INTO THE WOODS

Sunday evening, we gathered for Self Care Circle and Rose asked us where in our bodies were we feeling gravity. Sarah said her arms felt heavy. Xander felt weight behind his eyes. Tania felt gravity in her legs. Most everyone felt heavy in some place. I confessed to not feeling gravity. In fact, I felt/feel like the only thing holding me down onto this planet is a thin piece of string tied to my right ankle. The other end is weighted with a marble. I am at work, frantically trying to finish up imaging on the latest batch of slides while troubleshooting computer issues on the very same microscope I am using to image that batch of slides. Multiple terabytes of data still needs to be transferred from that computer to the network for further processing. I am at home thinking about chicken care and if I packed enough of the right things for camp. I just remembered that I haven’t packed shoes of any kind, but there are socks in my suitcase. I am at camp thinking about the classes I’m supposed to be teaching.

I am dreaming about my three o’clock massage appointment on Saturday.

This untethered weightless feeling will go away once we are at camp with our camper setup and camp things put in their places. The groove of the camp routine will take hold and I will give in to pool floating time and laying my body on the cool concrete floor of the yoga shala. I will feel weighted and heavy and full. These are not wishes or hopes. These are truths. Every camp experience has been different and I expect that this one will as well, but there is a part of the experience that remains consistent between camps. Cell signal is shotty at camp, so there’s no email, no news, no remote accessing into to work. The ideas I have for some blog entries and where my book writing is going will be handwritten in a notebook, with possibilities of seeing the light day when I return. My camera is packed, along with my tripod because if the weather cooperates, I’d like to play around with some night sky photography. But if I end up napping a whole lot, that’s okay too. Camp is a time where I have no choice but to set my usual daily life over on a shelf not to be touched for five days.

It is a terrifying thought that I am welcoming with open arms.