Journals from the Jungle VI: Still Not Sure if I'm Awake
I gave, and I allowed myself to be taken.
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Welcome to Journals from the Jungle—a series of stories from my recent travels, drawn straight from the pages of my journals. These are reflections on breaking free from a life of structure, convention, and societal expectations, and finding my way back to an embodied, authentic self. Through journeys in nature—and into the nature of self—through adventure, challenge, rest, and the dramatic dismantling of old beliefs, I explore themes of freedom, pleasure, love, and the strength that comes from shedding what no longer serves us. I hope these stories inspire you to embrace change, reclaim your vitality, and live more freely.
February 2024: the final day
It all reminds me of the sea. A sea within. Sometimes, like they were at sunset tonight, the waves are ferocious and wind-whipped, spray thrashing into the sky before a smoldering sun. And the same sea will also, later, be barely whispering—lapping delicately at my toes. Seasons. Swells. Conditioning.
Tonight, the waves seemed to be bearing down on me from a distance. Just far enough away to do no damage, but to threaten it. Not angry, just pure, raw, power. And, it showed its incessant nature—tireless until eternity. Roiling and seething, cooing and sliding, trickling and crashing and all as it pleases, purely.
Tomorrow, for my final day, I will walk to the beach for a swim with the birds. I will bask. I will say my farewell. I will try to smile because it happened.
It feels like a dream. I feel so far away from everything. I feel incredible, really. It’s hard to imagine clothes, ice, walls. And, I’m glad. I’m so desperately thankful for all of this. To have burst beyond myself in so many ways. To have exploded my life—or ignited the potential to—to have exploded my brain. To have changed my voice (always so low and slow and fluid when I sync with the rhythm of places like these that friends comment on it), and: to have changed my mind.
This feels like the farthest out I’ve gone. This feels like the closest I’ve come to losing my mind, which was always “my greatest fear,” and in return, I have found so much. The “O.” Incredible, truly. Profound. Transcendent. Transformative. Etc.
I am stretched. I am … really something and yet only human. That we might all find our versions of this—this other, singular, ultimate dimension.
~
Up early, now trained to dawn rises. I’m happy for more time awake in this anyway.
It’s a soft morning, the day feels gentle, last night’s powerful winds are gone. The jungle coos, whistles, rustles, echoes. There are so many things to see and hear—how wide my senses are now. I too feel soft today, like the breeze. Quiet. Bruised maybe (probably).
My first thought upon waking is how to return to New York without reentering the matrix. I wish I knew the way but I don’t.
Lying here staring at the plants in the sky, noting how I have such an affectionate relationship with them. So clearly I can see the shaggy palm’s personality. And the locust—the way its soft hands drum on the breeze makes me want to hug it.
This place is like an addictive psychedelic. My mind just floats. It’s as if it’s been erased, wiped clean.
I stare. I notice how slow my breathing is. And then I notice the iguana in the same place that I saw him a couple of hours ago when I noticed how slow he was breathing, and tried to match it myself. The only motion on his body is a tiny patch behind his leg revealing the in- and exhalation of his little lungs. We two, simply absorbing.
What pleasure, to lay here in the shade and feel.
The final surf, the final sunset: I arrive to the beach early and it’s a white-hot scene straight out of heaven—shimmering shades of iridescence. We paddle out beyond the break, turtle-rolling and pushing hard. I obey the calls to dig-in and appreciate his occasional shoves at the back of my board, boosting me over the rolling peaks. Once beyond the break, we bob in the setting sun as the clear light begins to turn colors behind pelicans that cruise around us, also surfing. I catch a wave and ride it well, tucking in my back knee as I’ve recently learned to do. Back out we go, and again with all of my might because big sets are arriving. He can see waves on the horizon that I can’t and shouts directions to keep me safe. Paddle north! Straight! North! Push hard! And the most frequent, which I now hear any time I’m reaching an edge of physical capacity: Big one is coming.
Outside of what feels like a mountain range of waves, we sit upright on our boards, recovering. I’m trembling and I sputter, “I appreciate you.” He laughs at me, but kindly. For him, this is simply what he does. For me, it’s life-changing. And then we’re off, paddling again to catch a right that I ride all the way to the end, ecstatic. After as much of this in and out as my muscles can take we ride to the whitewater on our bellies and work there, doing drills. Eventually my arms give out from all of the paddling and he takes to tugging my board around so that I can keep catching waves. I marvel at the strength of the surfers here who can do this all day seemingly without ever tiring. Uno mas, uno mas! I go until I can’t and then I ditch my board and just float—the sunset now fiery and fuschia and more breathtaking every time I look up. I never want this to end.
When I stagger onto the sand, grinning, I say, “I’m still not sure if I’m awake.”
The last morning: I run to the beach to search for my shawl, which I forgot there last night, skipping off in the moonlight. The tide had come all the way into the shore, drawn high by the full moon, and it felt unlikely but possible I might find it—this thin rectangle of sun-bleached fabric that I’ve been inseparable from on every jungle adventure for the last ten years. I believed it would be there, despite the odds.
And it was, water-logged and full of sand and having traveled down the beach a bit, catching on a piece of driftwood. The sea had gotten it, but not taken it. I hang it to dry like a flag and sit in the scene for the final minutes before leaving for the airport.
At the airport: Feeling so entirely different from the state I arrived in. Wonder now how to arrive without returning …
On board: Bruised and pacified. Unsure and also certain. Delirious with memories—the piercing beauty, the sedative light recessions, the heartbreaking poetry of surfing, the trauma of the sea and staggering from it, alive! Alive, alive, alive. The weeping.
The heat, the green, the hum, the growing closeness between my body and that body of land. How it gulps me in, roughly and quickly.
What a gift. I will never be the same. I am that one there, that creature, that nearly naked, tanned and scuffed, strong and sensitive, healthy, feeling, open. That final evening felt like the last bit of myself to give. I went all the way in—into the waves, into the jungle, into the experience, into myself. I said absolutely yes to everything, afraid or otherwise. I gave, and I allowed myself to be taken.
I don’t know many things but I do know that this is what I must move toward now. Four months to finish my book. And then, I go back.
Now, my pen is running out of ink. How f i t t i n g . . .
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Loved this! Scarf at home on the driftwood…💕
Your recounted experience of nature is enchanting, gripping, vivid!