Landing on our feet and in good hands, and feeling brave

"All week ... Don’t waste resources trying to fix a problem on the fly. Take your time and the problem may resolve on its own. Or you may change what you want out of the situation. You can always buy the thing later if that turns out to be the right course of action. For now, work at figuring out what IS the right tool for the job or the right desired action or outcome. Spend money if you know you’ll enjoy it for its own sake now. There’s no need to spend ahead just in case. Don’t feather a nest you may not ever move into." - Satori

Pete and I have moved the wagon from the Prairie Front; we did that earlier this week. Tuesday evening just before the Sun set the old Dodge truck with the old white man pulled the vardo built for two onto a small knoll next to the only Cedar on the campground. We are parked with many, many mostly mocha-colored bunnies and been befriended by a gaggle children.

The events and the interactions over the past months have been incredible. I have learned so much about my own internal resiliency, come to appreciate the value of being multiply sensitive to all that is; and know a lot more about what it means 'to be brave.'

As I walked back from town the other morning I met a friend who was so surprised to see me.
"What are you doing (in this part of town)?" She asked as she stopped her cart, and pulled her scarf from her face.
"We're camped just up the road." I said. She interpreted that and asked, "You must be cold."
"Oh no, the vardo is very warm. We're just up the road at the campground."
She paused, then said "You are so brave."
"People have no idea how brave we are." I said.
"No. I have no idea," she said.

Later in the week when Pete and I had spent the afternoon clearing out and cleaning up the kitchen we had used for the past year, a young woman came to talk. I was surprised to see her, and I was very tired from the physical work and the weeks of stressful encounters with people and their choices.
I let fly with a barrage of emotional explosives. Pete told me later the young friend was in tears when he pulled away in Bernadette.

I wrote an apology the next night. It was an apology for the explosion.
"I was overly-tired when you came. But, you did come and that was very brave," I wrote in my email.
This is the same young woman, the only member of the Tilth Council, who ever approached Pete or me about her misgivings about voting to ask us to leave.

We are parked in a campground not far from the Langley Library where I sit at a big screen and keyboard look at the peaks of mountain range and listen to the murmur of others behind me. This is a transitional time once again; our vardo and the stuff that filled the Tilth's kitchen are with us in one form or another. There is still more to clear and sort, but, we are as Satori describes, "not trying to fix a problem on the fly...For now, we are figuring out what IS right."

With the time running out on the library computer, I found something to consider. It's about 'courage' and it's something Maya Angelou has said. It comes close to what 'being brave' feels like to me but not quite.

Brave. How often do you think about that quality, and do you recognize bravery in yourself or people you really know?

 “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”- Maya Angelou