One of my favorite places on this earth is the Black Hills of South Dakota. Margie and I moved there in 1992, but had been visiting the area on a regular basis since 1984, and had driven through a few times in the years before that.
Six months after moving there, I was flying in to the Rapid City airport and as we were descending I looked out the window and said to myself, “Ahhh, it feels good to be home!!!!” Feels good to be home? Home? I’d only lived there for 6 months and it feels like home? I had lived in Ohio for 17 years, another 26 years in Michigan, and never had that feeling or thought. We later lived in Tucson, Arizona and have lived in the Nashville, Tennessee area for the past dozen years, and I have never had that spontaneous thought or feeling about coming or returning ‘home’ again, EXCEPT, when I would go back to the Black Hills, which I have managed to do just about every year for the last dozen years or so.
Several years back, I noticed that for several weeks after returning from my most recent trip to the Black Hills, I was feeling sad, depressed, and a little lost. That got me to thinking. What was so special about the “Hills”? If they were that special everyone who ever visited there would feel the same way. Not everyone does.
I see and experience “The Hills” as an incredibly soulful spiritual place. So do many others, but not everyone. So, it would seem that perhaps the answer was somewhere inside me. After much contemplation and consternation, I came upon this realization.
Apparently there is an aspect of my soul, of my personality, that I allow to emerge during my visits to “The Hills”. A spontaneity of spirit and action?. An intimacy with nature? A simplicity, perhaps? Going to places that had always held a spiritual attraction for the native peoples? Immersing myself in the local history of the places and the people? Becoming a ‘student’ of everything I experienced and everyone saw and met? All that and more.
So what is so bad about that? Absolutely nothing. Why did it feel so bad leaving? And then a picture jumped out at me. When I would leave “The Hills” after each visit, it would be as if I would take that part of me, that almost that childlike wondrous, curious part of me, rent a space in a local storage unit, and say, “I’ll be back next year”. Wow!!! What an awareness!!! No wonder I felt sad. Locked down for another year, knowing I might get another chance to emerge next year?
It immediately became clear to me that my life would be more full (and less painful), if, instead of sticking that part of me into a storage locker, I could bring that part of me back to my ‘everyday’ life back home, and allow it to be with me in my daily life.
Once I had that awareness and made that decision the depression in leaving my beloved “Hills” was gone. Today, I celebrate when I have the chance to go, because it is still a very special place for me. I am also able to ‘celebrate’ more often and closer to home because what I learned to ‘turn loose’ in the ‘Hills’ now is a large part of my daily experience.
There are people, myself being one of them, who visit places like the “Hills”, and organize their lives around “I am going to live there someday because there is something special about this place” (whether it makes economic sense of not). Today, when I feel that urge, I am challenged to remember that I can have the same experience anywhere in my world. It is just a matter of whether or not I allow the part of me that I allow to roam free while in “special places” to come out and play, or whether I put it into the “lock-down” storage unit. I am the one with the key.
How about you?
Where is your special place on this planet?
What feels so good about being there?
What part of you do you allow to ‘come out’/give yourself permission to ‘be’?
How much of that can you take back to your everyday life?
Hi Ted, I have been scanning your blog readings and enjoying and taking notes from them. So many insightful thoughts you share. Grateful.
I have some understanding of the special place you have shared about. I too have one it is in Kentucky at Gethsemane(where Thomas Merton lived as a monk). I try to go there once a year more often if possible.
I recall coming to a similar conclusion as you after one of my spiritual journeys there. I thought why can’t I find that spiritual connection and serenity,healing back in Nashville. So I have ventured to various chapels around this area. I have sat in contemplation and prayer and though I have found some moments of connection with God.
I just believe when one has found their spiritual place in a sanctuary like the Black Hills or Gethsemane it is meant to be our holy, set apart place where no one or no thing can distract our communion with the purest part of ourself with the purest connection with our Higher Power.
Thats what I think. blessings b