Baptized
I felt like an exhausted pioneer woman bushwhacking through the Amazon, and looking at the trail app on my phone, I was dismayed to see I had made it a whopping .17 miles.
When it comes to water, June was an embarrassment of riches. A baptism of riches. A lake, an ocean, 3 pools, a creek, and a river. God kept seeing fit to dunk me in the water.
I was happy to go under—most of the time. My walk down the creek on my forest retreat near the Rappahannock River basin was a whole ‘nother story.
It’s maybe half a mile to the river, my host Darlene said. And there’s no path. Just take it one step at a time. Notice how it’s like the walk of life, she added. That was the first clue. On this walk of life, there was no sure footing. The creek banks were overgrown with thorny vines and trees, and the creek itself was swiftly running water over hundreds of craggy rocks. I felt like an exhausted pioneer woman bushwhacking through the Amazon, and looking at the trail app on my phone, I was dismayed to see I had made it a whopping .17 miles.
That side of the creek looks easier, I thought until I got to that side of the creek and found it just as hard going, if not harder. I will not give up, I will get to the river, I repeated to myself at least a hundred times tripping my way ever deeper into the forest.
And then, at last, sweaty and broken, I made it to the Rappahanock which was clear straight through to the bottom. I took off my clothes and swam in my bra and underwear, floating on my back, staring up at the sky, pure heaven.
And then it was time to walk back.
I stubbed my toe a few times before falling flat into the creek, scratching the underside of my arm from wrist to elbow and soaking my backpack straight through. My cell phone and journal got sopping wet, a fact I decided to ignore in favor of my sanity.
Because when I fell, I also peed a little, which would’ve been horrifying if it weren’t also so fucking funny. Sometimes as a woman of a certain age, there’s this thing that happens when you cough or laugh too hard—or fall on your face in a creek—where you pee on yourself just a little, inevitably accompanied by the knowledge that you are past your prime, have not done the appropriate number of Kegels, will soon lose all bladder and bowel control, and are generally unfit for polite society.
But to hell with polite society. I wasn’t a failure, I was a badass. I was baptized all right. Into the species of human woman.
In the last few weeks, I’d thought many times of my Dad’s favorite quote by Isak Dinesen: “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” I would just add…and pee.
Unsolicited advice is criticism.
—ancient Alanon proverb.
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I love your trip to the river🤣