The first time I fell in love with expansive land I also fell in love with a person — and I think I had the two confused.

.

Sitting with him on top of Baja hillsides, I remember feeling like I could pull my breath in from miles away, that I could suck air in from over the hills on the horizon, through valleys, across the flat land — and it wouldn’t touch a single toxic thing before reaching my lungs.

.

I had never experienced breath like that before. I had never loved land like that before.

.

When our relationship ended I was heartbroken, partially because in addition to him, I felt like I also lost the land.

.

For some absurd reason I believed that one 23 year old boy was the only gateway I would ever have to land like that, breath like that, love like that.

.

Can you imagine how unbelievably devastating that was?

.

It is no wonder I was heartbroken. It felt like the sky fell. I had mistaken him for the source of all that is Divine.

.

My time with him on that Ranch in Mexico remains one of the greatest loves of my life. I continue to be deeply shaped by it. Challenged, stretched, guided back to myself by it.

.

But that relationship and place was not my only gateway to sacred breath and union with the Earth. Similarly, Peso was not the only source of unconditional love in my life and Chelsea was not the only true witness to my soul and gifts.

.

These special people, places and things were cherished portals for me, conduits — not to be confused with the source of what they brought.

.

I have known great love and have experienced excruciating loss — and when I zoom out on the landscape of my life I can see there is not one inch in which I have been forgotten, abandoned or un-loved.

.

Divine breath has flowed over the hills, through the valleys, across the flat land — touching every single part. Moments, places and characters have been linked, breath by breath together, in a love story so unbelievably penetrating and grand — there is no way it could ever be lost.