It is a sense of being dislocated and coming home all at the same time.

It’s day 3 in Kauai, and the sun is beaming up here in the hills where we are tucked into our new home in the jungle. The cat is watching birds fly by outside my office window, while some sort of bright chili pepper red flower waves in the breeze, and shadow mixes with light on the cloudy peaks above.

I’ve finally landed from my leap of faith from Alaska to Kauai, and though I’m still finding my firm footing and next step, I know I am where I’m supposed to be.

I can hear the air singing, and the jungle’s seeped in mystery, and my heart is beating slower than it has in a long time; I go out onto the grass every evening, press my palms to the earth, and offer tobacco in thanks, as I’ve been taught, to express my gratitude to everyone and everything and every force that came together to bring me to this magical space; I thought for sure the bamboo heard my heart the other night as they clacked and clanked and swayed at least 20 feet high in receptivity.

It takes courage to trust our hearts. To make breaks from the past. To forge a new trail that we can’t quite see. To trust that if we have the courage to follow what is calling to us, something better is waiting on the other side.

And to know that life will make a way for that which calls, but as the last few months show,  it doesn’t mean that we don’t still have to show up and do the hard work of getting there.

Yesterday I spoke with a woman at a furniture store named Bee who has been here almost 40 years. This is the most magical island, she said.

If you came to this island with an open heart, a sense of joy, a love for the earth and the sea, if you let the island teach you and don’t seek to change it, you are in the right place, only certain people are called to live on Kauai. But if you are here seeking money, seeking materialism, seeking to change the ways, to change the island, it will spit you back out and bid you leave this place.

We chatted for an hour. I bought a thick wooden stand needed to help organize our new space. She asked my opinion on whether or not her store was feng shui, and we talked about how the most valuable gifts in life cannot be measured on a piece of paper but are only found in the heart.

Last night I sat out on the lanai. Rain pouring down, deepening the sense of green. Thinking about Bee and what she said. Teach me your ways, I whispered to the breeze, heart open wide, ready to receive.

An orange butterfly circled free; a wild boar poked its head out of the jungle long enough to see me then retreat; and the bamboo swung and clanked and saw and sighed in peaceful unity.