(Forgive the photo quality. It was taken from a distance, with my phone, through a window.)
On a foggy morning, the coyote arrived through a green opening at the edge of a broken fence. My guess is that he was a young one, not very skilled at hunting. The squirrels kept evading him by running up trees. When I came out onto the deck, he behaved in a way that I would expect a wild animal to behave; he ran away and crawled back through the hole in the fence, temporarily disappearing into the greenspace beyond. But he kept coming back. For three full days, he made his home beside the blackberry hedge on the edge of my property. Resting and hunting, with no kill to show for his efforts. By the end, it took all the willpower I had not to toss him a chicken breast.
Here is an edited transcript of the voice recording I made on the first day:
I'm thinking this has got to be an omen of some kind. Because they [coyotes] aren't usually out like this, this late in the day. I left for an hour to go to therapy and came back, and he was still there.
In therapy, we were having a conversation about the pressure to be seen on social media. The pressure to have a platform and to be a part of the conversation and promote yourself and the whole branding and working the algorithm thing, all that stuff that is so much a part of influencer and social media culture. And it's all tied into capitalism because the whole point is, to be successful, to make money, to market yourself, you have to follow these rules about how to use social media. I was telling him [my therapist] about how I've struggled with this. This feeling of, "I don't want to do that." I don't want to live my entire life for the purpose of making it into content. I don't want to be thinking about everybody else and putting my life in front of everybody's eyes constantly. But at the same time, I feel this internal pressure that says, "This is the time to be seen. This is the time to offer your gifts." Because what good are my gifts if I just keep them to myself and they're never seen by anyone else? Is that still a valuable gift? Am I using my gift the way its intended? Am I living up to my potential? All of those questions.
We started talking a bit about the three initiations I had in my 30's, and about how in indigenous cultures the medicine people aren't out there trying to tell everybody the messages they're getting from Spirit constantly. They're living their simple, quiet life on the outskirts of the village and it's only when the people ask for guidance that the information is shared. I was telling him how I feel more resonant with that kind of living.
And then my therapist said something that was extremely helpful that I don't want to forget. He used the metaphor of colonizer culture and said, "Isn't it a colonizer mentality to go out and put yourself out there, and expand your reach and put yourself in the faces and spaces of everyone else? And isn't that kind of what social media is all about?"
I was like, "Fuck, that is so true." I didn't see it that way before. And that was a really helpful perspective because that's exactly the kind of mindset that I'm trying to dismantle. So it makes sense that I would feel repulsed by that kind of mentality when it comes to promoting myself and sharing my work. And that I would feel more in tune with this way of being grounded in my experience of the sacred and have it be just about that. It's not about what happens with that sacred transmission. I've been slowly deprogramming myself out of that colonizer mindset that says I have to go out and do something with this, or create something with this. And I'm coming back to that place...
Oh, I'm looking out the window and now it looks like the coyote is just going to take a nap. He closed his eyes for a minute and his little head started to go down. He's sitting in the sun. Awww, buddy. He looks like he's going to take a nap. That is fucking amazing. That he feels that safe, right there in my yard to just take a nap in the sun. Damn.
So, yeah, my therapist was talking about that and it really was eye opening. Helped me clarify that the way of living that I feel more resonant with is just to be in my sacred space and connect to my environment in a sacred way and moment to moment feel through my instincts what is the correct way to respond to whatever comes into my environment. And sometimes social media is a part of that. I'm not saying it doesn't have a place. Because in this modern world, it has a place. That's without a doubt. But it's learning how to have a relationship with it, how to engage with it in a way that is authentic and aligned with a sacred way of living, a sacred way of being.
And then I did the happy hand clapping thing and said, "Oh, that's what the coyote is about." I thought about the hour I spent watching this coyote trying to hunt. He would be just straight up chilling, like he is now, and then every once in a while I would see him get up and dart across the yard, chasing after a squirrel. He's not pacing around frantically looking for food or searching for what he needs. He's resting. He's being. And then when there's something to respond to, he's ready to get up and respond to it. But I don't sense any urgency in him. There's no desperation. It's just a natural flow of rest and activity, rest and activity.
Cautiously, so as not to scare him away, I opened the window and played my drum. We had a conversation. I asked “what am I to learn" and “how can I tend this relationship”? I expressed my gratitude for his visit, "you're welcome to share space with me..." and declared my boundaries “...but keep your distance when I'm gardening and I don't want to see any of my cats end up as your lunch!”
At one point, I felt like he was asking me to come outside and follow him, but I knew that as soon as I opened the door, he would run. I sat with this feeling and sunk into it a bit deeper. Then had this conversation with my inner voice:
What if this isn't just a visit?
What if it's a call?
And I'm inside trying to find out what it all means instead of surrendering to the urge to follow him into the green.
But is that what you really want?
Or is that just what you expect a wild witch to want?
I remember the collage I made in December 2017, when I was casting a visual spell to attract my desired future. So many of the images on that board have come true, including the sunny nook where I was sitting that very moment and the giant sequoia tree outside. My home has become my sanctuary and I am reluctant to wander far from its warm embrace. My middle aged body has shown me its limitations (now that I'm listening). My mind has been liberated from the pressure to do "all the things." So where does this leave my youthful craving for adventure?
These days, when I hear the call of the wild, I'm apt to answer with, "I can hear it from in here."
(Hench the name, Wild Within)
On the fourth day, I looked for coyote in his usual spot, but there was no sign. Maybe we had said all that needed to be said. Maybe he found his pack. Maybe it was a rare magic that is only possible during eclipse season. Maybe it was a call, and I didn't respond, so he moved on. Or, maybe he had come to show me something about sovereignty within relationship.
Not long after this, I received an email in my inbox referencing the work of Rachel Botsman, author of Who Can You Trust? She says, "Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown." And like any relationship, I am free to make the choices that are best for me given my current reality (which at the moment is: still recovering from a major bout of burnout and don't have the energy to crawl around on my hands and knees through the brush on a wild coyote chase).
The way I see it, this idea that Spirit may demand something of me and I would have no choice but to comply is a holdout from the controlling God of the Patriarchy, which sees humans as subjects rather than sovereign beings. It may be wrapped up in New Age clothes, but it feels the same to me. For me to have a confident relationship with the unknown, I need to be in conscious equal partnership with it. And that means trusting that I can say no when I want to say no. And I can say yes only to what naturally moves me. With that said, our ego's protective mechanism can sometimes prompt us to say no out of fear. But that's a topic for another day.
For now, let's get back to the coyote story...
Here is an edited transcript of the voice recording I made on the fourth day:
One of the main messages that I got from coyote during those three days was that this is time for me to deepen my relationship with nature, my relationship with the animals, and through those relationships with nature and animals and plants, that's my connection to Spirit. That's how I nurture my connection to Spirit. And also I'm doing that through my art as well. Another message that I got is that when I'm doing my art, especially my collage art, I am branching out into the transpersonal territory where it's not just about me. And I think that the Human Design that I've been learning about has really impacted my view of that, too. It validated and clarified that I am primarily a transpersonal being. I'm not incarnated in this life for it to be all about me.
And that's really really clear in my Human Design. I struggled so much with thinking "oh my god, I have all these thoughts, all these ideas, all these visions and how can one person physically, mentally, emotionally do all this? Why am I getting all these visions? I can't handle this. This is overwhelming." I didn't know what to do and so I would get paralyzed. So just coming to the realization that it's not all for me, that was so -- God, I can't even -- that was such a relief and it took off so much pressure. And now I can focus on just doing what's for me to do. And it's so much easier and so much more natural and fun and enjoyable and it has to do with art and being connected to spirit. That's really it. And healing. My healing work has been off the fucking charts this last year because I'm really connecting to it, probably for the first time in my [nearly 20 year] career.
The conversation I had in therapy this week was helpful, but when I came home and sat with coyote for the rest of that day, while I was doing art, that's when I really understood the answer to this question about how put my work out into the world. What I heard is that people don't need to necessarily see the art for it to have an impact. They can. It's not like I have to hide it. But the energy that I am opening myself to, that I am channeling and that I am harnessing to put into this physical piece of creative soul expression, on paper or canvas or whatever I'm using. That act of being so present in the energy of that process is already bringing that to this world. And the disconnect that I've had has been this thought that I need to use technology to disperse that message, because that's what everything outside of me is telling me is the way to do it. And coyote is telling me, no, you can do it through nature. The energy that I am bringing in and having go through me, can go into nature and be given to the messengers of nature, like Coyote.
Then I start thinking about the mycelium and how they're underground connected to everything, so if I ground that energy...if I stop focusing on how to please the people in the screen and actually focus my energy on the moment that I'm having, this holy, sacred moment that I'm having, and be so immersed in that that the true transmission comes through me and gets grounded into the Earth, that can then be transmitted by the Earth through all of its networks, whether that be the mycelium network, the plant network, the animals. And then that goes out into the world.
In this time when people are hurting and lost and they are looking for answers. When they go online to try to find the answers, they feel more confused and more unsure. What are they going to do? They are going to naturally gravitate to nature to relax and be calm and regulate their nervous systems. Some primal part of them is going to naturally seek that out. Sometimes in the midst of great suffering, there comes a moment of profound awareness, when we surrender and release what stands in the way of our realization, and soulful clarity pours in. My hope is for the insights that come through my self exploration to become consciousness seeds that are available to others in those moments.
It's been over a month now and no sign of coyote's return. But, I've made space in my life for this new relationship and the conversation continues. On a recent morning, as I sat at my desk with a cup of tea, gazing at the full moon shining in the western sky, I heard the coyotes howl and felt that some part of me, more wild and free, was howling with them.
Until next time,
✨A
To read the introduction to this series, Field Notes from the Wild Within, click here