Gotcha

When I need a break from DC, it always helps to get up into the ancient mountains, to hang out with the wild Potomac River (and all the other rivers, too of course). There is so much potent, wild magic up there. Whew! The only other place I've been that feels as crazy-making wild is Wales. I know there are other tracts all over this beautiful planet that feel edgy, gorgeous, awesome and slightly dangerous, but I have never put my feet down in those places. I'm called, over and over again, up to the Shenandoah, along the Potomac. That land beckons.

Though - it isn't just the land that calls me. ("Just?") I'm drawn to Civil War battlefields like a moth to the flame. During my first few years in DC, I spent a lot of time walking the battlefields, reading about the Civil War, trying my shamanic best to bring healing to these haunted places by listening, doing ritual and praying. The work was interesting. I learned a lot but I tried to do too much too fast and as a result made myself crazy. Reya vs. the Civil War? Ha. It's no contest.

Though I feel the pull much of the time, I haven't stepped foot on a Civil War battlefield in many years. I still read, study, and think about that terrible time in our history, but I avoid the battlefields. It's prudent, especially as I grow older because the energy there is so intense even those who could give a rat's ass about the art of listening to subtle energies can feel the ghosts. Ask anyone who has ever visited these places. It's palpable. You can imagine the effect of these energies on me!

I get a bit drunk on the energy, disoriented and/or goofy. Sometimes I glaze over, feel spacey or fearful, like a deer in the headlights. So much is going on, I am sometimes dazzled, sometimes bewildered. When I try to eat, everything tastes moldy. It is so weird! Though quite entertaining, it isn't healthy.

Ah, but the ghosts got me on Tuesday! Civil War - 1, Reya - 0. Again. Sigh.

They got to my friend, too. The second we arrived in Harpers Ferry she began saying she was craving bar-b-que. "We HAVE to get bar-b-que - right now!" she kept saying. This friend is a very careful eater. She rarely eats meat, is a yogi, has a sensitive stomach so she chooses what she eats mindfully. I should have seen it, but I was already so far into the spin of energy, I did not have the presence of mind to say, "You? You really want bar-b-que?" We ate smoked, bar-b-qued pork sandwiches and a mountain of fries. This is SO unlike my friend. She asked for more bar-b-que sauce, even. Imagine the most dainty eater you know chowing down on smoked pork? Huh?? It should have struck me as weird, but it seemed perfectly natural, the way the oddest things are normal in dreams.

After that, I could not eat anything. I had no appetite whatsoever until the Sufi acupuncturist treated me yesterday. It's not like I'm in any danger of starving to death, but still it's not healthy to be disconnected from appetite. Yikes. They got me but good!

The fact that, "by mistake" we drove directly through the Antietam battlefield on our way out of town, right past the cemetery, should have alerted me to the fact that I was, in my own unconscious way, doing my dance once again with the fallen soldiers. But it was more than 24 hours after I returned before it dawned on me what had happened.

Good Lord. My mind is always the last to know!