Chapter 31 – Into the Darkness

Alone!

He’s alone here at Dinky. Karen left yesterday. She’s going to LA to see Steve and Simone. His friend Larry left just minutes ago. He’s alone in the camp now.

He’s physically exhausted. He has no strength at all. Earlier today, he was dizzy and had to sit down. He’s continually losing his balance, falling, and missing his footing. He feels strange too. He asks the I Ching where he’s at and receives the Hexagram, Conflict, changing to the Hexagram, Wanderer. He’s not sure he understands the message.

He’s feeling weaker by the minute. He’s tired and his head is hurting. He just wants to lie down and sleep. He’s not sure that he wants to smoke or drop acid today.
.

He finally got out of camp. He’s down at the lower pool now. He took a swim to wake up, and now he’s sitting here, leaning against a friendly tree, reading Stephen Gaskin. Gaskin began slowly too. He hopes that, like Gaskin, he can also create a space for Spirit. After awhile, inspired by Gaskin’s words, He finally does drop a hit of acid.

Now that he has dropped, he’s afraid the acid might hurt his body. He asks Wanderer to help him heal rather than hurt body – to help him to be centered in both body and soul. He also asks for help in not always being in conflict with himself.
.

As he feels the acid coming on, he suddenly becomes very scared. He doesn’t know why he’s so freaked, but he is. He panics now. He grabs up his stuff and runs back to camp.

But whatever is after him is here too. He can’t find his center anywhere – there’s nothing strong enough for him to center himself upon. He hopes he’s not still this scared after dark.

He almost left with Karen yesterday, almost left with Larry earlier today. He worries about Karen in Venice. He imagines that she’s been in a serious accident, maybe is even dying. A part of him wants to believe all this, wants him to pack up all his stuff and head out to the phone at the trailhead, maybe even hitchhike all the way to Venice. A part of him wants to leave here, wants his Karen mommy.

Somehow, he realizes that this is all just one big fear fantasy, wanting him to act it out. But knowing this, he is able to take it symbolically and commit himself to staying here no matter what.
.

He’s very scared of being alone.

Scared.

Scared.

Scared!

.

He runs to the Old One now, looking for support, for meaning. Why is this happening to him? He knows it has to do with Karen being gone. She has been his main support for who he is. If she dies, who is he? He realizes he had better find this out while she lives, especially so she can enjoy him as he truly is.

It helps being here. He begins to think that he might be all right. He’s feeling calmer now. He even begins to ramble about, enjoying the beauty around him.

He ends up sitting under a Juniper tree, one new to him, sitting high above the junction of Cow and Dinky Creeks. The clouds above are beautiful and try to calm him out, but he’s still completely freaked. He still wants to get up and run. But to where?

He wants to find some place where fear can’t get at him. He feels so vulnerable here. He knows he has to face whatever is scaring him. What are these fears that Karen has been shielding him from?

If he can survive today, he’ll be ready for anything. But right now, he’s completely overwhelmed from fighting both the acid and the fear.

He stops running. He can do this much anyway. Instead, he lets go to the acid and the fear, trying to be as high as he can but without denying the fear. He lets go of being himself. He becomes pure awareness. Suddenly he begins to leave his body. As he floats high above the trees, he can see his body far below, sitting still beneath the Juniper tree. He knows that he can keep going and never come back to the fear and all the shit of his life. But something within him yells now and wakes him up. And suddenly he’s back in his body, shaken but awed by the experience.

He decides that he needs to walk about and be in his body now, or else he might go floating off again. He walks down to Cow Creek and dives into a deep and cold pool, trying to center himself again in his body. There’s no sun down here by the creek, but he’s still warm from the day.

The day is ending. He hadn’t been tuned in enough to notice the passage of time before. He walks back up into the sun and lies on the rocks, watching the warmth leaving the day, watching the feeding hawks wheeling high above.
.

The Visitor

He has started his fire and has even made himself a good dinner. He’s much calmer now, although he knows it isn’t finished yet. He’s still scared. He’s taking care of himself for now though. It’s dark, and he’s sitting here before the fire, everything done for the day. He’s about to smoke a joint, his first of the day.

A man walks into his camp. The man speaks to him from just outside the fire circle, asks if he can share the fire. He tells the man that he’s welcome, to come have a seat. At first he thinks the man is of this world, but then he notices that he can see starlight through the man. He really is here though. He asks the man who he is. “A wandering man, just a wanderer,” the man answers.

The man is near his age, maybe somewhat older. It’s hard to tell. The man is loose and on the loose. He can tell this. He understands somehow that he’s going to be like this man. He’s going to be loose and on the loose himself – in the mountains and on the road, with his life. He knows he’s going to learn from him too. The man tells him that he knows his fears, knows that he is just beginning a path that he has been on and comfortable with for years.

He asks the man what he should do with his life now.

“Live it. You want to wander, do so. Write your book, tell of your beginnings. Write another, of your travels if you want. And don’t worry about money, you won’t need much as a Wanderer.”

“You’re me from the future, aren’t you.”

“Yes, and it’s really cold where I am now, when I’m not here with you. You’ll see. You’re going to change fast from now on, really fast.”

He lights his joint now, takes a hit and then starts to pass it to the man. The man laughs at that and says he’s already stoned. He remembers his dream of smoking with a man in the mountains. He knows that this man is somehow a part of his coming death. He smokes while he and the man sit quietly together.
.

After awhile, the man says that he has to leave soon and that he has come here for a specific purpose. The man is here to baby sit his body while he returns in time to help the sick and dying little boy that they both were once. Leaving the fire now, he heads for his sleeping bag to find that little boy within himself, still crying and freaked out in his lonely hospital bed of pain.

He lets go of his here and now, trusting his magical visitor to protect his body. He returns in time, just in time really. The little boy is badly freaked, just as he himself was earlier today. The boy can’t find his center no matter where he runs to in his mind. Seeing the freaked out little boy falling through the darkness, he remembers what to do. He tells him that there is no bottom and to turn the falling into flying.
.

The Ants

The next day he’s up early, and soon he’s down by the lower pool again. He has been writing new notes as well as rewriting some of his older ones. He has been out of sorts all this morning, jumpy and bothered especially by the ants.

Don Juan says that morning is a bad time for sorcerers, a time when they are most vulnerable, especially after first meeting with an ally. Last night he met his. His ally walked into his camp – that wandering man from his future.
.

Later in the day, he ends up at the Juniper tree where he was sitting yesterday when he left his body and started to float away. That was extreme! And now, just as he leaves to move on, he slips and falls on a rock, almost hurting himself badly. He feels danger all about him today.

God, the ants are here too! Today’s been very difficult for him. It’s funny; he thought Edie would be in camp when he just passed through it. He’s still hoping she’ll come up this time.

He remembers again Karen saying how when you fight the ants, they think it’s war and attack you back, but when you grab a handful and eat them instead, they understand they’re prey and run away. Gypsy used to eat them, and they stayed away from her. He decides to eat a few to see for himself. It worked before.

He’s thinking about ants. He knows they often symbolize anxiety and fear – “ants in your pants” or being “antsy.” He realizes he’s learning today not to fight his fears, but instead to eat them, to digest them and turn them into positive and healing nourishment.

He eats an ant, another one, then a third for Gypsy. He eats only the ones who come to him. He thought it would be weird but it’s easy. “Okay! Fear, I’m done fighting with you. I’m eating you instead. I’m listening now. Speak.”

Fear speaks: “You’re afraid of being alone. What if you become hurt or sick? What about Karen, is she all right? Will she come back? Is she sleeping with Steve? If she does, will she use her diaphragm, or will you have to go through an abortion with her like you had to with Pamela when she had one of her affairs? Does Edie love you still? Will you ever see her again? Will you ever earn a living? Are you fooling yourself about your book?

Fear continues: You’re afraid to stay here and afraid to go back to the city. You’re afraid to be alone and afraid of people. You’re afraid Karen will leave you. You’re afraid Edie has already left you. You’re afraid of the sun on your skin, of the mosquitoes, of making mistakes, of being a fool, and even of people knowing who you are. You’re afraid of almost everything and everyone and every place. You’re mostly afraid of yourself.”
.

Wanderer speaks now, “Be patient and wait for your fear to end. It will go away as you wait with awareness.”

He doesn’t understand, doesn’t believe, but then….
.

Then understanding bursts upon him. Oh, this hurts! Gypsy’s dead! That is what this is all about. When they buried her, there were all those ants crawling all over her, and she was dead and couldn’t scare them away anymore by eating them. He remembers seeing them crawling in her eyes and her nose and into her ears, and….

Oh, this is terrible! He’s sitting here alone, crying, remembering. When Gypsy died, it was the first time he had ever seen death, ever realized that it would be him there someday with the ants crawling all over him. He cries now for the longest time, remembering Gypsy and their love and times together. When he finally stops, he feels comforted and mothered, as if the Mother has been listening to his grief and has been holding him tenderly to her breast, helping him to feel again.
.

When he’s finally still, Wanderer speaks again, “Death was and is still constellated in you. As long as you have feared to face death, even that of others, you have had to stay out of your body and have even had to hold off love so that death couldn’t take away anyone you cared for.”

He listens and sees that this is true. He would never visit his great aunts or his grandmothers as they lay dying. He would never look upon the face of death. He has always been afraid of death. This has been his central fear.

Wanderer goes on, “And if you do give your heart to someone, as you have with Karen, you make them too important and hold onto them too tightly, yet you still have the fear fantasies.

Also, you have never been physically brave. You have always been fearful of being hurt or dying. You’ve never risked, never taken chances. You’ve never really lived. And all this unlived life in you wants out, is trying to kill you, their jailer.”

He asks Wanderer what can he do. Wanderer answers, “begin with always being in your body. Also, let people closer without hanging on to them, without always being afraid to leave because they might die while you’re gone. Take chances, risks, and be willing to die. Accept your fear of death, feel it, taste it, eat it, let it fill you – then overcome it.”
.

He eats another ant or two while he digests the meaning in the air. He’s not afraid anymore. He’s ready for tomorrow, for the day he’s going to die. Maybe he’ll see Gypsy.
.

Wanderer Understood

He understands now that Wanderer lives outside of time and has always known of Gypsy’s death. He knew of it too, near the end, because of his connection through Wanderer. This is why he was so anxious for her the day before she died. He realizes now that her fate had already been determined when they first met. There was no way for them to overcome their destinies. There is no blame.

“You’re right, son, you’re learning,” Wanderer interjects. “You have glimpses into the future. You can already see it coming. When you have learned that you have no control at all over events and that everything is already set, then you will begin to see even further and deeper through time.”

He begins to understand. He feels awe at Wanderer’s wisdom. “Who are you? Where do you come from,” he asks him.

“I’m you at your best, at your furthest reach.”

He imagines that Wanderer is a future self, back to teach and guide him just as he has been reaching back in time to teach and guide that scared young boy he was once and still is within. He asks Wanderer, “Is this why you are here now?”

“Yes. This is the second time in your life when you will face death.”

“Where will it come from,” he asks.

“From yourself, and soon.”

When he was seven, he died, and, when he came back to life, there was no connection between who he had been before and who he became from the experience. He asks, “Will it be the same this time?”

Wanderer answers, “It will be the same yet different. There will be death and renewed life. I’m here with you as the bridge, just as you are the bridge for the little boy.”
.

Tomorrow he is going to follow that little boy into his lonely darkness. He’ll be with the boy, while Wanderer will be here with him, protecting him and anchoring him to the here and now. He realizes that this is what he wanted from Edie – to be his guide for this, knowing now though, that if he had had his childish and frightened way, he would have ended up being always dependent upon her. Being here alone with Wanderer, dependent upon no one but himself, he can emerge from the experience whole.
.

Chapter 32 – Into the Darkness

Peyote Morning

He wakes up early, remembering he’s supposed to die today. He sees the rain clouds rushing in, so he leaps out of his bag and gets the tube tent up – just as the rain begins to fall. He throws the rest of his gear into the tent and then crawls back into his sleeping bag. He’ll stay dry for now. He gives thanks to whoever is watching over him.

When the rain stops briefly, he gets up again to prepare the rest of his camp. It looks as if the rain will be back again soon. It’s going to be that kind of day. When Karen was here last week, they made a wooden framework for a shelter. They made it out of some old dead trees and branches, all tied together with some of their rope.

Now he gets out their big blue and maroon tarp and lays it over the framework, tying it down with more of their handy rope. Next he brings his packs and his bedding inside. Everything will stay nice and dry under the tarp. He also gets some dry firewood to put inside the hollow tree for later.

A few minutes later, it’s raining again, really hard now. He hears thunder. He’s dry in the shelter. He decides to stay in it today, at least until it stops raining. He’s reading Carlos Castaneda talking about death and Mescalito now. Inspired by Carlos’ story, he decides to eat peyote instead of acid today. He’s going to follow the young boy within himself into the boy’s darkness. He hopes to return. He has done the best he can.
.

It rains all morning. He’s feeling stuck here under the shelter. The peyote is making him sick, and he’s really sick of himself too. He can’t stand it, so he gets up and walks out of camp aways. It’s not raining that hard now anyway. He tries to throw up but he can’t. He’s feeling just terrible.

He clambers down to Cow Creek now and takes a dip in its cold waters. Afterwards, he finally does throw up. He’s feeling somewhat better now, but he’s still nauseous from both the peyote and his fear.
.

He’s tired of trying to throw up with nothing coming. He’s scared and feeling really alone. He wants Karen! But he’s afraid she’s dead and he may never see her again. Everything is dark. The only light in his life is Karen, and she isn’t here. Suddenly though, for just a moment, he becomes clear and realizes that all this is really just a part of the little boy’s darkness – not his.

But, almost immediately, he loses his clarity and sinks more and more into depression. No one but God can help him now. He certainly can’t help himself. He wants to leave and go to Karen, but he knows he would be defeated for good if he did – and she would know it too, that he ran to her. He can’t run. He has to bear this somehow.
.

Later…. He almost did leave. He went crazy, now packing, now unpacking; now starting a fire, now putting it out. He did stop short of taking down the shelter, thank God. If he had taken it down and left, it would have been a rout! Actually, the rest of his life would have been one too.

He knows that he has to stay here and face himself alone today. He has to accept his fate. If he’s going to die today, let it be.
.

The Treasure

Today, he’s following the little boy, who was and still is him, into the darkness that the boy entered when death claimed him on the operating table years ago. Right now, he’s remembering an old dream from when he was that boy. He’s realizing now though, that it wasn’t a dream, that it really happened, somewhere in that little boy’s darkness.
.

He hasn’t remembered this in years. This is awesome! He is a little boy, almost seven years old. He is deep within the earth, exploring a wondrous and magical cave, hewn out of solid rock. It is very large, with many passages going off in many different directions. He somehow knows he has been here before.

He wanders along a main passage, tall enough for even a grown man to walk through without stooping, almost a hallway. He sees a light ahead. He’s strangely attracted to it, and slowly makes his way closer.

When he turns the corner, there he is – a giant Genie, standing guard over something in the niche that has been carved out of the rock wall. The Genie is turbaned and holds a giant scimitar before him. The boy expects to see Aladdin and his magical lamp somewhere about too. The Genie is immediately aware of him, says for him to not be afraid but to approach him, as he cannot leave his post, not even for an instant.

The boy slowly and hesitantly walks towards him. The giant is not scary, and he does want to meet him; it’s just that he’s so big, so majestic. When he stands before him, looking way up, the Genie begins to speak:

“I have waited for you, until the time when you would come. It has been my duty and my honor to guard your treasure. Now it is yours to guard. My work is finished.”

With this, the Genie’s face dissolves, and the boy sees the clockworks within. The Genie is a machine, able perhaps to see and speak, even to hold to duty, yet still only a clever and faithful mechanism. Behind the Genie, in the little recess in the wall, he sees a small wooden box. It’s his to protect now. He takes it in his hands and begins to open the hasp….
.

He has always felt protected in his life. When he was with that young boy last night, helping him to stay sane as he fell through the darkness, he started something, gave the boy something new. The boy saw then that he would have grown up to be him except that, in his fears, he forgot for all these years. Reflecting upon this, he realizes that he is the little boy’s treasure, the treasure that the boy had touched upon in his darkness then. He was then and is now the image of the boy’s true future, the best the boy could ever be, leading him always right to here and now.
.

The Dark Night Journey

He’s back in the shelter again, already in his sleeping bag. He’s tired of wandering around in the rain, and it’s almost dark anyway. He’s not even bothering with a fire this evening. He’s not at all hungry, not after eating all that peyote.

It’s been a very hard day for him. He’s still freaked out. If he does survive all this, it will be from having stuck to his guns. He has stayed here, in spite of all those incredible fears that have chased him from one end of this creek to the other. He didn’t run home to mommy. He sure wanted to. Even now, he’s still having thoughts of Karen being dead or with someone or else leaving him. He is beginning to suspect though that there’s an ulterior motive behind this panic.

It’s dark already. Using a candle, his flashlight sometimes, he is writing this while he rereads his most recent notes – all those he has written since he met Edie. He is finding it really hard to face himself again, but he does want to look at what he has done in his relationships with both Karen and Edie. And he would like to remain objective and clear while he is doing so. He just wants to see who he has been and what he has done.
.

From rereading his notes, he feels that he and Karen still have something important to share. He can also see that he has been extremely inflated. Worse yet, he has misused his high for personal power. Don Juan would say that power has defeated him. He has definitely caused hurt and pain in others out of his inflated sense of himself.

He keeps having these fear fantasies about Karen. But now, he is beginning to see how they have been keeping him from feeling his love for Edie. They have been keeping him from being truthful with himself too. He asks God to take these fear fantasies off of him. He took a heavy rock off of a young tree by the creek yesterday, and today it grows upwards and strong again. “Please take this rock of fear off of me now so that I may also thrive.”

He is thinking now that Edie did support his inflation. Maybe that was part of the attraction – maybe a big part of what he really needed from her. She did see him in a very positive light. It also meant a lot to him that she was into acid. She was the first person he had found since Karen who could really connect to him on acid.

Is he inflated because of acid? He doesn’t know, but there is one thing he does know about himself and acid – when he is on it, he is always completely open and honest and brave and loving. The only trouble is that he can’t always be this high without it. So the question really is – can he be trusted with acid in the future, or will he fuck up with it again, as he has with Karen and Edie?

Tonight, as he reviews his immediate past, he wants to stay centered and conscious. He doesn’t want to get into judging himself. He doesn’t want to put himself down in an attempt to escape whatever karmic payback may be coming to him in his here and now life. He doesn’t want to get into a self-hater trip. He just wants to see the truth of himself.

He knows he actively worked to get Edie into a three people marriage with himself and Karen. He misused his power. If he hadn’t pushed, she might not have run away scared. He might not be here alone now. He has to accept the consequences of his actions. He has to be honest with himself. In particular, he can see now that his thing with Edie really weakened his and Karen’s connection. He can also see that he and Karen have worked really hard and lovingly to maintain and even to enhance and renew their marriage in spite of all that they have put it through.
.

One of the main reasons that he keeps imagining that Karen has died is because Gypsy did die. Death does exist and can take away his loved ones. Also, by focusing upon Karen and his fears, he has been avoiding an important truth – that he still does love Edie and still wants to be her lover. He didn’t realize that his relationship with Edie would hurt Karen. Maybe he should have.

He really thought that she wanted the marriage too. It would have hurt him to share her though. He knows this. Her affair with Brian did hurt him, even before she told him about it.

In spite of how they have all fucked it up, their three people marriage was an alchemical vessel for their mutual transformation. Even if it failed, it has still changed each of them immensely. It’s definitely the catalyst behind what he is going through now.

He’s thinking back to that fateful night when Karen and Edie had their terrible fight. They were all on acid then, and he was somehow able to achieve a detachment that he could not live up to afterwards. He felt their angers, his too, but he was above it all at the time. Later though, his anger went underground and turned really destructive in his relationship with Karen – and without him even being aware of it at first.

At least he and Karen were able to work that out when she was here with him last week, before she left for LA. She heard his anger then and admitted that she had blown it with Edie.
.

Central to all this drama is his supposed craziness. Is he completely inflated and insane, or is he really working to bring back to consciousness a part of himself that he left on the operating table when he died thirty-two years ago? Is his fear only a reaction to his obvious inflation, or is it also a sign that he’s getting closer to who he truly is – closer to the fire?

He keeps coming back to his fear of being alone. This has always been his main fear. He has manipulated both Karen and Edie so that he would never have to be alone – and here he is now, without even Gypsy. It’s his karma. He’s beginning to see this.

It isn’t so much that he’s afraid for Karen. He’s really afraid to be alone without her. And behind this fear of being alone is the fear of what will come to him out of the darkness. He wants to know all that he knew as that young boy. He wants to follow him into the darkness, but he is really scared. He has avoided being alone for a long while now, knowing that the darkness was always lurking, waiting for him, just out of the light. He is alone now though. He has stopped running. He waits for death.

He remembers back to that day, after Edie had left, when, after fighting all day, he and Karen tripped in the lodge in Berkeley. He remembers being surprised in the middle of all that to encounter the scared little boy that he had once been. The boy saw him then too and got an image of a man better than his father, followed it somehow to him and is now becoming him, as they begin to merged into one being. He started to get his center back from Karen on that trip, started to be in touch again with his own destiny.
.

Ever since he dropped acid two very long days ago, he has been completely freaked – and it has never let up. Writing in this notebook is all that has kept him sane, all that has kept him objective and open. Without his writing, He would already be over the edge.

He just smoked some grass for the first time today. He has been sort of hesitant. He is glad he did though. For one thing, it finally settles his stomach. “Thanks Edie,” he whispers aloud to the night, remembering how much she liked to smoke and get into her head whenever she was doing psychedelics.

It’s really weird how out of touch he can be. He had dreams of death. A voice in the air told him that he was going to die today. Then Gypsy died, and he still blocked on death and his fear of it. It took the ants a whole day to help him get in touch with himself, to help him to see how, being afraid of death, he has been afraid of life.

Earlier this evening, just before dark, he found these four beautiful rocks down by the creek. Someone or something must have placed them there. They weren’t there in the morning, and he has been close to camp all day, sick from the peyote and scared as he has been. He knows they are somehow important. The little tree down there that was bent over by that other rock is important too, symbolizing, as it does, his present condition. He’s like a new tree himself, burdened with his fear of death.
.

Suddenly, in the middle of his dark night, reality itself takes on a weird charge, become quite uncanny. He feels something strange in the air. Death is out there, nearby, stalking him. He hears a raspy cough. He sees a darting shadow. Another…. He remembers his dream of the vampire stalking him. It’s the vampire again! He’s out there, haunting him. He pulls out his hunting knife, his vampire slaying knife, and holds it ready.

Death is everywhere outside the shelter. Someone or something is running about, laughing insanely, though the dark and dangerous night. There are shouts and voices, almost overheard conversations. He has his big knife. He is waiting. When death comes to swallow him, he will cut his way out through Death’s belly and swim back to the surface of life.

Now there are terrible sounds, like a big and ugly machine, like a factory at work. These sounds attack his belly. He feels as if he’s in for what happened to Carlos that night the ally attacked him in the mountains. Like Carlos, he’ll survive.

Reading Don Juan has really prepared him for all this. When he enters this separate reality, where nothing is as it seems, he will survive only by having achieved an inner detachment from life and its games. He also knows that the face this other reality turns towards him will reflect the face he shows it. If he shows fear, he will encounter something fearful. Understanding this, he tries to be accepting – and aware.

He’s thinking of his vampire dream again. This week has actually been a reenactment of that dream. His fear has been the vampire. It has hunted and haunted him, and he has run. It seemed, as it did in his dream, that Karen really wanted to be with the vampire, that his fear fantasies about her were really true. But he has stopped running now, and he has come to see that none of these fantasies were true. With his knife and all that it symbolizes, he has managed to overcome the vampire once again, cutting through his fears to the truth of her and him. She is alive and well, she hasn’t been with Steve or anyone else, and she will be here in a few more days. It’s easy for him to feel her loving energy now that he has overcome his fears, now that he is clear and open again.
.

He’s at peace now. He closes his eyes. He sees a boy on a swing, falling over, falling into the darkness. He sees him turn the falling into flying. He flies after him, and, when the boy lands on a nearby rock, he follows him into the cave. He tells him who he is.

The boy already knows. “I’ve stayed here, waiting for you to come for me, as you did once before. It’s been very scary here, and I want to leave with you this time. I want to grow up too.” He tells the young boy that he has felt his fear – he has been running from it now for days – but that, until tonight, he has thought it was his alone. He tells the little boy that this time they will leave together. They will go as one.
.

It’s getting light outside. It’s almost dawn – a new day. He has been up all night. He is very tired. But somehow, he knows that the little boy’s rock – the one they entered and spoke to one another in – will be somewhere by that little tree that he rescued yesterday. Something very powerful happened there at that tree, with the four rocks and all, something very important for him.

He gets up and walks down there now. He sees that his little tree friend is still sturdy and growing. It just needed a little help. There are no new rocks about her, but in a nearby hole, one several feet above the water line – the one that looks as if it might have been used by the early peoples who lived around here to grind acorns for flour – anyway, in that one, there’s a new, small, and very beautiful rock. He reaches in to grasp it….

Immediately he has vivid images of his first visit to Dinky Creek, years ago. He came here with Pamela and two others. He remembers how he lost his wedding ring that first day. He fell out of love with Pamela then and fell in love with Dinky, all in the same day. From then on, he has loved these mountains, and he always will. Fate and his inner teacher Wanderer have conspired together, over time, to bring him back here again and again.
.

He has stopped running. He has finally faced death. He and the young boy are no longer afraid. They are one now. He feels whole again – for the first time since the young boy’s operations. He is Wanderer now.

And he will continue to survive and even thrive through his love of these mountains. They alone can heal him – the mountains, the rocks, the water, the trees and the sky. They alone endure and will always be here for him.
.