Not a Hippy but Today I Miss Her

I am clearly not a hippy or a tomboy but I miss the earth today. I love wearing fancy footwear, putting on mascara and doing my hair. I would never be caught dead wearing Birkenstocks, listening to Phish, with drugs but no deodorant. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are hippies and tomboys, but I am not a tomboy either. I'm not really all that athletic and although, I love playing catch and seeing sports live, I'd rather flirt with boys than make competition out of it.

After all that self-identifying blabber...Today, my declarative statements don't really matter. Today, I feel disconnected from nature. There is always a trade off, isn't there!? I wish I could just go hide in the woods and live off the fruits of the land. I would like to bring back the week of the Menstrual Hut so I could take time off from a world apart from my biology.

In high school, I became a member of the Explorers, a co-ed division of the Boy Scouts of America. In truth, I originally joined to be closer to my first love's interests. However, quickly, I discovered that it brought me back to how much I loved the earth and wanted to be close to it. We went spelunking in Mexico, pack packing in New Mexico and camping in the yonder woods of Central Tejas and there was always a larger proportion of boys. I have always loved the boys and I also love Mother E. There are days, like today, when I miss soil. Especially when it is just too cold to go to the park and impossible to drop responsibilities and escape city life with a voyage. I revel in the opportunity I have coming up in a few weeks to go to the tropical weather and be close to Mother Nature.

The earth is not just way down deep underneath the concrete, hiding in the woods or looming above in the mountains beckoning me to touch her… she is also in the salt of the ocean, she is bubbling up basalt from the ocean floor, she is making more. She is harnessing the will of the moon and cutting grooves onto the sandy beaches. I was always the kid who got dirty and today I miss dirt! I adore the feeling of running my fingers through the soil.

I don't especially like the sand, but I can get past that gritty feeling in my toes to be closer to my beloved ocean. I have both a love of nature and the city. But living in the city as I do, daily, I only feel close to nature when I get home to my kitty. Today, I miss my vegetable garden in California. Today, I have house plants and a chia pet for my little furry friend. I have no plot of land to make a zucchini from a seed. I used to love to dig in the mud as a kid and that was the reason why my mom took me out of private school. It's been twenty five years since I was called into the Principal's office for having dirty fingernails, but I will never stop looking at my hands with scrutiny.

Today, dirt under my nails is really of the dirtier kind and although sometimes, I want to wake up closer to earth and not to be so high in the sky. I am not physically grounded but I'm really grounded, comforted that I can go underground and go anywhere within human capacity and without being a slave to a car. I'm not a hippy but today; I miss nature.