Soon soon, Mike and I will once again be heading back to Deer Park Monastery (DP), with plans to return home to Montana and our small-sprouting, rustic & humble practice center Empty Mountain (EM) in April. As we’ve been venturing to DP annually since 2014 – and for longer stints over the last 3-years – returning to DP feels very much like a homecoming.
Since moving onto the land we purchased on July 1st, most of my energy for blogging has been routed towards EM weekly blog posts on our website (see here) and less so here on my personal practice blog. But since we’ll soon be on retreat at DP, with no EM updates for a little while, I anticipate jumping back into my site here a little more, perhaps posting twice a month.
By happenstance and not direct intention – also fueled by the pandemic – Mike & I have become snow birds these last few years, wintering south like migratory birds. Personally, however, I’m not a big fan of people assuming I head south to get away from our north country winter. It’s just sorta worked out that way. Actually, I quite miss winter in Montana when we’re gone. The writer in me, especially the poet, thoroughly enjoys a good hibernation season. For me, a proper winter is fertile ground to help spark creative flow.
Please don’t get me wrong, though. I super enjoy the near full-time sun of southern California, but it’s kinda like when I visit back home, the place of my birth & raising outside of Philly (go Eagles!). It’s perfectly nice and lovely, but it just doesn’t hold my heart in the same way as my home in Montana does.
What a treat and gift it is to structure our lives in such a way that enables Mike and I to spend swaths of time on retreat at DP. We are incredibly fortunate and deeply grateful for being practitioners on the path of practice; continuations of our beloved teacher Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh); and welcomed in by the four-fold community at DP.
Onward ho to DP we go.
going outwords & inwords 