Wonderland

This blog post is a difficult one for me to write, because it is a continuation of a post I wrote a year ago. The original post was titled  Rabbit Holes, Snake Skins, Butterflies, and 'All Our Yesterdays.' It is the only post I have ever taken down. The reason being that several months ago I wanted to get it published. I edited it and had my mom edit it and then did nothing with it.

If you've followed along my blog for long enough, you'll know that Alice and her rabbit holes have been an omen for me for quite some time.

Here is a brief excerpt from that first blog post which I posted (coincidentally) on June 12th, 2024.

"Without going too in-depth about my personal experiences, Ana proclaimed that I was Alice in Wonderland. Maybe it's because I’m blonde and was wearing blue, maybe she’d just seen the movie recently, or maybe it's because she really does have deep powers and saw me through her third eye. But when she looked at me straight in the face and told me that I was Alice, and needed to open my eyes and go down the rabbit hole, I believed her. We analyzed this more throughout the reading. She connected Alice to my inner child, freedom, creativity, and ability to take risks."

Recently, I discovered Yellowstone has a nickname and that nickname is Wonderland. I learned this a few weeks ago when I first arrived and simply brushed past the fact. I didn't think about it. I didn't want to, I didn't care to. Until today. I started rereading my blog, and found myself looking for the one passage I had taken down. I'm not quite sure what led me to look for it. When I came across that paragraph I quoted above, I became immediately choked up. It hit bedrock. I called my mom without thinking, and as if I were confessing to a priest, I disclosed my secret-- that Yellowstone is Wonderland. My mom found it meaningful and non-coincidental. We hung up and a wave of anxiety rolled through me. I took out my journal to think through this, and concluded that the 'Alice' in me is something I have been avoiding. Of course I had see the old Wonderland ads here, but I hadn't stopped to think about what they might mean to me.

Talking, thinking, writing myself through it, I found that I've become overwhelmed by the idea of omens, of something spiritual, of a profound connection found across the threads of life. I turned away from Alice, and shunned the concept of Wonderland. Perhaps because I feared coming here to Yellowstone and starting a new chapter in life. Change is scary!

Sitting with myself today, I am giving myself the needed time to rethink this. Why would I purposefully want to shun and avoid the beauty in a Wonderland that is around me? In the idea of being Alice, who in my own words, "connects me to my inner child, freedom, creativity and ability to take risks."

Yellowstone is unfamiliar and remains a bit daunting, but it is a true, beautiful wonder.

I'm already here, having already taken the risk of making it over.

I reread the line about the things the Alice omen stood for. Then I applied it to my current state here. I am connecting to my inner child by doing a job that is about adventure and the great outdoors. I am embracing the freedom of being independent from the people and places I so thoroughly know. I am adding my own creative twists to things as I go along (the other night I hosted a creative writing session where we all wrote from the POV of a bear who is getting their picture taken). As I thought through these things, connecting each of the little Alice pointers, I felt happiness. The Alice omen has stuck around and there is something beautiful in the fact that she, this little blonde animated adventure child has remained even as I reject her.

Writing this post, there is a fear that a lot of this sounds crazy, a little coo-coo. To you- the reader, sure, but also to myself.

While a bit strange, I feel like I am helping myself find my voice through the documentation of this experience here on my blog. The Alice omen today gives me a thumbs up that I am on the right track. It is a grounding feeling.

And, of course, that I randomly happen to revisit her today of all days, 364 days after writing that initial post about it...."curiouser and curiouser!"

Three Alice in Wonderland quotes I am thinking about today:

• "The Mad Hatter: There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter." 

• "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." 

• "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." 

Anyways, thats all for now.

Here is one of the cool ads I found about Yellowstone being Wonderland.