On The Road

Yesterday I packed up my Texas apartment into a UHaul and made my way to my friend's place so we could pack the moving pod. We're leaving tomorrow on our way to Oregon. It's going to be quite the road trip, but I'm really looking forward to it. The Pacific Northwest is an ideal location for Witches; many sacred trees such as Rowan and Hazel grow there, and the huge forests are ideal working spots and guarantee privacy. Of course I'll be posting loads of pictures of my new home when I get there.

It's interesting how much a cross-country move in some way mirrors an initiatory experience. You lose your ordered way of living, undergo frightening trials (try driving a UHaul for hours on the freeway and in downtown!) and then have to rebuild your life from the ground up before expanding into something new and different. It's also made me become less dependent on physical things; when you have a finite amount of space, you tend to keep only what is really important and let go of what is not.

A Magical Move

In the next couple of weeks I will be moving to the Pacific Northwest. It's something I've contemplated for a while but have only now really had the chance to do. Texas just is not the place for me; I cannot take the extreme heat and lack of forests anymore. To me, the climate where I will be living is much more conducive to magic, and the huge old-growth forests hold a lot of attraction for me. It's always been my dream to live in England, but as that's not possible the Pacific Northwest has almost the same climate and similar terrain in some parts. I will finally be able to have my English Cottage Garden! At any rate, I will be in transition for the next few weeks and may not post regularly until I'm in my new home.

In a more amusing vein, I'm learning the hard way that it's hard to move as a Witch. Of course, I don't feel comfortable shipping my ritual tools so I am having to pack them into a box so I can take them on the road with me. I've also got so many boxes of candles and oils that cannot be subjected to heat that I don't know what to do with them. Finally, the larger items like my Stang (which is almost 6 feet tall) and besoms are unwieldy and difficult to move discreetly. If anybody's got suggestions for moving such things, please let me know as I would appreciate it.

This will be the first time I've moved so far away from my birthplace, at least as an adult (I had a brief stay in Arizona as a child.) Though it's kind of scary, and because of my poor health extremely taxing, I know this is the right thing to do and I very much look forward to roaming the huge forests and visiting the sea.

Here are a few images I found online to demonstrate what my new home's surrounding will be like.

My Sympathy

I wanted to take this opportunity to extend my sincerest sympathies to those affected by the senseless acts of violence committed today at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it sounds as though it was a hate crime directed at a religious minority. As a Pagan, I'm only too aware that there is still much hatred directed against non-standard religions in the US. Terrible events like this remind us that there is still a long, long way to go before we can hope for an end to the cycle of violence and hatred. I hope that all my readers, of any religious persuasion (or none) will take a moment from their day and send thoughts of healing to those who have been hurt or who have lost loved ones in this terrible, cowardly attack.