Bookends, Milestones, and Other Trail Markers
Every adventure centers and thrives around the excavation of hidden treasures. All true markers are planted accordingly.
In Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the boy Mowgli is abducted by the great apes, whose leader wishes to hold the secret of fire. Bagheera, Mowgli’s panther mentor, has just arranged for him to learn the Master Words of all races, panther medicine being of the wisest of all. In this way, Mowgli becomes an integrated forest dweller, able to call on the allies of Nature for support. As he is being dragged away through the jungle canopy, Mowgli cries out to the raptors circling above, “We be of one blood, thou and I…mark my traaiiil!” And so, Mowgli’s allies are able to find him once the tale is told.
The year 2020 began a cycle of purging, shifting, threshing, and breaking apart. The child whose visceral understanding of Mowgli’s journey ‘through the brush/bush backward’ has marked this passage. She followed Source’s trail markers from one mountain range to another, across the entire world, before coming to rest in the Rockies once more.
Here, a new gestation began. Its components quietly came together through many infusions and a ground-zero kind of letting go. What are the fluid dynamics of a new life? There is only and ever and always flow. When life feels paused or stuck or struggling, there are undertows at work. Like the great apes, these currents have an agenda. These have ramped up, amped up, and accelerated through the June Solstice and will continue to roar and rage like the spring melt through the December Solstice 2025.
Why did the apes want to wield fire? What is it about the power to put down, flatten, and destroy that is so very attractive? The power to destroy a thing is not power over that thing but only the means to force a certain type of transformation. The surrender of this lens of perception is key to greater unfoldment.
The daystar we call the Sun contains the power to incinerate Gaia’s surface world many times over. And yet. our Sun functions at a higher octave of light bringer and life-giver. Its light and the waters of this world meld together to strengthen and sustain Nature’s web. From the depths of space through the depths of Gaia’s stellar heart, life force sings its quiet, radiant symphony.
The first notes have begun to sound. Bookends dovetail into milestones, indicating new trails available for exploration. Already, and not yet.
A major current of dissolution is that of holding the fear of being attacked, therefore not safe, not valued, and all things the human mind attempts to spackle on top. The debris is like that of a dam breaking, carrying stone, tree, and decimated dreams in its flood waters. The deepest currents hold the most peace. What requires sorting and sifting and threshing and grinding will go through those hoops one way or another. In the midst of raging waters, the trail is still marked. The Sun’s light, as both star and guide, still shines.
There have been markers for all of us indicating radical change. The mind may argue or try to explain away these moments of illumination. “Oh, that’s only your imagination.” Those voices will be left behind in old eddies and forgotten realities as ancient rivers become new tides.
What runs swift and sure beneath your surface? This is what nurtures, nourishes, supports, sustains, and carries your essence.
May we honor the journey as it marks our trail.
