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Rediscovering Windermere

 

Rediscovering Windermere
by Leigh Merrihew

Before this spring, it had been a long time since I had been at Windermere. I came out once in the early 90’s with a group of New Yorkers and we did some brush clearing. I hardly remember it, other than the sound of chainsaws, a group dinner, laughing in the bunk house and this sweet area named Oak Glen, forming right before our eyes. We weeded and shaped the land back to what it wanted to be: clear, full of sunshine, the trees retaining their authority. I seem to recall the glen transforming in two days, like you might see in a cartoon. I wondered how much had become myth in my mind and how much was really the beauty and wonder of Windermere.

So naturally, one of the first things I did after moving to LA was head up to Santa Barbara to see the land. I thought I was doing it for me, to get out of the city and have some peace, some mental space. But I discovered, and continue to discover, that these trips are more like a relationship I have with the land, what I call OurHarmony, if you’ll grant me some latitude to create a new word. ‘OurHarmony’ is the combination of myself (and could be you as well) with the resonance of the property itself. The land including the sky, the small insects, the scurrying lizards, the ravens and hummingbirds, the rocks, the caves, the scrub brush, even the remote essence of others who have lived there, many centuries ago. It’s an all-encompassing experience that can’t be defined as “I was here”; it is the full experience of hearing the birds, feeling the wind, the scuffle of a hiking boot over dirt on loose rocks. Of my own breath (or yours) in and out, sleeping or awake, adding to this dimension.

We have all heard people say, “I just have to get away.” But ask them where and often the response often is “it doesn’t matter”… the beach or mountains, north or south—golfing or skiing—just some experience of nature. I too often attribute my feeling “better” to being in the woods or on the beach at dawn. However, at Windermere I discovered it is this combination of myself (and it will be yourself) in that environment.

At times I have walked in the most beautiful gardens and not been a part of it, preoccupied and dulled with no OurHarmony. I might say that such places are boring or too sunny, not worth the trip. How many birds have I hastened by and dismissed? A friend will say “Oh look Leigh, a hummingbird!” Some days I think, “Yeah I know they drank water there yesterday, bid deal.” The beauty still exists, I’m just not called to it, I’m not in OurHarmony.

No matter, however. There is that patient and enduring quality of nature\ that causes us to love it and it to love us, like a favorite dog or cat that awaits us each evening, ever ready for us, with open arms. It is like a thing unto itself that greets us and holds us. Did you ever feel that? You come upon a set of low lying trees, a quiet stream, some roses along a wall and you know they’ve been waiting to greet you, to relieve you? windermere_walking_600

If you know that, then you could just as well have seen the quality of enchantment that hovers around Near Pond area of Windermere. The fog through the trees, the odd rocks, the sunlight on the hill descending down to the pond that makes the leaves glow. The tall grass that sways as fully as if it were a whole wheat field and not simply an overgrown dirt road.

I have been going up to Windermere about once a month, watching the seasons, untangling my thoughts. I can go up planning to to be busy (that four letter word) but then repeatedly chagrined to find myself nodding off, gazing over the garden house valley for unknown periods of time. How long was I looking? What was I thinking about? Oh my God I don’t know what time it is?! I don’t even care what time it is!

Sounds amazing right? Sure, but as my life became busier, I was more hesitant to load up the car and disappear for a few days without WiFi. On one such weekend, my girlfriend asked if I was going to be doing any photography. I triumphantly replied that I was bringing my camera but not taking it out of the car. “I want to just relax this weekend.”

Off I went, camera buried deep. I drove up to Windermere, pulled up as the sun was setting and within 20 minutes had my camera out, hiking boots on, tramping down the Garden House field trying to get every angle of the sunset I could. I was so happy—so gloriously content—because despite myself, I was in OurHarmony, nature was available. I wanted to capture the sky, not to show anyone, but to affirm to God that I appreciated what he was showing me. God, I got that one, thanks. Yes, God, Wow! In fact, you reading this might have been with me that evening as well, as the company was great and I felt among friends. Was it you there, your spirit? Was it the trees?

Returning to human-ness yet again, the next month I didn’t feel like going again. Can you believe it? Yup, too busy. Things were serious in my life. I compromised with myself, concluding I would just go for one day. Arriving again about dusk, I dropped my stuff in the garden house and said to my body “OK, I’ll go for a hike…yeah movement would be good.” Being half genuinely tired and half truly lazy, I took an easy route, down the dirt road by the bunk house.

About 200 hundred feet into the hike, I had the most amazing sensation of the earth coming to greet me, coming up through my scuffling feet. It was so intimate that honestly, I really don’t want to tell you about it because I want to be sure it will be there again for me, my secret, OurHarmony. Nature welcomed me before I welcomed it, before I got out my Light-anchoring brain and began to bless the land. I realized that the land remembered me and, though it will always wait for me, I was fully pleased to be there, it was fully pleased I had come, and it will be when you come as well.

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I have seen more than sunsets at Windermere. I have seen a large gentle bug with a red head, fog you can’t see through, one lone purple wild flower bush dropped in the middle of nowhere. There are things I can’t take pictures of either – like that buzzing that I thought was the largest bee ever, but was actually a hummingbird active in her nest above a rock I had climbed. I can’t take pictures of the tickling foxtail grass, the sudden temperature difference in the caves, the sounds of the goats’ hooves, or the smell of the breeze across the lower fields.

I really don’t want to share all this with you. I like keeping such adventures just for me, to keep the Garden House ever unoccupied so I can go anytime, and the little areas I visit sacred. But I also have to tell you these things because it is so sweet and I know if you went up there you too would find such things, such qualities, and we would all be better friends. Maybe you would have a better word than “OurHarmony.”

And even if you can’t go, there is plenty to be a part of. I have just returned from a visit back east, and folks there were eager to tell me that they too are picking up on the revitalized energy of Windermere. They love the new qualities, working them from 3000 miles away and having the full experience.

There are 5 new qualities at Windermere: ENCHANTMENT – Near Pond; REJUVENATION – Garden House Valley;; INSPIRATION – Park bench and rocks/road; GRATITUDE – upper orchard; and RESTORATION – Quelin. We all know there are more there, more that you have seen, that we will see. The land is waiting for you, or is God? I’m not sure anymore, I’m not sure where the myth ends, where OurHarmony begins, but I tell you, something is there.

Thank you to all of you who hold Windermere dear in your heart, who have been supporting it, your donations and/or Light. It is our group consciousness that keeps this property. Watch for the new quality updates coming from our ranch newsletter published by Lynn Cox each month. God Bless.

Browse Other Articles from NDH November / December 2016

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