Don't be surprised when the streams find you.

With reverence to the Orisha, always beckoning us home.

We’ve had several downpours this month already, here on Kumeyaay Land.

One of my favorite songs on what may be considered the most divisive Panic! At the Disco albums is “Northern Downpour.”

It sends its love, it does, it does.

We’ve come out of our rainy streak this week, the sun streaming in bluish haze and iridescent ribbons.

Our hemisphere tilts closer to the Sun in the Winter, so I’m learning. I recently found a book of short essays contemplating the Winter Solstice and have been poring over them diligently, deliciously.

The elements of Earth + Water are speaking to me loudly in this season. I shared a bit about this overlap, this desire for my tears to meet the soil beneath me, in a love letter earlier this month. I’m happy to share that I’m still in this dreamstate of canyon wandering, letting the pull of freshwater bodies drive me deeper into the mountains.

Lakes and rivers came to me later in life. Born on Kumeyaay Lands with access to the Pacific Ocean, I was a devotee of Yemoja without knowing it for most of my life. Saltwater baptisms, soul exfoliations by millions of sandy grains, the way the Sun dipped so low in the sky we could almost touch it if we jumped high enough. The ocean held me for the first 17 years of my life and I knew I could never live land-locked anywhere for long. I would need access to her and those deep, untamable waters.

When I lived on Piscataway Lands for the next 6 years of my life, it was time to connect with another elemental spirit, and she called to me in the depths of both major depression and joyful expression. Piscataway Lands are, after all, along my Jupiter line. My time in D.C introduced me to the magic of lush forests, deep verdant mountains and running waters that enticed me to sit by their edge for hours. I’m remembering, here, the first time I went to Rock Creek Park and all the other sacred, countless times that followed. These snapshots eventually became the first iterations of my poem Thirst, published in Braided Way last February.

Ancestor led me to the water today

and a daughter of Oshun

left crinkled rose petals by my feet.

To the river I ran when heartbreak cracked me open. To the river I sprinted when I grieved and tried to recover my “no.” To the river I broke down, broke through, broke my cycles and begged for the tools to begin birthing new ones.

Freshwaters have witnessed me in my most vulnerable states, gently guiding me to let go of my addiction to narrative-spinning where it is not needed. Oshun shows me where I can set down my pen, for so much of my life is authored beyond my knowing.

It goes something like this:

I am called to immerse myself in the low dips at the base of a mountain ridge, or the canyons whose hungry mouths sit at the edge of our highways. Mission Trails, maybe, or a visit to my home suburb in east Chula Vista.

I follow the call of the lone circling Hawk. I go where Milkweed has browned, where Black Sage is stirring from slumber.

I walk and I walk. Farther away from the sound of cars. Deeper into the crest, where the crunch of gravel grit meets my shoes and there, in the distance! babbling sounds of running freshwater.

Oshun has this way of leading me right to her without me being privy until the last second. How many times have I taken myself on an afternoon hike and stumbled upon a rushing stream, cheeks warm with delight?

She is the embodiment of spiritual magnetism, effortlessly wise and playful in her delivery of this simple message: what is right for your path is already in pursuit of you.

The next time you find yourself beside the element of Water without having sought them out, trust that the magic is unfolding as it’s meant to. The elements are always beckoning us home, often before our tongues can find the sounds to express its longing to be found.

⋆˙⊹ ࿐ *ੈ✩ ₊

The Dream Seeding Studio weaves herbalism and poetry with workshops in San Diego, BIPOC virtual writing circles and small batch herbal remedies. The Studio is nurtured by Shel, a Black/Chinese/non-binary herbalist and poet, chaos gardening their way into remembering on Kumeyaay Land (San Diego).