Ensouling Sea: Retrieving my Soul Skin

Immersed in blue: blue sky, blue mountains, blue saltwater -- I stand in the surf, slaking soul-thirst: It's been 28 years since I wandered off out of the Pacific Northwest into the golden hills of California, then the towering red rocks of Sedona, and a brief time in the Mid-West, soaked in prayer for our world. Having returned to Arizona this past March, this September I returned to my homeland, the Wet Coast. Wet Coast describes the the coastline of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Canada's British Columbia during the long, damp winter--and is also a play on West Coast. 

Standing in surf-lap, Ediz Hook, Port Angeles, Straight of Juan de Fuca, I recover my sea-tail, stashed amongst the rocks and trees at ocean's edge. "It's time for you to come home," say the Thunder Beings--the Thunder Mother and Father, "to recover your mer-tail, your saltiness, crown of sparkling sea-spray; that which has gone empty to fill, sea-lonely inner spaces mated once again to the shoreline. Lightning zippers the sky of my soul.

Wikipedia describes Selkies, also spelled Silkies, as mythological creatures found in Irish, Scottish and Faroese folklore. Similar creatures are described in the Icelandic traditions. Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land; this legend being most common in Orkney and Shetland. 

Seal Skin, Soul Skin (originally from the Inuit Nation) is a fable told by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, a fable of our deep need to be true to our own nature, preventing the loss of our soul as we forge bonds with 'other,' reminding us that the greatest loneliness comes from loss of contact with our inherent, native depths.

Journeying into the California Anza-Borrego and Arizona Sonoran desert-scapes 28 years ago, I wooed the wild dryness; stark vision, bare-bones discernment; cooked-down, the wind-stripped sacred parching that would scour clean the debris of my years.

Now I venture home to the Wet Coast, and the jewel within--the Sunshine Coast; renewing myself to my seal-skin/soul skin, re-fleshing my spirit with this lush, raw, undulating wet wildness: the richness of past exploring and the breathing, velvet, evolving tide of my future marry, becoming my present. Sea shanty arises in me, rhythms pulse my blood, tides call forth what is to be, rendering me to primal yearnings: soaking in sea-soup, fulfillment, recovery of my seal skin, soul skin. 

For a time, I was graced to have a real seal skin gifted me by an Alaskan Native--and, as in the fable, the seal skin is gone from me, and now, I've come to retrieve my inner seal skin, soul skin. I stand at the threshold of coming into Full Presence of my deepest currents.