“And I thought you were just helping me with my tent. I guess this was no accident.”
As I walked back from the bathroom at the campground I had spent all day resisting returning to, a woman shouts from 30 feet away “Hey can you come help me – I can’t figure out how to get this tent up!” I confirm with her that it’s ok I get that close to her. I dig the dirt out of the pole ends that’s keeping them from hooking on.
This isn’t her tent. She is a crisis counselor and therapist, especially for veterans. She drove a very long way to volunteer her time to help a veteran and his family in imminent crisis. Someone gave her a tent for her travels. She has a severe injury and is exhausted. She hasn’t done a lot of camping but she’s no timid city girl either; she’s a strong willed Vietnam vet. We get her tent set up so she can get in and out ok.
I tell her a bunch of basic tent life stuff and she starts calling me Ms. Parks haha. She says I should work at the parks, maybe as a camp host haha. I’ve thought of that before 😉
She’s also psychic. She kept asking me what I do and finally I said “sound therapy” and that whole shpleel. She tried to find the contact info for a recruiter she knows for the state of Alaska assistance agency that helps native populations. Apparently they’re into it? It’s a big thing up there, she says. Another friend has been trying to get me to go to Alaska but I had opted not to when I saw it would cost $1500 to take the last ferry down to Washington, (the van’s ticket is a fortune! And I can’t drive through Canada), and also that visitors to Alaska need 2 covid tests. Yikes. But now maybe there is a good reason to go? Then she said oh no you need to settle somewhere warm. Yup she nailed that one without any info from me! 😉 She quite agreed that Costa Rica wasn’t it!
We talked for a couple hours of many things. She has given me some very good ideas of how to leverage my broad experience and augment with some other certification to be of service to people in deep need. Didn’t I just say I’m looking for seva/volunteer work?
She specifically mentioned medical missions and Doctors Without Borders. I have enough background they like and I could apply as an admin, then do sound on the side for clients and staff.
She said if I can prove that sound therapy helps depression and PTSD, I’m good to go. I can certainly pull that info together!
As it turns out she was the one needing a session with the singing bowls….
She invited me to share her large campsite for the next two nights. Her intention was to save me money cuz a second car in a site is only $10 instead of $30-40+ per night per campsite. She gets hers for free as a disabled vet. I took her up on it. Where else did I have to go? Park on the street?
You know, I think she actually just wanted to have someone around. She liked having someone to talk to after a stressful day. She was going to need help packing up. I’m guessing she felt more comfortable sleeping with me nearby.
She spent all day helping that family in crisis. I spent all day cleaning my cooler and it’s contents that soup had spilled all over 😬 and catching up on my dishes and other chores. I set up my nice stove and texted her that she could use it tonight. She was SO excited to get to have hot food!!!
After she ate, she ran to the nearby shop to get a bag of ice. She got back in bad shape. She was already really stressed out from the crisis work and her injury. For some reason she ended up carrying the 7lb bag of ice with her broken elbow arm. It inflamed the injury, and she was super frustrated that the clerk wouldn’t help her out to the car, which made it all the worse. (I couldn’t hear her reason for not using her good arm. Perhaps she was not taking care of herself?) She said the pain was so bad she was worried she’d have to go to the hospital and that would be extra bad news for her arm.
I built a campfire for her because I figured she rarely gets one. I got one of her medical devices charged up from my “house” battery. I played the singing bowls and did energy work for her. The fire was working with her too. She talked out her frustrations. Bit by bit she slowed down, calmed down. Across the way, a youth group started singing as a beautiful choir, echoing through the Forest. It was ~ Heavenly. ~ She kept talking but I could tell she was shifting. She started to realize she needs to get serious about taking better care of herself.
She said something about another device that warms her hand to help the elbow healing. I pulled out one of my 75¢ reusable hand warmers. I tried to give it to her. I had a dozen at least. She didn’t want to take my things. She started using it. Then she accepted a second one for her other hand! 😹 She said they were better than the $5,000 device the VA loaned her.
Eventually the pain and frustration subsided enough she could go to bed.
I was exhausted and ready for bed. But. I wanted to go for a walk! It felt like I had not been outside all day even though I was. I had just been busy and not been with the trees much. So off into the dark I went.
The next day my friend was back to her normal. The elbow injury had not been further compromised. What a HUGE relief!
I helped her get all packed and go and then I packed up and went.
We kept in touch. Tonight she told me that the singing bowls changed her energy. A lot of things were falling into place for her or falling away as needed since that night. She is being unusually well cared for this week and next. She realized someone else was not helping her but stringing her along, and she is not going to fall for it anymore. Another person may be actually helping her with something she has been after for decades. She is also recovering from an infected spider bite that she got while walking around the campsite in her flip flops. (Likely a brown recluse ~ that’s some serious medicine.) But she has a house to stay in and doctors taking care of her. And she is helping two other local orgs too.
Lots and lots going around ~
Singing blessings and gratitude ~~
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