Coming Home

Abstract

Abstract

This is a personal narrative of a backpacking trip into the remote mountains that form the backbone of Vancouver Island. It is not a commentary on the value of wilderness experience or therapy, or on what defines notions of wilderness; rather the author, a trauma psychotherapist working with victims of violence, is simply telling a story of journeying into the mountains, accompanied by the pain of being a witness to the grief that this world suffers. As she traverses the ridges, she pays careful attention to her inner landscape of violence and loss and to the external landscape of coastal alpine. The necessity for mindful attention brings her step by step to a deeper place, a place of increasing spaciousness and a sustaining unity. Implicit in the narrative are themes of the interconnectedness of all life, what it means to find our place in the world, and loosening the edges between the self and the rest of life. In the mountains, the author is reminded of her true nature and what it means to live awake in the moment, to commit to what needs to be done.