The Journey begins...

May 8th, 2018

From Santa Barbara to Grass Valley

May 8th to May 19th 2018

With the platform built for my bed and the van packed with all the essentials, I set off on the first leg of my trip north.

A big SHOUT OUT and THANK-YOU to Eric for renting me his awesome Astro Adventure Van and Dirk, Jill, Jesse and Parker for helping me build the bed for it!

My friend, Rygel, joined me for this first part of the drive, from Santa Barbara, north to Grass Valley.

We decided to go up RT 395 to settle into the groove, soaking in the fantastic hot springs outside of Mammoth (Wild Willy's) and Bridgeport (Travertine) that I had found when escaping the smoke and Thomas fire in December.

We continued on to Sierraville Hot Springs and Grass Valley.

Wild Willy's Heart pool, favorite and the hottest pool at this site.

Travertine Hot Springs... From this angle it looks like Falkor from The Never Ending Story!

I spent a few days in the Grass Valley area while waiting for the right time to continue on the road north. My intuition felt that I was supposed to wait to leave for the Jedidiah Smith Redwoods. So, I spent time at the Yuba River, meditating, and at night listening to the wild Mountain Lion calls screeching from the woods nearby. One night, I dreamt a mama mountain lion brought her cubs to meet me.

And then one night as I was waking from dream time, the first tree called out to me!

This was the moment when I began to feel like I was living in a storybook, on a treasure hunt, with my intuition and trust as my only guides.

As I was drifting up from the dream world, this tree you see below, flashed me.

He flashed me two times with this image of himself. Just this portion of the tree was in the flash picture in my third eye.

It struck me as something different from an ordinary dream because the image flashed in my mind's eye and then flashed again, like a slide changing on a screen and showing the next slide, but was the same image.

He was making sure I took notice!

As I opened my eyes, I took a breath and thought WHOA! What was that?

Never have I had that happen to me, coming out of sleep.

This is the tree and image I saw in my minds eye, in a flash, flash as I woke up.

I had known from the start of this project, the Redwoods were my first tree visit. They feel like my original family tree. I've always been drawn to their presence. So much so, in my early days living in Santa Barbara, I would drive 4 hours up to Big Sur, just to sit with them and then turn around and drive 4 hours back....

So it only seemed natural they would be my initiation into the Tree Pilgrimage.

But the details, as in what particular tree, or where that particular tree was, was a mystery. In the beginning, I did some research into all the Redwood groves on the west coast and found Jedidiah Smith NF, which felt right as my first stop.

I had my starting point, but Jedidiah is a big park with countless trees.

I understood this project was going to heavily depend and lean on my capacity to trust and develop my intuition deeper than I ever have before.

I didn't know, though, that some of this journey and information would come from dreamtime, until that first flash, flash.

The day I woke up to the flash, I went back to the Yuba river to meditate and reach out to this tree. I was a tad confused, because I thought I had so clearly known the redwoods were my first visit. And this flash had a tree that looked silver-grey, not like the redwoods I have seen that are a deep red, brown color.

In the meditation, I called the tree in and I asked, confused, "Are you a Giant Eucalyptus?"

He grumpily and a tad offended, responded, "No!". "I'm a Redwood."

OH! I thought, "Good! I am still on the right track."

He verified he was at the Jedidiah Smith Redwood Forest and to wait a little longer before coming there. This was May 11th.

I waited until it felt right to say goodbye to Rygel, and head north to this tree that was calling me. May 18th, I left Grass Valley and headed north west.

I spent my first, solo night, in the van in Dunsmuir. I was nervous being on my own and it took me quite a while to find a parking spot that felt safe and ok to land there. But, I curled up and slept through the night and eagerly got on the road the next day after an early and delicious breakfast, at the Wheelhouse, across from the train tracks.

Next stop, I did a quick visit back up to the Umpqua Hot Springs for a night before arriving to Jedidiah Smith Redwoods on May 20th.

It is my very favorite hot spring and I just couldn't not go before my deep dive with the Redwoods!

Follow along for the next installment, where I find the tree that flashed me and continued on to meet the other Redwoods I was called to photograph and sit with........

Thanks for coming along the journey....

And especially for those patiently waiting all these months for me to finally start writing the blog!