this morning i awoke to the strum of soft guitar
the singing of friends in harmony
and the kiss of sunlight on my cheeks.
this place wraps me in magic
dances across my skin
until i feel the magic within myself
realizing it’s been there all along.
i have landed in the right place.
i am right where i belong.
~ Zo DeWitt
I 100% believe in magic.
Not the hokey kind of magic where a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat.
I’m talking about the kind of magic found in everyday life, the magic that you have to create for yourself. The magic of the sun’s rays shining through tree branches, illuminating every speck of dust drifting through the air. The magic of an encounter with a wild animal, that mutual recognition between two beings, one just as curious as the other. I think I find the most magic when I’m surrounded by nature, which I believe is one reason why I was drawn to the Immersion: a longing to find more magic.
One of my favorite recent encounters with magic happened on our Day of Fire. Learning to carve a bow drill kit, I watched as mentors and classmates alike blew coals into flame all around me. My mind was boggled, entranced, enthralled. No one could convince me that this act is not filled with pure magic. In the words of my roommate and close friend, Kai, the flames had “made me come alive.”
What does it mean to come alive? Coming alive, in my eyes, is when a person feels most excited, most inspired, most drawn to a certain thing or being. It’s finding the things that make a person believe in magic. I haven’t necessarily figured out if coming alive and experiencing magic are the same thing to me yet, but I definitely find a deep connection between the two. A lot of the things I have found the most magic in through this program are also the things that make me come alive.
So, what’s made me come alive so far? Bow drill, obviously, although I have yet to get my own coal to blow into flame. Camp craft, building shelters and tying knots and using my knife. Trailing animals, using their tracks to follow and potentially find them in the wilderness. And while I don’t feel particularly drawn to tracking, I did have a moment of magic upon learning the story behind these two strange dot tracks in the muddy sand. As a mentor guided us through our learning, helping us find the answer behind these mysterious tracks, I literally felt the picture come to life in my mind; I could see the beaver dragging the log up the beach, I felt each step and noticed the swish of his tail.
Tracking the things that are making me come alive is becoming an important aspect of this program, and of my education as a whole, to me. If I focus on what makes me come alive, I will ultimately be more engaged with the material and find more satisfaction in it.