On a September retreat at Prairiewoods, the trees woke me up. Just outside my second-story guest house window, they were shaking their heads wildly. In the background I could hear the rumble of thunder. It was past midnight, and now it was Mary Oliver’s birthday, September 10. Pieces of her poem “The Journey,” that I knew by heart at one time, were instantly thrashing in my head. The speaker of the poem has set out on a journey, leaving a house behind in the midst of a terrible storm: “It was already late / enough, and a wild night, / and the road full of fallen / branches and stones.”
Many years ago, I fell in love with this poem. Or it might be more accurate to say I fell into this poem and it caught me. I was on a pilgrimage of sorts, climbing Mt. Rainier with a group from the National Park Service, but really trying to climb into my life, to find, as the poem says, “a new voice, / which you slowly / recognized as your own.” I was deep in my roles as mother and wife, and I was struggling to attune myself to another frequency, the still small voice inside me.
I had never climbed a mountain before and it was both terrifying and exhilarating. Afterwards, I re-entered ordinary time, but I had the poem with me. Over the next few years, my life broke open and I began a new journey. Storms have power to shake us awake, listening for what life journeys are calling us.
—Carol Tyx, Prairiewoods artist in residence
photo by Joni Reed Cooley