by P. W. Child
It was not in Sam's nature to feel at ease in this kind of environment, and he took his deep breaths with a certain self-consciousness. He listened carefully to the people around him and tried to synchronize his breathing with theirs, but they were slightly out of sync with one another. He picked one to follow at random, feeling like a pillock as he half-closed his eyes and squinted at the others to see whether anyone else had their eyes closed. He could not tell, so he closed his completely. At least I'll look like I'm getting into it, he thought, even if this isn't what I'm meant to be doing.
The drumming stopped. The tent was silent, apart from the gentle crackle of the fire, the rhythmic inhalation and exhalation, and the faint sound of Sara's footsteps through the sand. "Welcome," she said softly, her voice as warm and inviting as if it had been an individual address. "We find ourselves now in a place of harsh, unforgiving beauty. It is the perfect place to connect with the divinity within you—a place that can be as unyielding as you are toward yourselves, where we must rely on one another and on ourselves without distraction or assistance from the outside world. You will leave here stronger and also kinder, more self-sufficient and less alone."
"Long before the Native Americans, the Paleo-Indian considered this land to be sacred. Each year, as the seasons turned and the summer heat began to descend, the tribes who inhabited this place would move from the shelter of the Grand Canyon to the higher elevation to find the cooler, fresher air of the mountain forests. This area was part of their sacred route, and they documented it in the form of paintings, petroglyphs, that have been preserved to this day. They show us images of gatherings, of the confluence of energy being focused on a central point.
"They suggest that the type of ritual we carry out on this spot might well have been part of their lives—that we are a part of a tradition dating back more than 13,000 years. They knew then that this place—this earth shaped by volcanic fire, torrents of water, and the ceaseless rush of air—was the perfect meeting point between the human and the divine. They might have believed that they were communing with gods who existed as external forces. We, however, know that there is no separation between the human and the divine—except that which we choose to allow and create for ourselves."
As she sent more scented smoke drifting gently across the still air, Sara told tales of the Paleo-Indian and later the Native American tribes who had occupied Parashant. It seemed a little convenient to Sam that the names of these tribes had been "lost to history" but that their mythology had been passed down perfectly intact. Nevertheless, even his natural tendency toward pedantry had trouble standing up against the spellbinding atmosphere woven by Sara's words.
"Legend has it that Parashant was once the territory of an angry god," she half-whispered, "a fire god. He made his home in one of the volcanoes that once set the valley ablaze. A neighboring volcano was inhabited by a beautiful fire goddess, and she was his lover. For a time they were happy, until a great storm came. The lightning god fell in love with the fire goddess, and when she refused to be his, he lashed out in a jealous rage, sending a bolt of his lightning deep into her volcanic home. It struck her in the heart. She died instantly, and her volcano cooled and became nothing more than a mountain.
"The fire god was devastated. The explosive glory of his volcano brought him no joy without his lover to share it, and the best he could do was send thin streams of lava trickling downhill like fiery tears. So it remained for a thousand years, until the first condor chose this path for its annual migration. They call these noble birds California condors, but the evidence of their presence in Arizona predates that of California by millennia. This condor flew high above the fire god's home, saw the marks of his grief on the scorched earth, and called out to the fire god to ask the cause of his grief.
"The fire god was so accustomed to his lonely solitude that at first he was taken back, but as he told the condor the circumstances of his pain, he began to feel friendship for the kind bird. At last he ceased to cry, and the ground cooled. But the lightning god, who still considered himself a rival to the fire god, was angry and jealous of their bond. He threw another bolt, which caught the tip of the condor's mighty wings and send it spinning to earth, where it crashed into the ground. The lightning god left the bird for dead, certain that the cold night would kill the condor and leave the fire god alone once again.
"The condor felt the chill of the night air on its feathers and knew that without being able to fly to safety, it would certainly die on the cold rock, either freezing while the sun was gone or becoming the prey of a coyote. The bird called out to the fire god that it would be sorry to leave him to his solitude. At the prospect of further loneliness, the fire god began again to weep. Trails of molten rock cascaded down the mountainside, warming the earth beneath the condor, warming its body so that the cold night could do it no harm. When coyotes dared to approach, the fire god spat at them, gobbets of liquid flame that sent them scurrying for the shadows. Day after day, night after night, the fire god protected the condor until its body healed and the bird was able to soar through the skies once more.
"Their friendship continued for many years. The condor's migration path took him back and forth across the fire god's territory, and they spent a great deal of time together. There were no secrets between them. They knew the innermost depths of each other's hearts. But sadly, the condor was mortal and the god was not, so eventually the condor's life came to an end. When the bird realized the end was near, it flew to the fire god's home and lay once more on the warm volcanic earth, taking comfort in the presence of the fire god, and then it died.
"The fire god, in his grief, took a handful of his friend's feathers and consumed them so that a part of the condor would always live in him, and, for a brief time, his fire burned black. He sent forth a mighty blaze of black fire and magma into the sky to mark the condor's passing, and it is from this that we take the name FireStorm. We seek to emulate the example of the fire giant and the condor, who found closeness and connection, who knew true friendship, and who lived interconnected lives."
That explains the logo, then, Sam thought. It must have been easier to use the black fire than the condor. Sara had fallen silent. She bowed her head, one hand clasped over her heart as if the telling of the story had taken everything she had to give. Sam looked at Cody, expecting him to step in and take over the proceedings, but he did not. He knelt close by, watching Sara intently, until she raised her head again. He passed her a small cup of water, which she accepted gratefully and sipped at gently.
"I have shared with you the story on which FireStorm is based. I should now tell you a little about who we are, who I am. We are a comparatively new organization—or at least, we are a new iteration of an old set of ideas. FireStorm has been called a religion. I don't know about that. A belief system, certainly, nut it's a belief system based on connections made by living beings, not on blind faith and the idea that a better world awaits us when we die. We are concerned with bringing connection back to a disconnected world."
She began to tell her own story. It was the typical history of a high achiever—Sara was the child of a lower middle-class family. She had worked hard, won a scholarship to Yale, and then worked her guts out to pay her living expenses. She had graduated at the top of her class, then moved to England to do her MBA at the London School of Economics. By the time she was twenty-five, she had made her first million dollars. She had gone on to lead Fortune 500 companies, frequently being pursued for other leadership positions. She had considered herself an excellent networker and an extremely successful person. By thirty-five, numerous publications had named her as one of the world's greatest businesswomen.
Of course, like so many people experiencing great professional success, her personal life had been a disaster. Her dedication to her work had left her little time for any form of distraction. She had assumed that eventually her meteoric rise would come to an end, and that when her career hit its plateau, she would find the time for a relationship,
perhaps even a family. Until then, she would continue to work insane hours, sleeping only a few hours a night.
Eventually she had burned out. On her doctor's advice she had planned a holiday, but taking time off meant putting in some long days before her vacation began. After fourteen hours in her Manhattan office she had set off for the Hamptons, where she had located a beach house to relax in. She never arrived. Physically and mentally exhausted, Sara had dozed off at the wheel of her Lexus.
"I woke up in the back of an ambulance," she said. Her hand strayed unconsciously to the tiny scar on her cheek. "I was covered in blood. I had three broken ribs and a fractured collarbone, and also little cuts all over me. The EMTs kept asking me who they ought to call . . . and I couldn't give them an answer. There was my mother, back in Indiana, but what could she do from there? Calling her in the middle of the night would only have worried her, and it wouldn't have given me a hand to hold as the doctors stitched up my cuts and reset my bones. There was no one in my everyday life whom I knew well enough to ask. That was a heartbreaking moment.
"I knew then that I had become completely disconnected from myself and from everything that really mattered, and that no amount of money or success was going to comfort me when I found myself in an early grave. Things had to change. When I recovered, I went in search of my spiritual path. Along the way I found FireStorm, back in its earliest stages, and I'm proud to say that I helped the organization to develop into what it is today."
For a moment, the tent was silent as Sara's speech came to an end. Then Cody began to applaud heartily, and the rest of the group quickly followed his lead. "Thanks, Sara!" he cried over the tumult. "Thanks for sharing such an inspiring, cautionary story with us! I've heard it plenty of times before, of course, but every single time I'm amazed and blessed by the honesty and openness you give to us. Now—who's going to be brave enough to do what Sara has just done and tell us about their own disconnection?"
☼
Chapter Twelve
Oh god, Sam thought, not me, not me, not me, don't pick me. He shrank back into the sandy floor, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head as subtly as he could. He had not been so unwilling to volunteer since his school days, standing at the side of a freezing cold playing field, hoping not to be asked to captain a team. I've got nothing to say about my "disconnections." I'm not sure I want to hear other people talk about theirs, but if it means I don't have to talk about mine, that'll do me just fine.
Much to his surprise, the first person to raise a hand was Julia Rose. He was accustomed to her looking nervous, but this was a kind of nerves he had never seen her display. Rather than looking as if she was expecting to be thrown out, this time she looked as jittery as someone meeting an idol. At Cody's prompting she got to her feet and told the group her name, then she spoke haltingly. "I, um . . . I don't have a long story or anything. I'd probably have to think for a little while to tell you about disconnection in my own life—I think I'm still just getting my head around the concept. But I just wanted to say, Ms. Stromer—that spoke to me. There's a lot about your story that I recognize, and . . . I really want to call my mom right now."
She sat down again hastily, her dark skin tinged with a deep blush, her eyes on the floor. Sara was only a little way from her, and she reached over to take Julia Rose's hand. That's twice now, Sam thought. I got the impression that Julia Rose's interest in Sara Stromer was more muckraking than hero-worshipping. Maybe I was wrong.
Others followed, sharing stories of their less proud moments. Some were common place—there were several who had realized that they seldom spoke to other people except online, or that they had forgotten their own birthdays until Facebook had reminded them. Others, such as Sara's, were a little more dramatic. Christopher Slack, a British MP still young enough to carry a layer of puppy fat that he had expected to shed after leaving Eton, told them of a long, dark night of the soul after his father had died. He had missed the funeral due to his heavy workload, then visited the grave a few days later, when he had a horrible moment of epiphany. It hit him that his father was gone and his opportunity to say goodbye had passed.
As affecting as some of the stories were, Sam found his concentration beginning to wane. There was a certain element of repetition to what he was hearing, and after a while the stories simply blurred into a mass of first-world misery. The more he heard, the more convinced he became that he had never experienced real "disconnection." Even when Trish had died, he had felt loss and loneliness and pain, but he had always known that if he had really wanted companionship, he had a couple of people who would provide it. He wasn't close to his sister, but he knew that she would never turn him away if he needed her, and there was always Paddy.
"Sam, how about you?"
Sam's whole body tensed at the sound of Cody's voice. The gaze of the room turned on him, expectant, demanding. He cleared his throat a couple of times, feeling foolish. What am I doing here again?
"Er . . . " Desperately he searched the recesses of his brain, searching for anything, any memory or experience that could be turned into a story that would satisfy the group. He had nothing. The closest match he had was Trish's death, and he would not twist that in order to fit in with this crowd. "I don't think I've . . . er, you know, when I stop and think about it, I don't think I've ever been through that—disconnection, I mean."
"What do you mean, Sam?" Cody's twangy voice was as perky as ever, but Sam thought he detected an edge of irritation. "It's really a universal experience. Don't you find that online communication and heavy workloads have taken over your life?"
Sam shook his head. "Not really. Sorry. I'm not trying to be awkward or anything—and I'm not saying my experience is typical. I'm just a bit old-fashioned, I suppose. I never really got into online communication. When I want to connect with people I tend to just go for a pint with them."
"Ah!" Cody seized on Sam's words. "But are you able to connect with them without using alcohol as a crutch?"
"I've never really tried," Sam shrugged. "It's just what we do."
"As a way of coping with how much you work?"
"Er . . . possibly? I don't know. For the most part I've always liked what I do, so I've never really worried too much about separating work and life."
Cody stared at Sam, torn between disbelief and a desire to start aggressively fixing him. He took a step toward him, but Sara raised a hand, stopping him in his tracks. She gave a slight shake of her head, and Cody backed down. "Well, Sam," he said, "I think those were some important realizations right there. Sometimes it takes a little while to get as far as being able to recognize your own disconnection. It's not easy. That's why this part is called friction. For some people, friction comes from working through their disconnections. For others, it's a process of learning to recognize them. Yours is going to take a little longer . . . " he gave Sam a grin so warm that it made him uncomfortable. "But we're here to work through it with you!"
"Sam. Sam. Sam."
At first Sam was not sure whether the sound was real or not. It reached into the edge of his dreams, pulling him out of sleep and into reality, where he found himself in pitch darkness. He waited, completely still, for the whisper to happen again.
"Sam! Are you awake?"
Nina. It was Nina's voice. They had all been asked to sleep in the tent that they had helped to build, leaving Sam to share with Nina, Purdue, Julia Rose, and Hunter, who had dragged his blanket as far from the others as possible within the contents of the cramped teepee.
"Well, I am now," Sam sighed, rolling onto his back. He tried to focus, but it was too dark.
"Do you want a cigarette?" She rattled the packet and Sam heard the comforting sound of sweet nicotine calling his name. He crawled out from under his blanket and followed Nina as they fumbled their way toward the tent flap and out onto the sand. A fat, waxing Moon cast an ethereal glow over the landscape, providing them with almost enough light to see where they were going. Nina had a light of some kind—Sam coul
d not see what she was holding, but he could see the small pool of light cast in front of her. He walked carefully in her footsteps, eyes on the ground to avoid the treacherous roots and tumbleweed that might be hiding in the night.
She led him down to the river, far enough from the camp that they would not disturb anyone with their conversation or their secondhand smoke. "Watch out for rattlesnakes," Nina warned Sam as she opened the packet and held it out to him.
"Are they around here? Do you have a light, by the way? I didn't pick up my jacket."
"Yes, here you go." She pulled a lighter from her pocket. "I think there are snakes here. If not, there's plenty of other deadly stuff—coyotes and the like, scorpions. Don't sit on a scorpion, will you?" As she lit his cigarette, Sam noticed that the device he had assumed was a light was actually Purdue's little folding tablet.
"I thought we were supposed to hand all our gadgets in?" Sam said, taking a grateful puff.
"Fuck that," Nina settled herself on a large, flat rock by the river and pulled off her shoes to dangle her feet in the water. "It would take more than some vague nonsense about 'connection' to persuade Dave to go give minutes without this. It's his favorite toy just now." She paused, waiting for Sam to speak, and then it struck her that the topic might be a little awkward. "So what did you make of all that stuff this evening?" She reached for the first alternative subject she could think of. "I wanted to look over and see how you were taking it, but I knew if I made eye contact with you I'd end up laughing and get us both in trouble."
"What, you mean you weren't sold on all the 100 percent genuine, definitely not made up some time in the 1960s Native American mythology? You do surprise me."
"It just pisses me off," she said. "I'm not keen on the idea of making money by selling a watered-down version of someone else's culture. To be honest, I nearly balked at the whole thing when Dave invited me to join him for a Vision Quest. I came because I wanted to see whether it's possible for these things to be done with any kind of integrity or respect for the history that they're laying claim to."
