Saltwater Heals Everything

I’d thought that moving into yet another rental would have been hard. As soon as we began packing up the Los Gatos home, memories of last August and the flight from our land into a new town began to haunt me. Right after the fire, I couldn’t sleep. Displacement from your home so violently lives within your body for some time and the move from rental number one to rental number two definitely triggered that trauma. Dealing with our stuff, getting our deposit back from the previous landlords, connecting with the new landlords, and working with insurance to set the whole thing up, raised my level of anxiety to a high point. Top that off with a cross-country road trip and it’s no wonder I had a panic attack in the hotel two nights into our vacation. Everything felt like it did those few weeks after I learned our home was gone. My skin felt thin, my throat tight. I knew I was safe, that this wasn’t the same situation, and yet my body acted as though I was still fleeing from the fire.

I’d been in this new rental only a week when I felt the shift; the homesickness lessened within my heart, my body began to relax, and my mind cleared. I was hit with a ton of crap to do—three different dramas with PG&E, two contractors to get lined up, a trencher to rent, grading and gravel delivered, a huge insurance check lost in the mail, and the regular stuff that a homemaker must do after being gone for two weeks like laundry, grocery shopping, and paying the bills. So I was surprised when a few days ago, I realized that I was quite satisfied. I love this new home. My office is once again in a closet, this time under the stairs so I feel a bit like Harry Potter, but I’m less than a five minute walk to the ocean. While walking the dogs, I discovered a quiet trail along the ocean, away from the touristy part of town. Even better, my friends Regina and Joel also just moved to Capitola and yesterday we explored the area together, making a new friend at the brewery as we honored the year anniversary of the lightning storm by celebrating—not the loss of our homes, but our good luck at landing in the same neighborhood for this next year.

I’ve taken to coffee by the ocean in the mornings before the village wakes up and only the surfers and fishermen are milling about. Capitola Village is the idyllic, storybook Northern California town you see in the movies.  As I sip my coffee, young adults in their San Jose State and UCSC sweatshirts prep the beach for Junior Guards, their skin tanned and blond streaks in their hair, talking about drunken escapades from the night before. Two old surfers bitching about how too many people surf their lane now that covid has kept them from other activities. The water is like glass and the waves aren’t great, but there’s a couple taking surfing lessons, unable to pop up onto their boards when their instructors tell them to. Coastal fog covers the land and it reminds me of Cape Cod in the winter; women dressed in sweatshirts and Uggs, men wearing stocking caps and puffy Patagonia coats, grasping their warm coffee as they watch their children run in the sand. They have concerts at the beach on Wednesdays and plenty of quaint shops, just like Los Gatos had, only funkier. While Los Gatos was stylish and manicured, Capitola is more like a wild English garden—a little unkept but comfy all the same. Yet again, I find myself surrounded by $2 million teardowns, but I’m already at home. I can’t afford to live here, but I’m eager to enjoy my year with these folks none-the-less.

The gypsy in me is elated.

As I watched a teenaged running club sprint past, I felt a sense of déjà vu, like I’d known this was where I was going all the long. I allow my thoughts to quiet and my eyes to relax as I stare out to sea. It’s there, in the place where all things are always happening, when I begin to wonder, what if all of this is the answer to a prayer, or a set of wishes, three very diametrical desires, coming to fruition? When I was twenty, I wanted to live in a condo in Chicago, but after my first son was born, we had to move to the suburbs because we couldn’t afford a home in the city. I recall the pain of that very sudden move, we hadn’t planned to become pregnant, and yet there he was, on his way. Leaving the city was hard, unexpected, and felt like I’d been ripped away from something just beginning, a life-long desire cut off by practicality and necessity. Later, as a young Waldorf mom of two crazy boys, I’d find myself dreaming of creating an eco-village; something for land, animals, and people to live together in intergenerational communities. It would be this desire that led me to eventually move to California and discover biodynamic agriculture. Through it all, I’ve longed for the freedom to travel more, to be less of a homeowner and more of a gypsy. This too was quite strong in my early twenties, but parenthood and endless debt to keep a roof over our heads put an end this dream before it even really started. Then last summer, a fire raged across our mountain while CalFire fell back and watched it all burn.

A year later, I am creating a tiny home village for my sons and I on an apiary and wildlife sanctuary dedicated to learning how to live as the hands of the Earth. I’m also able to buy that condo in Chicago. Moreover, I got to live a year in Los Gatos, a town I’d long admired and something that never would have happened if we hadn’t lost our home. Now I’m living at a village by the sea. I wonder where we’ll venture next, it’s a big world after all, and if we don’t plow all our money into shelter, that world could be ours to explore.

Some say that your thoughts create your reality, but most of us dismiss such a thing. However, what if this is actually true? What if the human capacity to wish is the magic of this world and that wishes do come true even if they take decades to blossom? I’m not one who thinks everything happens for a reason, but if everything happens because I’ve longed for it in some powerful way, then right thought becomes an imperative, not just for me, but for all of us as a whole. I doubt my own insignificant longings created the wildfire that destroyed 900+ homes, but there’s a part of me that wonders if it’s coincidence that lightning and fire are consuming the state where social media was born—a public place where we’re all sharing our thoughts willy nilly and sometimes in not such nice ways. As we implode and argue and hate online, is it any wonder nature is imploding with us? Could we be that connected?

I wonder, I wonder.

I also wonder about what else my heart desires. What other dreams have I asked for? Are they too coming forth, just in a manner so slowly, it’s hard to notice the manifestation as it happens? I have no clue, but my new friend, Lorilee, another wildfire survivor, asked me a few months ago if I was at the place where I was grateful for the fire. Back then, I said no. Today, as I sit on my new porch and smell the salty air, I think I can answer in the affirmative. Yes, I am grateful for the fire, not because I learn through pain, but because it has allowed me to experience things, towns, and opportunities that once lived only in my dreams.

What’s that saying? Be careful what you wish for or you just might get it.

I think they also say that with every boon, there’s a price.

What exactly is the story my mind keeps playing and is it a story I wish to manifest?

Am I even paying attention?

On this day, the day when lightning struck and changed everything as I knew it, I wonder.

I wonder.