Celerah Hewes: Travel Music Words
  • Journal
  • About
  • Contact

Retreat & Renewal

8/19/2019

0 Comments

 
Disclaimer: This post is a little touchy feely/woo-woo. Prepare yourself.

You know that feeling you get when you just vibe with a place? It’s like your body relaxes and you feel a sense of being right where you should be at that moment in time. A friend described it recently as "being in a harmonic vibration with your surroundings.” It is a lot like when just the right song comes on when you need to heat it the most. I have written about this feeling when I lived in San Francisco and while visiting in Portland. Colorado: not so much.

I have visited Colorado dozens of times. Growing up in Albuquerque, Denver was one of the closest big cities and was often an overnight or weekend road trip. I have camped, visited friends, driven through, had my heart broken, broken others hearts, danced all night, and all stayed in quite a few places. Me and Colorado are well acquainted. Once I even drove 5 and a half hours up with friends just to buy a pack of clove cigarettes when they were all the rage and not available in New Mexico. I have had a lot of fun and some really bad trips, but, in all of those times I have never been able to set my compass on where I am or where I am going. I feel lost, stressed, and panicked whether in traffic or on the open road. Once, I got altitude sickness on a family vacation so bad I had to suck on a can of oxygen (I thought that was a gag in Spaceballs, but it is in fact a real thing. Who knew?). Because I live at about the altitude of Denver and have traveled to many other high altitude places, I will attribute this (perhaps somewhat unfairly, I admit) to the level of unexplained anxiety that I get when visiting Colorado.

I guess given my history with Colorado, it was possibly not the best choice for a weekend retreat to reset after a busy summer. I was attracted by the idea of getting to be an off the grid introvert in a judgement free zone. Originally, I was going to come right before my 40th birthday last April, but life happened and here we are. Maybe I am just trying to hard to make sense of my literal place in the world, but I like to be clear about where I stand with a place when I visit. Don’t get me wrong, Colorado can be one of the most beautiful places (the picture below are evidence of that) and I have had lots of good times. In fact, I will be back in just a few weeks to see one of my favorite bands. But taking this trip, it occurred to me how this year of travel has changed the way I see the places I visit and Colorado came into focus as a place that has never called to me.
I did, however, come to realize that you can still enjoy your time in places where you do not vibe perfectly with your surroundings and the people. Being at a mountain retreat center was a great opportunity to spend some time really unwinding from my daily expectations and habitual patterns. I did yoga, meditation, napped, finally read the book I have been trying to get through for a year, wandered around the woods and fields, and found a healthy appreciation for the quiet and peaceful beauty of a place that feels really in tune with itself. I never assume that a single experience will change me, and this one didn’t; but I did recognize that when it gets quiet, I unplug, and I have just me to keep me company--I have a pretty good time. 

Usually, I keep busy with this or that. My life as a parent and consultant has a long daily to-do list that I have to stay on top of and this retreat forced me to slow down: to observe the world at a different pace and to really face parts of my life that I had been avoiding. I was able to fill the quiet with music or thoughts when I needed them, but I didn’t feel the hunger to keep moving to the next thing or to check in with anyone. I didn’t have a moment of grand clarity or find any new answers for myself (my last trip to Portland did more of that for me). In fact, I made no great discovery or plan of action while away. I did have high levels of frustration and not much sleep for a few days, so it was not a relaxing getaway as much as a challenge to let the present just be what it was and accept that for a short while by not judging myself or others too harshly and not running away. If I left with one grain of wisdom, it was this: I don’t need to run to the mountains (or a record store for that matter) to be present or to enjoy quiet time by myself. I can find these same things no matter where I am. I don’t feel deeply changed after only a couple of days of quiet, but it is remarkable how that simple thing can give you a renewed appreciation for really spending time with yourself and I hope that I can keep holding that as long as possible.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Celerah Hewes

    Just your ordinary introvert exploring and writing about some of the things I love: travel, music, and being human.

    follow me on Instagram
    Listen with Me on Spotify

    Categories

    All
    Poems
    Random
    Travel

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Journal
  • About
  • Contact