Each weekend people fly here, to Austin, to meet me at these sacred waters hidden deep inside Pedernales. This is a reality I never, ever, not even for a second, take for granted. I cry almost every drive home along the long country roads, lit only by the stars. This is what I have to offer the world: My kintsugi heart gilded in flecks of gold and sea glass, muddy feet and weathered skin battered from the winds of a thousand storms. I speak the language of the rivers because they only know of words that deal with survival, and my armor has always been made of nothing more than salmon scales all along.
For years I show up and step in and promise to protect and proclaim and profess my love. For the skinned elbows, and the tears, and the rushing rapids. For the lightning bugs and the deer and the wobbly armadillos blindly trying to find their way home.
But really it's all for Her. For the indestructible force that burns inside of every single woman.
This is our collective Home, this is where we belong, together, and week after week I am left speechless and in awe of just how breathtakingly beautiful it all really is.
