The leaves are starting to change. Little yellow and orange flickers are starting to rise up through the forest, in the yard. I’m watching a buck this morning. He has small antlers, which means he has to be a year or less old.

I have a lot to write about in general. I don’t lack for material, that’s for sure. I’m feeling the edges of my vulnerability. I feel that wall. I know my best writing comes when I can flow from that space, but I feel protective. I know I’m at my edge.

The moment you see something

I took the RV to a lake yesterday. With that man. I’ve only introduced him once before as Michael. I wish I had just used his real name. I love his name. We made pasta and slept in. We walked the lake the next morning.

The sun rose slowly yesterday. It was cloudy and damp. Montana is surprisingly humid to me, coming from Colorado.

We started later in the day. It’s hard to pull away from him. But, when we finally did walk, and as we were walking through the forest, we found a trail that followed a lake.

We walked for a while before he felt like we were going to see something. That feeling when you know you’re going to see something is palpable. I’m not sure I would feel that on my own. I’m usually head down, mission-oriented. I like to make a destination, a goal, and get there.

It’s Michael that really moves with the land. I don’t know where he gets that sense from. I don’t know that I have it in the same way. He communes with things differently than I do. I’ve had to practice communing with nature. It feels like he always has.

It looked like we were on a game trail. We had kept seeing moose droppings. So I thought we might run into a moose. His doggy running up ahead of us and then coming back. She likes to be in front. She came to a point where she started staying tighter. Started being a bit more alert.

At this point, Michael’s leading. He’s walking slower, but he’s got all his senses on. He’s alert and present like I’ve never felt. His presence is one of his greatest gifts.

We stop. He sees a movement in the trees up away from the water. He points, but I don’t see anything. I have my camera and some coffee in a sealed mug. I’m wearing biker shorts and cowboy boots. I am unprepared to see a moose, and I genuinely hope we don’t. I know how dangerous moose can be.

But, instead, something catches me in the opposite direction. I look toward the water. We’re above it, and I can see it moving below us, on a rock, right at the edge of the lake. It’s moving around quite a lot.

At this point, I’m thinking it’s a small bear or something. My mind goes first to the things I’m most scared of. It’s too small to be a moose, but I can’t tell much through the tops of the trees, and I don’t know enough about this land yet.

We’re still in low voices, and I point to it. Michael doesn’t see it at first. He moves around to get a better angle and takes out his phone to zoom in on them (we forgot well-needed binoculars).

But, he has it.

He looks back at me with wider eyes than he already has and says, “It’s a river otter”. He’s so excited. We’re both so excited. He has me move to see them just a little better, and you can.

Their tails come in and out of the water like little eels. They’re jumping from the rock into the water and back up. They swim in and out with their little bodies. They’re just the cutest, and I’m filled with joy. They make you feel like you could burst.

“I hope it’s not lost on you how rare this is to see. I’ve lived in Montana my whole life, and I’ve never seen a river otter,” Michael says.

It’s a bit lost on me. I’ve been in Montana for a little over two months, and I’ve just seen them. And I have a connection to the otters, spiritually. The otter is in my medicine name, and they’re the animal in my sitting place. I know Spirit will always provide the medicine we need.

I’m what the lineage I’m studying calls a North sitter too. The otter is the totem animal of the North, the ones born to Aquarius. I have a spiritual connection to the otter, so I feel exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Otter medicine

The otters have big medicine. Otter medicine cleanses and purifies sacred waters, i.e., all emotional states, the blood, and the lymphatic systems of humans. If an otter is in a stream, the water will be clean to drink. The otter teaches us how to stay on the good, clean road.

The otter shows us how to play in our inner child and how to give with our emotions. Otters will always tell of emotional reality with absolute accuracy. It also protects men as they learn to deal with the energy of women’s moon cycles.

It’s uncanny that we saw these otters at the time we did, for more reasons than one…

Because, just hours before, I had blurted out the words I’d been carrying in my chest for weeks: I love you. I couldn’t hold them in any longer. Every time I look at Michael, my whole heart rushes forward, like water pressing against a dam. He brings me flowers and stones from the river, and I just want to pour everything back into him.

But when I said it, he froze. His reaction was, let’s say, lukewarm. He was sort of, I think, shocked by it at first. He says, what did you say when I said it. Oh, nothing, nothing. Don’t mind me, just in love with you over here.

I don’t remember us talking much more about it in the morning before we headed out walking. The otters found us before I could make a fool of myself again. Sleek and shining, their bodies cut through the water with a kind of holy mischief. They were playful, effortless, pure.

Otter medicine reminds us that emotions are sacred and good. That the I love you I give, in my interjection, comes from a place of play and innocence. But what needed to be cleansed here? What was the message for me? What was it for him?

What we hold

Spirit sent me the otter right after I told him I love him, right after I met new parts of his emotions. I know he doesn’t take it lightly. I know I have to take the message from Spirit.

The I love you was for me, innocent and happy. I didn’t need him to say it back. I was scared to say it even. Knowing maybe it wasn’t reciprocated or ‘the right time’.

I felt him scared by it. Vulnerable. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I just want to love him like the otters play. Pure and easy. Playful and loving by nature’s design. Joyous and together.

But my adult knows the weight those words hold, now a bit better than before. I can feel the promises made by others before me that might have been broken. Might not have stood up to the ideal. Might have made mistakes or faltered. Indiscretions or pain. My I love you, although innocent and true, carries a weight I didn’t create.

The otters remind me that were both just children, really. That part of us is always still there. The part that wants to love and play, and the one that might be hurt. The otter makes it clear what might need to be cleansed. Am I making sure that I’m saying this with no other motives or attachments? When I say it, can I know it’s not all just butterflies and rainbows but a real, whole human heart here? One that in my own desire to love, I’m asking to hold. Can I be clear in my ability to see the impact on him?

Otters are born blind. They have to stay with their mothers for 91 days and are slowly weaned off. When something can’t first see in the world, it must have to feel. Must have to build a kind of pure trust with everything. With a trust, truth, and innocence that has to be honored, admired, and protected. That’s what we do with the child in us all. With the thing in us that is only pure.

It doesn’t just happen that you see an otter at a moment like that. At the moment where my I love you touches both of our emotions, the child within us, the part of pure truth, trust, and innocence.

I didn’t need his reaction to be anything but what it was. Because I feel like the otter in his water, too. I’m blind and I still feel safe. I can see his core, through the mess of hearing those words and what it brings up. I can feel some place that we’re both with, and I’m also steady in my own truth and innocence. And that it’s beautiful to feel that way about someone, and that I’ll let that little girl love this boy simply because she does.

And so the medicine of the otter was to be with that pure emotion. With both the pure truth of I love you and the clear truth of the whole person. Of that part of them that is the otter too. Of where purity and play live and of what also might need to be cleared by the sacred waters that we move through.

Love,
Val

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