Spirit Run

Bluebonnet beauties rise and thrive in Texas sunshine. Photo by the inspired soul-rebel, Ann Sydney Taylor. Step into the worlds upon worlds she sees on her adventures at https://www.annsydneytaylor.com.

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Texas. My spirit calls me to you.

                                                         

Texas. My soul recognizes you as hOMe.

Texas. The intensity of love I possess for you startles me at times, like a soulmate meeting logic wrestles to analyze into tidy patterned thoughts, but reason falls to its knees when I stand in your sun and in that pure bask of heat I feel vibrantly alive.  

My proclamation of adoration for you elicits surprise, bemusement, skepticism.

“I always saw you in California,” quips a relation. “Still do.”

I want to agree because at once the West Coast was my tempting dream. In the wake of my early twenties, I travelled there to see friends, rode trains up and down the coast, practiced yoga at a Chopra Center, drank all-organic smoothies, read in the sun sweetened splendor on the beach, lunched on Pinkberry. 

My time unfurled in the pastel-hues of a daydream, pleasant, decadent, spiritually enlightening, but I felt no root connection to the ground. I felt at any moment I could be shaken off into the ocean, or swallowed whole by a split in the earth. I can’t pinpoint the exact cause for my slight unease, but I didn’t feel embodied, and left vaguely disappointed and disenchanted.

The feeling I restlessly longed to feel in the core of my body, in the soles of my feet, rumbled into being on a vacant reach of road winding and pushing through plains, mountains in West Texas.

I come home when we stop at the side of the road. Gallivanting through the Lone Star State, my childhood best friend – a Sagittarius, a sizzling, shimmering force of bright-eyed adventure and love – and I venture through the glory of Big Bend National Park. 

My Sagittarius is a photographer, and the drive proffers a stream of inspiration. Her muse pulls us off to the side of the road, and she adheres to the creative instinct directing her to step into and kneel into the burgeoning blooms of bluebonnets.

I stand on tiptoe peering at the blanket of flowers.  My senses struggle to grasp the majestic, raw beauty encircling me, so I focus on the bluebonnets, the dash of color brushed against the canvas of rocks, road, rugged and dusty earth.

A rock 'n' roll song I no longer remember serenades the scene. The lyrics have faded, but the loudness blaring from the speakers from the car echoing into the serene stillness remains in memory.  The front car doors are swung open. There is no one for miles. I see no signal of another car rolling down the mountainside. Just us, and a stillness brimming with aliveness.

The ancient, majestic landscape permeates a presence, a spirited energy stirring a sudden desire to run. I’m not a runner, but I’m pulled into the enticing spell of sun, mountains, the empty sweep of road roaming up into the next rise of foothills.

“I feel like running,” I announce to my friend, who is more like a sister, and doesn’t question and judge my whims and outbursts of energy, and off I race down a lone stretch of road with the single, clear intention to just run.

Feet pound pavement. Wind whips my hair. My heart drums faster. 

I run to initiate and deliciously feel the current of energy, breath, blood, pumping, pulsing, and propelling me forward. 

I run to experience my aliveness intermingling and enlivened by this landscape luscious in history, promise, almost unbearable beauty. 

I run from my past, to feel the present, to push toward the future. 

I run, passing white butterflies, and watch as they gently coast through and over the bluebonnets hugging the side of the road.

Immersed in grasping waves of breath, in the jolts of energy coursing through my system, in the shimmering gorgeousness of plains and mountains, my heart breaks wide open to receive pure, exhilarated joy.

This heartbeat of time encapsulates my love for Texas, the pull to return, to reignite and sustain living from a secured connection of spirited embodiment.

And so I do. Not on the quest to capture a feeling, but to answer a call I heard running through the plains. Here I am. And I am listening.