Today is One Year Traveling with Ranger in Our RV

One year ago today, July 8 2020, Ranger, my boyfriend, myself and our 2 kitties set out on an odyssey that would take us into unexpected scenery. In one day, we purchased our RV in Vermont, loaded it up with our earthly household possessions, put Ranger in the cab of the truck and trailered our new home to a campsite several hours away near the Delaware Water Gap. Ranger at the time, was just coming out of 7 days of a near-death state. The week before we set off we didn't think that he would be making it with us into this new era in our lives. He not only held on, he showed us a true miracle during the next few months of our lives on the road.

I am so grateful that Ranger has traveled with us both in body and spirit this whole year, and continues to share this journey of discovery and opening with us.

Today on this day, I would like to honor Ranger in a few ways on this blog:

This morning when I picked up his water bowl in his crystal garden to fill it, I found a large black beetle underneath the bowl. The last large black beetle I had seen was around a year ago, a large black scarab had suddenly materialized out of thin air to walk across Ranger's belly. The insects that were appearing on Ranger during his period of illness were so strange that it really got my attention at the time that something unusual indeed was going on. The scarab appearance was very weird, and it started to dawn in me that these insects showing abnormal behavior on and around Ranger were messengers from the spirit world. I felt so grateful to see the black beetle under his bowl in his garden this morning - exactly 1 year from when he set out on this journey with us. Thank you Ranger, thank you for being with us and letting us know all of the time that you are with us.

My communication with Ranger in the spirit world has been the deepest blessing I have experienced. He has continued to visit me, send me signs and communicate with me ever since he passed on September 2, 2020.  I have for months wanted to join one of Danielle MacKinnon's animal communication study courses, and today in honor of 1 year with Ranger on the road I signed up for her Soul Level Animal Communication Course 101. I look forward to deepened communication with Ranger, my other animals in heaven, my pets here in physical form, as well as my horse that is on her way into our family.

We light these candles in gratitude and love for Ranger. Thank you our dearest Buddha for showing us that home is not a physical location, it's in the heart - and for revealing to us that life and love continue on after death.

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate this poem to Ranger and myself. We may feel so deeply lost when we enter the landscape of bereavement, but if we take the time to connect with nature as we walk the path of our grief, we find that we are surely not lost at all but standing at the entry portal to eternity.

Lost

By David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~~~~

Ranger, as those living the traveling life say, I will see you down the road...