Not all spirits are mine to understand. Not all places are mine to investigate. Brave as a lion when I was young, I have learned to temper curiosity with wisdom. A few years ago I drove a along the Deschutes River where it rushes between steep rimrock bluffs. On impulse, I turned up a dirt track that quickly reached a dead-end against a stone wall of tall vertical up-thrusts, shaped something like the pipes of an organ. I got out, walked to the edge of the wall, peeked around, and was immediately overwhelmed by a high-pitched sound that reverberated around the little amphitheater. The further I walked into its circumference the more intense the sound. It penetrated my body, my skull where it seemed to rock from one hemisphere to the other making me dizzy. I hesitated, but still, if anything, I am curious, so I walked further. In the center of the little area the intensity was so amazing that I grew uneasy. I wasn’t sure what was afoot, what the effect on me might be. Still. I traced the sound to a very small pool of water where hundreds of tiny frogs were ecstatically singing as one. Their combined voices reverberated against the stone surround, breaking tones into finer and finer vibration. I was relieved. In her frog-shape, nature was busy. Nothing more. The frogs ignored my approach and continued to shake my cells. A bright color caught my eye and I went to investigate. It was a child’s yellow toy. Next to it was a soldier’s helmet pitted with bullet marks, several shell casings. Both sat on the charred remains of a small fire. A shiver ran up my already trembling spine. My mind raced for explanations, but what was clear is that I was in a place where I didn’t belong. Someone else prayed here. I did not need to understand. I did not need to know more. I needed to leave. At the outer wall I paused, rocked back and forth across the plane of the entrance. At the outer edge I could hear the sound, but if I rocked forward slightly, it was a different story. I don’t need to categorize what I experienced, what I saw. Instead, I need to know when something is not mine. I need to leave some questions unanswered. I also need to know when to leave. I think of this as an issue of spiritual boundaries; me and not-me. Along the river were plants I know, rocks who love me. I stopped to talk with these. I went to rimrock who is an old friend, to the stones where I once left a poem for him. Walked up the sage-filled valley where I’d met the spirit deer, where I tracked the coyote in winter, where hawks and eagles nest. I stopped in the mountains, collected Usnea, washed in my favorite cold creek, the one who once warned me about the road ahead. Mine and not-mine. Boundaries. |
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October 2017
AuthorJune O'Brien is an author of fiction, non fiction and poetry, living in the Pacific Northwest. Categories |