The World as We Know It (27 page)

Then I said, “Everything.”

Hannah smiled. “Me too,” she said, and then she looked at Zach and took his hand.

“Me too,” he said.

“Me too,” said Zach’s father. And then his mother echoed, and then across the table, Hanna’s mother, father, sisters, and brothers. The chorus grew with every mouth on down. Parents, grandparents, and children. Their gratitude was as profound as it was true. What a blessing it is to simply recognize one’s blessings. So seldom had I done that before. The things I’d had and the times I had suffered were all just the way it was; I didn’t ask why. But life itself was a gift, along with everything that made for it, even those tribulations that had once seemed hopeless.

After the meal, I was given a bed by a warm fire and turned in early to take full advantage of it. That would be the best opportunity for sleep that I’d had in weeks and would have for weeks more. But exhausted though I was, I could not fall asleep that night. A mysterious anxiety overwhelmed me, and even with the bountiful meal that had filled my stomach, I was somehow starving. It seemed there was a hunger within me for something more, something
greater than I had ever known. Perhaps, I thought, I was on a path to a place I had never intended to go.

Sometimes a person has to be lost in order to be found. Only by losing my way had I found the place where I learned to give thanks for my many blessings. Still though, that spirit, that God, the recipient of my thanks, remained a mystery to me. Although I didn’t know that great power, I thought that I was beginning to understand its ways. Curiosity and longing were consuming me, almost literally, as that hunger in my stomach refused to subside. No matter how much food I digested, my suspicion was that it wouldn’t until I had an answer as to what exactly I was still missing.

Despite my fatigue, my restless mind could not be put at ease. Quietly, so as not to wake my hosts, I crept outside to see the stars in that beautiful desert sky. I had followed them there on nights I couldn’t sleep, using Jake’s lessons to let them guide me. They always made me feel so small, yet so important to have any role at all in this great thing. I walked a path through the canyon foliage next to the turquoise stream and back to the waterfall where I had been earlier in the day, and I sat beside that pool again to absorb more of the mystical air of which I could not get enough. The sun would rise and fall and rise again, and the water would always flow. In the darkness, the falls looked like a white wall with a fog where it met the earth, and the crystal floor between that wall and me sparkled with reflections of the glowing moon and dancing stars.

Some time had passed when I began to hear sounds that transcended the spray of the falls before me, and the stream running beside. They were curious sounds, those of wild animals I had not seen in the day. I heard the distant howling of coyotes echoing from the canyon walls. Then came the hooting of an owl. I looked toward the cottonwood from where the sound had come, and I saw his dark figure on a branch high above, silhouetted by the moonlight. He left the branch and spread his wings, gliding in perfect silence across the night sky and coming to rest in a nearer tree, and what hung about him there took my breath away. There were dozens more like him, perched in silence, and they all seemed to be looking down upon me. What could they want, I wondered. What was their interest in me? I had never before seen such a great parliament of owls.

As I watched them, I heard a sandy sounding rattle, and I looked behind me to find a diamondback rattlesnake not more than a few feet away. I sprung to my feet and began backing slowly toward the water, hoping he would not follow. He stayed there, watching me like the owls overhead, the howling coyotes never ceasing. They were becoming louder, and I knew they were drawing near. Then came the sounds of pattering paws. They appeared at the rim of the canyon—a whole band of coyotes—and stopped there, looking down upon me as well. It was as if I were some wild spectacle out there, drawing critters from far and wide for a glimpse.

The snake’s rattle ceased, but from the shadows behind him more approached in a winding slither, tracing the contours of the earth and the rocks. As I began to step back into the water, they stopped as if to request that I stay. It occurred to me then that perhaps they meant me no harm. But what had drawn them to me?

Between the snakes crawled dozens of desert scorpions that emerged from beneath the rocks like circus clowns from a Volkswagen. They would distract the snakes, I thought, and I could make my escape as they made their meal. What happened, though, was exceedingly odd. The snakes took no notice of the abundant game among them. Instead, predators and prey alike harmonized on the stage before me, and I realized that they were not my audience, but rather I was theirs. There was a percussion of rattles and paws and tiny feet—songs of hoots and howls—a grand performance of nature in profusion before me. It was mysterious and strange, and I suddenly felt a spiritual connection with each of those creatures. I was no longer fearful. I stepped from the water again and took a seat on the red ground to watch the glory of the earth unfold.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up beside the embers that remained from the night’s fire back in the room I had been given to sleep in. The sun was up. I had not felt so alive and refreshed since I could remember, nor so excited to resume my journey. Perhaps that feeling itself should have left me with reservations, suspicions, even, but at the time, I saw it as yet another blessing. I read Maria’s letter again, as I had hundreds of times by then, and it only
excited me more. I couldn’t wait to see her again. My desire was so great that I ignored the warnings of the people who insisted that heading into the mountains alone that time of year was a foolish undertaking. Rather, I was inspired by something within that I thought divine. Nothing would stop me. Nothing
could
stop me. I shared a final meal with my hosts, thanked them for their hospitality, and set off with Nomad toward the rising sun.

16

FAITH

S
now began to fall about the time the mountains came into view, a few days northeast of my last sighting of another person. Days and nights passed as we began to rise, but it didn’t let up. A bit of precipitation, though, could not discourage me. I was determined. Nomad, however, seemed for the first time more anxious than I.

“Come on, my friend,” I would say. “We’re going home. Just over the mountains and across the plains.” Even the sound of my voice didn’t seem to ease him. His anxiety grew with our elevation.

By then, we had found the road again, though it wasn’t long before I only knew it by the path cut through the pine trees. The pavement was covered in a steadily accumulating layer of snow. The sky turned gray, and the frigid wind began to pick up, which slowed us down. I was growing
hungry, a feeling surely shared by my horse, but food had become scarce as the winter had overtaken the mountains. Once again, my ambition had gotten the better of me.

It got bad quickly. What began as a light dusting was soon one of the worst blizzards I had ever experienced, and there was no place to turn for shelter. We had no choice but to move on. Nomad was noticeably burdened by my weight in that weather, so I dismounted to walk beside him. Our footprints disappeared in the snow and wind almost immediately behind us, and the road ahead continued upward.

I couldn’t help but blame myself for the position we were in. After all, it was my own arrogant mistake that had put us there when had I insisted upon leaving the path paved for us to roam the unfamiliar desert without truly knowing the way. Had we stayed on course, we would have reached old Denver on the other side of the Rockies by then, perhaps even the plains.

The thick clouds and blowing snow blocked the sun in a way that made it difficult to discern night from day. The world was always black and white with shades of gray. But even at night, the white ground helped us to see where we were going. We were exhausted, but if we were to stop for too long, the cold might have killed us, so we kept moving.

“Don’t worry, my friend,” I repeated again and again. “It’s just over the mountains.”

Finally, after days of hiking up and down through constant atmospheric torment and sleeping briefly in hollows I had dug in snowdrifts, I saw a dark spot through the
falling snow in a wall of the mountain. We made our way to it and found that it was a cave, not exceedingly deep but tall enough for us both to fit without much effort. Inside was little relief from the cold, but at least we had escaped the wind and snow. I could feel my cheeks again. Strangely, within the cave I found a hoard of dry wood that I assumed had been stored there by a previous passer through the area. I started a fire and lay down to rest for the night.

I was half-asleep when I heard Nomad’s hooves shuffle nervously. Outside the clouds separated, momentarily framing a pitch-black and heavenly white painting of the glowing moon cut in half by the silhouette of the mountains we had already passed over. As if imitating the growling of my own stomach, I heard what I thought was Nomad’s hunger speaking.

“We’ll find food soon,” I whispered. “I’m sure of it.”

Just as the separation in the clouds began to close again, I saw the glint of two eyes outside the mouth of the cave. My empty stomach became ill as fear washed over me. They were the eyes of a demon, I thought. The eyes of death looking upon us. I reached slowly for my knife and gripped it tightly, its blade by then dull and chipped from so many months of slicing meat, carving bone, whittling wood, prying stone, and clearing foliage. My hands trembled from cold or terror; I’m not sure which. Whatever it was stayed watching awhile, as I watched back.

In such a state of exhaustion, just keeping my eyes open was laborious. Though my soul sustained the will to
live, my eyes had nearly given up. Sometimes the mind gives up before the body. Sometimes the body leads the mind to its demise. It’s strange how the two so often seem to work independently of one another. The eyes outside, though, were intent and alert, and there was no question in my mind that I would be forced to face the beast, whatever it was. It could be moments, it could be days, but it was only a matter of time.

I clutched the knife, preparing for the strike, but the more I considered the present circumstance, the more I questioned the wisdom of waiting. On the defensive, I was at a disadvantage, I thought. Surely suffering the winter’s famine as much as I, those eyes saw me as prey. They needed me weak and vulnerable, and they were as desperate as I was to stay alive. If I’m facing a fight, I must face it head on, I thought, and I crept slowly into an offensive stance, guarding my territory and protecting my horse in his weakened state. A sort of primal instinct came over me, and the fear I had felt transformed to the methodical plan of a predator hunting prey.

We sprang at the same moment, the eyes and I, falling to the snow in vicious combat just outside the mouth of the cave. The black and white world was sprayed with red as teeth and claws fought steel, and from the woods, more glowing eyes emerged. Sounds of snarling, howling, neighing, and screaming echoed from the cave walls, silencing as soon as they hit the snow outside. What saved my life, I believe, was that the first wolf had his eyes on my horse for his meal.

I don’t know how many there were, but the rest of the pack continued to attack after the first lay dead in the snow. Two went after Nomad as he reared and neighed, and I sprung to his defense, slashing wildly at any beast that drew near. As the pressure of teeth sunk into the frozen numbness of my arm, I dropped my knife. Two more wolves came after my legs and torso, and more surrounded as I fell to the ground, trying to fight them off. They ripped my clothes and gnawed at my flesh, my world of vision blurred by powder-coated fur. With my left fist, I struck the snout of the wolf on my right arm, and he released long enough for me to grab my knife from the snow. Then he came after the arm that had betrayed him. They tore at me from all directions.

I had but one bladed hand to fight wave after wave of hungry predators, and try as I might to fight for survival, my fate, I thought, had been sealed. The rush of adrenaline began to fade, and my body went limp like the exhausted gazelle at the rear of the herd. For a moment, as I accepted my fate, the sounds of war were silenced. In the snow falling from above, I saw Maria’s face looking down upon me with that beautiful smile.

“Not yet,” I heard her say. “Not yet.”

Suddenly, I heard the pounding of hooves and distressed yelping as Nomad trampled two of the wolves attached to me, and I felt my blood pump through the pits left by their teeth as they disappeared into the woods. Others backed away, standing watch and waiting for a moment to strike again. My horse circled in my defense,
fending them off until only one remained. With a final stab of my knife, the last wolf on my arm had had enough, and he followed the rest of the pack as they left me lying again in the cold quiet of the snowy night.

Nomad somehow emerged unscathed. I, on the other hand, was covered in gashes and puncture wounds by the time the sounds of howling and yelping faded into the distance. My clothes were black with blood, as much mine as my foes’.

At least we had our meal; the first wolf had been left for us. Nomad was not much of a meat eater, but we had no other options then. The beast would fill our stomachs and keep us going for at least a few more days. I lay in wait through the night, just in case the pack decided to return. The next morning I cut up the meat, and we ate again by the fire and then left it burning there as we set off again. I found myself looking up, giving thanks for the sustenance and asking for guidance through the rough terrain ahead. Through the pain of my wounds, I limped on, feeling the blood leaking from them and running down my body beneath my clothes. It was caked onto my skin, freezing red before it could dry black. A gash on my neck. Punctures in my torso. The signature of a full mouth of teeth on both arms and my right thigh. I hoped that the cold would slow the flow, but it could not go on for long, I thought. I would die from the loss of blood before the winter killed me. Behind me, a short trail of pink snow and footprints showed where we had been.