Rewriting this after time has passed. Remembering the day that Liz and Joanne and I went to Chesterfield Gorge for the first of many times. It had been a special place with my now long-gone lover and the three of us made it all new and washed clean for me:

Yesterday, Liz and Joanne and I went to Chesterfield Gorge. They had never been there before so I had the fun of introducing them to the cliffs of sheer rocks that look like building slabs turned on their sides, to the places where the rocks are washed, over millennium, into smooth bowls (I found a perfect one to sit in yesterday). I didn’t have to say much; they were sucked into the magic of the place. We picnicked, played in the water, took pictures of each other and the formations, the water swirling, reflecting. We all were entranced by this little swarm of ugly bugs skimming the surface of the water, like small brown oblong blobs. The game was that if you hovered your hand over them, they went into an instant frenzy of movement. Remove your hand or the leaf or whatever we were using to play with, and they settled back down into slow bumping around together. We played this game a strangely long period of time.

We were all happy. It was like a day at the beach, a day outside of our normal days, less than a half hour from town, but a foreign vacation-land. We told stories, shared time and space and light and air and water together. The ride home, I noticed we were all quiet, like after a long hot day at the beach, minus the long drive and hot beach. We even stopped for soft serve on the way home, just about at dinner time, no one there to tell us it would ruin our appetites. Who cares? And a promise to do it again, in the fall, when the colored leaves will decorate the gorge walls and be reflected in the water.

Transformation. Chesterfield Gorge is mine again. My friends and I reclaimed it for me, and introduced it to them. We all needed this day.  This is a sacred space to be shared.

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.  ~~Chinese proverb

I will stumble again, grieve more again, but I have the autumn winds to urge me forward, and I will go with that, with gladness.