Honoring the Stones

Davenport, CA

Ritual heals me. It’s how I mark the years, honor the Earth, and meet the nature spirits. Ceremony is key for renewal. All peoples hold ceremony and rites of passage. Since losing my home, I’ve been using a ceremony where stones are collected to represent the blocks toward healing from the wildfire, as described in, Healing What Grieves You, by Julie Lange Groth. The first rock I found was for the shame I felt at leaving my animals behind, followed almost immediately by one of guilt when it came to the way I treated the house I lost. After that, I spent several months curating a further pile of grief stones and morning after morning I talked to them, as suggested by the author. She believes that by sharing my grief with these stones, with time I’d feel my heart lighten, because my pain would be transferred to the stones. What a kind thing for stones to do.

I chatted with my grief stones each morning for months. After shame and grief, I added anger, loss of community and friends, cost of living in Santa Cruz, and the loss of my trees. When no more stones appeared in my way, I found myself visiting and revisiting each one, trying to make sense of their purpose in my life. In early April, the day came, and I felt ready to release them. Groth suggested throwing them into the ocean, or a large body of water, and I so I drove to Davenport, the dreamy beach town north of Santa Cruz where I’ve spent many weekends escaping my family so I could write. I placed them in a nice satchel, along with offerings of flowers, tobacco, and sage from my friend Blu’s garden, and hiked to the beach.

Immediately, I remembered why I can’t leave this state for good. I might not be willing to play the game of “do whatever the cool girl wants” to stay here, but I do love this land and no matter where life takes me, a part of my heart will remain here. It’s California, after all, as songwriter John Craigie says, “Wherever you roam, you’ll always want me.” I hiked down to the sea within the canyon along the San Vincente Creek, the same creek that leads to my neighborhood way up in the mountains, found a sunny nook in the rocks above where the creek met the ocean, and began my ceremony. I was instructed to take each rock and say its name, and then speak aloud all the thoughts I had. When I was done with my last conversation with the rock, I was to toss the grief stone into the sea. Seemed easy enough. I closed my eyes and let the breeze tickle my face. After taking a few deep breaths, I opened the sack containing the grief stones and grabbed the first one.

It was Guilt for not loving my house. A slab of my kitchen counter that I’d tripped over while visiting the property, it reminded me of how much I hated the cold, drafty place when I first moved there. I spent as much money remodeling that house in the woods as I spent total on my first home in Illinois. I bitched about the price, the construction, the fact that it wasn’t permitted properly, only to realize when it was a pile of ash that I actually loved it. I miss that house so much. As a homemaker, I’d created a shelter from the storm for my family there, the nest that I raised my sons to adulthood in. Oh, I’d give anything to still be living in it. All of the negative feelings needed to be let go. The original owners were just trying to build what they could afford on the most beautiful property ever, within the very restricted guidelines of a state that even in 1977 had its head up its ass when it came to building codes. I judged the original owners at every turn but now I understand and I am humbled. House-I-Lost, it wasn’t your fault you cost more than twice the house I left in Illinois, and it certainly wasn’t your builder’s fault that the Planning Commission deems itself lord and savoir of the land. I’m humbled now and so sorry I ever judged any of you for the insanity called building a home in Santa Cruz.

I threw Guilt into the ocean and ironically pulled the Cost of Living in Santa Cruz rock out of the bag next. I lost my house during covid-19 which has created a housing market unlike any other. The strange scarcity that drives the decisions right now is surreal. From the increasing cost of lumber across the nation to the fear buying going on in every state, now is not the time to be displaced, but displaced I am. I hated this place from the beginning for the housing costs. Things are only worse at the moment. A home in the town closest to me was listed for $1.45 million. It sold for $1.91. Cash. They went over the asking price for more than I sold my entire home in Illinois for when I came here. Nevermind the building costs. Homes similar the one I lost in Bonny Doon rarely sold for $1 million before this unreality we now live in, so if I build a small home for that price will I get it back when I go to sell in a few years? It will be a new home that’s insulated, but this isn’t Los Gatos people. Something is broken and I don’t want to be a part of it.

As I held this stone in my hands, I gazed at the beauty of the creek flowing into the river and the layers of golden brown strata in the canyon that surrounded me. Above flew sea gulls and pelicans dove into the sea. Our human insanity isn’t California’s fault. The land has always been beautiful and there used to be a way to live here without being poor. Now tents and beat up RVs line the main highway in our town. People sleep in the Garfield Park courtyard, while a 600 square foot bungalow across the street lists for $900,000 and will probably go over the asking price. This creek, this ocean, this canyon didn’t tell us to live in such greed. The land feeds the birds and other animals willingly, with nothing expected in return. I gazed at the pelicans as they floated along the waves and considered the passage in the Bible where Jesus asks us why we fret so much. If God so loves the birds that they are clothed and fed, why shouldn’t it be the same for us? Because we cut ourselves off from God on Earth, put him in the clouds, uninterested in nature, and decided to conquer her instead. The land is alive and wants to be loved, not resented. I will not participate in the story of scarcity. I will continue to believe the land will provide. It has so far, I don’t see why it won’t continue. I clench the rock in my hand and wait for a wave to crash into the canyon and then toss it away to the ocean.

Next grief stone up was Loss of Community and Friends. Even before my home burned, Covid had already ushered in this sad reality. Between the high taxes, shitty power grid, and insane cost of living, we’ve put up with the nonsense of California in order to be near our friends. There’s a way of living in the community here that is unlike any other and when we went from a large, magnificent, fun group to small pods where someone was always left out, the foundation began to crack for me. But my husband’s friends, his ping pong guys, never really left him. After the fire took him from their side of the mountain to Los Gatos over the hill, I could see how he suffered being separated from them. I live in a beautiful house right now, in the heart of a fun town, and Walt and I have made the best of it. We don’t consider ourselves displaced, but we are. We not in our community, we’re over the hill, thrust here by fire. We didn’t chose this. Fortunately, Steve and Michelle play music on their porch sometimes and we drive over the crazy mountain highway to watch from the street. My friends Regan, Regina, Sarah, Sam, a new fire friend Lorilee, come to Los Gatos to have a meal or shop. The Hoovers are always up for pizza and good beer on the porch. They’re still there, my little pod. But the community is scattered, no longer one. The double whammy of a pandemic followed by a fire has loosened the bonds and I mourn that. What was once a storybook friend group is now an essay about grief.

As I turned that stone around in my hand, it dawned on me that for those people who have remained in my life and made the effort to be there during both the pandemic and now the fire, we’re even closer than ever before. The Battle Mountain Ladies grief group, a club of total loss fire sisters that no one really wants to be in, the Hoovers, Clarksons, VanHeckes, Regan and her husband Jim, the men and women of the BDGLC helping us clean up the land, the music of Steve, Michelle, Jess, and Charlie when you need it most, these relationships are actually stronger than before. It may be a scattered community physically, but it’s bonded in our love that grows out of grief. What I thought I’d lost has actually grown deeper and transformed into something sacred. I do not need to mourn the loss of community, instead a new community is being born. One I love from this place I now stand, on the other side of such loss. I kiss this stone and toss it into the ocean, grateful for the chance to be here at this moment in time with these incredible people.

Next, I pull Anger out of the bag. Anger at the fire for consuming our mountain. Anger at CalFire for letting this happen as they watched from the sidelines. Anger at PG&E for cutting down the few living trees we had left without our permission. Anger at the county for standing by as PG&E clear cut an acre of my land and now have the audacity to throw in regulation after regulation just so I can return to land that I technically own and lived on just eight months ago. How dare they tell me I can’t put up tiny home on wheels and a hot tub and call it good? Why treat my loss as new development? It’s not new development, it’s rehoming a family for goodness sake. It really shouldn’t be this hard to help us get home, should it? Anger at California as I paid my huge tax bill to them a few weeks ago, but the state still hasn’t fixed roads washed out in the 2017 rainstorms, has allowed our electrical grid to become a public safety hazard that must be turned off when the wind blows too hard, all the while failing to use our tax dollars to get the homeless into shelters. The richest people on earth live here in California, but it feels like a third world country.

This rock is hard for me. It’s not just that I’ve lost so much—from the community to trees to pets to my own shelter—I’ve also lost a certain sense of innocence. I used to believe that the government would take care of me. That the state knew what it was doing. That CalFire would come to put out the fire. That PG&E would ask first before cutting the trees. None of this is true. We are utterly alone and that is terrifying, something I didn’t realize before being left to the flames. I supposed it’s a lot like realizing your parents are full of shit or Santa Claus isn’t real.

I know that I can’t heal the madness in my own mind if I stay angry. Daddy isn’t coming to save the day and in the end, this is what it means to grow up. We are a community species, but at the moment the procedures we have in place to hold us together are falling apart. I need to trust that what will be created in this vacuum will be better, more organized, and more grown up. One can only hope. There’s nothing I can do about CalFire, PG&E, State Farm, or the state of California. They will do what they will do. My plan to build an apiary and throw a few tiny homes for me and my family, along with a hot tub where we watch the now beautiful view we have of the night sky, is a good one. A great wave crashes up, almost reaching my toes, and I plop this grief stone gently into the water as Mother Ocean reaches up to take it from me.

There are only two stones left and my chest begins to feel heavy. I pull out the smaller of the two and rub it between my fingers. It’s a polished stone, one I found in the place where our house used to be. My sons collected such things from cheesy souvenir shops when they were young, and this one had survived the fire, untouched. I’d chosen this rock to represent the Loss of Tree People. I’ve written so much about them already, but it never gets easier. Losing an entire forest that you loved like your own brothers and sisters is utterly devastating. Through biodynamic gardening, I’d learned to listen to the trees, shrubs, and plants. There was more going on there than met the eye, and Airbnb review after Airbnb review for Big Trees Cabin revealed that many of my guests felt it as well. That forest was ALIVE and spoke to them in their dreams and hearts. I had several return guests and they always asked how I made the place so special.

“I don’t do anything. I let the trees and the goats do all the work,” I’d tell them.

They have died and many spirits of the land have gone with them. Yet, there are new beings waiting in the wings. The work now is to honor the dead by creating a world for the living. We planted redwood saplings and our attention is an invitation for them to grow and join us in this endeavor. The firs and madrones have released their seeds and I need to pay attention to see who has taken in the earth and nourish them in their attempt to join life in what’s left of the forest. There is soil to build and earthworms to welcome, as well as bacteria, fungi, and those yucky creepy crawlers. I have water on the property now and I can finally tend to the garden herbs, and bring manure, mycelium, and compost tea to nourish those underground beings. There’s so much life churning under my feet and from there, the future will grow. Pollinator gardens, orchards, vines. I can already see them, even if they’re years off.

I mourn the trees, but they are wise and they have spoken. “Turn your eyes to the little ones, for they are the future.”

I squint at the sun and smile before I release my tree friends into the sea.

All that’s left in my satchel is Shame. I wrote about finding this rock and there isn’t much more to say except that it was heavy and when I hefted it into my hands, I felt the need to walk along the cliff beside the sea with it. Leaving the animals behind will haunt me for some time yet. Perhaps forever. We camped up on the property the other week and were invited to visit a friend down the mountain for a bonfire. This was very exciting, our first visit “home” and it felt a little normal. An hour into the event though, I began to feel a fluttering in my stomach that moved into my heart. I couldn’t relax because we’d left the dogs in the camper, windows cracked, super comfy, and safe, but alone. I hadn’t left any animals alone there since the fire and all of those had died. I tried to focus on my friends, engage in conversation, but it was impossible. I had to be near the dogs. What if someone took them? What if someone drove away with the trailer with them in there? What if a tree fell on the trailer? I made my husband take me home.

It’s a shame, isn’t it?

I clutched that stone to my body like a beloved child. How do I release this? How do I let go of Sebastian, Abigail, Barttimus, and my failure to do the right thing? How do I feel safe there ever again? These are big questions and I’m not there yet. However, it is time to forgive myself. Focusing on my failure is holding me back from embracing the amazing story taking place in my life. I want to walk into the portal of grief. I don’t have to wait until I feel better to let go of my shame. I might never feel “better” whatever that means. I can accept that I’m not perfect. I made a horrific mistake, one I can never undo. It was time to toss my shame into the sea.

For some reason, I felt frozen. At that moment, a boy came climbing down the cliff, startling me. At first, I was annoyed. How dare this human invade my sacred ceremony? But as he nimbly scaled the rocky cliffside, I heard Sebastian in my heart.

“You’re taking too long. Throw it in the ocean, time’s up.”

Tears now running down my face, I turned and thrust the heavy rock into the sea. It crashed into the water, sending a splash of its own into the foam of the roaring sea. I can only wonder what that boy thought about an old woman holding a huge white rock, crying at the seaside, but it is Santa Cruz, and strange things are always happening here. He probably didn’t even bat an eye.