The plan had been to meet at a halfway point between the two of us to spend a week camping, which would have been the surrounding Boise, Idaho area. But the whole plan was produced out of a spontaneous idea and call to travel, so nothing was fixed.
“Why do you want to visit Utah?” Kali asked me as we FaceTimed in the midst of me packing my home at the beginning of August.
“Because I want to see the place where I fell in love.” I answered after suggesting that I just drive the additional 4 hours from Boise to Ogden, Utah where I had attended college and fell in love years earlier.
It had been over two years since I had graduated and moved back to Oregon, and since then my heart longed for the place that had once been home. Perhaps it was because I was moving homes at that time we had planned this trip, but Utah never stopped feeling like a home. Especially when it seemed that I was consistently packing my belongings and moving in those two years, I desired to have that need for stability met that Utah had provided for me during a crucial part of my becoming. I wanted to be in the desert again, to walk in the open air at sunset, to smell the sage clinging to me as I brush past it on the mountain’s trail, to allow the dissonant song of crickets at midnight be what puts me to sleep, to go out into the night in search of owls, to be a wild thing once more.
Wild Women
I spent my week in Utah at Kali’s cabin located in the canyon. While our original intention had been to camp we didn’t get around to it. Naturally, I did spend a majority of the time outside both within the canyon and in the valley.
For hours we listened to one another discuss where our paths had taken us since our last goodbye, and where we had anticipated it going with our set intentions for our envisioned futures. Of course, there are outcomes beyond my control, but Kali had both inspired me and encouraged me to pursue writing on the poet’s path. The life that I want is unconventional, non-traditional, and it seems as though no one else sees the vision projecting itself onto my inward eye, but by Kali choosing passion as a guidepost, I too have allowed desire to serve as direction.
I am so proud of the women that Kali has become in the short time that we have been apart. While she has always had a strong sense of self, she has become more fearless in her expression as she has taken on roles of leadership in her career. Kali has never been one to follow the conventional path that had previously been asked of us. Instead, she has allowed her passions to guide her forward, to let that fire be what blazes the trail as she speeds down the mountain, sleeps beneath the moon's drifting sky, rushes through a high level rapid on an untamable river. She honors nature, meets it in the center of its chaos by unionizing with that force and remains wild and above all else, free.
The events that transpired out in nature during my college years were profoundly spiritual and elevated me to know the God existing beyond the scripture I had been brought up reading. Instead, God was in every living being and creature residing in those lands, and in every atom of its making. And like the poets in my college curriculum who had shared similar musings of God and nature, I too had the desire to find my voice and spread the same inspiration through my words.
It was through Kali’s invitation into the wilderness on various excursions during college that connected me to the refuge of the natural world when I had not previously known the feeling of safety in my life or in my body. This reconnection of body to land was a catalyst to my healing which contributed to my growth and reclamation of self. Outside, I discovered a new perspective that raised my consciousness, which allowed me to forgive those who had harmed me and to release the toxins of past hurt and shame from my body, my psyche, and my heart. This gave me freedom. Even more liberating was discovering that the body in which I had been birthed into, matched the intelligent body of earth, and from this I began to honor my experience existing as a woman as sacred. This value was shared between Kali and I, so when we were outdoors we reclaimed sovereignty over our sexuality and expression of gender to find unity with the earth and power within ourselves. This is how we became wild women.
My growth is measurable
Being outside and returning to the place that had molded me, provided me with space to reflect on my growth as a person and as a writer. I am no longer the person I used to be, and while I had grieved the loss of her for so long, I was finally glad to not be that person. I knew that this version of myself would have made her so proud. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of who I once had been, rather I had so much compassion for her and I honored that maiden version of myself by growing into the person she wished to become and doing all that she wished to do. All this to say is that my growth is measurable to me and those of my past.
Still, I met the past version of me outside, in all the spaces she had sought sanctity in. She was there with me during the hours I spent on the sandy shores of the reservoir, or charting its waters on my paddle board, her eyes admired the tall arid grass of summer waving in the shadow of the season as we drove on the valley roads, we laughed and cried alongside my best friend as we ate watermelon that we had cracked open on the rocks of the riverbed. One evening, we trespassed on the campus of my old university in search of owls that I had spent a summer with years earlier. With no luck, we fell asleep laying in the damp grass of a forest preserve listening to the crickets. I was a little drunk and didn’t mind the unseen insects nibbling on my skin. In each wild moment, she was there, fully alive in my heart.
Through all of this, I reunited with the past version of myself in the feeling of deep reverence for the lands. She was there in the moments of awe as I reveled in the beauty of the earth like she was pinpointing to me where my heart was and why it wished to speak in poetry.
I had the privilege of meeting with my writing mentor, John, who had been one of my English professors during my senior year. We hadn’t formally met in person due to the pandemic disrupting regular in-person classes, but it was his class that reminded me of my dream of writing after being blocked for nearly a decade. After graduating from school, we kept in touch and continued to discuss my evolving voice and my plans for my work. From the beginning of our academic relationship, John has given me the encouragement that I needed to begin writing again. Although my voice felt impoverished when I took his class in 2021, he heard the resonance of what it was meant to be long before I could articulate my mind. He listened to the heart of my voice and believed in me while I excavated for it within the depths of myself.
We met for lunch on 25th street where I brought him up to speed about my life transitions and travel plans because at the time I had just quit my job and moved homes. As we discussed, my poetry professor wandered into the restaurant by coincidence. Similarly, I had not had the opportunity of meeting her in person due to quarantining, but I had taken multiple of her classes and kept up with her post-graduation to discuss my poetry endeavors. While they were both there I shared the news that I had been accepted into a poetry program. We were all elated, but I especially felt proud that I was finally able to show them the proof of the work that I had been doing behind the scenes.
Wasps
A poem I wrote one afternoon in the canyon.
The path is still unknown
In my head, I chanted, I am safe, I am safe, I am safe, but the rest of me would not listen, my discomfort became obvious.
“Just relax your body.” Kali instructed me as my body tried to adjust to being exposed completely to the darkness that had set itself within the canyon. We were swimming in hot springs that had all been abandoned at that hour, and despite knowing that we were alone the mineral water did not calm the fears of cougars possibly lurking in the shadows, or the noise of the nearby rapids in the river next to us overwhelming my senses. But I surrendered, and soon enough, my body was floating while my head rested upon the rocks capturing the hot water into the natural tub.
This had been all too common for me, existing in a heightened state of fear which made it difficult for me to practice release. But when I finally did relax and became wholly present, I found clarity in the darkest hour despite the minimal light coming from the dilapidated constellations overhead. We meditated with the stars, until a couple of them reached down to us and promised their guidance.
While I was enraptured in the star’s embrace, I began to reflect on my growing faith which I had been cultivating in the last two years since beginning my path to becoming a writer. Days before I left Utah to move home, I wandered the canyon trails while the ideas of what I hoped to create were beginning to plant themselves in my mind. Beyond this, I had also thought of what I wanted to do and experience. It seemed as though nearly everything that I had envisioned had already come true, perhaps not in the way that I had anticipated or expected, and despite the doubts in my mind, I walked in the direction of my dreams anyway. When I looked back on the time in between those years, I recognized the intricate weaving of my life as a story written by a great creator residing within me and everywhere. I looked at the journey as a whole and saw the beauty of my life, then became just as grateful for the deep grief from loss and heartache as I was for the blessings. It was all divine, all of it.
And as for the dreams that hadn’t yet happened, I knew that I was on the path towards their manifestation. It was as if everything I was seeing in my head was being projected outward and I was meeting it along the way. Life had already aligned me with my visions and all I had to do was surrender to its unfolding while taking inspired action.
I was more than safe, I was divinely guided and protected by the stars. While the path is still unknown to me, I was making peace with the journey.
On my last full day in Utah, I went for a walk alone in the canyon on a trail across the street from Kali’s. My body was no longer used to such high elevation after having lived nearer sea level, so I only went for as long as I could before the pressure got to my head. Eventually, I found a clearing just off of the path and laid down in the middle of sage growing naturally.
Above me dragonflies hovered about in search of something I was unaware of, I simply watched. The mountains stood unwavering and so large in space to the point where the vastness of the universe became almost visible and I thought to myself that it was rather silly to give into the illusion of impossibility. I can do anything. I can bring to me opportunities, I can manipulate thought into action and bring forth my vision and a pathway to the dream that had not been there previously when I lacked belief.
The Video
Here is the accompanying video that I filmed and edited for my trip to Utah which includes visual poems.
The Place Where I fell In Love
Utah, its lands, the animals and plants, the community I cultivated during my stay there, all of it provided me a refuge to grow and heal from my past. The experiences that I had while living in Utah were so profound that it expanded my heart to a size I had not thought it was capable of becoming. With this, I was finally able to understand and see divinity everywhere, my eyes opened when my heart fell in love. Yes, maybe I did fall in love with someone’s son during that time, but my heart extended to know love beyond even that. When I was there, I fell in love with my friends who I would eventually call my sisters. I fell in love with the written word and intellectual thought. I fell in love with the practice of yoga which I would eventually adopt as my practice of faith. I fell in love with being, this being a woman. I became more of myself, as I worked through the shadow toward the center of my heart. The more I connected to my heart, the happier I became, the deeper I was able to feel, for the first time in my life, grateful to be alive. I fell in love when I experienced my heart–warm like the sun and radiating like an emerald.
Land Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge and send my respects to the indigenous people of Weber County—the sacred lands in which I resided as a guest—Fremont, Goshute, Paiute, Ute, and Shoshone. I give my deepest reverence to the lands, the ancestors, and the current and emerging elders.
p.s. here is a song that really embodies my time in Utah this summer