Then It Hit Me

“So you feel disconnected from everything? Like you have no place where you belong? Start with your back yard! Connect with the land. It will teach you what to do.” A frequent response to my lament of losing old support structures and being unsure of new ones. My formal rejection of Christianity made me vulnerable.

That refrain was echoed by many a friend and associate. Each response was tailored according to their world view, of course. So I was advised to find an order, find a coven, join this school, start that correspondence, etc. Because most of my advisers were followers of earth-based religions, when they said “Connect with the land”, they really meant the earth beneath my feet.

Which was part of the problem. I’m a military brat. I moved every three years. Even after leaving high school, I still managed to only remain in one spot for 5 years before my life upended again. I don’t have roots. Y’all have already read of my battles with my bloodkin, cut off from my living lineage, and my immediate ancestral lineage is scattered across three continents. (I think I’m Margaret’s descendant by way of now-awakening BAMF Queen Bitchery. She survived. I will too.)

No matter where I have lived, I am the outsider, the infiltrator, the assailant upon a community that is already ensconced and settled. My place is the path outside the gate. Add to that, most of the places I have lived were physically stolen from the indigenous peoples only a few generations ago.

I should be lucky to only be ignored by the land. There’s some serious resentment in some places I have walked. Where the land itself waged war against those that would build upon it. Let those with eyes to see, see.

So, here I am, in a desert. A land of imported palm trees and water bills higher than electrical bills. Where whole communities are under water rationing, while the golf courses have fountains that evaporate dry in a matter of hours. Where wild fires are a matter of monthly events, and rain is something that happens in more affluent areas that are anywhere but here.

Most of those that tell me to connect with the land, come from areas where actual trees grow without ever being pruned. Where the local wildlife consist of animals larger than cats. Where bolete mushrooms can be found in an afternoon’s walking! Summer for them is full of life, bugs, birds, critters, flowers, creeks, and delightful lazy afternoons enjoying the sounds of the crickets.

My summer is heat, dried creeks, carrion flies, occasional bees, air conditioning running late into the night, and such low humidity levels that your lips will dry and split by the time you’ve walked from the car to the grocery store doors.

This land is hostile to those that don’t know it. It does not take well to interlopers. The attitude is picked up by the city I live in. Everyone has their own fortress, and woe to those that trespass the border.

“Connect to the land.” I’m pagan, I should be able to do this, right? So I try this ritual, and that offering. These crossroads and those ancient rocks. And with each attempt, I can feel the land becoming harder and harder against me. I’m told by those well meaning, but physically distant, advisers to try under this moon, or that dawn. Face this direction and pour water that way. I’ve had better luck speaking to the faux granite in my mother’s kitchen. At least that would speak to me of memories of garlic and onions.

Each time I went out to “embrace the land”, the local winds would pull at me. Over the years of living in this area, I had grown to know the wind’s temperament. When they would blow hot and dry, stoking wildfires into rages of flame. When they would carry the hint of distant thunderstorm, but only teasingly. When they barely moved, bringing refreshment only to those that remained completely still.

In my desire to “do things right”, I followed the majority rule of all my advisers. “Humans are land creatures, we need to connect to the ground under our feet before we can connect to anything else.” So for years and years, I tried to forge, coax, and plead a relationship with the desert dirt my house was built upon.

One evening, I gave up. Another example of why Keri would never fit in, anywhere. The hot wind blew harshly in my face, as I poured out the water at the base of the nearest tree and started my trudge back to the car. I knew this wind, it was an angry one. Like an annoyed employer thrashing all the workers, the wind ripped at my face, throwing sand and dust into my eyes.

I was forced to stand still, while I tried to clear my face, but the more I tried, the more sand and dust scratched at me. I finally turned my back to the furnace gale, in hopes of having a moment to clear my face. As I cleared my eyes, the fierce gale turned soft and the heat lessened to comfortably warm. With gentle swirls the wind wrapped around me, seemingly coming from several different directions at once.

I had started to cry, from the sting of the dust and the sting of failing to connect to the land. I only wanted to find my place, and what should be standard practice for everyone else wasn’t working for me. I turned over all the various procedures in my head. Did I need to do this action again, or that other action? Should I have approached directly from the parking lot, or should I have circumambulated and come in from the wilderness side?

As I pondered, the wind continued the strange shift from fierce gale to gentle caress. It felt like a warm hug from a large man. Holding me gently but surely. As the swirling air nuzzled my face, even my tears were taken away.

And then it hit me.

The wind wasn’t just a meteorological phenomenon, a movement of air from high pressure zones to low pressure zones. The wind had an attitude. The wind had fickle moments that defied scientific prediction. I was paying attention to the wind as if it was directed, guided. The wind played and danced and swept and nurtured. I had learned how to read the wind, because it had taught me.

“Connect to the land.”, I was told. And I took that literally. I tried to connect to the earth under my feet, and the earth was having none of it. But there is more to the land than dirt.

I looked up, and over my shoulder, into the sky that had been cloudless before. Into the wind that moments ago was stinging my face like bees. And there, over my shoulder, was a single cloud. In a shape that means something to me. It was there for a moment, and then it was gone. But the wind, itself, never left. And as I learned how to connect with the Wind, I heard it clearly for the first time.

The Wind, was laughing.

I laughed with it, feeling much better. It was a connection that most of my advisers would say was for “advanced students”. Others would say it was out of elemental order. But I have learned a lot from the wind, such as why the land was so quiet to me. The lord of the area I call home is not the Earth, but the Air. And the lord of this area has been watching me flounder for quite some time. But until I was willing to accept alternate ideas, it could not speak clearly to me.

That key lesson, “Consider alternate ideas.”, has been repeated to me many different times by many different people. It’s come up again, since my Audacious Day. Obviously, what I have been relying on in times past isn’t working. I could follow what many well-meaning people are telling me. And I have been. But I have also considered other ways of accomplishing what I am seeking.

These other ways could fail. And most of them will. But to do what I have been doing already will be the equivalent of standing in the desert, wondering why the dessicated earth isn’t responding to me.

I need to lift my head, take hold of the wind, and fly.