Thrown Out Of, And Into, The Nest
Field notes from a premature spring and emergence from a personal winter
02.20.23-02.24.23
Greetings from the rolling hills of West Virginia alive with song: the chittering starlings crowding our barn roof; the hiccuping wood frogs’ thunderous orgy-chorus bouncing off steep holler walls; the raspy, high-pitched shriek of our resident red-tailed hawk keenly eyeing said frogs; and the fluted chirps of the song sparrow in an adjacent field.
Winter continues to yield mildly into a tentative spring, and the creature-neighbors are responding accordingly. I’m doing my best to greet them, learn their names, and pay attention for their fleeting appearances. When I walk the 2.5 mile gravel loop near our home, my ears and eyes are pricked for discovery. Just yesterday, a finely woven nest the size of my palm was perched perfectly on the ground—someone’s intricately crafted home. That nest rests now on our kitchen table, as a testament and reminder of what lives just outside our front door.
I find myself nesting inside, too. As I write this now I am folded into a corner of the couch, swaddled in a fleece-y WVU blanket with a mug of mint tea steaming beside me. It's beginning to rain, as if divinely timed to emphasize this epitome of cozy moments. A chorus of raindrops ricochet off the tin roof—not entirely unlike the chorus of frogs—soft at first and then steadily building into a whispering wall of white noise. I am subdued by this deafening cacophony, millions of liquid finger tips drumming in an erratic but somehow coordinated percussion. All the way down to my very bones, I am grounded by the sound.
I can barely say how much I needed this soothing, tangible respite. My life has swung wildly in a direction I’d been longing for, for months. I experience vertiginous moments of startling clarity periodically: I live in West Virginia now. Everyday, I get to wake up cuddling Mike in our warm den of a bed, whereas before we were alone and hours apart. These days I come home from my new barista gig with my hands smelling like espresso instead of covered with flour, and my spirit infinitely lighter. We have time for friends, for family, for garden plans and—dare I say it?—wedding plans. The fact that I have time, energy, and the wherewithal to comment extensively on the qualities of raindrops alone speaks volumes.
For the last part of 2022, and the beginning of 2023, I was running on high octane. Between a stressful job, The Holidays and a move, I simply couldn’t slow down. My mind was a live wire all the time, no matter how much I meditated or yoga-ed or nature-walked. Life was just nuts, and I was so scattered and stressed by it I could barely feel myself, let alone process the massive change that was occurring. I’m still feeling the trickling after-effects of uprooting my life and following love west, and I’m sure I will be for some time. This is natural, good, and right, even as it’s disorienting. I’ve shared this quote here before, I’m almost certain, but fuck if it isn’t continually relevant…
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
To be fair, I’ve felt uprooted and distinctly alive since leaving for the Appalachian Trail almost two years ago (!) Or possibly even before, when the pandemic hit and I chose to stop teaching yoga, a path I had pursued and identified with for almost a decade, and picked up a job waiting tables instead (the fact that Magpie Diner opened and thrived at the beginning of a pandemic will always blow my mind.) Or maybe it was even before that, when I had a “come to God” moment, i.e. a full blown panic attack, and realized I needed to drop out of my counseling graduate program.
When I look at it like this, I’ve been molting and shape-shifting for awhile now, throwing myself—or being thrown—out of the nest for some time. With that broader perspective in mind, this moment of grounding and rest registers as a long time coming. It strikes me in these quietest of moments—rain on the roof moments—where I feel a quality of peace unlike few I’ve felt before. Every steady drop affirms, this is right in my soul.
Lately I’ve been in the business of really letting things touch me, deeply. It speaks to the chaotic tone of the past several years, that I had created a protective emotional wall thick enough to not let anything by. Numbing out in the face of so much change was subconsciously easier; dissociation and distance became a subtle means of creating safety. I’m not judging or blaming myself—or anyone else, for that matter—for it. Sometimes we need to retreat under an emotional blanket and become very still, the human equivalent of a wood frog overwintering underground when conditions are unbearably frigid.
But the real work has been in emerging from said blanket and allowing spring sunshine to illuminate my deepest desires and values. At first glance, this sounds like a grandiose and overwhelming task, but is actually quite simple in practice when you get down to it. There wasn’t any “aha” moment or anything, when it came to revealing my values. Instead it was a slow discovery, the emotional equivalent of a patient forest stroll. It took time to cajole my joy from a corner, and ask it what it most dearly desired. It took yet more time to convince myself that I could honor that joy, hold it and care for it. And it took a lot of inward focus—not the narcissistic kind but the courageous, bluntly honest kind—to stay tuned to that joy.
As a result, I’ve stumbled across a version of my life that feels so deeply good and right—though perhaps the word “stumble” is not doing nearly enough credit to the extensive trial and error, self-awareness, and humbling growth it took to get here—that, again, I’m amazed at how simple it is.
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
-Abraham Joshua Heschel (via Jillian Lukiwski)
Looking around me now, I am truly, radically amazed at all the ways that interior work has reverberated outward. Firstly and most obviously, there is Mike. I sought out uncompromisingly one year ago, affirming the insecure parts of myself that wondered if I was worthy, or even allowed, to experience the kind of love for which I secretly yearned. I halfway wondered if it even existed. To then find this utter gem of a person, with whom I am astoundingly compatible, was like striking gold. For the first several months of our courtship we often asked one another questions like, “are you real?” and, “is it just going to keep getting better?”
The answers to both being, yes.
Part of what makes our relationship so remarkable to me is our mutual prioritization to create everyday joy. We are tuned in to the same frequency, curating inner and outer spaces that support magic, love, and amazement. Last night, for example, we were both on the cusp of skipping a run. It was dark out, the slivered moon long faded into indigo gloaming tinged with green. We were tired from our respective days on the job and the siren song of Netflix was beginning to call. You know the sound.
But we looked at one another and I saw what it would mean to Mike, to go out for a run after a full week of illness. And while my own lethargy might prevent me, I couldn’t let it stand in the way of his joy. I told him as much—something to the effect of, “I wouldn’t run for me right now but I will for you, and I know it will be good,”—and we stepped out into the crisply delicious air under an inky sky scattered with stars. It was so dark we couldn’t see our own feet, creating the effect of floating all the way out on the crunchy gravel road to a nearby open field (the same one where I hope to say my vows to Mike come September, should our currently loose plans allow.) When we came back, exhilarated and refreshed, we stretched our warm muscles on the kitchen floor, then fried potato cakes in a life-giving amount of brown butter alongside sauteed mushrooms and spinach. And when we cheers-ed, as we always do, clinking our ceramic mugs, I felt a resonant ping of happiness. Cheers to the simple, reciprocal act of loving.
This is not suggest that it is always easy, or without intent and effort. Sometimes I fear that in my airy-fairy, awe-focused approach to most things, I’ll be perceived as fluffy or not grounded in reality. Ultimately it’s not my business how I’m being perceived, but you know, I’d like to be as clear as possible: shit can be really hard. By “shit” I mean, adjusting a relationship dynamic from long-distance to co-habitating, after the stress of a drawn out move, a week of travel and a subsequent week of significant illness. That’s just the broad strokes, but you can imagine how those events alone would impact two sensitive, emotional, detail-oriented folks like Mike and I. And we just got engaged for goodness sake, shouldn’t we just be absolutely enamored and awash in bliss?! Well, of course not—life is still life, riddled with roadblocks and speed bumps, even when you’re head over heels in love.
I don’t really know how to wrap all this up in a cute little package, so I’ll leave my long-winded musings with a final image that encapsulates the recent joys of finally, finally being here. Mike and I recently went for a hike with one of his good friends, on a forgiving section of trail through Blackwater Falls State Park. The five-ish miles passed through rhododendron tunnels skirting canyon walls, mossy spruce thickets, and open meadows. Halfway in, we arrived at Douglas Falls, a thunderous, iridescent cascade. Entranced by the swiftly tumbling water, I thought again of what it means to be in free fall, thrown out of the nest. What must the singular water molecule experience, flowing in wild motion and rippling gleefully, terrifyingly, over the edge?
