Saturday, June 23, 2012

Ever notice how a certain area can calm you—to the center of your core?  How just driving through the area, your breathing deepens, your anxiety level drops and a deep-rooted calm washes over you, cleansing away the ill effects the world may have on you?  I’ve found several of those areas throughout my life and treasure them for the healing aspects they provide.  One, in particular, is an area I’ve frequented over the past thirty years, falling more in love with it every time.  Each visit has revitalized my soul. 

The activities I engage in there don’t have to be anything fancy.  In fact, most often, they’re not.  Instead the simplicity of the area, accepting nature of those who opt to call it their home and abounding natural wonders envelope me in an experience no high-ticket activity could buy.  A day trip to a theme park doesn’t compare.  Nor do going to the movies, eating out or any of a thousand other things I do. 

To me, this locale is pivotal to my being.  Guess I have a lot of my father and grandmother in me, for they were the same way—drawn to specific areas that fed their souls, making them…content…whole…fulfilled.  Ironically, their special locales mirrored my own….

It’s as if this locale is my Zen.  The one place that centers me, no matter what the world throws at me.  Also, it’s a simpler place, almost as if entering it, one transcends a time warp that delivers them back thirty years to a more balanced, accepting and whole California, not the fragmented keep-up-with-the-Jones’ rat race whose disease has affected most aspects of the state.

Living where I currently do, though there are mountains to explore and trails to run, I feel claustrophobic.  As if the very air around me chokes off my ability to take cleansing breaths.  Instead, what I manage is shallow breathing.  Though this allows me to gain enough life oxygen to survive, the wear and tear the effort puts on me eats away at me.  That’s when I flee to the sanctity of my special place.  To be rebuilt.  To have the scars the world casts on me purified, in a sense, so their lasting impressions will be minimized.

I suppose that’s what makes special locales so…magical…their ability to calm, heal and minimize the effects of the world on a person’s soul.  Like my father and grandmother before me, I’ve found my Zen on earth and will endeavor to plant myself firmly in her bosom where I feel safe, accepted and reborn.