The air grew increasingly cool, but the colors of the day were hot. The sun bounced from the canyon walls, highlighting horizontal stripes in all shades of red, yellow, and orange. The nights, though, were so cold they struck fear even into the earth and transformed everything to deep blue and purple. I shivered in the frigid wind of the desert, wondering each night if the icy reaper would take me in my sleep. It felt as though my life were slipping away every time I closed my eyes. In the dead quiet darkness, I could fade into oblivion, my fate never to be known to a soul on earth.
Yet each day I awoke with the rising sun, rolled my bed, and packed it away on the back of my horse to continue on. The canyon was one of those sights that could never be adequately explained with words or justified by a photograph. Even seeing it with my own eyes, it was impossible to comprehend something so extraordinarily immense. It was breathtaking. Millions of years at work and it was still eroding and evolving, still not complete, and it never would be. The canyon is like humanity in that way.
My nightmares became worse as the nights passed. I dreamed that I had returned to the farm only to find it abandoned. There was no one waiting for me, yet the stream still flowed behind the cabin, and the birds still spoke from the trees.
Shadows crept across the landscape and canyon walls as the sun passed high in the sky. The brown vegetation quivered in the desert wind that drowned out the sound of the river rushing below. The terrain got rough. I could feel rocks slipping under Nomad’s hooves as we hiked steep paths, but it never seemed to make him as nervous as it made me. It was a tense ride for a while. I tried to stay far enough from the canyon to keep us on flat ground, but its shape was serpentine with legs that sprawled miles from the main and left us with constant obstacles to work around.
As we climbed through one of those subsidiary gullies, we came across a mystical waterfall nestled within the landscape, as if it was kept a secret by some divine native culture. It spilled between the red canyon walls into a brilliant turquoise pool surrounded by lush green cottonwood trees and ferns that crawled across the vertical rock faces. A rainbow glowed in the mist above the pool and drew my eye to where it cascaded into a series of others and continued to flow down further into the canyon.
Beside the large pool, I saw a young couple in their midteens seated with their feet in the water. From where I stood on a cliff above I could hear their voices and their laughter faintly. I was momentarily puzzled. It was strange, I thought, to come across people in such an obscure and hidden place as that one, buried within the canyon and many miles from any civilization that I knew of. As curious as the situation seemed, I had grown so accustomed to hospitable people and it had been so long since I had experienced any hostility from my fellow man that I had no apprehensions about meeting those two. Nomad and I headed down toward them, and as we drew near, they heard us coming.
“Make haste, newcomer!” said the boy. “The hour is approaching! I’ve not yet found the chance to eat today, but I’m peering over the edge of consciousness. Join me.”
“Oh, hush,” said the girl. “We ate this morning.”
“Peyote does not count as a meal.”
I got down off my horse and walked to them, introducing myself.
“Where is this?” I asked, my eyes scanning the red walls towering around us, framing my view of the blue sky.
“Havasupai Reservation,” said the girl. “Where are you from?”
“East of here. Just passing through.”
“Did you take a wrong turn, or were you looking for the scenic route?”
“Wrong turn.”
“Well join us anyway,” said the boy.
“I need to keep moving,” I said. “It’s still light out, and I’m behind schedule.”
“Wouldn’t it be a shame to stumble upon something so beautiful merely by accident and leave without taking the time to enjoy it?”
It didn’t take much to convince me. Besides, it was my best chance for a night of sleep indoors with warmth, assuming they had homes to go back to. I went into the water to cleanse myself of the filth I had accumulated along the way before meeting any more people. Then I stayed with them to dry in the sun beside the waterfall.
While the pair was clearly present physically, they seemed captivated by the world they shared, which was not quite the world as I knew it. My perception of the world had changed in a profound way, as had that of my new companions and undoubtedly every other soul on earth. Physically, it was the same place we shared, but conclusions I had drawn throughout my life had brought me to only one variation of everything it could be. I had come from a place far away. I had led a very different life, lived in a very different culture and a different time with a different education. I had traveled far, gathering wisdom, I could only hope. I had known love deeper than I could have ever anticipated and only truly understood its importance when it seemed so far away. Certainly their years, though fewer than mine, had taught them lessons very different from my own and different even from each other’s.
I sat and watched awhile, marveling at the wonders of nature, something I had seldom done in my past life. Over the recent months, however, I’d had little else to do while on the road. It’s amazing the things a person learns about the world around him when he takes the time to appreciate it. There is so much life and color and beauty, even in places where, at first glance, they may be overlooked.
Nomad stood nearby, so still that his coat camouflaged him with the canyon walls. A falcon soared overhead, searching the earth for prey. Above the pool, with the waterfall behind it, the rainbow hung perpetually in the air. It was truly a heavenly place. Experiences of such beauty before had always been fleeting. There had always been some place to be, some responsibility preoccupying me. I hadn’t had the time to ponder such seemingly trivial things when there was progress to be made elsewhere.
I fell asleep in peace there by the waterfall. My teenage companions woke me later and invited me back to the village to join their tribe for a great feast. We followed a trail alongside a turquoise creek, which led eventually to the most remote town I had ever seen, surrounded by an earthen fortress. It was the sort of place that would never be found unless you knew exactly where to look. There was something magical about it all, as if I might turn my back and, in one moment, find that everything had vanished into thin air.
The village was populated by native people whose ancestors had called it home for hundreds of years before Europeans had ever set foot on this continent. They spoke English to me, but to each other they spoke a language as mysterious and beautiful as the world around us. In front of a church with a barrel roof and a stone façade were dozens of people at work, preparing and spreading a grand banquet on a yard of tables. They put me to work immediately. Whenever that happened, I never took it as an insult. That sort of greeting seemed to me more of a true invitation into a family and culture than simply serving me as a courtesy or charity. I never wanted to hear anyone say, “Sit back, relax, and have a meal on us.” Taking anything for free did not come naturally. I didn’t deserve to be served. Rather, more and more, I saw myself as a servant.
Looking around at the abundance of food before me, I remembered our weekly trips to the grocery store back home. Maria had always wanted my company, but Saturdays at the market had summoned my empathy for agoraphobes. Why had everyone chosen to do their shopping at the exact same moment that she had?
“What do you need to get?” I had asked in objection to our last-minute shopping trip before our last Thanksgiving dinner at home.
“I have a whole list. I’m not going to read it all off to you.”
“So you expect me to follow you blindly to my doom?”
It used to be so easy to go to the store and buy food. There I was, ironically preparing to share my next Thanksgiving dinner on a Native American reservation with the very people whose ancestors had been robbed of their land so many years ago by foreigners like me. Still, their warm hospitality had not suffered. The
feast before us was abundant, somehow even more so than it had ever seemed in the past, and it came in varieties to satisfy everyone present.
Despite the plentiful provisions before us, the people lived in simplicity. They had inherited the ways of their ancestors, hunting and farming the land, which provided all the sustenance they needed. Décor was natural and beautiful, but never excessive or grand. I remembered a time when Noah’s family was moving and their old home had developed such an accumulation of useless junk that he had finally rented a roll-off trash container in order to clear it all out while everyone else was at work.
“I just need to get rid of all of it,” he had said. “I feel like starting with a clean slate would be better than to keep throwing things away one by one to get to the good furniture.” Those were problems we would one day look back on, cock our heads, and wonder how the human race had ever reached such a point.
The banquet rivaled that of the Cratchits’ Christmas present. There were at least two hundred people, making it easily the largest family gathering I had ever been a part of; many were old, many were young, but all shared the place together. Before we ate they gave thanks, and I couldn’t help but join them in the sentiment. Their respect for what they had been given was like the proverbial old man’s for his fish. I wondered with whom I had more in common. Was I a fisherman, fighting with my life to catch that great creature, or had I all along been intended to be snatched from my natural environment, everything I had to offer taken to sustain the lives of fellow mortals? We’re all created to share this earth into which each of us will eventually return.
I felt the joy of home with those people, though everything about them and that place looked very different from the place I knew as home. I sat with Zach and Hannah, the boy and the girl I had met earlier, and with their families, all of whom were amazed by the tales of my travels. Sometimes I thought I was talking too much, but they kept asking more questions, eager to know every detail of what I had gone through. What captivated them most was what had happened at home during and immediately following the collapse. It had been very different there. They had seen it all on the news, of course. Tourists had stopped coming, and eventually they too had lost all of the amenities sourced in the world outside, but they had never been forced to leave. There had been nothing to run away from there. They had adapted to the change, and life had gone on.
“In the spirit of this day,” Hannah asked, “what do you have to be thankful for, Joe?”
I smiled as I thought for a moment, and all eyes at the table turned to me. I thought of Maria first, the greatest blessing of my life, and of the rest of my family back home. I thought of all the wonderful people I had met along the journey and the generosity they had shown me. I thought of my horse, who had become a life-saving companion when there had been no one else to turn to. I thought of what I had learned about survival and self-sufficiency and about my improved physical capability that had resulted from a grueling existence, keeping me alive even when sustenance was scarce in the wilderness. I thought of the love I felt everywhere I went that seemed to burst from every color of the earth. I thought of the future that awaited me at home and of the purpose I had gained through the loss of some comforts and material possessions.
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
Snow 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.
The World as We Know It Page 21
