“The Guest Who Smelled Like Cheese”

A blunt friend of mine once commented that guests are great, but after three days they start to smell like cheese. I laughed, understanding that as my hint how long I could stay. For seven years I lived far from the city, returning there monthly to work for a few days – during which time many of my friends took me in. Even though financially it was a wash, it enabled me to deliver healing to the people in my life with some consistency, continue spiritual studies, and then return to the silence of nature way up north. The voice of guidance sent me up there in 2010, the year I mangled my right hand. In 2017 the Bay Area called me back. In this moment, I am sitting somewhere in between.

Mendocino County allowed me to buy my first little home, become an herbalist, and cultivate a garden simply based on what seemed to grow. Medicines also known as weeds. Plantain. Rosemary. Comfrey. Malaleuca (tea tree). Oregano. Thyme. California Poppy. Mullein. Digitalis showed up one year and choked my comfrey, but luckily I’d already harvested a ton. And the prolific wild dandelion was so ruthless we never got along; she wove the yard into a tangled mat that made walking to the shed or the trash cans a hazardous feat. Weeding was futile. When I couldn’t do the trips any more I left the country and moved back.

So now I am the guest who smells like cheese. For two years people asked me to come back to work, and I finally said yes – surely due to the mind control of these trees. By some strange script I landed here with a fractured foot. It was nothing, really. My left foot simply slipped sideways and the outer bone rolled. But I heard that awful ripping sound I recall from breaking my hand – I just didn’t think this could be that bad! Now I’m a humble dependent on this farm run by strong, talented grandmas who are here creating the world they wish to see. I’m grateful for their hospitality, yet unaccustomed to disability this absolute. I don’t want them to serve me – they are busy – but I keep asking for greens. Twice a day I hop to the kitchen and then collapse. What a comedy I am! My favorite appendage is the lightweight walker given to me by the senior center here, and I now use kitchen chairs that way to cook. It’s slow going nonetheless.

The morning mists of Anderson Valley have spoken to the autumn winds. After a week of bright sun and scorching heat, it has suddenly become quite cool. This happened on the cross-quarter holiday, Lamas or Lughnisadh – August 1. We feel the shortening of days as darkness gingerly encroaches on summer’s light. Seasons changed suddenly in Colorado too, those many years I got to camp there in late July. Though I mean to, I rarely notice seasons morphing in the city, maybe because of electricity, light pollution, and the rush. But here I sit, ten days after fracturing my foot, and five days after admitting I’m not going anywhere too fast right now. My eyes, neck, cheeks, hands and legs are swollen from rabid mosquitoes feasting all night. And I only have two sets of clothes…one for day, and one for night. They don’t fixate on laundry here but today I may need help…