***
I took a moment to bring my mind back to that night with the two women. “It was a night in July, at an elevation of a little under 11,000 ft. The night was cool, but not bad. Surrounding Lake Isabelle were several mountains rising to over 13,000 ft. They were called the Indian Peaks because of being named after Indians—Navaho, Apache, Shoshoni, Pawnee. After a while we got tired of talking and just sat there watching the fire in its ring die down to embers that glowed red and then became grey ash. The women poured water over it several times to make sure it was out before we went to sleep. They got in their tent and I curled up in my emergency blanket outside, close to the fire ring and the tent. It felt perfectly safe, and I lay there letting myself absorb the stillness and the dark sky with blinking stars. The women had given me a blow-up pillow to put under my neck and a sweater to add to my clothing layers. In spite of the headache, which did not want to go away completely, it was fairly comfortable. It was about three miles to the trailhead where I was supposed to have been, and I figured I could stay around the lake most of the next day and do some writing before I had to walk out and try to find a ride. At least, that is what I think I thought. It could have been something else. I was still half wanting to just disappear and never be found.
“Next morning, the women woke up early and were taking down their tent and packing up before I was awake. They’d even heated up cocoa and coffee and offered me some. When I sat up the dizziness caught me by surprise. I accepted that hot cup of mocha and sipped. The warmth of holding a hot cup on a cold morning is a comfort hard to describe. It almost takes you to another dimension, another space-time. If I hadn’t had to go to the bathroom, I could have sat there all day. And I knew they wanted to get going so had to drink more quickly than I wanted, wash their cup and give it back to them. They showed me a place in the trees that made a good private bathroom, and when I got back from that they were ready to leave. I assured them I was all right, and wished them well. I played the tough girl role pretty well, I thought. Then, after they had gone and I was alone, the nausea started. It was mild at that point. Just a vague feeling that the thought of food made worse.” I stopped and looked around at those variously colored specters watching me so intensely. What an audience!
“Well?” one of them said. “Go on.”
So I did. “Well, I did manage to get out paper and pencil from my pack and jotted down some notes. The sun came out for a little while, then clouds moved in and I decided I better find a place to get out of the coming rain if I could. I took my pack and moved into the trees, off the trail, trying to find an overhang. For some reason I hadn’t bothered to fill my water bottles the night before and all that was left was some of the wicked stuff. But I took a few sips anyway to get the sweet cocoa taste out of my mouth. Before long, the sky got really dark and a wind picked up and it turned cold. Then hail. I had my rain gear on and got under some bushes and tree limbs that worked pretty well for a shelter. That’s when I started shaking. I’d had hypothermia before, but this seemed different. I didn’t seem to care. I thought maybe I should care, but I didn’t. I think I started talking to myself. I’m pretty sure I saw a coyote go by, about as wet and droopy as I was and it made me laugh. It apparently startled him, because he stopped and looked my way. It was a friendly look, and I thought it was kind of nice to have some company. After a while the shaking stopped and I started to feel warm. The coyote had gone on, the rain had stopped. Everything was wet. It didn’t seem to matter; I was sleepy and my head hurt and my stomach felt sick and all I wanted to do was curl up and let the world go by. Which it must have done, because I can’t remember how long I may have been in those bushes before the visions started coming. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? The vision quest I was on? I can’t remember when the visions brought people who transported me to what I thought was a level playing field where everything was open and comfortable and full of Love.” I stopped talking and looked at Counselor. The others were quiet as I asked her, “Is that when I passed over? It was such an uneventful thing, almost like going to sleep and waking up in another reality. Could that be?”
“Death is sometimes like that,” Counselor said. “The details of yours may be something you needn’t remember. Perhaps more important is the question, do you regret passing over?”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “Yes, because I lost the life that I could have had, had I been able to find someone to help me figure out what I was supposed to do with it.” I paused. “No, because now that I’m here, I think I have found someone.” I looked at Counselor and she gave me a long look of such understanding it made my heart leap to my throat, and my eyes fill. Only, I had no physical heart or throat or eyes, since I was all vibration and light. Even so, it did fill me with hope, and a desire to know more about this place and what it offered.
It was then that Gail commented that she didn’t see how hypothermia could happen in July. “Even at that elevation, and even with hail. It surely wasn’t that cold, right?”
“It could have been dehydration,” Ruth offered. “She wasn’t drinking enough good water. It’s something we always thrust on our guests when they came to our dry country from the Midwest. One little bottle of water wasn’t nearly enough on a long hike like Cassy was on. And then to fall and hit your head. That could have killed her right there.”
“We went through a lot of possibilities,” Gail sighed. “A park ranger had recently died from a fall on one of his hikes in the high country. His body was found a few days after he went missing. It was a shock. We speculated that that’s what happened to you.” She gave me a penetrating look that made me shiver. She was closing in on one of those lesson points that I dreaded facing. “But the ranger’s co-workers knew where he planned to hike and when he planned to get back. Cassy, you didn’t say a thing to anyone but Ray. You didn’t say anything to your parents or other friends.” She was right, and it didn’t make me feel good, but my defenses went up anyway.
“Why would I have told them?” I asked. “It was just a hike. I needed to be alone to think. I didn’t really have a plan to kill myself, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Actually, I wasn’t sure that was the truth. In a way it was and in a way it wasn’t. I did want something to happen. I was tired of waking up in the night and feeling so tense, so absolutely ready to punch something, to break open whatever it was keeping me from knowing what I needed to know. I began moving about, pacing like I used to do in the middle of the night, but doing this without the heaviness of a body was strange and awkward. I felt like I could float off at any moment. Yet, I, too, had a tether, just like David. We must all have had one, though it wasn’t apparent. Maybe they appeared only when they were needed. A life line, sort of. I looked at the group. All were watching—even those away from our group, those that had died on mountains. Watching, as if some great learning was about to take place. A lesson being achieved.
“All right,” I said when no one said anything. “So I was careless. I did not care. I’ve said that. I wasn’t deliberately starving like Ruth. I wasn’t deliberately getting dehydrated. I just let it happen. Okay? I pushed the body to exhaustion. I made it go, go, go, and did not care. Haven’t you ever done that? Runners do it all the time. They push until they feel that ‘high’ which takes them up and beyond the normal body experience. They push through whatever pain there is, and punch through that bubble into a higher dimension. For a moment. Isn’t that what every living body wants? David, isn’t that what you really wanted? Not just attention. You knew you weren’t going to get that. Didn’t you just want someone to open their eyes and ears and see...you? the real you?”
I could see that question took him by surprise by the way he jumped back as if to avoid being hit. He stared at me so long I began to wonder if he were going to answer. Still, no one else broke in. No one was going to save him from answering. Or me from his answer. Then, he broke down in tears, streaks of shiny rivers pulsing down the front of his aura, his ?
??shoulders’ shaking and his ‘hands’ rising up to cover his ‘face.’
“They thought I was gay. They wanted me to go into therapy and become normal. Like them. They told me I chose what I was—just like you’re doing! I didn’t choose...that. It chose me!” The Torch took on a fierce, demented look that was pitiful to see.
Counselor stepped in then. In a soft, consoling voice she said, “You chose to switch genders, David, that’s all. You had been trying a woman’s body in the last several incarnations, now you wanted to try a man’s. But it causes a little confusion sometimes. So in one sense, you chose who you were, but you’re also right that you didn’t choose to be ‘gay,’ as it is called. You were attracted to men in a feminine way, but in a man’s body. Unfortunately, humankind has not learned that men and women try each other’s way of living as part of learning to be One with all things. If you really learn what being One means, you will realize that there are no actual differences, just modes of being. A hand has five fingers, usually, each finger contributing to the whole. Each human being is a part of a larger whole. The real You, David, is an ever-existing finger of the One.”
We all looked at each other. This business of choosing what kind of person we were going to be, or discovering what kind of person we were last time on Earth was looking more and more...complicated. It was as if we had chosen a part in a play, a role, and we were going to choose another role for the next play. And if you thought about the millions of humans that have lived and are going to live again, it’s just really overwhelming. I was again ready for a break. All this exchange had gotten really intense. How much were we supposed to take?
“Okay,” Counselor said. “Shall we call it a ‘day’?” She smiled, as if it were a joke. Which I guess it was. “Let’s take our attention to something more amusing. Shall we?”