I set out this evening around sunset to engage in my nature trail ritual. My dog calmly stood beside me between the water oaks while I opened with qigong. I opened my arms up to the branches and admired how full of leaves they were. I noticed orange butterflies flying around each other in front of the live oak across from us. looking like they were playing or arguing over territory. Orange to brown leaves gently fell from the tree, mimicking the look of the butterflies. We got to the willows, and I let her off her leash.

As I walked along the tree line of the wetlands, I heard a bird making varied and colorful noises from the brush. As I stopped to identify it, another one appeared. They were Ruby-Crowned Kinglets. I have not seen these birds out in this area before, but perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. I walked up to the top of my magic hill, and began a two part series of movements meant to integrate the different sides of my journey. in the way that this area, between wetlands and the creek, is a liminal space, so too do I honor my liminal spaces by moving energy through them. I lifted my arm up on one side, brought it back down my center line, and then repeated this process with the other side, several times. Then I rotated my body with my arms upheld, looking over my shoulder as I rotated my spine. Look at the wetlands, look at the creek. Observe my scientific and rational side, and my emotional and mystical side.

As I wrapped this up, it occurred to me that I had not seen my dog in some time. She usually stays just on the edge of the wetlands or jumps in and out of the creek. I called her and didn’t hear her, and it was only when I clapped that she returned to my side. We started walking, and then I noticed a woman in scrubs walking towards me from the other direction, with a husky and a blue heeler on a leash. She approached me and asked if my dog was friendly. I said she was, and she wanted the dogs to meet. I brought my dog closer and she greeted the husky and then the heeler. I was a little concerned one of those dogs might try to attack her, because there did appear to be tension in their bodies. As I noted this fear in me, I observed that my dog had blood on her face. I brought her close and touched her, probing where she was bleeding from. It was the tip of her ear. When I pulled my hands away, they were covered in blood. I quickly made an exit from the situation with the girl and her dogs and continued my walk, concerned.

Meanwhile Gracie didn’t have a care in the world; it definitely was not slowing her down. She ran up and down the creek and through the grass. I approached the small oak that was wounded, and touched it with my bloody hands, honoring its wounds with hers. I decided against washing my hands in the creek, because the incline to get up and down is steep. I went to Tristessa and put my arms around her. I laid my cheek against her trunk and asked for a message. “You are capable of so much more than you realize” was the message. I traced my steps back to the creek, looking for an object that caught my eye as I approached: a delicate apple snail shell, kind of cracked on the side.

I checked out Gracie’s ear again. Fresh blood kept dripping from the tip and getting on her cheek. I wiped it off. Because of this, we didn’t stop in the Cypress grove.

By the time we got to the marsh, it had clotted and was not actively bleeding, so I let her off leash. I stood in the marsh watching her and the sunset and did a qigong movement where you bring your hands up from the ground to the top of your head, unfurl them like a lotus, bring them above your heads, link thumbs, then place interlaced hands behind your neck. Then you stroke your face and neck (with hands that have dried blood on them, and you hope you aren’t wiping fresh blood), then bring arms up, then push energy gently out from your abdomen, then arms up again, then push energy away from your sides. Release it down to the earth and begin again.

Gracie was sniffing in the cattails near the edge by the paved path. A man and his young boy were walking along the path. When they heard her in the brush, the man became concerned, stopped his child, and then picked him up, tenderly and with concern. They might have thought Gracie was a wild thing. I greeted them (waving hands with dried blood over them), “hey, its just me and my dog”, then called her to me and leashed her up as we started to exit the trail, a little behind the man and child now, who had walked off, relieved.

We stopped just at the edge of the wetlands and honored the change of seasons. We entered the grove of a hundred trees. I stood by the oak trees and honored the sunset and thanked the land, doing another movement where I pulled the energy of the earth up around my waist several times, and pulled the energy of the sun into my body from my heart space making its way down my trunk to the ground. To exit, we walked back through the threshold of the two water oaks in the opposite direction from which we entered, making a full circle. A bunny sat poised on its rump at the edge of the wetlands, watching us cross back from her land into ours. When we got to the car, Gracie shook her head and blood droplets got all over the side of my car. I looked in my trunk for supplies and found a package of toilet paper. I used part of a roll to make a bandage to wrap her ear up and pin it to her neck. We drove home like that, her wearing a big toilet paper bandage. When we got out of the car at home, she shook again and the bandage came off and the ear began bleeding again. I led her straight to the bathroom, where she got in the tub and I bathed her. Cleaned her ear really good. Found some bandaging supplies. and a bandana and made her a little bonnet. Then we went outside to the backyard for a while, so she could chill with her bonnet until her ear clots up for good.

When I had gotten home and my child saw what was going on, he chided us for being “irresponsible”.  He thinks I should keep her out of the wild rose bushes.  But Gracie is so joyful when she is out there.   And I think if anything, we were being “ear responsible”, after the fact.

And I don’t think we should feel bad about that, and his comment didn’t touch my shadow at all, which I believe is proof of my healing journey.