Outview (18 page)

Flashes of the lion’s life came, a long
series of hunts and kills. There had been cubs at some point, maybe two
litters. Only one survived but was grown and gone. We ran another ten minutes. She
stopped for no apparent reason and seemed to be waiting. I dismounted. A quick
look at me, then she ran in the direction we’d been going, into the darkness.

I stood there wondering about the
encounter. Would anyone believe I’d ridden a mountain lion? Did I believe it?
It was impossible to imagine a greater thrill. But there was much more to it. A
spiritual connection occurred between us. How did it happen? Do we reincarnate
as animals? Was it real? If not, then why was I now so far from Tea Leaf Beach?

The questions would have to wait. It was suddenly
very cold. How far had we come? I didn’t know it at the time, but mountain
lions can travel thirty-five miles an hour. In twenty minutes at top speed, we
could have gone ten miles. Hopefully, it was less than half that. A daunting
task lay ahead, with so much ground to retrace through a black forest. At least
now I could see farther; it was a useful new power that had surfaced without
Spencer or my prompting.

I headed back with Spencer’s warning
replaying, “Lions and bears are the least of your worries tonight.” My steps
quickened, out of a mixture of needing to stay warm and concern about
everything
.
Every few minutes I stopped briefly to listen. There was so much to hear: the
distant ocean, crickets, and always the rustle of things moving, some a few
feet away, others farther. I distinctly heard footsteps that stopped whenever I
did. Animal? Human? Something else? I didn’t know but moved a little faster
each time it happened. Soon I was running. After what seemed like hours but was
probably fifteen minutes, I had to rest. My breath rapid, legs burning, I heard
the steps stop again. Keeping my thoughts light to alleviate the rising fear
wasn’t working. I got my flashlight and positioned it in my hand so any
pressure from my thumb would turn it on. I had no other weapons, but in a dark
forest a bright light could possibly save me.

It wasn’t difficult to find the way back to
Tea Leaf Beach as long as I kept the ocean on my right. I drank some
water--there was not much left. I started my gentle jogging until a small
clearing opened, which the lion hadn’t brought me through. The break in the
trees allowed moonlight to illuminate the meadow, and three deer on the far
side were startled as I lumbered in. It seemed safe, maybe because I could see
something coming before it was too close. I knelt down in the middle of the
field to rest and think about something more than survival. My hands, wrists
and face were cut and scraped by the five million branches over the last few hours.
Rubbing my hands together generated warmth of my life energy and I took turns
moving my palms over my injuries. After a while the soothing healing put me to
sleep.

Why was I back at the African coast?
Watching the slave ship being loaded, my mother crying, father defiant but
frightened; however, this wasn’t being viewed from my perch hidden in the tree
as before. Now I was holding a gun. I was white, one of the slave traders.
“No!” I screamed and vomited bile. It was the cruelest of fates. My soul
experiencing two simultaneous lives, which crossed as both slave trader and the
son watching his parents torn from his existence. It was impossible to
comprehend living as such a horrific person.

I jerked violently awake, shocked I’d
fallen asleep. How long? I surveyed my surroundings, happy to see the small
meadow and my Oregon moon. I needed to be as far from the slave trader as
possible. There must be some way to wash that existence from my soul, which had
always seemed so pure to me but now was dirty and ugly. All I wanted to do was
claw my skin off and rip the slave trader out of me.

I headed back into the woods, not caring if
I made it to dawn. Could I ever forgive myself? In how many other lifetimes had
I been evil? Only the thought of freeing Dustin gave me hope, a step toward
some kind of redemption. What a joke! How many lives had I ended or put into
torturous forced servitude as the slave trader? How could I ever redeem my
soul?

It was good to be back in the trees. They
had sympathy; they did not judge me as a slave trader, even though I was
certain they knew. If I couldn’t live with myself, I would come back and stay
among the trees as a hermit until I could face a mirror again.

Any inkling I had of what time it was
evaporated with the nap in the meadow, but I knew it would be darkest and
coldest before dawn. I went on without thinking of the slave trader and then
without warning collapsed to the ground sobbing. Screams I couldn’t recognize
as my own wrenched out of me. It was too much. The ferns and undergrowth
enveloped my body, and my face buried into moss and dirt. I don’t know how long
I was there. The damp, numbing cold was more dangerous than lions or bears, and
so was the slave trader. I didn’t care.

My thoughts were in a different world,
following a slave’s journey when something nuzzled the back of my neck. I
turned over, hoping for the mountain lion. It was a medium-sized buck. They
wander into Ashland all the time. But this one was different, gentler and
somehow wiser. He looked into my eyes as if I was the first human he had ever
seen, and waited until I understood. When I rose, he leisurely moved away but
looked back, to be sure I followed. This went on for quite a way. He walked
slowly through the forest, continuing to look back every so often.

I was shivering uncontrollably. Walking was
not helping, and my steps were increasingly difficult. He led me into an area
of thick brambles and bushes. Two doe rose, startled as we entered the small
space, flattened out with only enough room for the deer. The buck pushed at me
in a way that I sunk to my knees. I couldn’t believe it but he actually wanted
me to sleep with them. Their gentle warmth, as they curled around me, didn’t
just save my life but gave me hope.  If these special creatures cared, then how
wretched could I be?  When I woke, they were gone. I was warm, dry, and renewed.

Later, I came to the ledge the lion had
leaped onto. It wasn’t the exact spot we’d come through; it was much higher
here. I saw no way down and reasoned it was probably highest near the beach,
which was lined with cliffs, so I moved in the other direction. The cliff went
on forever, and I was getting cold again. In order to get back to where I
started, I had to try and climb down.

It was probably only ten or twelve feet,
but there wasn’t much to hold onto. I was doing pretty well until a rock
crumbled in my hand. The fall wasn’t far, but the ground was rocky and uneven.
Nothing seemed broken, except my ankle was twisted, legs and arms were bruised
and it hurt to breathe. Lying on the cold hard ground, injured and shivering, I
knew I was in trouble. I rubbed my hands together to begin healing but it was
beyond my novice skills. I could move, even walk, but not far. There was dry
kindling in this area as a break in the trees had allowed the sun to dry things
out. Unfortunately I had no way to light a fire.

My dad had taught Dustin and me a trick to
start one using a mini-mag flashlight and although my light was in my pocket,
steel wool and a small wire were also required. The memory of camping with my
dad brought the distinct feeling that he was nearby. “Dad, are you there? Can
you help me?”

No answer, but I was sure he could hear me.

“
Your
friend Spencer got me into
this mess.”

Nothing.

“Spencer can hear you, right? Could you go tell
him I’m lost in the wilderness and maybe he could rescue me? Spencer, are you
out there?”

The spiral of an Outview began to take me.

“Not now,” I said too late.

There I was in a bombed-out village. A
German Panzer tank passed by the open doorway of the building in which I was
hiding, making it obvious this was the Second World War. Thank you, Mr.
Anderson, you taught me well. Two friendly soldiers approached from another
room speaking in French, which was nowhere near as easy for me as history.
Still, it was clear they were discussing some kind of plan to either attack or
escape. Knowing the pattern of my Outviews, I figured we were all about to get
killed. Then a third soldier approached. He was smoking a cigarette and offered
me one. I looked up to accept and saw my father’s eyes. He handed me the metal
tin of matches, winked and smiled. Seconds later came the unmistakable whistle
of an incoming shell. We didn’t even make it to the floor. I rolled out of the Outview
back into the cold night, onto the steep ground above the beach, coughing. It
took a moment to realize that clutched tightly in my hand was the small tin box
of matches. Stunned, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. “Thanks, Dad,” I
whispered, tears streaking my cheek. He was with me. Lost in that moment was
the fact we had died together in France during World War II. There would be
time to think about that later. Right now, all I could do was bask in the
miraculous happening of my dad coming back.

I was shaking again and needed to get warm
fast. Taking a sharp rock, I dug a shallow pit and surrounded it with stones.
After quickly gathering dry grass and twigs, I struck a match against the
embossed striker on the bottom of the tin. Soon there was warmth and light. I
made a good pile of wood to supplement the fire for some time. “Thanks, Dad,” I
repeated several times before moving on to my wounds, concentrating on my ankle.
Two hours must have passed. I drank the last of my water and kept very warm.
Slowly the healing took affect. The bruises and new scrapes did not take as
long as the ankle. The difficulty in breathing was the last to go. Because I
didn’t know what was causing it, I channeled the healing energy around my torso
and trusted it would cure what was needed. It did.

Exhausted, all I wanted to do was sleep but
there was too much ground to cover, and I wasn’t interested in seeing the slave
trader again. After piling dirt on the fire, I reluctantly began walking. How
far to go? I tried to will my mountain lion to return, to carry me back. I
called her with my mind. Soon the ravine that was so easily crossed on her back
was before me, deep and wide. It was passable, but even in daylight if I was
well-rested and with a full canteen, it would take more than an hour to make my
way down the steep grade, one-hundred-fifty feet or so, then back up the other
side. “Dad, you there? Got a bridge up your sleeve?”

No one came. No lion, no deer, no Outviews.
Just me and the struggle. It must have taken two hours until I finally crawled
out of that hellish ditch. But I did it. It’s the part of the night I remember
least. As the sky lightened, I found the path to the road. Twenty-four hours
earlier, I had descended this trail with Kyle and Linh. It was a
long
time ago. I was different then.

26

Monday, September 22

Kyle and Linh were leaning against the
guardrail as I came out of the ferns. Would they see the change, the absence of
the confusion I’d worn for so long? I wondered how much to tell them.

Linh wrapped her arms around me.

“Got any water?” I asked.

Kyle handed me a full bottle.

“It’s all so incredible. You won’t believe
any of it,” I said.

“Of course we won’t, but you have to tell
us anyway,” Kyle said.

“Yes, we have the whole car ride to Merlin.
We can’t wait to hear.”

“I’m sorry, guys. I just have to sleep,” I crawled
into the backseat.

“No fair,” Linh said.

“Where’s Spencer?” Kyle asked. “Does he
just live down there on the beach? Where’s his car?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Two and a half hours later they woke me as
we pulled into Aunt Rose’s driveway. “Did you guys eat?” I asked. “I’m
starving.”

“We went to a drive-thru,” Linh said. “You
didn’t even move.”

Rose was dressed in a purple and emerald
green frock-kind-of-thing. “Tanya and I were just sitting down to eat. Any
interest in bacon, eggs, and pancakes?”

“Aunt Rose, you
must
be psychic,” I said
“Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite aunt?”

“You’re sweet as caramel, aren’t you,
Nate?” Rose led us through to a spacious kitchen. “This is my stepdaughter, Tanya
Phelps, the best part of marriage number three, or was it four? Oh, who can
keep track of these dramas?” she said, waiving her hand.

Tanya held up three fingers indicating she
was from the third marriage.

“Tanya’s taking accounting at the local
community college,” Rose added.

“It’s not like I’m going to Harvard or
anything,” Tanya corrected.

“Accounting is math and that makes you
smart enough for Harvard in my book,” Rose beamed.

“I’m turning twenty-three tomorrow,” Tanya
said. “I’ve decided to give myself a gift. I joined a weight loss clinic, and
I’m going to try and lose twenty-three pounds by New Year’s, right after I
finish these pancakes.” Her short curly brown hair and green rectangle
eyeglasses made her look more serious than she was. I liked her right away.

After breakfast we moved into Rose’s
“reading room,” as she called it. I was eager to talk to her about my time with
Spencer. Kyle and Linh couldn’t wait to hear, but I was hesitant to say
anything in front of someone I’d just met.