Doing Nothing

The Camino Letters continues on in my absence.  I am older.  Malakai is all grown up.  What an amazing child she is.  She has been, since day one, a very wise one.

I get emails from readers in response to the book, I respond.



And the bits of magic that sometimes spark into daily life continue on.

The Camino was really just something that happened to me in the middle of the rest of it.  And in those particular days, with those particular feelings and circumstances, I happened to write some letters to some friends. A point in time.  A speck of dust.  A note struck each day, before the day passed to the next.

Some of those friends have died, or are dying, and time marches...  it does, with all of its ache and joy and endings.

It's important not to be stuck, as Proud Woman taught.  Remain slick, not sticky, so that things fall as they should. 

When a Bird Falls from the Sky

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There are some stories that just need to hang for a while – as threads and beginnings of the same fugal looping of life, and the inexplicable moments that sometimes come in small and blinding flashes.

The story of the hawk that was in my freezer when I returned from the Camino is a long story. I knew what it was, and I had been told what I was to do with it.

But I don’t climb high, that is not something that I do.

That hawk stayed in the freezer until after I happened upon an eagle one warm June day in 2010, when I was out for a walk in the woods searching for a railway tunnel with my friends Harold and Marleen,

These birds, these birds.

Harold was my witness, he said so.

And then there is the strange and almost-not-believable story of a book club and a little brown thrush, feet crossed on the threshold with a still-vibrating warmth in its belly.

What?   I said as I turned to face her.

Is she alive?  She said.

Did you know her?  I said.

Yes.  She said.  A long time ago.  

Did my first feather come from your hawk?  I said.  

Yes.