Travel can offer time for appreciation of passing landscape or whimsical modeling that rejuvenates us. Just leaving the routine and the familiar can pique our longings to express ourselves, but long cramped road trips can also give rise to boredom and whining voices form our children or the child-within asking, "are we there yet?" A fun car game as remedy involves focus on and response to the names of places, roads, festivals, stores, or any words on signs.
Last month driving in Montana, the names intrigued us as they reflected the history, landscape, and local culture. Consider the town names, Bear Mouth, Silver Bow, and Opportunity, or the store name, If You Forgot It, We Got It, even signs for the upcoming Testicle Festival. I kept trying to come up with a feminine counter: Ovary Reverie? No one said they have to be good!
Other names elicited reflection and a sense of beauty like Divide, Wisdom, or Morning District. Recently I holed up in a cabin for some writing days on Washington's Whidbey Island. On the way, I passed Honeymoon Bay, Mutiny Bay, Double Bluff Road, and Useless Bay. Those names suggest a novel plot that practically writes itself.
Riding the Chetzemoka Ferry home, a cherished memory floated up. As a young girl, sitting in the back seat of the family 57-Chevy winding along the Eagle Mount Highway, there were yellow signs with black letters that read, Watch for Falling Rock and Watch for Running Water on Roadway. My father, in a moment of brilliance, spun a yarn about the lost indian brother and sister named, Falling Rock and Running Water. I became transfixed with the plight of these poor children and stared in the woods imagining their lives.
You can apply this naming metaphorically to significant stages or events in your life. In one of my favorite classes to teach, I guide people in writing their spiritual autobiography. I define something as spiritually significant if it causes a reaction relating to our center of living: integration, disruption, enlightenment, or darkness. We write to explore the meaning and gift of our life.
I follow Dan Wakefield's prompts in his book, Returning: A Spiritual Journey and during one session, we draw a map or board game as an overview of our lives. Here I encourage writers to appreciate the power of naming.
Rainier Maria Rilke in a little collection called Letters to a Young Poet wrote, "It is so often the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort." This is where spirited women need to apply nurturing wisdom in naming events in their history to integrate all that has occurred.
May you dear women embrace your truest names, see your lives with compassion, and enjoy the names you meet and give along your journey.
Sue Sutherland-Hanson
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