I no longer wanted to be a homeowner. Gave away mucho, mucho stuff. The items I placed in storage were really a litmus test of things I’d cherished over the last 22 years.
Such as?
My found gifts of nature’s bounty; adorning walls, filling corners. Multi-pronged racks of deer antlers shed by bucks passing through in the spring, usually sniffed out by my late dog. Each time I found a rack of antlers, it was like Christmas and Hanukkah combined – whoopee!! Stones and rocks grabbing my attention while walking in the woods. Couldn’t take my eyes off them, so home they came. Beautiful nature-sculpted cedar sticks and branches from my forest frolics. Yep, there goes Jan again, hauling things out of the woods. Smile…
Certainly not forgetting the glass bowl of fool’s gold, collected one by one by one while exploring nearby gravel roads over the years. Little gold specks surprisingly peeking out from the darkest of stones. (A needed reminder of the hidden light in my life.)
Living beside the woods, but filling the inside of my home with their treasures. Sources of deep wholeness when I needed reminding of something larger than myself.
ALL these pieces of nature’s bounty were lovingly wrapped by a friend and placed in storage for 3 months until a renovated duplex opened up. (Sidebar: I can call someone else now when something breaks, or needs to be resuscitated. Hallelujah!)
In the new place, still-filled boxes were sequestered in the kitchen. The spacious corners were yet to be occupied by my precious sticks, stones, and antlers.
What the ….?
They-don’t-want-to-come-back-out. Nope. They don’t. Nothing is calling from those boxes saying “I need light, I need light. Please let me out!” Nothing. Some of the beautiful nature-sculpted sticks are still bundled in a kitchen corner.
Such a knock upside my head when I realized I’d been pulling a Gollum! (From Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring.) Gollum desperately intoning “my precious, my precious” in reference to the power of The Ring. Without any desire to emulate Gollum, (but there I was, doing just that) referring to my home filled with nature’s bounty as “my precious.” That aura of “precious” energy seems to have gone poof.
What to do….
Nothing. Wait. Trust. The light will return in its own time and in its own unique form. Meanwhile, I have brilliant vistas of trees I can view from all my windows. Even with bare walls and empty corners, looking at the trees through the windows brings a sense of peace. For the moment, that’s enough…
You tell our individual stories as you write, Jan! So true!