Flower Fairy Field Notes

Resuscitated by Rhododendrons

May 2025

Yesterday while I was out for a walk I saw a baby bunny. The timing was uncanny. I was making an audio journal and right as I was saying the sentence “there is nothing that helps”, the baby bunny hopped across the path directly in front of me.

It filled me with a flickering flash of joy, a much needed salve and a feeling of being blessed by the universes trickster spirit. "Oh really? Nothing helps?... 😏🐇.

A half an hour later as I walked back, the baby bunny hopped across my path in the same area again. Perhaps I needed to be reminded of the animal medicine a second time to really get the message.

Animals do help. Especially the babies. I had a healing experience with a baby goat named Luna the month before. More on that later…

It’s also this pesky cognitive distortion at play that I can see but cannot conquer when it appears. The over generalizations, saying that “nothing" helps, or I “always” feel this way, or I hate “everyone and everything”.

Even as I say it I know it’s not true and I see the distortion in action, but it doesn’t over power it. I offer ample proof to negate it, but the narrative grips on, as if to say to me - "Nice try, I see what you’re trying to do, but I’m not letting go of this distortion!" And so it yells even louder. "NOTHING, ALWAYS, EVERYTHING."

Fine have it your way - I surrender in defeat. It will pass.

Last week I also mustered the herculean effort to drive an hour to the Rhododendron Memorial Park. I felt resuscitated by the rhododendrons.

I had no life force in me before I arrived, and I left feeling like they breathed life into me.

A gentle reminder that it’s worth the effort to push a little sometimes. Not to do things that you “should” do, like go to a social event that you don’t want to go to, or some other neurotypical normative solution, but to go visit the flowers, or the petting zoo, or to take an extra long drive into the mountains to be kissed by peace.

On that note, I’m setting out today for a road trip up north. Another hureclean act of moving mountains with inner miracles.

I shall camp for a couple nights beyond the mountain pass. Another medicinal location for me.

I have been trying to will this adventure into motion for months, and I almost gave up on it, but then on the rhodo rescue outreach day I got inspired to throw my car camping stuff in the trunk.

The Rhodos made me do it. They inflated me with just enough life force to take the first step toward the dream. I set up the bed while I was at the park. Then once I was laying in my car bed in nature, I got excited to go car camping and decided I must make it happen.

I talked myself out of it several times over the following days, but maybe divine intervention is helping me with my lack of will. I feel like my body is going through the motions of packing the car and organizing the logistics without my mind being on board.

I’m going to drive off today - using the magic trick I sometimes have to use in order to participate in life: Just go check it out for a minute, you can leave and drive back home if you don’t like it.

I know how this trick works though, 9 times out of 10 I’m off to the races once I get going and I don't look back. I can already hear Americas Ventura Highway serenading my soul as I cruise the desolate mountain roads to the north end of the island.