Hello Beautifuls,
Welcome back to everyone who’s been here before and welcome to everyone who is new here this week. ❤️ I am grateful for your presence and humbled by your generosity and love. Thank you, thank you.
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My Loves,
I am in California again and it is glorgeous. That was a typo and now I’m making it into a word: gorgeous and glorious. Because California is both.
I’m perched on top of a mountain 12 or so miles west of San Jose and about the same distance east of the Pacific Ocean at San Gregorio beach.
On my mountain, there are trees, oh so many trees, and hawks and wind, and views all around. And do you know what else there is?
Silence. The nature kind of silence, where you can hear the wind and the branches connect and move together, without any background noise of cars or cars or cars or people or music or anything else. It’s magnificent. Glorious. Gorgeous. I am in love.
With the place, with the silence and also with myself and who I am when I am here. Not just on top of the mountain, but in the home of my heart. Where my bones know the landscape, where familiarity is pre-verbal deep. It’s not a specific house, or even one specific piece of ground, but home, home, home in my spirit, in my breath.
I think it’s so interesting that bound has very different meanings and I mean them both here. I have been homeward bound since the second time I left California, in 2017. I knew I needed to leave, and I still know that to be true. And I knew I would, at some point need to come back. That point is now. To fully embody myself, and to save the plants and animals that live in and on this beautiful land I love more than, (truly and almost) my life.
I am also heart-bound. Bound to the redwood, the Douglass fir, the giant sequoia. Bound to the sun-polished leaves of a lumbering oak, the full moonlight gilding the Joshua tree. Bound to the harbor seals, the rocky beaches, the crumbling cliffs. Bound to the purr of the waves, the grit of the sand. Bound to the granite peaks, the rivers and their smooth rocks, the lakes and their dark depths.
Being away from California for nearly a decade, for the second time in my adult life, has led me to know that I am bound to this place, to its wonders. No matter how far I go, or how many times I leave, I breathe with its heart.
What a blessing to be here again. What a blessing to be bound to such a place. I am a lucky, lucky woman.
To be bound to luck, now that’s a glorgeous thing.
Harbor seals off Bean Hollow Beach
Like every other social platform, Hello Beautifuls will get seen by more people if you ❤️ this post (or share or restack it). I’d be grateful if you do.
Glorgeous- I can see that taking off!
Your posts always make me want to travel to these places. I’ve been to Cali but it was a time when nature was low on my priority and scene-y places were alluring. Oh how we change 💜
"Where my bones know the landscape" - gah, YES! And I will take that new word and run with it - glorgeous. It works so well! lol