e.m.claytor

“When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them – for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes.” –Carl Jung

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Read Part 1 here.

Once we made the decision to travel to New Mexico, the synchronicities continued to follow us.  It was reassuring that we were on this path for a reason, but I still couldn’t figure out what that reason was.  The next couple of months were a blur of mystery, confusion and excitement like I’ve never experienced. 

I couldn’t sleep some nights – my mind ran in circles thinking about what lay ahead of us in New Mexico. I consumed all I could about the state.  I looked at the cities we might want to visit. I planned our itinerary and adjusted it multiple times.  I could hardly contain my excitement, and I was completely baffled because a few weeks earlier I knew nothing about New Mexico and had no desire to ever visit. But there I was – giddy and dreaming of my feet touching the dust of the high desert.

A few days after we had decided that we were definitely making the trip, I asked my boss if I could take some vacation time ahead of the holiday break, and I told her the whole, wild story of our synchronicities.  She was understanding and even told me about a personal situation where rainbows had been a sign of confirmation for her. 

That night I went home and while searching for travel information for New Mexico, I stumbled across someone’s blog entry about how New Mexico had called them – and that multiple rainbows followed them on the drive across the country serving as confirmation that they were heading in the right direction.  And, once again, the “meaningful coincidences” began again. I’ve listed some of them here, but this definitely isn’t a complete list.

A week or so later, Daniel and I were in town for some dinner, and we couldn’t decide where to eat (no surprise here).  We finally settled on Panera Bread, and when we turned into the parking lot, I saw Books-a-Million, and I said “Hey, stop. I feel like I need to go in here for some reason.”  It was just a slight nudge – an instinct that may very well have been nothing.  I even said “It may be nothing, but let’s just run in for a sec.”  Daniel joked, “Yeah, you’ll probably find a book about New Mexico.”  Yeah, right.  Not in small town Alabama. 

We walked in, and I browsed my usual psychology and philosophy sections while he stuck his head in the guitar magazines.  I bought some coffee.  Looked around aimlessly.  And finally decided it was a fluke and time to go.  As we headed toward the door, I said, “Hang on a sec – I am going to see if they have a travel section here somewhere.”  I looked at all the signs and found nothing. 

Then as I turned to walk away, I saw a small sign that said “Travel” near the magazine section.  This was the tiniest section of magazines – like two narrow shelves.  When I walked toward it, I was completely shocked.  There were TWO New Mexico magazines.  In a small town Alabama bookstore.  The other travel magazines were related to the Southeast, general travel and Europe. No other state was represented. I had no idea what those magazines were doing there or what I was doing there to even find them, but I obviously bought them both and decided that this was another sign we were being guided where we needed to go. 

That weekend, I presented at a conference in Birmingham and afterward we headed to the Gulf Coast for a few days to visit a friend.  While we were there, I stumbled upon some information about the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM and immediately fell in love.

The home was built by famous patron of the arts, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and her husband, Tony, of Taos Pueblo.  During the 1920s-30s, Mabel hosted so many artists and writers at this home – Georgia O’Keeffe, Willa Cather, Ansel Adams, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence and even Carl Jung (!!) visited and created there.  It was later purchased by Dennis Hopper after he visited Taos while filming Easy Rider.  In recent years, it has been opened up as a bed and breakfast and conference center.  I was so excited and kept thinking about how amazing it would be to stay in a place with that much creative energy. 

My brother is an English professor and D.H. Lawrence fan, so I texted him the next morning that we might be staying in Taos at a place where D.H. Lawrence stayed (and painted the bathroom windows).  His response was, “WHAT?!  I’m teaching D.H. Lawrence to my class in 20 minutes!”  Another synchronicity in the books, and for me it was a good indicator that this was a place we should stay.  

That afternoon, we went to the Gulf Shores Books-a-Million (no New Mexico magazines in that location by the way). I walked by a book about writers throughout history, and I opened it up nonchalantly to a random page – and there was D.H. Lawrence’s face and bio.  This was apparently just my life now.  One big collection of synchronicities, but my attention was caught, and I was listening.  Taos was officially on the itinerary — and we would stay at Mabel’s. 

One night during all of this, I dreamed that we had just arrived in New Mexico and to my left I could see a beautiful, powerful mountain range in the distance — It was glowing pink and orange and deep purple – and I remember thinking it was the one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen.  The feeling I had looking at that mountain was pure contentment.  We had arrived. 

For a few weeks, the word “Sandia” kept coming to me.  I saw that it was the name of a casino in Albuquerque.  And I had seen it in a few other places and just had a feeling when I saw it — like it was drawing me in.  Finally, I decided to look it up and discovered Sandia is the name of the mountains in Albuquerque – and when I saw a picture of the Sandias at sunset, I realized that was the mountain in my dream. The Spanish named the mountains Sandia (meaning watermelon) because of their color at sunset – a pink-reddish hue. 

The trip was beginning to take shape.  With my new magazines, I was finding a good route for all of the places we wanted to go.  This was an exciting, mysterious trip to take for our ten year anniversary. But we were still nervous about how we would be able to pay for it all.

Piece by piece as we continued to move forward in faith, we saw that we were being taken care of.  I ended up having a free night from Hotels.com.  We had a new credit card which would provide enough in rewards for two nights at a hotel.  I found a $50 Visa card I had been awarded as part of a promo for a business.  And it was Christmas time plus my and Daniel’s birthdays are during the holidays.  Mom and Dad gave us gas cards for our birthdays.  We took our Christmas money and put it toward the trip.  

We were going to make it. 

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