In the Woods by the Water
October 17, 2020
Dear friends,
Last week I had the chance to escape into the woods…kinda. Work made it necessary for me to stay close to internet so I chose to camp at Jordan Lake (Wake County, NC) and spend time sitting by the water, taking pictures and writing. At night I made some small fires, ate s’mores and read Harry Potter. I’ve found reading Young Adult Fantasy (mainly The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter) make for a wonderful camping activity.
Once in the tent I strung up some twinkle lights, snuggled up in a giant 2 person, extra plush sleeping bag and read myself to sleep. I spent just two nights there…
I’m grateful for those hours by the water, nights warming at the small fire and reading under those fairy lights. I remember getting a restless feeling just a few days before the trip and thought “I must go to the woods, I must find some water…” and so I did.
I know my love for water started young, I know it as truly as I know my own name. I was born in a port city called Zamboanga in the southern Philippines and spent my young years of life traveling back and forth between Zamboanga and the small island of Basilan to the south. Some of my youngest memories are of sitting at the very front of those boats and watching the water part or giggling at the flying fish that we frequently passed.
With water on my mind I returned home and prepared to film another music video. I had recorded Old River for my Patrons (see my community page) at the start of October and decided that I would do a live version for Youtube as well. Old River is a goodbye song to my childhood, written from the perspective of young Mona, flying away from her life in the Philippines to settle in the state of Ohio, on the other side of the world. I spent a good bit of my middle school and high school years living in a small subdivision in Pasig City, Metro Manila called Riverside. It fits that water would be involved on all sides of this adventure. A childhood started on a peninsula, riding on boats and living on a small island, moving to the big city and still finding myself living by a river— from which the subdivision got its name— and finally flying over all that water to get to my soon to be adult home.
It feels like during those young years, water followed me and kept me close. Now as an adult I find that the roles are reversed. I must seek out time with my water, take breaks to sit by the Eno River, drive to the beautiful lakes here in NC and try and make it out to the coast. I’m glad to do so.
I have access to the Eno River which is just minutes from my home and with a bag of supplies in hand I made my way through the woods to a nice spot by a stream running perpendicular to the river itself. The day was perfectly temperate, the sun causing things below the tree tops to sparkle in those bright patches of sunshine. I’m glad in the below video that you can see the sun spots illuminating parts of my face.
I am publishing this post a couple weeks after actually putting up the video which was not my aim… but I thought it worth telling you a bit about what this song means to me and how I got to that little spot by the stream. I hope you enjoy it in some way and that the bubbling stream brings you some of the peace it has offered me all these years.
I’m celebrating another day on this earth with you. I’m hoping for the light to continue to shine down on us and that we grow like these trees, rooted in the ground and quenched by the water. We’ve got lots of work to do don’t we? Sometimes I can get so overwhelmed by all the work that I end up just laying in bed immobilized for days. Thankfully, sometimes you find the energy and resources to lay in bed by the water instead… gain back that energy for the good work ahead.
Until Soon,
Remona Jeannine
