Going Back 2

The trees

“What do you think about all this, this coming and going of people, their arguments and fights?” I ask the big tree. I sit in her lap far above the ground and up here such calmness comes over me. Momma Fig, heart of the Trico-ops, consecrated again and again throughout the years by co-opers who felt the special power in the dappled shade of her canopy. The cool afternoon light and the scent of figs. She whispers her answers into the rustling leaves. This constant flux of people, that divide themselves up into ‘generations’, or ‘houses’, and then again ‘individuals’, and then they’re a ‘community’... They redraw the lines at their convenience, to back a point, to take a stance. The Fig Tree doesn’t see those lines, doesn’t recognize the individuals who return to take refuge in her arms. She just is there. Unwaveringly, unendingly, she receives the life that seeks her out, and gives of her shelter, shade, and fruit. Such a blessing trees are, to remind us little humans with our petty whirlwind lives of stillness.

“What is time like for you? Up here I hardly feel it at all,” I ask the soft hairy branches of the big redwood. Dozens of feet above the ground, this is an incredible spot. A well-kept secret, because it’s quite a journey to get up here. It’s one of my favorite places in Davis, and I had been looking forward for weeks to visit the redwood again. When you trace the lines and crinkles in its furry reddish bark, you can tell the tremendous force with which it’s shooting up out of the ground, towering higher and higher, spiraling upward. And yet trees seem suspended, unchanging, because they don’t share our sense of time. Up here it works differently, and I can almost pretend I never left this place. What a blessing these trees are, calm and steady, to come to and forget all this frantic time travelling for a while.

Finding my new role

I originally thought, naively, that I was coming back to reaffirm all my relationships here. Instead, as it turns out, my return breathed them back to life, and they continue to evolve within the current circumstances. The web of relations has rearranged itself around my absence. Everyone welcomes me with the old love, but my old life here is gone, and the role I played in people’s lives in a few rare cases just doesn’t fit anymore. A very humbling experience. This dance is tricky and unending, a perpetual positioning and repositioning of ourselves to each other.

Back and forth, back and forth, between feeling so uprooted, holding the shattered pieces of my precious old life in my hands, to doing my thing like I could be doing it anywhere in the world. It took me a good week to finally figure out my new temporary role here. I found it on the Pierce Haus trip to Lake Tahoe, in the snowy hills and Jared’s cabin, amid the Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines. For three days straight I felt so in place. Pierce is a fine home, and I am very grateful to the current Piercians – known and new – for welcoming me so fondly in their midst. Since then, I been chillin. Simple enjoyment, lighthearted and happy to see so many friends and familiar places. Drinking IPAs, eating kale salads, still not understanding the traffic rules around here, inserting ‘hella’ in my sentences, Seventh Generation dish soap and food sampling in stores and farmers market stands, potlucks, sleepovers, long boarding, stargazing, camp fires, road trips, scampering up back country hills*, peeing with the door open, ahh I know it here!

* (I actually got lost for an hour in a redwood forest, it was really scary, it would start getting dark soon, no one could hear me and I could hear nothing, and I had absolutely no clue which way was left or right. Cole and Gordon rescued me, a chance for them to repay me after me saving their asses last year on the Lost Coast.)

The magic

But even as I’m chillin, I still don’t want to belittle the momentousness of being here. Moments in the tree branches remind me of what I returned for. I’m here for the magic. I know it’s there, profoundly influencing me subconsciously, even when I don’t readily notice it all the time (thankfully). That’s the reason I’m so aware, so intentional, about my being back here. Some places hold undeniably powerful magic, like the Fig Tree, and the Pierce porch: Palm gliding up the banisters, worn down by so many hands full of love for it, the smell of old wood,  the feel of the cold metal doorknob, the sound of its creaky turn and the door opening to a true home, hallowed by many many souls. “Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color”, some anonymous hand wrote by the door. How supported and surrounded those two lines made me feel in the last weeks before leaving last year. And how they still echo in me now.

I planned this whole trip around Co-op Thanksgiving, the annual reunion, which is an event of some awesomely powerful magic. It is the night when the hallowed walls hum with life upon the gathering of generations who poured their souls into them. Last year the event was the absolute pinnacle of my Davis year. This year was different, the Thanksgiving celebration the focal point of some radical and polarizing political criticism from within the community. The night itself was fine of course, but as a result of the intense Facebook discussions the turnout was rather low. A pity, I had hoped to see more people and feel that co-op magic come to life. But a traveler must stay flexible. I am at the mercy of people’s availability and hospitality this whole time here, and nothing ever works out as planned anyway. If anything, this year’s reunion was a good test of character: those ready to take charge of their own experience showed up to have a good time regardless of the circumstances.

Home

Unexpectedly, during this trip I’ve also realized that after being back in the Netherlands for some time, my dominant life is back there now. I’ve even caught myself missing my chilly northern country and its people. Who would have thought… Not me, I thought I would never fit back in. But humans are so adaptive. Though I have relished the chance to reconnect to the Californian pieces of me and the cherished friends and places here, I’m looking forward to going home in the other direction, too.