Sometimes we take the road, and other times the road takes us. The latter is when we leave room for the miracles.
In my late 20s, while I was a student in a Master's program in psychotherapy, I started a women's Art & Spirituality group that met in my living room. One of the friends I made through that group was an Ethiopian woman named Desta.
For Desta's 35th birthday I decided to take her on a road trip. A friend of mine had loaned me his 1968 Mercedes sedan for the week while my car was being fixed, and it seemed like a great opportunity to take a car trip.
Desta and I didn't really know where we were going. She knew that she wanted to go north, so starting in the San Francisco East Bay where we each lived, we set out upon our journey.
The first night we stopped at a private home in Mt. Shasta where a woman was conducting sweat-lodge ceremonies just for women. We met some very interesting women and did the sweat-lodge experience under a full moon. Then we continued on northward the next day.
(Source: Desta shot this along the CA coast)
We eventually made it as far as Ashland, OR. Desta had lived in Washington, D.C. when her family first arrived in America, and she had moved to California in her early 20s. She had had a spiritual teacher when she was in Washington, D.C., and she knew that this teacher had moved to Ashland, but she didn't know where in Ashland. She'd lost contact with her years ago.
We wandered around Ashland for about an hour, enjoying the park, the shops, and the lovely houses. Finally we came upon a house that intrigued Desta.
She said, "You know, this looks just like the kind of house my teacher would live in."
It was a sweet little cottage with ample flowers growing in the front yard and in window planters. We liked it so much that we decided to linger a little bit, maybe ten minutes. And then her teacher drove up! It was in fact her house!
We visited with her for a while, had some tea, and it was wonderful. That was miraculous event #1.
We started back southward after Ashland, and it just so happened we then had run into Labor Day weekend. We had commenced our trip on the Tuesday before the Labor Day holiday weekend, and had really not thought ahead to the implications of a lack of planning at such a busy travel time.
For context, Desta worked as an architect, and she was trying to get her photography out so that she could transition into working as a visual artist. And so on this trip I was also helping her take her portfolio around to galleries wherever we would go, trying to get her photos into the galleries. Each place we would go, I was pretty much egging her on, trying to make it a little easier for her to tell people that she was who she longed to be, an artist.
The Friday before Labor Day, we reached a coastal town called Ferndale. In this particular town Desta decided she wanted to go to the gallery on her own.
So I said, "Okay, I'll go hang out in this crystal shop." So I went to the crystal shop, and it so happens the friend of the owner of the shop was trying to start a practice of doing psychic channeling. Just as I was trying to encourage and support Desta's "right-livelihood," the owner of the shop was doing the same for her friend.
She came up to me and said, "Would you like to do a psychic reading with my friend Taylor here?" And went on to tell me how gifted Taylor was, and how she was supporting Taylor in this new chapter of her life.
I responded, "Sure. I'm on a road trip. I'm open to different things; this is all about experience, so sure."
I met Taylor in a small, sunlit room at the back of the shop and received a reading that profoundly affected my life in the days, weeks and even years to come.
For one thing, she was uncanny in her understanding of my past, which made me very much take her seriously when she started talking about my future. Additionally, the very experience of being in the presence of someone channeling so powerfully was like a transmission of spiritual energy in and of itself. There will later be stories I'll share that relate to some of the things I was told that day. But, staying on track for this particular story....
So, I had this profound experience, and then I met up with Desta. We next went to a "local artists" gift shop. There I found what to me was the perfect journal cover. It was made of leather and engraved with a carving of a tree on the front, which is a combination of two of my favorite things. I loved the journal cover so much, and didn't hide my enthusiasm a bit, as I spoke to the owner of the shop. She told me about the artist who made it, and about the overall mission of her shop, to support local artists. We had a wonderful conversation about art, and road trips, the psychic reading I had just had, and the artists who supplied her store.
Then she said, "Well, where are you girls going next?"
And I said, "Well, we're not really sure. We're just on a road trip for her birthday, but we're thinking about going to Mendocino next."
She said, "Well, where are you going to stay in Mendocino?"
And we said, "Well, we don't know. We never know where we're staying; we just drive until we get to a place we want to stop, and then we drive on the next morning."
And she said, "Well, it's Labor Day weekend and if you don't have reservations in Mendocino, you're not going to find any place to stay."
And we were like, "Oh no! We didn't know what to do."
Then she said, "Well, I have a friend who has a place in Mendocino and though it's not open to the public, I could give him a call and see if he would let you girls stay there."
We asked her if she please would, and so she did right there with us at the counter. And she worked it out for us.
So we get to Mendocino later that day, and this place is amazing. It's this little old cottage a block from the ocean. He's charging us $30 a night. That's $30 for the two of us! It's the oldest building in Mendocino. It had been on Main Street, but got pulled to its current location in 1906... pulled by an ox! The "wallpaper" is actually newspapers from that era. The cottage was two rooms, one room being the bedroom and the other this huge bathroom with a claw foot tub looking out onto the ocean.
The owner was really nice. He said it wasn't an official rental, because it wasn't up to code for that, but that he let family and friends-of-friends stay there from time to time. He didn't charge much, because he didn't need the money and just wanted people to have this experience. And we did have that experience. It was a great experience. 😁
The next morning we continued on south. By this time we had had plenty of experiences and were just trying to get home. So much had happened that was truly miraculous over the trip, but we were tired and ready for the trip to be over. We'd been in the car a lot over the previous week.
So we were driving these windy back roads through the forest. And the highway signs kept saying, You’ll be in Happy Camp in so many miles--132 miles. Then we'd drive another half hour--You'll be in Happy Camp 128 miles. And we would both be like, Wait a minute! We've only gone 4 miles!? And it kept being like that. We would drive for so long and then it would seem like we'd only be a few miles closer to Happy Camp.
At a certain point we started saying, "Oh my God, this is like Sartre's No Exit. It's like we will never get to Happy Camp. You just keep getting closer, but you never actually make it to Happy Camp."
But then after a while we both became silent and I think we both started reflecting on the trip. Then almost simultaneously we each started saying things like, "You know what? It doesn't matter how much longer it takes to get to Happy Camp, because this has been a spiritual journey. We've been led, and this is just a journey, so what does it matter when we reach the destination? The point is the journey and this is wonderful."
We affirmed what each other was saying, and agreed that yes, this was a spiritual trip and we were traveling a spiritual path, with everything par for the course.
Within seconds of our agreeing that we were traveling a spiritual path on the trip, we passed a thoroughly surprising highway sign, like those brown signs that will say "John Muir Trail" or such. It said "Spiritual Paths."
Couldn't get clearer confirmation of a yes than that!
Eventually, we made it to Happy Camp (which was pretty much just a gas station at a crossroads), and from there it was a straight shot home. And I returned the car to my friend who had loaned it to me. (He probably wondered why there were so many miles on his car from one week 😁.)
Desta's life changed after that, and so did mine. She began doing shows for her photos in Bay Area galleries, and I ... well basically it went like this:
I was in the last year of my MA program in psychotherapy and had been accepted into a very exclusive internship program that ran your last year of school and then continued to train you for the years after graduation, giving you clients and supervision, and gradually getting you to the point where you could get licensed and already have a full paying practice. Very hard to achieve in California, given the licensing requirements, cost of living, and abundance of psychotherapists.
I had just started the program two weeks before Desta and I went on the road trip. We returned on a Monday and I had my first individual supervision session on that Thursday. I left wearing khakis, no jewelry, no makeup, and returned wearing colorful sarongs from Bali, jewelry to the hilt and full makeup, plus a silk scarf tied into my hair for good measure.
For about 15 minutes my supervisor tried talking to me as she would within normal supervision, then stopped and shook her head and asked, "What are you supposed to be?
I was a confused by her question, so replied, "What do you mean?
She then said, "Are you supposed to be a therapist or a spiritualist? Because you LOOK like a spiritualist." (almost hissing that last word)
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I realized beyond any shadow of a doubt, and I said, "You're right! I am a spiritualist!"
The next day I quit the internship program, which I doubt was the reaction she was looking for. I did finish my MA, though it wasn't easy. I still had one of my three years left, but already knew I didn't want the career I was training for. But I did finish, since it was important to me to finish things I started to show myself I could, at that point in my life.
Since that time I've gone on to create a life that is truly fulfilling to me, one that has involved quite a bit of meandering along the spiritual paths of life -- though back to pretty light on the jewelry, colorful sarongs and makeup. I suppose over time we integrate these things into who we are after going from one extreme to another at first.
Have you ever taken a roadtrip that in retrospect you see was really a spiritual path you were being led down?
(Desta took a photo of me in the Mercedes at the Chandelier Tree. Unfortunately, this tree is no longer standing due to storms last Winter.)
Here are some other posts of mine you might enjoy:
- What Would You Gift This World if You Were Dying?
- You're not broken... You're art
- Meet me in the space between breaths
Resteems always appreciated