The Journey of Recovery Continues...

Whenever I'm in my home in Tennessee and I get to pining away to return to my home of 25 years in the mountains of the West, I go often in my mind to the glorious sunsets; the breathtaking beauty of the morning after a heavy (6-8 feet) snowfall when the sun rises and turns the snow into a trillion sparkling diamonds and the snow underneath is a translucent, glacier-blue; the smell of pine so heavy in the air after a summer rain you can cut it with a knife; the intricacies and mysteries of the granite that reminds me the world is alive below the surface; the crystal clear rivers that make waterfall seekers crazy because there's just not enough time to go sit next to them all. So much stunning beauty that it almost creates a "beauty-fatigue" because you just can't absorb any more, yet the flow is continuous, like the flow of the rivers throughout the mountains. 

I remember the dreams I had as a young man, who,

was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin' home to a place he'd never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door...

I came West convinced that Id been born again, hoping to start a life of honorable intent and community engagement. 

And then I remember the pain of the culture shock, the failure of my dream, again and again, the return to that which I knew best, a life of drug use, abuse and survival. I remember the unspeakable misery of a heroin and cocaine addiction and a life out of control; the poverty and anguish I forced upon myself and my family. Perhaps worst of all, I remember living homeless, strung out and time spent not caring whether I lived or died.   And I remember why I don't live in the mountains of California and Nevada any more.  

Visiting the West periodically for my work as I continue into my 13th year of recovery is a bittersweet time for me, and I can't tell if I'm maturing further - growing emotionally each time I come here - or I'm being tugged to return here by old hopes and the omnipresence of the Ancients that are infused in everything around me.  There's a sense of spirituality I only get when I'm in the West, and it's I think because I can connect to the cycles involving the earth; wind, water, rock, that remind me everything is renewed, over and over, and we are a part of it all because the atoms that make up our bodies have been around since the earth began precipitating out of the dust cloud in space.

I'm trying to figure out for myself what keeps me longing for a return to the West, yet when I get here, I'm filled with angst, a level of dread, a desire to leave just as quickly as I've come back even, tho I want to wander into all the beauty and rekindle my relationships with the Ancients.

But I've never had a better life than the one I've made with my loving significant other, Dorothy while in the state of Tennessee, and while I'm not in agreement at all with the politics of ANY area of the South, I have to say that Tennessee has treated me beyond well, allowed me to build a life I only dreamed of when I was eking out an existence in the West.

The recovery journey continues, but once again, I'm reminded with my visit to Santa Cruz, CA this week, that the journey does not include a return to the Golden State....