Waiting for Autumn (3 page)

After a few hours it began to darken under the tree-lined canopy above the meadow, and the light began to play hide-and-seek with the shadows. The greens and blues turned to browns and purples, and faces in the tree bark emerged and retreated with every second. The dragonflies flew away to their respective tree houses, and Robert collected Puppy Don, who was fast asleep in the grassy meadow.

Robert quietly gestured for me to follow him, and we made our way to the other side of the meadow, which was still illuminated by twilight. We then came upon a large irrigation ditch with a well-worn walking path along its grassy lip. I could hear that a stream was still flowing even though it was summer, and I was comforted by the soothing water sounds that caressed the rocks and pebbles on its journey through the forest.

“Watch your step,” Robert said as we transitioned onto the side of the culvert. “I have something very special to show you.”

We followed the stream for about ten minutes until we came to an open field just as the night had fully committed to darkness.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to breathe in the energy of the moon?”

“What does that mean?”

He ignored my question and proceeded to guide me through a series of actions that I reluctantly followed. “First, stand up and bend your knees slightly. Then bend your elbows so your upper arms are perpendicular to your forearms, and raise your hands up on either side of your head with your palms open, facing the moon.”

Robert contorted himself while talking, and I mirrored his movements the best I could.

“Good,” he continued. “Now lift your head back so your nostrils are aligned with the moon. And squint your eyes so you’re looking at it through your eyelashes.”

It wasn’t the most comfortable position in the world, and my neck and lower back started to ache almost immediately.

“Now breathe in the energy of the moon through your nostrils in long, slow, deep breaths. Hold the energy inside of you for a count of five, and then slowly exhale through your mouth.”

I followed his lead, and after a while I thought I could feel the lunar energy enter my nostrils, travel down my throat, and accumulate in the pit of my stomach. It was a cool, calming feeling; and the more I consumed, the more I felt a reservoir of energy fill my insides. However, my excitement was quickly replaced by a cramping pain in my neck and lower back, and after just a few minutes I had to sit down.

When I glanced over to Robert, I saw that he had placed his right foot on the inside of his left thigh just above the knee and was balancing on one leg. Without moving a muscle he said, “Don’t worry—it takes time for your body to feel comfortable in that position. Even a few deep breaths will give you enough energy to last until the next full moon. I try to breathe in every full moon to give me strength for the month.”

I could see why he would do this regularly and thought that I should try it myself. I felt more powerful than I ever had, and the moon energy felt like it was waiting for me to call on it whenever I needed extra help.

“The lunar energy in the mountains is much more powerful than in most other places,” he said after a long silence. “The only other place on Earth that has access to really powerful moon energy is in the heart of the desert.”

Robert lowered his leg and opened his bag, which was on the ground next to Puppy Don. He pulled out a small bracelet and handed it to me with both hands while bowing his head. It had several round orange gemstones with silver discs that were sandwiched between white opal-like stones that glimmered in the moonlight.

“I made this for you. It has carnelian to help you speak your truth, moonstone to nurture your intuition, and silver moons to help retain the lunar energy you received tonight. Wear it every day for the next twenty-eight days and you will begin to feel its power. The power of gemstones is one of nature’s gifts. There are many moons of energy already contained in these stones, and you can bring it with you during the daylight hours. However, it’s important to keep the bracelet charged by putting it outside in a dish of saltwater every full moon.”

“I will,” I said as I fastened the bracelet onto my wrist. I’d never worn jewelry before, but for some reason this bracelet felt like it was already a part of me. It was like a long-lost friend that had just found its way back to my wrist.

After a few more minutes, Robert looked up at the sky and said, “I have to go.” He gathered his belongings and picked up Puppy Don, who was still sleeping. “I have a lot to do tonight, and I completely lost track of time. Stay here as long as you want—do you know your way back?”

“I think so, but I’m done.” I was starting to get cold, and I was just wearing short sleeves. I hadn’t expected to be gone past dark.

“Okay, let’s go.”

We retraced our steps along the grassy lip of the winding culvert, and the water below reflected the silvery light of the moon. When we finally returned to the meadow, it looked and sounded much different than I remembered. It was as if someone had rearranged all the fallen trees along the path and blotted out key rays of moonlight to deliberately confuse any visitors. I was sure I would have lost my way if I’d been alone.

As we walked, Robert continued to answer my questions.

“How can the full moon give you energy?” I asked.

“It’s simple. Everything in the universe is merely an exchange of energy. It either helps collect energy or it helps expend energy. The Chinese have called this yin and yang. I assume you are familiar with the yin-yang symbol?”

“Of course. The black-and-white circle thingy.”

“Exactly. Moonlight is filled with yin energy, which is restorative. And during the full moon, the yin energy is at its peak, so it’s much easier to receive and store for later use. On the other side, the sun is filled with yang energy, which gives you the power to express yourself if you have yin energy in reserve. Does that make sense?”

“You mean, the moon fills up your bank account, and the sun helps spend it.”

“That’s a good way to describe it,” he laughed. “What I wanted to show you is that nature can provide you with all the energy you need if you just slow down and let it help you. The moon, the sun, and everything else in nature has been provided by the universe to help us with our earthly needs. Unfortunately, over the past few hundred years, humans have been taught to ignore nature instead of turning to it for help—which is probably at the root of the reason the environment is in the shape it’s in.”

I didn’t like to think about environmental issues at all because they were so depressing. And they seemed too big for me to do anything about.

Robert continued and seemed to address my concerns: “Not everyone has to be an activist to make a difference. Just doing what we did tonight can make a huge impact by our becoming part of the cycle of nature and reclaiming what has been ignored. Nature is a living, breathing thing, which is no different from you or me. When we feel loved, we have more energy to heal ourselves when sick. And when we’re feeling ignored or unloved, we find it harder to recover from whatever ails us. By celebrating nature’s cycles, we show it our love and it can begin to heal itself. It’s not the only thing that needs to be done, but it’s something we can all do as part of our everyday lives. And with the power of billions of souls on this planet, a massive healing can be done in a relatively short time.”

By then we had found our way down the hill and were approaching the town center.

“See you later,” Robert said once we reached the bottom of the hill.

“When?” I asked, and instantly felt selfconscious about appearing needy.

“When the moment is right. We now have a connection that doesn’t need to rely on archaic measurements of time. When the universe wants us to meet, then we’ll meet.”

Robert waved goodbye and headed out of town while I walked in the opposite direction toward my apartment. My thoughts were swimming with everything that had happened that day, and I was completely exhausted when I finally arrived at my front door. After climbing into bed and letting myself sink into the silence around me, I was able to feel the moon energy even more so than I had outside. It was still bubbling in the pit of my stomach, and with a smile on my lips, I quickly drifted off to sleep.

Cheryl was short with curly black hair, and had a knack for the culinary arts and making me laugh. After graduating from high school, she immediately found a job as a sous-chef in a popular restaurant that was favored by the tourists in a nearby town. She became quite successful in a short amount of time and began moonlighting at night to get her own catering business off the ground. On occasion I helped her with the bookkeeping and serving clients during events, and it was our dream to eventually work together full-time once the business could support us.

One of the most prestigious catering jobs we landed was a lawyers’ convention at a mountain retreat. It was easily the biggest event we had ever catered, and it was going to give us enough money so that Cheryl could quit her day job and work on the catering business full-time. When the event was less than a week away, I began to get a really bad feeling about it and tried desperately to get her to cancel. Doing so wasn’t practical, as the food had already been ordered, and Cheryl was worried that our reputation would be ruined because the lawyers were so connected. The feeling was so strong that I couldn’t let it rest, and eventually stopped helping her prepare. We fought about it night and day, and by the time the event came around, we weren’t talking to each other and I refused to go.

On the way back from the event around 3 a.m., Cheryl was driving through the mountains and a drunk driver swerved into her lane and hit her head-on. She was killed instantly.

I had dreamt the same exact dream nearly every night since she died. Evidently I was going to be haunted for the rest of my life, which served me right for not going with her that fatal night. I was positive that I could have done something to help her avoid the drunk driver if I hadn’t been so headstrong and had agreed to go. Perhaps she was distracted with the radio and I could have watched the road, or maybe I would have swerved differently if I had been driving . . .

“Hello, I’m looking for work. May I drop off my résumé?”

“Sorry, we’re completely staffed at the moment, but you can check back after summer.”

An exceptionally gregarious woman who worked at the Native American shop explained further, putting my insecurities to rest: “All the college students fill in during the summer, which is perfect for the tourist season. But once school starts in the fall, we’ll be looking for help from people who don’t need a flexible schedule.”

I had saved enough money to keep me going through the next season, so I decided to look upon this as an opportunity to enjoy the summer without responsibilities and resume my job search in the fall. It would give me enough time to really explore what Ashland was all about and get to know myself again. I’d always spent most of my time working and hadn’t taken a summer off since high school. And although I was still nervous about money, I was secretly excited about what I would discover without the responsibility of a job.

I began getting strong feelings to meet up with Robert again, and I remembered what he’d said about knowing when the time was right. I wasn’t sure where to find him, but it seemed reasonable to return to the place where we’d originally met. As I approached the Co-op, I barely recognized him, since he was wearing a brightly colored poncholike shirt and loose-fitting cream-colored pants. I was relieved to discover that he had more than one change of clothes, although the South American hippie garb was a bit off-putting. As I got closer, I could see that he was talking to a young dreadlocked mother wearing a tie-dyed skirt who was pushing an infant in a spoke-wheeled stroller that read: “Powered by Bio-Diesel.”

“I offer my humble gratitude to you for sharing your unique light with the world. You are truly blessed,” she said in a high-pitched, airy voice as she dropped a dollar onto the blanket Puppy Don was lying on. She waved goodbye and wheeled her child down the concrete ramp and along the opposite sidewalk from where I was approaching.

“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” I commented after the hippie chick left.

“It’s been a good day,” Robert said as he gathered the handful of crumpled bills and coins that surrounded the sleeping puppy. “Too bad the wind picked up earlier,” he chuckled. “I lost nearly half of the loot.”

“Why do you just leave it lying around? Shouldn’t you put it in a safer place?” For being so smart in some ways, he seemed remarkably dim in others.

“It’s not for me to decide who needs the money,” he said, his tone becoming quite serious. “It’s only my job to collect it. The wind will spend it on those who need it most. And besides, I’m always left with as much as I need. It’s best to only eat when hungry.”

As I let his curious words sink in, I reflected on the cardboard sign leaning against the tree that had previously kept Robert upright:

I wondered how I’d known I was hungry when I was in the womb. I was always careful about what I ate, but it had been a constant struggle as long as I could remember. And ever since I had moved to image-conscious Los Angeles, I’d weighed myself nearly every day to make sure the calories weren’t going to the wrong place. But in the womb I’d presumably had as much as I could eat twenty-four hours a day for nine months, and weighing in at six pounds one ounce at birth, I didn’t seem to have any problems with overeating back then.

“Come with me,” said Robert as he put Puppy Don in a front-loading baby carrier before starting to walk up 1st Street. The sun retreated behind the clouds that had been gathering all morning, and the temperature instantly dropped a few degrees, which was a welcome change from the heat wave that had been lingering since I arrived. This time I was prepared for hiking—I brought my own bottle of water, wore my hiking shoes with extra-thick socks, and tied a long-sleeved flannel overshirt around my waist in case we were going to be out after dark.

Puppy Don woke up briefly as Robert slid him into the canvas sling, and he eyed me through half-awake slits. But after a few steps, he quickly returned to his puppy slumber.

“Today is a very special day for you,” Robert said after we were a few blocks from the Co-op. “We’re going to find something of yours that has been lost.”

“Something of mine that has been lost? What have I lost?”

“You have lost a piece of your soul. And a very large one at that.”

“I lost my soul? When did I lose it?” I asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it was many seasons ago.”

We walked on the sidewalk next to a cemetery for a few blocks and turned left onto the street that led to the freeway. The charm of downtown Ashland dissipated quickly as we approached the outskirts, and by the time we neared the freeway, it was all but gone. It would have looked like any other suburban American crossroads if it wasn’t for the surrounding forest and mountains.

“How can you tell that I lost a piece of my soul?”

“Because it has a big black hole in it. That’s the first thing I noticed at the Co-op when you rejected my gift.”

“I was hoping you didn’t recognize that that was me,” I said sheepishly while once again trying to figure out exactly what gift he had offered.

That made me feel instantly self-conscious. I’d always taken the time to make sure my clothes were clean, wrinkle free, and all matching; and then I found out I had a big black hole in my soul that anyone could see.

“Don’t worry about it—most people don’t look.” Robert always seemed to know what I was thinking. “They’re so busy worrying about the physical that they seldom pay attention to the spiritual. Lucky for you, too, because your spiritual side is quite a mess.”

I wasn’t sure if that made me feel any better. “So you really think we can find my missing soul today?”

“I don’t know if we’ll find all of it today, but I do know we’ll get started. I have a hunch you already know where to look for the first piece.”

“What part of my soul is missing?” I finally asked.

“I’m not sure, but we’ll find out soon.”

We turned onto Dead Indian Memorial Road, which struck me as an ominous name for a lonely road on the outskirts of town. As I looked around, I noticed that the landscape was colored in markedly different hues than those of the town center. The hills above Ashland were painted with the vibrant colors of leaves and flowers, while the valley below was carpeted with low-growing pale yellow grasses. Even the dirt seemed drier, and with every step, my mouth lost its moisture and my lips began to crack. I was thankful that I had brought my own bottle of water, and I kept the cap unscrewed so I could continue to sip as we walked even deeper into the country.

Eventually we came to a painted metal gate chained to a thick cedar post, which Robert opened just wide enough for me to squeeze through. The dirt road was no longer maintained, and we made our way through the tall, deadened grasses, where dozens of grasshoppers bounced arclike to avoid our every step. Over the third hill we came to a pointed white tipi sunk into the middle of the golden field. I had never seen a tipi up close before, and the conical structure—made from ripped white canvas and weathered wooden poles sticking out the top—was much larger than I would have imagined.

“Here we are,” Robert said proudly as he gestured to the tipi.

“Is that yours?”

“Yes,” he replied as he unhitched Puppy Don from his chest and placed him on the ground. “Come on in.” Robert untied the entry flaps under six horizontal wooden sutures sewn into the fabric, and I followed both of them through the womblike opening. Once inside, the puppy stretched briefly, sauntered over to a folded pad of fur-covered blankets, and immediately curled up and returned to the business of napping.

“He sure sleeps a lot,” I noticed.

“You would, too, if you just returned from the dead. It takes a lot out of you.”

“Oh.”

The inside of the tipi reeked of smoke, and the hazy darkness was cut by a single shaft of light that fell immediately to the right of Puppy Don. There were stacks of clothes, bulging paper bags, and several Native American wool blankets around the perimeter of the dirt-floored circular room. In the center was a sunken fire pit within an intricately arranged circle of large stones, and a blackened iron teapot was suspended by a trio of branches tied together with baling wire. Robert unfolded one of the handmade blankets in the center of the spotlight and gestured for me to sit down. As I made myself comfortable, he lit a small fire in the center pit and unwrapped four leather pouches filled with freshly cut herbs.

“This morning I gathered medicine from the surrounding fields that should help you.”

“Medicine? What kind of medicine?”

“Plant medicine. It will calm you down so you can travel with me to the past and retrieve your soul.”

The teapot began to steam, and a few minutes later, whistled to indicate that it was ready. Robert grabbed an irregularly shaped turquoise ceramic cup from one of the paper sacks, and inside he dropped two pinches of each of the herbs he had prepared. As he poured in the steaming liquid, the tipi filled with a powerful scent that was as unusual as it was familiar.

“Here, drink this,” he said as he handed me the cup of herbal medicine.

I cupped the glazed ceramic vessel with both hands and brought it to my nose and inhaled. The grassy fragrance was sweet and dusty, not unlike the warm summer day outside, and it had a musty hint of what could most easily be described as dirt. I cautiously sipped the warm brew, and although it was unlike any tea I’d had before, it was surprisingly tasty.

“I’m not going to start hallucinating, am I?”

“Not from the tea,” Robert laughed.

The liquid began to calm my nerves, and I tried to let myself relax and enjoy the experience I was having. I was both excited and nervous about what would happen next, but I trusted Robert and believed that he had my best interest at heart.

After making sure I was comfortable and giving me a second blanket in case I needed it, he lit dried herbs in four ceramic dishes and let the smoldering leaves fill the tipi with smoke. I recognized the aroma of sage and cedar, but I hadn’t smelled the other herbs before.

Robert then picked up a shallow handmade drum and began beating it slowly and deliberately. The large instrument was made from two white leather skins stretched across a hollowed wooden stump and fastened together with yellowed leather strips in a crisscrossed pattern. There was also a single gray speckled feather tied to the drum that danced with every strike of his hand-carved wooden mallet.

“Okay, now we’re ready. Finish the medicine and lie down on your back.”

I drank the tea, handed him the empty container, and stretched out fully on the wool blanket after propping the back of my head up with the second blanket.

“Close your eyes and let the sunbeam warm your face.”

I closed my eyes and smiled as the warm sunlight caressed my cheeks. My head pulsed in time with the drum as Robert began to strike it at faster intervals.

“I have surrounded this tipi with white light, and today we call on the elders to help find and retrieve the missing pieces of Scott’s soul so he can be whole again. Please help us journey through the past, the future, and all the places that Scott has been or will ever be in this lifetime. And help us find the pieces of his lost soul that are ready to rejoin Scott’s present path.”

Robert’s breathing quickened and filled the spaces between the drumbeats with the sound of wind.

After several minutes, he finally spoke. “Your power animal has taken the form of a raven, and it has led me to a young woman in a car who has a piece of your soul. She is no longer of this world, but she has not yet journeyed to the other side.”

I immediately got chills over my entire body and tried to wrap myself in the blanket I was lying on.

“Do you know who this is?”

“Uh-huh.” I was barely able to choke back the tears. “Cheryl.”

“Good. Cheryl wants you to know that she is okay, and she wishes you well. But it is time for her to leave, and you need to accept your soul back so she can continue on her journey.”

I started to feel guilty. Was I somehow preventing Cheryl from moving on to the other side?

The drumming became more and more intense, and I thought I heard Puppy Don whimper in the corner.

“Scott, are you ready to receive the missing piece of your soul?”

“Yes.” I was barely able to use my voice, as I could sense something big was about to happen.

“I ask for the support and strength of the sacred raven, representing intuition and spiritual awakening. Please help us retrieve Scott’s soul from Cheryl and bring it safely and purposefully back to this dimension, where it may reside with its rightful owner.”