from the Archives, "In the Earth"

I am tired to the bone. Twenty hour days of frantic work, mothering, managing and juggling. Everything is going at such a rapid pace, I feel like I am not even touching the earth as I check things off of my list, run from one task to another, answer another phone, meet another deadline, don’t forget to cook dinner, feed the animals. I know what I need: some grounding.

A friend who is very wise, once said to me, “ When you feel like life is whirling out of control, go sit your bottom down on the ground, put your toes in the dirt, sift its fineness through your hands- and ground yourself again.” She was very wise and very right.

So in the midst of the madness, I’ve come back to the Earth. Stood quietly in the field with the mountains surrounding me, water running near the yellow boots on my feet, water in new corrugations needing to be walked to the end of the field. Slowly I feel peace descending and my world slowing to a pace where thoughts can be attended to and deep breaths of clean, pure air enjoyed.

The dry dirt of the field soaks in the much needed water to nourish the seedlings of alfalfa into a viable crop and I am reminded that my soul too, needs nurturing. The smell of water running over newly worked soil and the essence of alfalfa growing under the spring sun is recognizable not only from my childhood, but a subtle reminder of this life as one that gives me peace. A strange paradoxically world I live in: high tech, fast paced, deadline after deadline versus one filled and governed by mother nature herself. I need them both to fulfill my soul. Every little while the fields of my soul need to be irrigated with the grounding of the earth itself: quiet, animals, crops, trees, the mountains and the soil sifting through my fingers. With the firmness of the earth beneath my feet I am, once again, grounded.

Originally published on the first contemporarywesterndesign.com website May 2007