Its 2pm on a Tuesday and I’m watching mosquito hawks and yellowjackets drift over the grass. Fat yellow dandylion heads are sprinkled over the lawn, drowsy in the light. A tiny, spindly legged spider is crawling across the keyboard and an eagle is bellowing overhead. I am in the land of giants now, I tell myself, and I am bending to its shape.
There is so much desert in my inner territory, a long dry expanse ridged with whale spines and coyote tracks. Deep inside I rattle like rain soaked creosote, hollow cholla bone, and monsoon heavy clouds. I am hard-packed earth in some places, always at risk of flooding in a storm if there isn’t enough room for low-running washes. And yet, for 8 months now, I have not left the lush green world of the Pacific Northwest. The desert in me is watching.
I have not forgotten how long it took me to reconcile to a life spent in shimmering heat, barren stretches of land, and foul tapwater. I was such a sea-born thing, a river-raised girl when our dirt brown minivan pulled into a 7/11 in Phoenix and I realized this was now my life. I was a seal without her pelt, a roaring thunder pounding through my chest in waves I couldn’t control. I was landlocked and it took me a decade to befriend the thorned godds. I realize now it was the ancient woman of the wild who turned me toward the saguaro, who taught me to collect water through my roots and store just enough in my own body - a reservoir of resilience.
So I became a sea unto myself.
A body sloshing with self-preservation.
A map of streams, rivers, lakes, bogs, and coasts.
And I don’t know if I would have otherwise.
31 years in the desert built layers of dust and armor over my skin. Like a scorpion I became hard to control, every layer of what I endured, learned, and reclaimed made me almost impenetrable and I let myself be small enough to fit through cracks and under doorways. Still, inside I sloshed and roared like the Oregon coast. Gray and moody, sneaker waves and king tides - I became an internal force.
I don’t quite know yet who I am in this large, soft place. I am far less armored, washed cleaner and clearer by near constant drizzle. On the days we have sun I feel the light hit my face and I remember where I lost god and where I found her again, the familiar drumbeat of the desert still thrumming in me.
For 8 months now I have sensed how large I could become here, how expansive the air is, and how limitless I could be. I’ve shivered in forests I don’t know the language of, bloomed below a maple dripping with lichen, plunged my hands into rich soil, and grown food that we’ve eaten. I’ve retreated into parts of myself if only to finally tend to them. I’ve slowed my pace, repaired large gaps in my nervous system, and started moving back into my first love within writing.
I am so close to the sea I can drive to her any time I want - whales and seals and starfish so fresh in my memory I can recall every spotted, barnacled, vivid detail. A river runs right through my town, one of the only north-running rivers on Turtle Island, and I can feel the pulse of her force every time I lay in the yard.
I am still a sea-born creature, a river-raised girl, but I am also now a desert-forged woman. Yet here I am again: bending to the shape of something new. I can tell you what that indomitable wild gave to me, what it shaped and summoned in me. I can name what pressed up through my roots, kept my sealskin from drying out completely, and made me a reservoir of hope. My altar to Lilith still rests below Hagar’s tree in the desert and my friends leave offerings of heart-shaped rocks, serpent looking sticks, and spring blooms for me. For us all, really.
In the end, I didn’t just befriend the desert. I found myself in her creases and caves and tall prickly queens. I let her weave a crown of ocotillo bloom into my hair, and I carried well-preserved secrets out with me like a liturgy. I am of the desert and the desert is of me. I am of the sea and the sea is of me.
It’s 2:40 now and the eagle has moved on, leaving small songbirds chattering in his silence. It’s still enough that I can hear the sound of my partially feral heart stretching between desert monsoons and dark choppy waves. I am a tide, an undercurrent, a spreading map of mesquite, prickly pear, and north-running rivers. And still … I have yet to see what the land of giants will make of me.
I’ve written in my bio for so many years that I was raised by the sea (which means two things and the same thing) and forged in the desert. I love the overlap of our stories. How fierce our connection to the blazing sun and how forever we are called to the depths of the ocean in us all.
Potent. I could feel it all. Thank you