks another question, I explain that I have a long history of avoiding sleeping outdoors. In fact, I have only camped out three times — always at the insistence of friends — never alone. I have tented out twice in Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico, because there were no motels, and once in Scotland, because it was easier to acquiesce than to argue with my partner. I felt safe knowing other campers were close by. Memories of snores and stars intermingled in my memory as well as the aroma of campfire bacon.
Seldom did any of my friends ask to join me. June Bro, my 93-year-old soul friend, was the exception. When I returned to my beach house in Virginia Beach, she grabbed my hand and said, “If I lived in Maine, I would join you, Dear.”
Then she told me about her one-month camping adventure in Canada when her four children were young.
Many friends warned me of the ever-present dangers of bears, moose, coyotes and someone even added the possibility of a rabid mountain lion to the list of nocturnal predators. I comforted myself by remembering that I had befriended bears during my vision quest in Taos, New Mexico, and deer are my totem as well as my middle name. That left the band of yowling coyotes and they, too, were my familiars since I co-existed with them for seven years when I lived in Arroyo Seco and San Cristobal, New Mexico.
Who knows if the soul call had its own timing or was destiny’s response to the questions that I had written earlier in May in my teal blue journal:
- Is it possible for me to substitute clock time for Nature’s time and live the way my ancestors lived?
- Is it possible for me to slow down and count clouds and stars as my familiars?
- Is it possible for me to co-exist with Nature so I feel Mother Earth as my second skin?
I recognized the familiar beckoning of a soul call and eventually surrendered to my next jumping place. I knew from experience that words often diminish heart-centered, numinous encounters. I yearned to experience — not understand. Therefore, I declared my tent off-limits for writing or reading. Then I replaced my usual delights with a vow to surrender to the vastness and beauty of the nocturnal mystery.
Camping out felt like a lazy woman’s vision quest — minus the prayers, the warrior sweat lodges, the fasting, and the night vigils. The first week I was sleep-deprived. I shifted between being scared and awed, and being mesmerized by shooting stars and listening to the eerie sounds of a hoot owl and reminding myself that I needed sleep.
For weeks, I was fascinated by the liminal transitions from dusk to dark and dawn to day. The border times between day ending and night beginning and night turning to dawn felt sacred to me. I was filled with adoration, humility, and silence.
For months, hours slipped by. I had nothing to note and nothing to prove. I was content sitting on the ground, surrounded by massive granite rocks, towering pine trees, admiring the uninterrupted starry sky, with the fireflies as my only company. I even let go of wondering if I was emptying or filling up — or both.
Many times I wondered if the zillions of stars think that the fireflies are their relatives, and then I remembered that Native Americans related to stars as the campfires of their ancestors. Then I marveled that fireflies know how to be fully lit and I am only learning the art of high beam living and loving. Somehow my body remembered that we are all made of the dust and light of far off stars and I now include “stars” when I end my prayers with thanksgiving to all my relations.
My basketful of reflections include:
- The night sky is lighter than my bedroom at night.
- The earth smells different at different times during the night.
- Just before 3 AM, an audible “hush” happens as though the earth herself has neglected to exhale.
- Thousands of fireflies that frolicked for many hours surrender their light two hours before dawn. By August, the airborne fireflies are no more and I notice their lights decorate the ground-not the air.
Twenty-seven nights have passed since I felt at home in the earth and awed by the night sky. The feeling of remembered radiance accompanies me. Nature offered me another dimension of befriending my soul. I am adjusting to sleeping inside again and the sound of ocean waves has replaced the sound of the pine branch that patted my tent every night. I believe that camping out was another way to expand my practice of taking my silence and gratitude into the night. Deep bows to the earth.
