It always takes me a while before I can write about the desert, after I’ve been in it. This time, it’s taken even longer than usual. Yes, I’ve been back in New Mexico again; this time, teaching a workshop focused on place – ‘A Psyche the Size of Earth’ – just outside of Santa Fe.
I arrived at the little house onsite where I was to stay for the three nights of the workshop, to find a snakeskin on my doorstep. And so it began.
Because last time I wrote about being in this desert, I wrote about my experience of learning to fly in New Mexico, back at the end of the last millenium. And about how that process was translated into my first novel, The Long Delirious Burning Blue. So finding the snakeskin made me laugh, because here’s an extract from the opening page of that novel:
‘I have my own take on skins. It’s a simple one: they’re there to be shed. Like the desert rattlesnake, which sheds its skin two or three times a year. To enable it to grow; to remove parasites. It’s a process of renewal, you see. It rubs its nose along the ground until it pushes the skin up over its head – and then it just crawls right on out of it. Leaves it there: a ghostly, inside-out skin. There are millions of them, all over the desert.
A sea of shed skins.
It’s just like your selkies, don’t you see? – your mythical seal-women. Shrugging off their skin for one night each month, at the peak of the moon and the tides. Shedding that skin, they become another creature entirely. Seal becomes woman; woman becomes seal.
Ah, you and your fairy stories.
The truth is that we humans are so much less efficient. We shed our skins piece by piece, flake by flake. Slowly, over time; slowly enough that we never even notice that it’s happening. Did you know that we shed and re-grow the outer cells of our skin every twenty-seven days? I’m talking facts again, now, you see: I’ve always been more comfortable with facts. And I did some research, after that last letter you sent. By the age of seventy an average person will have lost one hundred and five pounds of skin.’
So hello, beautiful shed skin of a Red Racer snake. Yes, I’m still shedding skins too. Through menopause and on into elderhood and there are skins left to be shed; journeys still to be undertaken. And now that I stand on the threshold of beginning to write a new book – a nonfiction book about menopause and elderhood in women, which will be entitled ‘Hagitude’ – I am thinking about all that. About the skins we still have to shed, the journeys we still have to undertake, the transformations we still have to undergo, in the last third of our lives. Our culture tells us that we’re all washed up, washed out after menopause. Excuse me if I don’t think so. Excuse me if I actually think that we’re potentially at our very best, our ripest, our feistiest, our wisest and our most wonderful.
And so I’m here, in the desert again, looking for clues. Because as I am saying over and over again in all of the workshops in all of the states I am visiting, place is the greatest teacher of all. Places teach us everything, if we let them. Places, not humans, have taught me everything I really needed to know. Everything. Without exception.
Two nights in, and a band of wild-as-can-be coyotes break into the ranch and end up right outside my bedroom window. Not just howling, not just yapping, but singing some crazy, wild, playful, jazz-inspired howl-and-yap dancing song that makes me want to jump out of bed and run off with them, off into the cool-skied desert, with its cicadas and shooting stars.
Oh yes – let’s not take ourselves too seriously now that we’re becoming elder. Let’s not think we’ve arrived. Let’s not believe in our own mythology – let’s howl. And yap. And play.
Back to the Plaza Blanca, perhaps my favourite desert place of all. Rock like white bone and the bones in my pale face becoming more prominent each year and I am wondering how I look up against that rock, and so I do something I have only ever in my life done once before: I take a selfie, to see how my face blends into this rock, and I see that I still have a way to go. That’s good. I still have a way to travel, before I become all hard rock and bone, but the shades match – do you see, the resonance there in the shadows? Slowly, but slowly, I’m beginning to fade in.
I walk on, sit on a red-hot rock and the dry heat enters me and there is something oddly erotic about this place, and I am reminded of a beautiful poem by my favourite New Mexican poet, Pat Mora, called ‘Unrefined’ –
- The desert is no lady.
She screams at the spring sky,
dances with her skirts high,
kicks sand, flings tumbleweeds,
digs her nails into all flesh.
Her unveiled lust fascinates the sun.
(From Chants by Pat Mora, Arte Público Press.)
And as I think about leaving, I realise why this place is calling me; what the desert is trying to teach me. She’s teaching me what she knows best: she’s teaching me how to grow old. Not gracefully – never gracefully. But playing, howling, dancing with my skirts high. The desert might be no lady, but she’s a fully paid-up Trickster. She makes me laugh, and that day she made me howl. And I’ll go for that.
Your post resonates, Sharon. I just returned from the east coast of Maine. Acadia, wild, cool, misty, alive layered with history. I was with a group of writers, many of them shedding the skins of youth and digging in to find ways to share their accrued wisdom, whether through memoir or fiction. I have never liked the way we view aging in this country. We have it backwards. Women fight it instead of embracing the depth and beauty of it. The rocky coast of main is ancient and restless and never stops changing. Thank you for this lovely piece of writing.
Yes, all the different ways different places show us different aspects of ourselves … always so much to learn!
Sharon–I was at your daylong in Bolinas last Saturday which I loved and I wanted to ask you about the erotic and play in Hagitude—I am entering Hagitude with almost open arms but I am still the lusty 40 year old and the wild dancing in bars 16 year old and the wiser but still fumbling 58 year old. So here is my answer. Thank you! I will be at Hedge school in two years when I retire and return to the West Coast which I felt so connected to when I visited 20 years ago, where my great grandfather immigrated from a farm in Donegal still in the family. Thank you for all your words! They have brought me back to my connection to my place in Oakland, CA , my precious garden where I “immigrated” to as an 18 year old woman looking to break out of the working class Irish Catholic world I grew up in Albany, NY and to the land of my Irish maternal ancestors.
warmly,
Mary Kathleen Kelly Senchyna
Yes, finding that out is part of the ups and downs of the journey, isn’t it! – and even there, place is the best teacher. Glad you enjoyed the day at beautiful Commonweal.
Dear Sharon, I got goose bumps reading If Women Rose Rooted and now that I am on the very cusp of the last third of my life I very much look forward to reading Hagitude (what a brilliant word!). I need a guide to help with this transition and to fully embrace it. Arohanui to you.
Absolutely, Sharon! It was my 62nd birthday last week and I’m determined to grow old disgracefully! Keeping fit and healthy is my primary aim, so I can fully enjoy cronedom, my adult children and my adorable four grandchildren. And my wonderful husband of course! My mother was middle aged and pretty inactive from her early forties and I’m determined not to be like that. I look forward to your next book! And I’m currently negotiating a TV deal for Stonewylde! Exciting times! Xxx
Congratulations, Kit! – on both counts.
You remind me of Rebecca Solnit, the poet-author-activist and of her love of the desert. The importance she attaches to place (“It was a place that taught me to write”) was a revelation to me. Places and their memories do have political meaning, they not only represent beauty.
Skin-shedding is indeed a very strong metaphor apart from a physical experience. You have worded it so beautifully. thank you very much.
Magda
Thank you!
What a way to contribute to the start of another day, for me. I looked for the resonance in your face. I had to try more than once, panning between you and rock wall. As a stranger to you in most ways, I come from a stance that saw so much life left in your face I tried not to reject your words outright. There’s my yap, there. Much love follows it.
Oh, my poor words – I didn’t mean to reflect a lack of life; I feel so much life in that rock. I don’t know what I was looking for, really. A reflection of something happening inside … to reflect a sense of belonging to that place which makes no sense …But thank you 🙂
You set off a train of tnought. I looked back at all the women I have been and skins I have shed. Some have come off quickly in one piece, others slowly in bits. I think I am about to shed another -who knows how quickly. I am just coming to the end of one adventure in thinking (no travelling involved!). I just have the loose ends to tie off -always the frustrating part for me – and I am itching to get into the next. I have been focussed on myself in this plot of land where I have finally grown some roots. Time to explore beyond my edges. Slowly, on foot. The next adventure and the next .e are out there waiting for me to find them. Thank you.
Never any end to the journeying. I love that thought, though it isn’t always comfortable!
I love the pattern of the shed skins revealing itself to you in signs and stories. And I thank you for sharing that revealing with us so that we may in turn discover our own patterns and the messages they whisper to our obstinate ears. Lovely, so lovely, this turning of the wheel when we surrender to the motion and turn it into a wild dance.
Indeed. Un-obstinating our ears may be a prime feature of hagitude!
“un-obstinating”….love the way you break-out,every now and then from your proper[even prim] useage with a gypsy fling of flailing arms and and a wild heel heading skywards…bold,wild,anarchic…hagitude rules OK,I say. Thank-you
Such spot on comments/ sharing/ writing ….thank you . And although I have had your book ” The Long Delirious burning Blue” in the house for a while – I only just got to it and read it with great delight – last week . And just as I had gotten to the ” I want to lean to fall’ I hear a sound outside which could only be small airplanes …and guess what they were doing ? Perfect timing.
Ah, glad you’re enjoying the novel. Very close to my heart, that one!
Thank you Sharon, your post is inspiring me to think more about the sense of places/homes I have been in and what I have learned from them. I knew what they were teaching, each one at a time, but have never really put them together to see what kind of growth/shedding was happening. It’s an interesting progression along a journey to growing older, the wisdom accrued and the new realisation of having been through the school to finally graduate and find that there is more energy, more life, more fun, more skins still to be released. What these might be I don’t yet know, but at a young age of 73, I am looking forward to the next chapter.
Your photo is beautiful, you and the rock standing the test of time. Many blessings to you – Teri
Yes, one of the ‘exercises’ we do in my workshops is just that kind of mapping of a ‘songline’ of the places we’ve lived. Always a revelation!
Sharon, I love all your writing and look forward to each and every instalment…my wife and I recently spent two weeks on Arranmore Island in Donegal and boys did that place ‘speak’ to me.
Keep up the eye and mind opening writing.
Dave.
Sharon, your writing about the power of place has been such a catalyst for skin shedding in my 70s! A friend gave me If Women Rose Rooted. Though I am a man, this book catalyzed a move with my husband from Oregon back to northern New Mexico a year ago. Our lives took a sudden turn (skin shedding?) back to the desert and the Sacred Taos Mountain (El Monte Sagrado) where we are now building a new house, a most unexpected development which we were led to step by step (skin by skin?) I was sorry to miss Psyche the Size of Earth this time but I can’t be kept away next time. And perhaps you will visit Taos on your next trip to the Enchanted Land of New Mexico!
Julian – so sorry you missed the weekend; it was very wonderful. And I love Taos. So it’s probably a given!
I was in the workshop outside of Santa Fe with you for that weekend. It was a marvelous weekend full of wisdom. Afterwards I started reading the Baba Yaga myth in Foxfire Wolfskin. The way your version of the myth opened the door for reflection on being teacher and elder. I am still reflecting on when to step into elder hood and own it. I will be gald when your new book comes out to continue the conversation. .
Belinda – indeed you were – I remember very well. And that wicked Baba Yaga – that’s how to go into elderhood cackling and mischief-making!
A lovely post, and poignant image of your face against the white rocks. I shared some poems about the desert on the poem page of my website.
Re: skin – I shake out my cloth every day, from the backdoor. I watch the powder-fine dust of skin and wonder about its next purpose, as well as the stray hairs, which, I know, birds consider excellent material for building their nests.
I’m one of your (minimal) supporters on your patreon site.
Ah thank you. And there is no ‘minimal’ 🙂
Hi Sharon….
I lived at Synergia Ranch in the early 70’s while in my 20’s. John and Maria were part of the all back then as well. Changed my life completely. Have returned to the area (and Plaza Blanca) dozens of time since then, drawn always by the need to reconnect to the deeper self. It never disappoints.
I loved to hear of your experiences there. Magical and grounding, one can leap into further unknowns more easily. After many years of living many places, I now find myself in North Carolina amidst a land of trees and the nearly same blue skies that enchanted me always in New Mexico. On a lake that is home to blue herons, frogs, cicadas and crickets, owls and crows and hummingbirds, I am now settling into a life (at 75) of observation and contemplation, keenly aware of the accelerating passage of time.
I am always intrigued by your emphasis on learning a place well. Each day of observation is so uniquely it’s own, and somehow corresponds to inner development as well.
Thank you for your writings which continue to help me stay fresh to more possibilities.
Much love,
Jess
Beautiful Synergia! What an amazing place to have lived during your 20s. And I am still slowly uncovering why it is that New Mexico draws me in the same way as Ireland does. Not for me to live there, but as a teaching place. We had some interesting conversations about that during our weekend. Lovely to ‘meet’ you here.
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I was driving to Oakland to fly to New Mexico. Plaza Blanca was an extraordinary experience, but then the Land of Enchantment provided many such experiences. I’m entering my first year of menopause, so that I finally was able to visit a place that’s been calling me for decades and experience you and the other wonderful participants at the workshop felt like an honoring and celebration as I enter my own ripe and rich hagitude. (And I’m so looking forward to your book!) Georgia O’Keeffe was very much a part of the Santa Fe trip as well, visiting her home and museum. I discovered last week that the traveling Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit is in Reno, so I plan to visit and experience more of a woman steeped in freedom and fierceness. Thank you, Sharon, for providing these insights into life and myth and land. Fiery Lily Love
Yes, Georgia was a phenomenon wasn’t she. So enjoyed meeting you at Synergia and in Santa Fe and look forward to another time!
Place is the greatest teacher of all. The manna of kauai calls me. I will honor respect This sacred place even more blessing on you connections and wisdom that you share. Mahalo. Lady m
As a survivor of eighteen years in the Mojave Desert I can appreciate the stark beauty of her bones and am deeply grateful for all that she gave to me, including two strong and courageous daughters.
My passage into Cronehood has been as an exile in the Earth’s most ancient mountains, the Appalachians. These mountains called me and, over the past fifteen years, have given me the space outside of time to deepen my connection to our Mother.
Thank you Sharon for sharing your process through your books and other writings. Perhaps one day we will meet in the flesh.
Sharon – thank you for the precious gift of your writing. Your post arrived in my in box this morning … my birthday today … I am 73 … and I feel blessed … skin shedding … such a powerful metaphor … I remember as a child finding a snake skin which I treasured for many years … it seemed like such a miraculous thing to step out of one skin and grow a new one. This time, at this moment, it feels like more of a piece by piece shedding … some parts ripping off … others dissolving in discovery of a deeper self, hidden and revealing itself. I am nudged now to look deeply into what places have taught me. For so long, while living on the West Coast I felt displaced. I’ve returned to the East Coast, Rhode Island, where I’ve never lived before … but feel at home.
I love your writing and each time I read your words, some new discovery, new vista opens for me … with much gratitude
Happy birthday, and thank you for the kind words!
I lived in many places as I grew up, and from each I brought away a ‘something’ that was etched as a part of me and filled me with memories and joys. Then there seemed to be a settling that left me feeling that something was missing until we found a home amongst the trees on the side of a hill, where I can watch the sun kissing the hill on the other side of the valley each morning, hear the birds as they declare the day, and feel nature stir in the wind. This place has taught me that stillness is ripe with learning, that each day is filled with minute differences to watch, and that nature is so much bigger than me.
I lived on the edge of a desert for a year or so when I was a child, and my memories are the heat and light and the sun, a ball of fire over the sea at sunset, warm days playing in that sea, and cool nights with stars that stretch forever. Those stars still stretch forever above my forest home, and I realise everything is connected, and I am forever a child under those stars.
I love your story of the desert. And regrowth.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
How beautiful, Cate. Finding what in Ireland we’d call the ‘place of your resurrection’ – the place where the soul is happiest on earth.
Ah this. Such beautiful writing and as I enter my cronehood it sends shivers down my spine. Such truth
Hi Sharon, from a sister keeper of Place, hens and bees. I recently engaged with a 4 day rite of passage on my land here in the Grampians Australia. it was to mark and celebrate moving past my childbearing years ( no kids) and into young elder hood. I fasted for the 4 days and was visited by a stag deer on the third night – so my clay sculpture the next day of myself as a crone had antlers and held her ‘hart,’ so carefully between her hands in the center of her chest.
For me this rite of passage was both harder and more empowering than I anticipated. My family and community welcomed me back and listened to the story of my ordeal and mirrored the power of it back to me.
Thank you for your podcasts .They truly inspire me and they help me get the dishes done!
XXXSuzy M
What a lovely ritual. We need more such rites of passage, for sure.
3 months ago, I received a signal from New Mexico. 3 months later I arrived in New Mexico. Many people told me of many things I must do there, places I must go, food to eat, trinkets to be found, pictures to be taken. I just wanted the roads and the land. I felt the desire to fly over and across the canyons and sagebrush and rivers and pinon pines. I just wanted to watch the land unfurl and shapeshift and roll and rise and open. I found myself rattling down the road to Chaco Canyon the day after visiting Ghost Ranch. It happened to be Astronomy Festival culminating with the Autumn Equinox, and very close to my birthday (9/20). I listened to the tour guide as he explained the layout of Casa Rinconada and how it was oriented so perfectly to the Autumn Equinox and the portals that aligned with the rising sun on that day. It was on these last two days that I remembered that I was gazing at my own beauty, my own metamorphoses, my own textures. I too had the revelation that as I age, the desert would become a stronger reflection of my being rather than the lush temperateness of the Northwest. I saw the Crone’s handiwork in the contours and seams and carved mountains.
Wonderful! All I too want to do when I’m there is watch the land ‘unfurl and shapeshift’ …
Love your writing sharon, it vibrates out to me. This feeling of past lives, deja vu, like ive known these things before. It all seems so familiar. Shedding the old and welcoming the new. Blessed be
Hi sharon x a dear friend of mine was called to read ‘if women rose rooted’ and recommended I read it and it really resonates so deeply with us both. More than any book. Such a treasure of words and expression. Thanku xxx now reading ‘the enchanted life’s and again I am gripped. Protested the cutting down of two beautiful beech trees where I live and pointed out the trees have stories and belong there, part of the whole and golden now in autumn they look so dazzling! It’s like u say, it starts in our own gardens and communities and makes a difference. So looking forward to hagtitude xxx thanku for your inspiration x???
Sharon,
YES! Place does teach us so much about ourselves. I experienced so many soulful moments this summer in Scotland tracing my family roots! We are returning next summer for two months! The wildness, deep connection to my ancestors and sense of freedom I felt there stirred my soul and unlocked the door to my youthful self. At nearly 63 I am so grateful.
Hi Sharon and thank you for this post. It’s so wonderful to see you through your selfie and through your words describing the hot, dry desert when I imagine you often in the cooler, wet and wild environs of Ireland’s west coast. I’m in my mid 60s and have shed lots of skin like your Red Racer snake visitor. Instead of feeling depleted by the past skin offerings my new skin has left me feeling more fully alive than ever, like the eroticism you felt at Plaza Blanca and the energy of Pat Mora’s kicking, screaming, and dancing. I’m fully in my Hagitude with absolutely no desire to go back, only forward in the full lustfulness of uncharted territory. Onward.
Onward indeed! And I’m enjoying exploring why I’m so drawn to these two contrasting places …
This is absolutely wonderful, Sharon, and I deeply resonate with this. I live in the high desert of western Colorado. I believe the desert has much to teach us if we listen. Its a soulful place. The desert is mysterious and holds its stories deep within. The canyon walls and sensual sculpture of the rocks remind me of our human skeletons. It’s a very phallic landscape!
At 61, I am attempting to embrace my hagitude (the best word ever) and have had some difficulties accepting changes and aging along the way. The sudden death of my creative partner and twin flame rocked me to my core. Now my loving husband is showing signs of dementia. Writing, painting and hiking in the desert is helping me through. I am reading If Women Rose Rooted and am so inspired by it. Thank you! I can’t wait for your next book! It sounds amazing. I’m taking your online class, Courting the World Soul in October. I am so looking forward to walking this path with you.
Thank you, Diana. And yes, isn’t it hard to balance the pleasures with the challenges. Dementia is one of the most challenging of all, I think. Wishing you some joy on a difficult journey.
I built a small adobe casita above the white rocks many years ago. It was a place I HAD to be, if even infrequently. The “locals” make the comment that the Abiquiu energy will either pull you in or push you out, there is no in between. Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that those of us who resonate with that energy live in the in-between, so the utter wildness of the landscape feeds our souls rather than elicit fear of the unknown.
I wanted to mention that your books are traveling far. During my last visit to NM, I went to the Fechin Museum in Taos and had a conversation with a young woman who worked at the desk. She mentioned she likes to read books; I asked, what are you reading? She said, If Women Rose Rooted. And of course, I loved that book too. I mentioned Abiquiu and she pulled her shirt down to show me a tattoo across her collar bones of the Pedernal. I thought, we certainly have some synchronicity here, although I am her elder by decades. We’ve stayed in touch and in October I hope to meet with her again. Perhaps invite her and friends to meet up at my casita where magic always unfolds.
Oh how wonderful on all counts. I can see that polarity in response. Thank you!
Sharon, I’ve just heard you on BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour, and went straight to find your new book and then to find everything you’ve written, and your website. Thank you, Woman’s Hour. All of this comes as a deep blessing to me, as I struggle with ‘Hagitude’, moving into eldership and trying to resist the negative and demeaning images that seem to accompany this time of life. I am so thankful to find you and your writing and loved seeing your face too. I will follow you now and look forward to the publication of ‘Hagitude’ eagerly!
Thank you deeply for writing down the call of New Mexico wild. Uprooted from coastal living most my life, New Mexico has scooped me up since 2013. My spirit is strong on desert land. Deep ancient remembrance speaks to me here and guides my way.