Earlier this month, I took a brief trip back to the San Francisco Bay Area, and what a revelation. It was nearly 4 years to the day since I had left, and I had briefly returned two years ago, but this time was different.
This time, I wanted to move back.
When I reminded people that I’d been gone four years, they said, incredulously, “What? Four years?” The time warp thing seems to be a theme. No matter where I’ve gone lately, whenever I or anyone else mentions “the past four years,” the words “it all seems like a blur” come tumbling out.
Because, doesn’t it feel to you, too, dear reader, that we were in a kind of “time out of time” or missing time episode? It is as though a two-year chunk totally collapsed in on itself; we have very little to account for it.
What the heck actually happened during that mysteriously disappeared period? I think you know what I’m talking about.
Whatever the case, during my trip, I noticed that I had changed dramatically since 2019 (even looking at the year brings up the unbelievability factor that 2019 could have been four years ago). Do you feel the same for yourself? I also sensed that the Bay Area had changed significantly. It felt to me as though everything had to some degree been scoured.
It seems that some of the crud that I had accumulated in California had cleared off me. And I felt like I was going back more to a happy terra incognita rather than a place where there were old energies, old people, old issues. I felt strangely renewed.
Part of it was that the rain had returned to Northern California after a hiatus of what feels like forever. This past season they’ve had torrents, buckets, boatloads, lakes, full of water return, filling the aquifers to overflowing. And I thought to myself “Wow, the Bay really broke through whatever that dastardly barrier was and brought the water back to itself.” Pure magic. The negative forces couldn’t keep the desiccation going forever.
I mean, we’ll see how it goes, but it felt to me like the Bay had been transformed and purified ~ first in the fire, and then the water.
Mt. Tamalpais towered above, majestically glistening in the sun. The redwoods were like steadfast dear lovers who will never stop loving and whom I will never stop being in love with.
Old friends rose up from the ground like trusted and true family members, restoring the closeness that my biological family on the East Coast has not been able to sustain with all of the events of the time warp. (And my dear apologies if you are one of my friends whom I just was not able to contact in that brief window… next time!).
So I asked myself… isn’t California my home after all?
The beauty and aliveness of Northern California seems to be beckoning me back after this needed relocation in the Berkshires in MA, which has been a place of quiet, anonymity, rest, and restoration… even safety during the events of the last many months.
Now I feel that I need the vitality of Northern California again. (As I do so, I notice lots of other people talking about “relocating” once again, too… are you in that number?) And I am consulting with my best allies regarding all of my travel, the Faeries, about how I will co-create this. The cost of living seems so astronomical there, and yet… I am opening to possibilities.
So I put this out there to you frankly: If you know of any resources, opportunities, ways to help me get back to California, please float them my way. We are all in this great collective soup together, and perhaps something will emerge.
Meanwhile, for those of us in the global north, may we continue to enjoy the sweet unfolding of spring in its many manifestations. With the re-greening of the world comes the re-greening of our hearts.