Chapter 8: Wilderness

It was a Saturday, near the end of September. It was one of those beautiful early Autumn days, and it was the Autumnal Equinox. I had turned fifteen almost a month earlier, and I was taking advantage of my favorite birthday present, permission from my parents to take the sailboat out solo. I had packed my rock gear, and a couple days worth of food. The small galley on board made meals pretty painless, but I'd brought our camp grill and a bag of charcoal, with the intention of grilling a steak for dinner. It had been my intention to pack the damned grill, charcoal, steak and the already baked potato I'd made to go with the steak, to the ledge, and cook it there. The trip had been quick, the winds were smooth today, even in the narrow confines of the canyon top where the path to the ledge started.

We had been making the trip up to the ledge so frequently in the past year that we finally "engineered" ourselves a handrail for climbing the chimney between the boulder and the cliff that made it easy even for the smallest of us to navigate the spot unaided. Even loaded down with my backpack and rock hound tool bag I had no trouble. The late morning sun was fairly high in the sky, and the ledge would remain comfortably cool for most of the day until the sun was finally far enough into the western sky to shine onto the sheltering recess of rock. I walked slowly down to my favorite spot in front of the debris mound I'd spent the last year slowly working through. I stood on the edge of the ledge, enjoying the view, the cool breeze and the simple pleasure of being exactly where I wanted to be.

The pull of the lines here was as strong as always. I ran the focus of my attention across it, shifting myself to the point where I was in perfect balance with it and the rest of my world. I considered all the things which were real to me, my parents, Ginny, my friends and teachers. The reality of the lines was not in doubt. Poised perfectly, totally enclosed in a calm shell of acceptance, I reached out for the lines again, for the second time. This time my conscious mind was ready for whatever the rest of my mind was leading me towards. I shifted my awareness towards the source of that pull, and stepped, without moving away from my existence.

How do I describe what just happened? As a boy, just becoming a young man, its perhaps understandable that my mind can only think of something from my boyish past to use in making an analogy. In the movie Willie Wonka, one scene involves a ride in the Wonkamobile, at the end of which they get clean in the "hsawaknow", which as Willy Wonka explains, is Wonkawash spelled backwards. Only I went through something forwards, backwards, sideways and inside out all at the same time. There was a single moment in time when I felt, flat as a shadow, or smaller than an atom, or ... something. Even today I cannot find words to describe it. The apprehension I felt inside my bubble of calm reminds me of something I read by D.H. Lawrence.
"Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion?"

When my consciousness was once again focused on myself, and I was once again feeling balanced, I knew something was different. The debris mound looked different. The ledge seemed so familiar and yet so oddly different. I walked back over to the edge of the ledge and looked down at the lake. I looked, but the lake was not there. Below the ledge was a steep walled, winding canyon. To the south the canyon grew deeper and wider. Carefully I set my bag of rock tools and my backpack down and walked along the ledge, turning the corner and following the familiar path down to the boulder top. The boulder was there at least. Our handily engineered handrail, built of a couple large shackles and a five foot length of half-inch nylon rope was not.

I walked back to the ledge, my mind whirling with questions. Perhaps a little fear crept in. I was alone and my world had changed, leaving the achingly familiar to exist alongside the agonizingly different. I had taken a path which I did not believe anyone could follow. Was I lost?