When I moved to Taos New Mexico six months ago I was in the honeymoon phase. I loved the desert, the square adobe houses, the mountains that encircled the city like guardians.  Then the winter came. It snowed and snowed.  My car got crushed in a traffic accident.  I got COVID.  I started eating popcorn for dinner as a regular thing. 

No place or person is perfect.  One of the things that keeps us from seeing the special things about a person or place is getting stuck in an idealized vision of how things should be.  
When you are stuck in this mode you see only what is missing. Taos New Mexico doesn't have recycling. Really, no one recycles anything here!  There are torrential winds that blow up the desert dust and you end up inhaling it just walking around.  It's impossible to make a doctor's appointment, because there aren't enough doctors.  The list goes on and on. The real town of Taos NM vs the imagined perfect town of Norina Beck's mind.  Guess who loses every time?
 
One day I went for a hike by the river.  It was bitterly cold and the wind was blowing snow into my face.  I trudged through it, wishing it was warmer, greener, gentler.  I walked and walked.  Then I saw something.  It was a pair of tiny tracks in the snow.  An hour or two before, two mice had hopped along together, parting ways a foot in front of me.  That was something I'd never seen before.  I started looking around me and I started seeing more. Icicle formations at the river's edge.  The way the blowing snow reflected the sun like fairy dust.  The more I looked, the more I saw. 
 
What if relationships were treasure hunts?  What if, instead of evaluating and judging, I used my curiosity to unveil the surprising and beautiful things?  For me, this approach opened a door for me to experience my relationship with Taos in a new way.  Taos might not be my home forever, but it has something unique to offer. As long as I'm here, I want to be open to seeing and appreciating what that might be. 

​When I was a kid my dad was sometimes struck with an adventurous urge.  Driving home  from school he would suddenly turn down a random street. We'd end up somewhere else:  an old grain elevator, the trailer he lived in  before I was born, or a little known curve of creek behind the fairgrounds. He called this 'taking the scenic route'.
 
Taking the scenic route is what happens when you surprise yourself.  You start off with a plan of some kind, then you follow your curiosity and take an unexpected turn. That's what happened to me when I took a trip to Taos, NM and thought- hey I like it here.
 
I migrated to Taos this winter and settled in a little casita. Taos is a small town of about 3,000 people tucked between mountains and the edge of the Rio Grande. Standing at the edge of the mountains you can see for miles and miles, and the sky is so big it feels like an ocean. 
 
Its been a few months. I've found a nice coffee shop, a beautiful hike by the river, and a mesa that is covered with potshards over a thousand years old. People here say that the mountains decide whether you stay or go, so I've been saying hello to them every day and working on developing a good relationship. 
 
Taking the scenic route helped me find a place to call home for a while. When I started out, I was certain I was going to live in Sedona, Arizona.  It turned out my spirit had a different journey in mind. 
 
Following your curiosity by 'taking the scenic route' is one way to use your intuition as a compass. You don't have to move to another city to try this approach in your life. An easy way to start is to:
 
1.  Notice what you're attracted to.
 
2.  Make a choice to explore it in some small way. 
 
You can do this in small, everyday ways. You might be shopping for groceries and find yourself attracted to a food you wouldn't normally eat. You might be on a walk or a drive and notice a street or a path you haven't travelled before. Then, after you make the choice to follow your curiosity:
 
3.   Notice what happens next. 
 
What do you get to experience and how does it make you feel to trust your intuition in this way?  What kinds of small and large adventures follow from your choice? When you open up to your curiosity you might be surprised at what happens next.  An ordinary day can turn into a space for wonder and connection when you take the scenic route. Or maybe, like me, you'll find a path that you didn't know was there- and you'll want to keep exploring it .  Wherever your life adventures take you, I'm wishing you well. 

It's been about a month since I moved to Sedona Arizona.  I did not know anyone, have a job or a place to live.  I wanted to see what would happen and so the experiment began.  Currently I am in what I would call the 'silly putty phase'.  The phase where everything  melts into a puddle and stretches in strange directions.  Things feel weird and otherworldly.  I'll feel strange or sad, then go for a hike and feel better again.  I also feel joyful and grateful and amazed, but everything is a bit wobbly  because of all of the change.  Big transitions can be challenging, exciting, and confusing.  Here are a few things that have helped me keep a sense of equilibrium.

​Suggestions for a Reset Life:​

This month is a big transition for me.  I decided to move to a new city, selling my house and getting rid of most of my belongings.  For fifteen years I've lived in Portland Oregon.  I have friends, a garden, I know where the good coffee shops are and the best city parks to watch dogs make friends.  So, why leave all of those things and go somewhere completely unknown? 
 
A year ago I left Portland and traveled to Ireland.  I worked on farms, and lived in communal style situations.  It was me, and a bunch of European teenagers.  At first, this was a bit off-putting.  But soon I began to be inspired by these young people and their enthusiasm for exploring and figuring out what they wanted in their new adult life.  I also wanted to create a new life.  I had spent most of my adult life taking on more and more responsibility for others, and feeling more burned out.   But now I had space and more freedom.  I could figure out what I wanted to do on a daily basis.  Aside from the work I did at the farm, which was physical and not mentally taxing, my time was really my own.   

When I got back from my travels, I looked around the city.  I looked at my relationships, the kind of work I was doing.  I looked at my basement full of boxes of who knows what.  For nine months I had lived happily out of a suitcase, I had five shirts and two pairs of pants.  Now, looking at my closet full of options of things to wear I found myself unsure.  A dress?  A blouse?  Which sweater?  I didn't like any of them.  ​

I've been thinking about time.

For two weeks I lived alone in a tiny village in Spain.  I did not speak Spanish, and it was COVID.  The locals were friendly from behind their masks, but there was not much chance of any human connection. 
 
So, every day I went walking.  I packed up a loaf of bread from the town bakery, some salami and cheese and wandered for most of the day.  I walked into tiny towns whose only inhabitants were stray cats, I wandered washed out gravel roads, and foot paths into pine forest dotted with orange and almond groves.  I walked all day and I rarely saw a single soul.
 
One day, I was exploring a dry river valley when I stopped to take in the view.  Some whisper of intuition told me to stop and look longer.  And then I saw it, a tiny stone cottage, the same color as the earth. 
 
I picked my way over to it, and looked in.  There was just enough space inside for one person to sit.  The ground was damp, so I pulled at a large flat stone that had fallen from the roof, leaning against the wall.  Behind it, I found a wonder.

 It was a clay drinking jug, very old, broken where the stone had struck it, falling.  I sat there staring , then opened my water bottle and took a drink.   

I felt them there with me.  The ones who had sat here so long ago.  They had come in out of the wind and the rain to take a drink and watch their sheep.  They had looked out on this valley.  Like me, they had come alone. ​

My heart swelled with something great and unknowable.  Time stretched like an elastic band and broke.  
​
Before I left, I leaned the stone against the wall, leaving the treasure hidden, for another traveler to find.   On that day, I will be with them.   I will be sitting there still.  

Yesterday, winter arrived on my doorstep.  4pm, and already the sun was setting.  Outside it was cold and raining with a hint of snow in the air.  To ward off the darkness I did some of the things I know to help.  I brewed a cup of tea.  I baked some bread.  I put on pajamas at 6pm and snuggled in with a blanket and a novel.  But the next day, when the darkness came again, it came with melancholy and I knew that another kind of magic was needed, so I put on my rain boots and my warmest coat and went for a walk.

When gathering items for making an altar, I let my eyes wander.  I become a treasure hunter in a land that is full of surprises.  This time I noticed Rosemary growing outside my house.  A soft cushion of moss- emerald green.  Under some big fir trees in the park I found a fir cone and some of the branches that had fallen together.  Peeling bark of a madrone tree.  A stick painted with yellow lichen.  An acorn, A walnut and a chestnut, smooth and glossy brown.  As I collected my treasures, something started to lift inside of me.  See, said the something, there are wonders waiting everywhere.  

At home, I arranged my gifts and lit some beeswax candles.  A smell of smoke and sweet honey filled the air.  When I make altars, I like to lay down something there to let go of.  Something that feels heavy in my space that I am ready to release.  Then, I welcome in the energy that would support to me .  Gratitude.  Magic.  Wonder.  Abundance.

I keep the little altar up for as long as it speaks to me, lighting the candles  whenever I want to refresh my space with the intentions I have set.  Then, after a while, I clear it away to make space for a time I want to create something new.  

Over and over again, I notice the same kind of thing coming up.  If a relationship truly isn't working for one partner, it also isn't working for the other.  For example, sometimes one person wants to end a relationship, and the other person resists the change.  But that doesn't mean the ending won't ultimately serve both partner's growth. 

I also notice a lot of people struggling with feelings of guilt around making a change that affects others.   Guilt is never anyones truth.  It does not teach.  It does not forgive.  It does not allow us to see ourselves for who we are- people growing and learning through our experiences.  We all have the autonomy and the freedom to create changes for ourselves and to try new things.   Sometimes we are the one who wants to let go.  Sometimes we are the one who resists a change or an ending.  In both cases we can treat ourselves with gentleness, love and forgiveness. 

Relationships are growth periods.  If the growth period is over, we can approach the ending with gratitude and grace.  We learned something from the relationship and now we can make space to learn about love again.  ​