It all started when we decided we wanted to get out of the Florida summer heat.

A friend of ours from Colorado was doing a house exchange in Europe and was very enthusiastic about the people she had meet on the HomeExchange.com website. Although my husband was skeptical and another friend was surprised, intuitively it felt like a good option to look into as an easy and cost-effective way to travel.

After creating a profile and taking pictures of our home, I was set to go. But I had been told (warned) it would take up to 100 emails to get an exchange. The many hours of looking for a home in five of our desired destinations felt like a real search into the unknown. Time was getting close to our preferred date of exchange and I was about 60 emails deep and had not yet found an exchange that would work.

One day, again searching into the unknown, on an intuition I reached out to a family who lived in one of our five destinations, Seattle. They wanted to visit another part of Florida but I took a chance and asked if they would like to visit the Clearwater area. I had not made that suggestion to anyone else when it wasn’t their preferred destination.

Surprisingly, they said yes! Following more emails and phone calls, our exchange was arranged. This young family reminded me of my daughter’s family and our interests in living more consciously so there was almost an instant comfort level between us. The beauty of this exchange was that this family has two young children and our home was kid-friendly! We met in the airport and exchanged the keys to the house and car. And that was only the beginning of our journey down this exciting new path.

I knew the house we were exchanging was a much smaller, simpler home than ours. But we were enchanted from the moment we walked into a delightful 100-year-old sweet, quaint home with lovely flower and vegetable gardens, (plus five chickens and a cat). The love and care in this home was immediately palatable.

During one of our day trips we visited Bainbridge Island. That day we ate lunch at a bar table with three girlfriends traveling together and one of their daughters. That lunch, by the way, was one of the highlights of the trip! Talking with these four women was such a go-with-the-flow experience. Anyway, they strongly recommended we visit Snoqualmie Falls.

Snoqualmie Falls are stunning to behold, and the history of these falls was attractively displayed for all visitors to read in a beautiful wooded park area. This is one powerful waterfall! What makes Snoqualmie Falls so amazing is the Native Americans held this land and water as sacred. They viewed everything as having energy and used to do purification rituals by the falls (some people still do).

In the 1890s it had the first hydro-electric power pump completely submerged underground (and is still being used today). Interestingly enough, the only way they could pump water to Seattle was to use electrical AC (alternative current) which wasn’t much understood at the time. (I love that part because it parallels where a lot of people are now in some respects. We don’t really understand miracles of energy healing or how shifting our thoughts can shift our outside world. Yet the more we experience it, the more we learn.)

As I sat up above the falls, looking upon them I was immediately awed by the power and swiftness of the water pouring over the edge, and how graceful, yet forcefully, it hit the body of water below and smoothed out to a gentle flow. I was totally fascinated by the all-encompassing mist created by the water’s movement, hovering – moving, yet not moving – over the water. I was transfixed by this whole process.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen falls before, but there was a powerful message with this one. There was something about the movement of water. From in its feminine — wide and calm, in a seamless, beautiful dance — into its masculine, the powerful presence as it moved toward the unknown into the blanket of mist and over the falls. From the descent into the still waters of its feminine below — and through more of the mystical mist — to be channeled into the known river and transformed yet again into the pipes to power (the masculine) electricity.

As I gazed into the falls, I knew the magic was in the mist of the unknown: letting things flow, being comfortable with the unfamiliar and letting desires be open.

Looking back, our journey into the mists was this:

• Let’s go somewhere during the summer — how can we do this?
• Moving into the flow of using our intuition (feminine). Thank you Shannon for being the lead on using house exchange.
• Investigating, letting the mists swirl (masculine) taking time to send many house-exchange emails into the unknown.
• Trusting (feminine) and choosing (masculine) to suggest to our exchange family they come to Clearwater.
• Trusting myself and my intuition (feminine) about the exchange and the family despite those, including my husband, who were skeptical (masculine) and staying grounded in my heart’s truth.
• Traveling into the mists to Seattle!

Our exchange family has many similarities to us and our family. It was almost spooky but I believe in the magic of the mists and trusting the masculine and feminine, dancing in perfect harmony, creating the possibilities and the miracles. And we have found amazing miracles, possibilities, and much fun in Seattle!

I believe this magic happens when we flow with the dance within — with the harmony of the masculine and the feminine within — and allow the transformation of the mists, the unknown, to empower us. This seems to be a message for all of us as we move into unexpected or planned change.

Post and let us know about your going into the mist and having a magical experience.

Dancing in the mists of transformation,
Bonnie