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  108 Names of Now

108 Names of now

Dark Hollow Falls

9/23/2015

Comments

 
You know how sometimes a name will reach out and grab you?  I had fallen into a trance of driving along the very beautiful Skyline Parkway, when the sign for Dark Hollow Falls came up on my left, and I knew I had to stop.  Dark as in matter, shadow, incarnation.  Hollow as in emptiness, openness, yin.  Falls as in jumping off the 100-foot pole.  Pretty much the landscape I knew I had come here for.  So I pulled over and joined all the blinking people emerging from our cars into the bright sunlight, to see what we could see.  

Down & down & more down, into the forest, feet on the ground, and then:
Picture
forest body, feet on the ground.
I could feel how glad I was to have taken the risk to come out here to the big forest, alone, and also how glad I was to be here with so many others.  Lady hiking in an orange strapless dress, hello!  Older couple with nobly creaky knees, hello!  Young lovers with selfie-sticks, hello!  I could feel the relief of stopping, and the gentleness of this place.

No real plan, but then: why not keep stopping?  I pulled into the campground entrance, a bit further along, and found myself looking for a home for the night.  So clear.  Yes!  This one.  The grassy one that's pretending to be two spaces, but is really one blessed haven for the night, with apples & crabapples in fruit, and deer munching.  A one-eyed lady sold me some firewood & gave me some cardboard & newspaper.  Then I found some thorny branches caught dead in the thicket, for kindling, and I was all set.  

Once the fire was built & the tent pitched & the food all stashed away in the clanging bear-box, I took off with a light heart, along the little path winding back out into the big forest from my camp.  There were huge oaks & browsing does & a big buck wearing a research collar.  There were wild grapes twining from the low branches of hickory trees, and sweet smells of ripening and earth.  I felt a sense of embrace, of having arrived, of being exactly where I needed to be.  Then the path came back to the Skyline, and I realized where I was: circled back around to Dark Hollow Falls trailhead.

I settled in to sit, gone golden in the light of day's end and the ripeness of the world.  The three-quarters moon rose over the moon-ripe apple-trees, and I settled down to sleep long and deep inside my tent inside my silky bag, right here on the earth.
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    Author

    Julie Püttgen is an artist, expressive arts therapist, and meditation teacher.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Press
  • Therapy
  • Art
    • Everyday Regalia
    • Free/Not-Free Paintings
    • Trumpovers
    • Pilgrimage >
      • Sacred-Ordinary
    • Home / Away from Home
    • Mapping the Trikaya
  • Meditation
    • Retreats & Facilitation
    • Old Dragons' Club
    • Inner Beauty
    • Treatments
    • Meditations for Resilience & Resistance
    • Guided Meditations >
      • Lovingkindness
      • 5 Directions
      • Compassion
      • Coming Home
  • Writing
    • Stories from the Road
    • Stories from the Now
  • The Big Bang
    • Session One
    • Session Two
    • Session Three
    • Session Four
    • Session Five
    • Session Six
  • Teaching
    • Walking Each Other Home
    • Suitplay: A SoulCollage® Partswork Odyssey >
      • Overall Course Map
      • 1. World / Source / Self
      • 2. The Fool / Pages / Young Parts
      • 3. Knights
      • 4. Queens
      • 5. Kings
      • 6. Cups
      • 7. Pentacles
      • 8. Wands
      • 9. Swords
      • 10. Space
    • SoulCollage® and the Five Buddha Families >
      • Blue
      • Yellow
      • Red
      • Green
      • White/Black
      • Complete Mandalas
    • SoulCollage® for the Interim Times >
      • Suits of a SoulCollage® Deck
      • Protectors
      • Transpersonal Cards
      • A Four-Card Reading
      • Greeting New Cards
      • Working with Negative Spaces
      • Companion Cards
      • Pausing
    • Upper Valley SoulCollage® for Justice
    • Retreats & Facilitation
    • Murals
  • Contemplative Dance Practice
  • Contact
  • Shop