The Passage

 

 

 

I decided to camp with two friends high in the mountains near the Continental Divide.  We got together late that night because we had had difficulty meeting earlier.  They arrived at my home and were still eager to start out.  We reached the mountain around eleven and began hiking.  One friend, Tom, had brought an array of items for camping, as if he were packing for a long vacation.  He had even included firewood, despite the fact that we were surrounded by it.  After about a mile, Tom began loudly complaining into the dark wilderness about how he could not keep walking burdened by so many belongings.  He was already exhausted from the hike.  Our mutual friend Jason and I began laughing at him and offered to carry more of his things.  We stopped to regroup for a while and distribute his materials.

 

 

It was surreal up on the mountain, with the moon lighting the evergreen foliage that surrounded us, evoking a feeling of permanence and comfort.  We hiked for a while longer and set up our tents by a small stream which could be heard trickling in the silent woods when we sat motionless.  We started a fire and I began feeling strange.  Something in me was drifting off somehow and seemed to merge with my surroundings, like a dream taking over.  I watched in awe a large pine tree illuminated by the campfire light in front of me.  It had thick, old, rust-colored bark that formed strange, mysterious-looking, twisted shapes.  Then one of the large pieces vibrated.  It visually moved quickly and I felt a burst centered in my brow which twitched along with the bark’s wiggling motion.

 

I sat back and looked around. The campfire was dug into the earth like a crater and had been casting shadows around the tree which affected my vision, making me see things, I thought initially.  Then I felt watched and vulnerable, so I sat quietly while the unusual feeling returned and developed.  I was lying back against the mountain and watching the fire from another small, crater-like depression.  Jason broke the stillness, saying that we should go have a smoke after setting up the tent, so we decided to accompany him.  When we got in there, we sat back and watched the smoke rise to the top of our small, fabric cave.  I reclined, feeling overtaken; something was approaching that was imminent and terrifying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I actually heard something of monumental proportion crashing through the woods at an epic speed.

I was huddled against a corner.  Jason inquired if I was okay.  I asked if he had heard that noise.  He said he did hear something and then it seemed to overtake me again.  There was a massive, destructive machine tearing down the mountain.  I curled up, ready to be torn apart.  It sounded as if it had leveled all of the trees and had a million wheels, making it tank-like, or perhaps some legendary tornado sweeping through.  I sat up and looked at Jason and Tom.  They had been doing something similar.  They rose, exclaiming that they felt very strange now, as well.  We all resided there completely still for almost an hour, which seemed to stretch endlessly.

 

 

I felt suspended in watery space and everything became dark.  There was nothing, and yet I was there, watching silently, without my body, floating.  I was thinking without words, purged by silence, and watching as the darkness moved within itself like waves, and something shifted in the blackness.  A mass of some kind was moving before me.  It was a giant, dark sphere, floating from my left side and drifting over into a large, white ring, slowly summoning the appearance of a solar eclipse with encompassing corona.  The ring appeared to be composed of white flowery structures that resembled water lilies.  They seemed to be made of some strange mineral deposit, I noticed, and the black sphere floated through them, absorbed back into the ambient darkness.

 

 

Within this, something storm-like emerged and I saw a person standing on the mountain, holding an item in their hands like some kind of offering, reminiscent of a Mayan priest atop a pyramid.  There was a strange, purple light exuding from the clouds and then, on the mountain, I saw a standing dragon-like beast.  It reminded me of the large, stone lion or Foo dog statues from China.  It sat watching me under the viscous, violet sky.  I passed by it and witnessed an array of breathtaking artistic images and sculpted models -- which seemed to express the place and simultaneously the state I was in -- spewing from some enigmatic source before me in the darkness as I watched, captivated.  They seemed to be inspired by every culture.  Some became unfathomable and alien-looking as the sequences progressed.  I felt I had seen the underlying intentions, the abstract visions of artists throughout eons and beyond, symbolic expressions from all corners of existence pertaining to sentient beings.

 

My energy coagulated inside a dim dome structure which was occupied by a ghostly gathering of luminous people whom I realized were indescribable members of my fate.  They were somehow predecessors to this path, possessing a wisdom I would eventually amalgamate.  Yet this also felt as if we had already died.  They silently propelled me to continue as they softly observed me hovering above them.  Although it was not yet my time, there was a definite calling there.  I began to see something perfect and complete in that darkness.  Feeling I was merging with it entirely.

 

 I then descended back into my anchoring body when one of my friends spoke again.  We all looked at each other and I fell back into my vision.  Soon, I was terribly hot and had to exit the tent.  I felt like I was burning up and began sweating profusely

 

Crawling over the ground, feeling how cool it was, somewhere in a parallel scene, someone was calling.  I saw them there before me; the setting appeared as a front yard of an unfamiliar home.  It was dark, as well, and they could see me seeing them through the overlapping woods.  They yelled my name and waved, attempting to solidify my attention.  I turned, hearing it being called from behind me as well, and saw Jason looking out of the tent.  He came out and asked me if I was feeling all right.  Drenched in perspiration and unable to discern what was real from who had been calling me and from what location, I crept over the cool earth, asking for assistance from it.  It seemed to understand, for I realized our planet was truly our maternal source of physical existence, conscious of our awareness, somehow leading me to a purifying spot away from camp, where I rested.

 

 

After losing the parallel world I was crossing into, I went back into the tent shortly after feeling nourished by the earth.  I stretched and drank some water, which calmed my nerves and cleansed my erratic sight.  We all sat in silence for another hour.  I didn't remember falling asleep, but felt I had been laying there motionless for an entire lifetime, in a trance soothed by darkness, without any reference or limits.  Suddenly, we were illuminated by a most peculiar event.  It was first teal, then blue, creating a radiance which commanded our attention into the immediacy of the elusive moment at hand.  It was as if some mythical creature had flown into the tent and spread through our bodies, filling us with some revitalizing elixir, leaving us spellbound.

 

Then the blue waves seemed to wrap around everything, coating us with some strange, powerfully bright-glowing gel.  It appeared that the vision had continued yet the night had ended, and I was more enhanced than ever before in my life.  I felt something mysterious and powerful surge through me, sending me into a war-like state, yet feeling complete and calm, oozing this power, as if I had been reborn into a boundless organism.  It was the temporary window of enthralling twilight preceding the morning sun.

 
 

I had forgotten my familiar mind, becoming only a viewing sensation.  I was materializing from an observant feeling back into a physical vehicle, but retaining the sense of being firstly that fluid illumination which occupies the bodily vessel.  With this emptiness as my primary vantage, the physically challenging became effortless.  I sat up and had only a mild sense of having done so.  It was as if I had levitated.  I bounced out of the tent with ease, as if I was still dreaming.  Tom followed and stared at me strangely, asking to see my tattoos, which appeared to glow suspended with a strange, inner luminescence of their own in conjunction with the stunning blue light.  I found the state to be comfortably beyond my ability to accurately describe.

 

 

After noticing the quality he had indicated, I bounced around the woods a little bit and ran up the side of a tree a couple of times to a height of six or eight feet to verify that I was able to continue vertically.  I came down after I reached the first branch but didn't fall.  Actually sticking to the tree somehow, my feet felt like they dug into everything like mud, gaining extra resistance with some sort of energetic-projecting barb near my heel and calf muscle.  But they were lighter and I felt weightless.  I ran around for a little while, testing this out, and felt like I was dreaming in an old martial arts movie, running up and off the trees, momentarily stalling time and gravity.  I had the fleeting sensation that I was sweeping energy off the earth’s surface and using it as a covering, which allowed me to merge with the tree, with this skimmed energy as a transitional, puncturing cleat of sorts, displacing the surface energy to traverse upon as an adhesive element.

 

 

Tom watched and stared dumbfounded and then became sick to his stomach.  "Look!" I said as I leapt through the woods, bounding as if I had on spring-shoes.  I ran around a bit more and decided to leave, to errantly tread deep into what was calling me from that mysterious forest, waiting out there, seeing this all as a prelude to something limitless.  Jason abruptly stopped me as Tom retired, making me promise I would return.  I hesitated and knew I wanted to leave everything behind, never coming back, returning to the mystery I had experienced which was now pounding in my heart, to be forever on my way away from everything known.  Assuring him I would return for them later in the morning, I headed off, swallowed by life, jumping over various logs, through the trees, until I found an enormous, old pine about a mile away.

 

 

The mountain forest was prehistoric and the twilight hung in it with a glowing mist which I found exuberating to breathe.  Everything had a sheen and pulse, united but independent.  I effortlessly climbed high into the tree, hung my pack on a broken branch, and looked over the surrounding woods.  It was about fourty feet up to where I was sitting, but I could see the entire surrounding mountain range.  The trees seemed to emerge from the darkness as the dawning light embraced them, like dark tides washing away from an alien shore which they were unveiling.

 

 

Smoking my pipe high in the treetop, I was surrounded by blackness again, bodiless.  Next I saw myself pinpointed across a vast expanse, closer, until I could identify my exact location drawn upon in both directions by my shared perspectives.  The nothingness became outer space, and I observed from a point which seemed to be around the moon.  There was the earth before me, then, with forceful waves, the atmosphere and the panoramic mountain range and the particular tree I was in.  Having traveled somewhere beyond this world, I drank some water from my pack and felt that pursuing and reflecting that unedefineable beauty was what it meant to be a warrior.  Yet this traversing was our intrinsic nature, as the, earth, while unexplored in that light and anything but mundane, was merely a transitional station, I was inspired by the realiztion that there was so much more here and beyond. 

 
 

I had the undeniable sense of discovery of an elusive path I sought in the depth of this venture.  This path became myself merged with my environment, delivered in departure.  It seemed years had transpired, all condensed within that voyage that consisted of a mere several hours.  Everything that occurred which I witnessed had a unique, inclusive totality which felt like multiple, linked lives.  The world before me was so mysterious and magical-looking.  I felt I was lost on some unknown planet.  All of the trees seemed aware.  I felt them buzzing as if they were emitting harmonious waves of energy, enduringly alive.  I sat there for a while, watching the thick, high altitude clouds fly through the cerulean sky, and then climbed down and walked back to the camp, marveled by the miraculous power of life.

 

 

It felt strange to be encased in a body.  I realized that the giant machine noise was generated by the stream beside us.  The translated sound of it had somehow created that horrible crashing which had catapulted me into that visionary episode.  I sat outside the tent until Jason came out.  I waited on a large, fallen tree branch.  He said that Tom still felt sick and had fallen asleep.  He was hungry and asked me to take him to town.  The walk back was long.  Every stone embedded in the soil revealed an ancient story of historic formation and emergence from deep within the earth.  They all glimmered like massive jewels, seemingly abundant with esoteric tales.  We reached the car and traveled to the nearby town to eat.  After a short time, I said we had to return to extract Tom who was likely still sleeping.  Jason agreed, and when we reached the parking lot of the mountain, he said he was too exhausted to return.  He gave me a gift to express his appreciation that I would assume responsibility and seek Tom alone.

 

 

I thanked him, enjoying the prolonged experience, absorbed in silently observing the unfamiliar beings before me.  Those trees still seemed aware of my presence.  The rocks and clouds all had the same underlying force acting through them, joining us, this link of spirit, operating to illustrate that elusive quality I had actively sought, compounding into my view so that I may never forget the truths revealed to me there, presented by such unknown beauty.  I felt light on the interior, like a child playing, yet heavy and massive, now physically moving swiftly over the winding, wooded path, through the shaded forest, rejuvenated as my bid for this passage had been accepted.  Some hikers passed by and appeared to fear the state I found myself in, yet were also attracted to it, and returned my greeting in a guarded manner.

 

 

Soon, I was crossing the small stream and I spotted the small, red tent sitting peacefully nearby in a patch of hot sun.  I unzipped it and found Thomas sleeping deeply, like a baby, and had to laugh as he was unknown to being there alone.  Shaking him gently, he woke and exited the tent seeking the waning morning.  I took the tent down and again carried his possessions down the trail as he realized he had lost so much time.  He could not drive down the mountain, so I did for him, back to my apartment a couple of hours away.  He felt better by then and left.  I entered my dwelling joyfully, feeling an uplifting empty abundance as my view of the world had indeed changed, inaugurating a new era, alive and eager to know what awaited me until that day when we actually enter the forest and never return.