gathering...

It has been nearly a month since I made my way to the Taproot Gathering at Squam.

I have tried to find the words- many, many times- since I've been back to describe my days on that lake but they just seem to swirl in front of me and dissipate so quickly I can't grasp them.

For years, as I read about the experiences of those who attended Squam, the one word that appeared almost every single time was magic. Well, it felt very much like magic pulling me to that lake and the lovely people gathering there and it was definitely magic I went in search of.

I think that is why I haven't been able to find words, because the magic I found was so needed, so vital to me, that I didn't want to look too closely, or analyze it, or drop it. I felt almost like this new found magic would dissolve or disappear just like the words I tried to find to describe it.

I do want to form words around that enchanted retreat in the woods. And I'm sure I will, but right now I think I'll hold it close a little longer while I learn to trust and nurture the magic that I found there.

In the meantime, a few clear thoughts do stand out to me:

How much I miss the loons. I went to sleep each night to their haunting, other worldly call. That beautiful call that sounds like a reminder that we're not alone in this world.

The sage words of women who are no longer strangers, a few of whom I didn't believe had the years behind them to be as wise as they are. I am humbled and thrilled to be proven wrong about that.

Realizing that I was able to live in precisely the moment I was inhabiting. Not the past, not what is yet to be but the precise moment, lying right there on the dock, with my feet in the water and and the sun on my face and not a care in the world. It sounds simple, it is simple, but up until that very moment I had found it unbelievably impossible.

The connections, friendships, conversations, and classes with lovely, charming, talented people. I left feeling inspired and awed by their creativity. Not to mention, more than one sincere, heart warming moment spent with gentle souls who probably have no idea what their kindness meant to me.

How "at home" I felt within minutes of arriving in those woods in New Hampshire (something in me just needs to live in New England, I think). That was validation to me that, yes, home is a place you intuitively recognize. Strangely, that made the counterintuitive return to a place that just doesn't feel like home, at all, that much easier. That, and the magnetic pull of this little family of mine. How I missed these babies. The pure joy of seeing a sweet little man, all of six years old, run and dart through the airport so he could be the first to hug me or the indescribable love of his little sister, waking up next to me, saying "Mama, you're here". Somehow being away...and coming back to them...helped shift my perspective just enough to find myself a little more at peace here.

That is magic, indeed.