Following The Deer Trails - Texas Hill Country, 2000

A few years ago my inner guidance directed me to quit my job in Denver, telling me that as soon as I did that I would be offered another place to live. I was also told that I should dedicate my time to writing poetry. I went in to speak with my boss the next morning, and she was amazed and found herself laughing delightedly at the way I was living. There was no problem with the resignation, since I was a cleaner and wall-patcher on a refurbishing job, and easy to replace.
When I got home, the phone rang. It was my friends Angie and Kate in Texas, saying, "Do you think you're all done with Texas? Might you have some more work to do here?" Angie said, "I'd like to offer you a place to stay, with my husband and me in our home."
There it was - my next place to be. Always grateful for a roof over my head during those years of wandering at Spirit’s direction, I accepted. I knew I'd be living there in the hill country of East central Texas, in a small wooded community on the shores of Lake Travis, to write poetry. That was that. I packed up my little '94 Nissan and we headed on down to the hill country.
As I settled in at Angie's, I began a daily routine of wandering the woods, meeting trees and various flowers and creatures, always following the deer trails. The scent of the cedars (junipers) is a magical perfume that changes the heart for the better, and frees the mind. Mixed with sunshine and the scent of the limestone and soil, the perfume takes you one way; mixed with rain and the scent of wet kaliche clay, it takes you another way. I love that hill country magic.
I found different special seats for poetry-writing. One was like a chair made of two slabs of limestone, with a cedar behind it for fragrant shade and poem-power. Another was the extended branch of one of those dancing live-oaks, a tree which stood on a lightly wooded hill overlooking a valley. Some days if the wind was right I could hear golfers bragging and teasing each other in that wonderful Texas way. That always tickled me. One day I was sitting on a sun-warmed slab of limestone when a big shiny black rhinoceros beetle approached my toe in a very aggressive manner. I realized I was taking up its territory - and in a land-rights lawsuit, if beetles could sue humans, I was in the wrong. I'm guessing that, from the beetle's point of view, my toe was the offender. It was of a size the beetle could relate to, an attackable size. To test my theory, I moved my toe over. The beetle followed. Deciding that wisdom is indeed the better part of valor - and realizing that that beetle was not going to give up - I moved.
I used to carry my little Yamaha recorder with me in case the trees called for a flute tune. Since I have Celtic blood, it's natural for me to relate to trees in this way. There was one occasion when I spotted a tornado funnel in the distance, and I decided to try out flute-playing as a way of making friends with tornadoes. I played with my heart in a friendly state, open and joyful - no fear - and found myself dancing there in that grove of cedars, rain falling, flute music flowing - and after a while the tornado went along somewhere else and did other things.
There are times when trees stop me and pour divine love into me, and I cannot move or think, but only receive. That happened a good deal during this period in the hill country. Over time, the trees have taught me about the need for humans to stop being so human-centric, and to allow themselves to merge with trees, and to shapeshift into other forms as well, for better understanding of how the planet and the universe work. Trees have told me that only when humanity is able to merge with the tree vibration will it be able to truly make and keep peace. Let it be so.