Root & Rise

by Jessica Girija Jewell

This week’s note comes to you from New Mexico, the place I call home. I’m here visiting family and also returning to a mountain that shaped me long ago: Capilla Peak in the Manzano Mountains, the southern reach of the Rockies.

For many years, I worked at Capilla Peak as an “observer” with Hawkwatch International. Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and falcons stream through this high-elevation corridor, making their way south for winter. My job was to identify and count them as a way to monitor raptor population trends. I loved it: the sharp-eyed focus, the wide sky, the sense of being part of something meaningful and wild.

Some memories have never left me: a northern harrier lifting from below the ridge and locking eyes with me mid-flight; a Merlin chasing robins right over my head; the fierce stare of a golden eagle in my hands before I released her back to the sky. And on September 11, 2001, the sight of hundreds of white-throated swifts in murmuration — circling tightly, wheeling as one, then rising all together into the open sky.

It’s been eighteen years since I’ve been back. Life carried me elsewhere: raising children, supporting my husband's career, tending to the dharma of everyday family life. Now, I return — not only to the mountain, but to myself.

Many years ago, I received a spiritual name from a Swami: Girija — “daughter of the mountain.” It is one of the gentle names of Parvati, consort of Shiva. When I heard it, I felt seen. The mountains have always been my refuge, the place where my soul roots and rises. This name has been a mirror, a reminder, a call back to the essence of who I am.

And so I wonder: What calls you back to yourself? Perhaps it’s a place that feels like a refuge the moment you arrive. Perhaps it’s a word, a name, a song, or a practice that reminds you of your truest nature. Perhaps it’s the people who see you clearly and reflect your light back to you.

This week, as the hawks migrate south and I walk the ridgeline of my younger self, I invite you to pause and listen: What is your “mountain”? What murmuration lifts you back into the sky of your own spirit?

In yoga we often say root and rise — and perhaps this is the invitation: to root into what grounds you, and to rise into what frees you.

May your soul find its mountain, and your spirit its sky.