It was one of those December days when the beach was at her best. Winter warm, with the ragged tide washing out. Sand pipers, running in un-frightened little steps down the shining beach rim ahead of me. Families gathered in small clusters. Dogs chasing balls in the surf. Naked babies playing at the waters edge. A lone girl with cloud of wild sea wavy hair, sitting in a beach chair, reading a paper back novel, with the waves washing over her lap.
Beauty of earth and sea melded and I was in harmony with it, at one with the universe. I walked for miles along Bates Beach on that beautiful day. It was December 3, 2017 and the next day the Thomas Fire erupted and it burned out of control and raced down the mountain, crossed the freeway and burned all the way to the ocean. Homes along the shoreline were put under mandatory evacuation. Days turned into weeks and the fire raged.
And then December 2017 was lost to me. My neighborhood was on standby, readied to evacuate if the fire crossed highway 154. It didn’t. We were safe, my home was out of danger this time, but many of my friends had to evacuate for a long period of time and others lost their homes in what would become known as one of California’s largest wildfires.
I live two miles from the beach, as the crow fly, on the other side of town, in a canyon area near the foothills. We’ve had a number of fires over the years that have burned into our neighborhood.
But this fire was different. It changed me. My thoughts had started out molten and it was as if my thinking had been thrown back into the fire, recast, reshaped. I’m not sure what, only that my relationship with my belongings and my attachment to my home has changed. I’m thankful for what I have, deeply thankful, and I know the next fire might be the one that turns me homeless.
I didn’t have time to explore my thoughts further because a few days later on January 9th it rained hard, severe pounding rain that resulted in devastating mudslides for the areas and communities affected by the fire. Mud, darkness and destruction turned the community into a death trap.
Our town is beginning to rebound. Broken hearted, grieving the loss of lives lived, and beginning anew.
Meanwhile, what I discovered was the longer that I sat without understanding whatever it is that is taking root within me, the more I could touch the preciousness of life. Life’s beauty eclipsed by my fear, and that my incessant need to control out comes, is out of my control.
We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.
With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something.
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“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.” —Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence
