Going Rural: Dune Gardens, Mendocino
I am a nature girl. Whilst city time feels good for brief sprints, I crave the quiet, solitude, rightness of a nature space. There is a place that keeps drawing me in, one that offers me exactly what I need for this part of me. It is nestled in Mendocino county, California, in a tiny neighbourhood called Inglenook. I first visited when I just fell pregnant and ended up visiting each trimester. I chose Mendocino as my birth spot and whilst I did not birth Ruya in this particular place, I found a house nearby, surrounded by trees and saw a hummingbird deep in labor.
This place, called Dune Gardens, keeps calling me back without me planning to do so (if you are interested the contact is dunegardens@gmail.com). That for me is the kind of nest I call home. Home is not one place for me but those places that I do call home are rare. It is even more home now because the owners have become extended family to us.
What makes it just right for me is it goes enough rural for me to feel nature, and not so much I cannot relax. There are three cottages on the property, each with their own flavour. The one I usually got for is the most rustic and open. You see the garden - not to be underestimated as the owner is a landscaper and knows how to do that and keep things wild - through the glass pane studio. The little wood stove heats the small bed area with might, on just one log. And my bliss is the out door bathtub, which you get to following Ruya’s favourite path. As she walks along it she gets to examine moss and pick up pebbles mixed in with shells. She goes past lilies (she got her second name because when I was pregnant the owner always placed scenty lilies in my cottage), ferns and rhododendrons. The shade of a huge tree hides a little mother goddess statue she loves to look at. And then she gets to the claw foot tub, which she can just place her hands on and almost peer over. Needless to say she visits it often until we get inside it in the evening. There is nothing quite like lying in a hot bath with my daughter on my belly, staring up together at the birds in the branches, as the sun goes down.
Another perk of this place is there is no internet and very spotty cell reception. That gets me offline and drops me into contemplative mode. I study vedic astrology, I prepare charts, I read, I completed my book this visit. I take time over emails and send them when I can. I remember what it is like to be sensual again, to focus on what is around me rather than what is on a screen. I am not divorced from tech I just get to manage my relationship with it more spaciously. And that also makes me appreciate the stints when I get near a steady flow of internet again, makes me use it a little more wisely.
This last stay of a month, it was just Ruya and I. Our rhythm merged into a steady routine, so intimate and entwined. She got the expanse of a garden full of nooks and paths, and the ocean just over the dunes. And she got to learn the boundary of not touching the wood stove or eating too much sand - she gets a healthy amount of dirt on her every day. At eleven months she knows what ‘no’ means and I use it sparsely. She has never defied the rule around the wood stove. I open it when it is hot so she can feel the heat on her face, just enough so she gets that it is not touchable while the fire is burning. I am very lenient with most things. She gets to explore stuff many mom’s hold back. I am with her to manage the exploration and when she is done she moves on, her curiosity satisfied enough to let go for now. Of course there are moments when I have to pry something away but they are rare. I can’t child proof places being nomad. Instead I try to support her curiosity and provide boundaries that make sense to her. And when the knocks happen my little first aid kit of calendula, arnica and lavender oil works wonders.
Being in a nature spot let Ruya find her ground. By the end of the stay she had her favourite routes and flowers she visited, she would pick parsley and bits of kale from the garden and eat them, she took time to watch bees drink nectar and knew where the bird seed was to feed the birds each morning. Our rhythm followed the sun, rising before six, at dusk she would go down and I would follow as the sun set at nine. When I relaxed my body into the hot water as we bathed together at the end of each day, I always let out a deep, breathy, sigh. And Ruya would look down at me and copy me exactly.
