Back to Bed in California
earth constellations, and a playlist
"She says my body is the light, my body is the way,” sings Leonard Cohen in one of my favorite lyrics ever written, in his song “The Gypsy’s Wife.”
This week’s offering is a little break from my usual programming because my body has spoken—a light and a way— and I’m traveling back across the great Atlantic and then the vast north, over Hudson Bay and down down the long old growth spines of the far western coasts of North America, to spend some time at home for the summer months in California.
I love an international arrival back home to San Francisco International Airport, because the flight path usually goes right over the Point Reyes peninsula where I live. Since the plane is already on the descent, you get an overwhelmingly beautiful bird’s-eye view of every ridge and canyon and cove and estuary bend. I love seeing places I’ve walked and camped and gathered herbs and trailed elk families and circumambulated hills since I was a young teenager, like the migrating snow geese must. I press my nose to the window and am thrilled, every time.