Coyote whisper

Landing into a new home + the Spirit of Change

About a week after we moved to our new place on the peninsula, I had a dream that there were a pair of coyotes playfully sticking their snouts into our tent, their wet noses greeting my hands gently. I remember liking it, and then hesitating. I thought maybe they’re getting too close. Magical, and wild beings they are. I zipped up the tent and then they pressed their noses up against the thin blue material firmly poking and prodding to the point where I knew they would just break through anyway. I realized that maybe it made more sense to just open it up again. There was no use. 3 days later a pair of coyotes trotted down the dirt road, paused, and disappeared into the woods. It’s nice to meet you too. “Two wild wolves on my shoulders” - a line from the song I wrote a month ago. Two wild wolves in my dream a week ago. Two wild wolves on the edge of our woods 3 days later. The wildness beckons me to invite my own.

I find myself here to do just that, it’s what’s I asked for isn’t it? It’s what I set out to do. I guess I just didn’t expect for it to come in many more ways than one. One of my elders told me to be careful with the power of calling things in. I hadn’t really realized my own capacity for that fully until she pointed it out. I think I do have a way of connecting with spirit and bringing my visions into reality, or maybe it’s me just having my heart set on a thing, for better or for worse. I had a feeling this place would transform me; etch some new patterns into my bones. This place will adorn me with cedar and sensuality. I feel it.

As soon as I boarded it, I felt that ancient spirit of change. Plum juice and tears laid rivers on my face. The sun romanced the water and I searched for my sellkie kin.

I’m leaving again, this time on a boat. I wonder if cold salty water everywhere remembers them. The city has battered me, and my body is tired. I yearn for intimacy with the woods and the wool. I can’t help but think of them; my ancestors. I scoff at how this journey on the old Pullyaup next to Amelia in the white Volkswagen compares to what they went through. And in the same breath, I don’t think they had the capacity to digest all the generational trauma that’s catching up to me now; I bravely stick my paddle into it over and over again. Sometimes I feel unsure about what they were really like, what their conditioning came out to be, what their morals were. I do feel sure about their strength. And I feel sure that it’s inside me now. I call upon it in this new journey. That, and curiosity, and open-mindedness, and slowness. Like honey slipping through my fingers.

I’ve recently been enamored with the sensuality of the celtic mind. Multiple texts overlapping, a dictionary of sexy Gaelic words. Pleasure was part of our paradigm. There wasn’t as much shame wrapped up in the experience of sex and sensuality, pre-catholicism. This is one of the great losses of our culture, this literacy of, this familiarity with, this worldview of wild earth. Súil is cross means “eye and heart” referring to the gaze as erotic attention, longing or intimate connection. Súgradh (soo-grah) means play, frolic, flirtation. Cumhacht (koo-acht) means potency, lifeforce, power, sexual energy. Grá is one of my favorites; referring to passionate love, yearning, and hunger. It’s slightly different from Mianta which describes a deep longing, desire. I found at least three other ways to describe these feelings, and the specific distinctions along the spectrum of yearning, the in-betweens, all of it. Gaelic is a language of the felt experience, of the seasons, of the mystery. A language of the earth, and these bodies of earth.

This time of year is always so saturated for me, and over the years I’ve tracked that the biggest changes in my life have always happened around the fall equinox. The fruit bends over, ripe and rotten on the trees.The goldenrod makes the yellowest yellow I’ve ever seen. The salmon bellies swell with life. The raw, sweet scent of Amanita soon lures me into the forest. We swim naked in the rivers until the last possible moment. All I want to do is submerge, plunge in these new waters, and yet I know from a birds eye view, from the view of my continuously emerging self that this part of life is about the slow burn. Tending that precious flame. And so I’ll follow the scent, just slowly. Like the fall reminds me to do. And maybe that makes it sound easy, but it’s not. I know because soon there will be an album written. I’m writing songs obsessively, the lyrics revealing to me my own somatic process through symbols and story. I’m just trying to take my time, to move with a belly full of breath and my weight all the way back on my spine, and it’s hard, and it’s beautiful, and it’s sappy, and it’s all the things.

So many people have reached out to check in on me and my dear one, offer help with moving, connect us to gigs. I feel so grateful to be met with so much support here, in a way that truly embodies community. In Seattle, it felt like a concept more-so, something that people want to do if it weren’t for capitalism grinding you into dust. And it’s still hard here, it’s hard everywhere. Here though, people have space, the pastures that hold them, the trees that humble them, and humans that are dedicated to the practice of care and joy, of craft, and art. There’s just a little bit more capacity to create that here it seems. And although housing and jobs and routine seem a bit more patched together here than the average place, it’s got a real special feel. Folks are shepherds and equally teachers, they’re death workers and equally gardeners. They’re artists and equally carpenters. There’s babies waddling about and elders offering their wisdom. People are really trying to re-village here.

I have my own version of patching things together, and I’m just beginning to see the shape it will take after a week of settling in. I’ve deepened my work with earth benders caretaking cooperative as their Creative Director, weaving stories of land tending and getting our name out there. I’m meeting photography again in a new scene, and carry a level of discernment with me now that I’m grateful for. I am also watering this womb literacy business with each cycle of the moon, entering into the second year of a program to teach fertility awareness method. Music making is always in the weave, and living rurally will bring a lot more craft, foraging, and wandering too. After a brief moment of summer scarcity (I can never seem to get enough) I’m starting to feel the promise of death that the colder season brings. I feel relief now thinking of slower days and yin energy permeating into my bones.

Thank you for being here 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

Natalie