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From victresshitchcock.com
“A riveting and intimate tale of a woman’s journey in search of a home, in her body, in her spirit and in the land. I couldn’t put it down…” Tsultrim Allione, Author ––Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Sacred Feminine
As the 20th century careened towards the finishing line, author Victress Hitchcock moved with her husband of 25 years from their familiar urban world to 160 acre historic ranch in the Wet Mountains, a range in the Colorado Rockies so remote no one they knew had ever heard of it.
Within months, their lives unraveled, and out of the wreckage a path opened to a radically new way to be in the world fully alive with joy and sorrow.
Victress began her journey as a Buddhist practitioner after meeting Trungpa Rinpoche in 1972 at Tail of the Tiger. Before that meeting she had been trying, with little success, to meditate on her own.
Here is an excerpt from the book describing that meeting:
I took the bus to Vermont from Washington, DC. I remember it was snowing when I arrived at Tail. A meditation program had just ended, and only a few close students were still there. Everyone, including Tsultrim, seemed to be just hanging out doing very little. I was at loose ends, not sure what to do with myself.
One afternoon, I was sitting on a couch in the library nursing a headache I had had since arriving three days before and trying to read an article called “Working with Negativity,” when a man came in and told me it was time for my interview. I hadn’t asked for an interview, but I went. Rinpoche was in his room, sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair next to a small desk. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt with suspenders holding up his jeans. The light in the room was dim. I sat down in a matching chair, facing him, and he offered me a Marlboro. We smoked in silence for a while; I had no idea what was supposed to happen. Finally, I began to describe the confusion that arose in me when I tried to meditate. He put out his cigarette in his slow, deliberate way and said, “Open your eyes. It will make a big difference.” I had not told him I was meditating with my eyes closed. Rinpoche then said that he was moving to Boulder, Colorado, and I told him that I was living in London but I owned a house in Boulder. “I will see you there,” were his last words as I left the room, my headache miraculously gone. Karma or coincidence, a year later I was living in my house in Boulder, I had joined the community that had sprung up around Trungpa Rinpoche and begun studying Tibetan Buddhism.
You can read more excerpts and see pictures of the ranch at www.victresshitchcock.com.