Power Place

I was in my thirties when I landed in my "Power Place".

I arrived in West Virginia fairly unceremoniously, by way of Baltimore City. It was the long way around, to say the least; and NOT the scenic route, either. My ex husband had been hurt in a car accident (his first of TWO, if you can believe that) and this was when Jesse was less than a year old. Times were tough in those early days with two kids and a baby and bills we couldn’t pay.

I did what any self respecting daughter does. I ran home to Mommy, family in tow.

My mom lived (and still lives) in Baltimore City in one of those old "historic" (another word for crappy) row houses. Her neighborhood is infested with rednecks and heroin dealers, but it was cheap and we were welcome to stay with her. We made do and settled into life in the city. My Gypsy caravan parked curbside there for an excruciating ten months of life in the big city of B-More. When the kid’s school let out 8 months later, I started looking around for houses to rent away from the city. A week went by, and then two; a month passed and we were well into summer now. Nothing… I started to feel a small sense of panic. Tim was starting high school and there was NO way I was going to allow him to be bussed out twenty miles from home to attend a school with a metal detector and Baltimore City policemen in the halls. Ten days before school started I

happened to see an ad in the newspaper for a house for rent. "Commuting distance" to Baltimore

and Washington D.C. turned out to be two hours away, in Berkeley Springs, W.Va. When I was younger I was fairly impulsive. Jump now think later, you know?

I did what any self respecting Gypsy does. I jumped, caravan in tow.

In a weekend we went from living in the city and hating to wake up to living on top of a mountain, in the middle of four acres that backed up to twelve thousand acres of state park. And the stars - they took my breath away. I lay down in the grass, on my mountain that night. I thanked the Goddess that led my feet to that place, and I cried like a baby. I let the mountain have it all. The horror of life in the city, the shame of having to live with my mother, the fear for my children’s safety on a daily basis for almost a year, the endless barrage of questions in my own head about WHERE were we going to find work and HOW were we going to support ourselves, and my doubts already forming about my marriage…I cried it all away that night. And the mountain, in return, replaced all those doubts, fears, and shame with a strength that is still with me even to this day.

There were many lessons waiting to be taught, and I would have need of that strength…I think I would have stayed anyway, even had I known all that was to come.

Once the mountain finds a home in you, it is not easily shaken loose.

Tracy Wilson on Facebook

Photo courtesy of morgue file.