The pleasure of the Happy Hill's body-warmer wall - James, Mariella and Emma soaking up the heat on our walk down to the port :-)
For the last few months now I've been reading a wonderful book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés "Women Who Run With the Wolves". It is one of those books that seems to find you exactly at the right time (so thanks to Steve for being an agent in its finding me!). It is a profoundly insightful exploration of the female psyche through study of fairy tales and myths, and talks a lot about creativity and what it means to be authentic to your true self. It's really inspiring.
Like the title suggests Estés often compares women to wolves, who she describes as very sociable, sensitive and creative, but also well able to function alone. Estés take on the word alone is particularly interesting to me in the context of this journey, when I'm so often asked by folk whose facial expression at the time tends to be one of mild worry and confusion and : "So you're traveling alone?!"
In order to converse with the wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the word. Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, p.292 Women Who Run With Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Rider 1992
Estés also talks of the function of focused, purposeful solitude as palliative and preventative, a cure for fatigue and weariness and as an "oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life". As well as making time for and appreciating the moments of solitude within our daily lives, it's also great to celebrate the solitude that comes with lone traveling.
This solitude of the traveler has been a topic I've been thinking about a lot over the last weeks, particularly in the week leading up to my leaving our own pack of magnificent wolves back in the UK :-) As I said so many times to so many of you, I will miss you hugely while I'm travelling, and as I said to Hannah a few times, considering that community is such an important theme in my life and my work, it is a little odd that my inner drive is moving so far away from my pack and all the people I love. But that is what it is doing (for now!) and so far I'm happy to be feeling so well connected still with you lovely folk thanks to the wonders of wi-fi.
When I look back to the nine months cycling in Central America I remember it as a trip full of this kind of fertile solitude in the pedalling periods on the road and I bet a lot of you fellow travellers can relate to the feeling of personal quest that accompanies a lone journey. The solitude of those pedalling months was hugely necessary at that particular time, the journey was perhaps my personal "vision quest" as the Native Americans (and Steve!) would call it. ;-) It was healing and full of learning and in that trip's projects and friends lie many of the seeds of this current trip.
I also always laugh about how my cycling fitness got less over the trip because as time went on I would stop for longer and longer periods at a time, like the three months painting the Los Cobanos mural with José at Kali's Kalindigo in El Salvador. And I'd see the reason for stopping more and more as enjoying the friendships and the temporary belonging in a community. So from this Valparaío base where I am with two good old friends from my wolf pack, Emma and James, I am looking forward with a lot of excitement to both the periods of contemplative solitude and those of joining with the communities that I'll visit as I project-hop along my way. Plus there are a couple of special wolves I'll be reconnecting with in a few places, yay! :-)
The theme of wolves actually came to mind after learning the Spanish phrase for seal "lobo del mar" which translates as 'sea wolf'. Em, James, Marialla and I went out on tourist boat "Daddy Valparaíso" to take a gander at some seals and pelicans, admire the curve of the Valparaíso bay from offshore and look up in awe at the enormity of the army boats and the cruiser Arcadia whose crew and passengers exchanged energetic waves and photograph-taking with ours.
Mariella proudly told us that Chile had never been to war (Em tells me not since the 'War of the Pacific' in the 19th century) and that the maintenance of the fleet of battle ships we were passing was paid for by 1% of Chile's income from oil. Taxes taken from personal income goes towards social security, health and a pension. Em and I love the Spanish word for this, 'jubilación', as it seems to express the joy that you might feel on retirement (Auntie Mags, I bet you can relate to this with your time freed up now to enjoy grand-motherhood with gorgeous wee Cora!), although Mariella was quick to point out that the amount of the state pension is ridiculously low so not enough to live on and those that can pay into private pensions as in the UK.
A final thought on the wolf theme is the memory of our final day of our Therapeutic Communication course with Kids Company where we were invited to each blindly pick a folded paper from a collection of animals and descriptions of their importance to Native Americans. I was surprised and happy to find the wolf description sat in my lap as I read of the teacher quality that Native Americans identified with wolves. This was a happy moment to mark the end of a year where my confidence in my teaching ability has slowly emerged and grown as I ran the animation workshops at the Urban Academy.
Back in October Uncle James shared an eloquent eulogy speech for our Granddad where I was moved by his identifying our Grandad's love of teaching (and traveling) as having passed along to so many of us. It brings a warm feeling to think that teaching connects me even stronger to my family pack, where so many are teachers within their own fields: Mum, Maria, James, Jo, Marianne, Matthew, Daniel, Jonathan, Anthony, Jem, Margaret. in fact my second last evening in the UK I had the pleasure of visiting Auntie Maria's primary school St. Peter's Catholic Primary School in Leamington whose walls are covered in brilliant artwork from the kids and uplifting, informative and educational posters. I was hugely inspired by the visit, particularly by the bottle-top fish mural made by the children and the value and love for the children that you can feel all around from Maria and her staff.
So to all my fellow wolves out there,
and to my pack whom I love,
a big wave of the tail from Valparaíso
and a motivational quote from Auntie Maria's head-teacher's door:
Nothing Happens unless first a dream.
:-)
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