Renewing in New Mexico

I am excited.... I have a plan!  My time in Denver has been slow and has felt very introspective and almost stagnant.  But I think it was an important resting period for what is to come.  I plan on leaving in a week to head to Chicago - I found a ride there for only $25!  I will spend a few days there with my friend Patricia, and then together we will journey to New Mexico together!  This is very exciting for both of us, because we have both, for a long while, been wanting to explore New Mexico.  I just realized while writing this the significance of returning to that state...it is the place that solidified my love of the outdoors, and the place where I began as a trailworker.  During college I took a trip to New Mexico with a group of volunteers.  We hiked into the backcountry for a week, and I had one of the most mind-blowing and eye-opening opportunities of my life.  To be out there in the wilderness, with no comforts of modern life - no technology, bathing in the river, pooping in a hole - it was my first backcountry experience, and it was just amazing to me.  We also visited some local hot springs, spent a day in Santa Fe, and saw the Gila cliff dwellings.  After returning home from that trip, for the next few years, I would cite that week in the backcountry as the best week of my life.  That trip led me to find trailwork closer to home - volunteering at Ridley Creek State Park once a month.  And ultimately this led me to the SCA, the great organization I have now worked for many times, the organization where I got my real start as a professional trailworker.

So the return to New Mexico is symbolic - and I think it may be the start of a new direction as well.  While I am there, I hope to work on organic farms through WWOOF (wwoofusa.org), and also to reconnect with the visual arts.  My friend Patricia is heading to New Mexico mainly to study pottery, and I hope to learn more about this and about the arts in the southwest in general.  I have been drawn to the Sante Fe area, particularly to Taos, for a long while, mainly because Julia Cameron was there while writing her book that changed my life so dramatically: The Artist's Way.  In many ways the state is tied to the major transformations in my life - to my path of finding fulfilling work and finding real meaning and joy in my life.  To renewing my life.

Saying no to something is saying yes to something else.

I just turned down an awesome position in southern California doing desert restoration work for the next two months, because I thought it was more important to give my body and mind a rest, do some traveling, and recenter myself.  In a way, by saying "no" to the thing that seems on the outside to be the right answer, I'm saying yes to myself - to what I TRULY want in my life in this moment.  This was a very hard decision, but it was something I knew in my heart to be right - still, though, there is that little sting of regret, of "what if?"  But now I will know a different experience - I will know what it is like to say yes to myself.  And I will take this time and this opportunity to create something truly memorable - to create real growth and progress in my life, apart from trail work (which has been my life for the past year and a half).  And hopefully in a few months I will return to trail work as a project leader, rejuvenated and with a new perspective.