Exploring Cassy

by Margaret Guthrie

  * * *

   

   

  Ok. We’re back in session. I take a deep breath—or whatever it would be called, and begin.

  “That day the motorcycle club wanted to place the geo-cache they had been working on someplace on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. It was supposed to be on the way to one they were tracing further on. I wanted to hike the Pawnee Pass trail, which is a good one-day hike between Brainard Lake and Monarch Lake. Most people start at Brainard, but they didn’t want to bother to take me up there. If they had, maybe things would have turned out differently. It would have taken them less than half an hour from the cabin we were staying in. But no, they couldn’t be bothered. I could either go with them, or lump it. Ray wasn’t any help, either. He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t exactly a follower, but he did have more of a conscience than most of them. I tried to persuade him to do the hike with me, but he sighed and said he wasn’t a hiker. Just a biker. What a cad. So I got talked into going with them over Trail Ridge Road and letting me off at the trailhead at Monarch Lake. It was way too late for a day hike. I had a feeling I was going to get stuck with an overnight, but I didn’t really care. Something inside was telling me, Do It, as if a little suffering  would be good. I’d show them!”

  I smiled. Those oval light bodies all looked at me as if I was crazy. I shrugged. What did it matter now.

  Counselor gave me a questioning look, arched her eyebrows. Wow. She didn’t need to say any words. Her look said I better think about what I just said. Okay. So it wasn’t the best planning, maybe.  I did have an emergency blanket and some warm-enough clothes. It was July. Best time of the year. I knew that the trail reached an elevation that could get cold at night. Still, the prospect of being alone was very appealing.

  “Appealing? Can you say a little more about that?”

  Now I frowned. She was just like one of those counselors’s I had on Earth. Where’d she get her training? Had her Earth training prepared her for use in this place? It was startling to think about. I took a breath and went on.  “I said I wanted to be tough. Well, this would prove it for sure. I wasn’t going to let any guy tell me I couldn’t, shouldn’t. And Ray could just feel guilty when he didn’t find me where I told him I would be at the end of that day. Hm.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that out loud, but heck, they seem like pretty good sports here. They waited for me to go on.

  “What a day. The sun was out, sky clear blue at 10:00 in the morning when I finally hit the trail. The first part was okay, as trails always are where they start. The trail took me along the edge of Monarch Lake, and then I had to watch for the junction to pick up Cascade Trail, which the book said  was a popular trail, so I expected to meet people, and I did. Most were in groups, kids in families jostling each other, reminding me of younger days. I stopped a couple times, but didn’t sit down, just to take a few swallows of water from the small bottle hooked to my waistband. It was important to keep hydrated. I had a larger bottle in my pack which I’d use when I took a real break. I also had nuts and raisins handy to keep my energy up. After a couple of hours, or a bit longer, I found the boulder they called Shelter Rock, and the bridge over Buchanan Creek that was described in the guidebook. It was a steep trail, just as promised, and then leveled out and passed over some marshy areas and numerous falls. Guess that’s how Cascade Trail got its name. It was tempting to get off the main trail and follow the paths people had made to get to some neat views. I was still uncertain about whether I really wanted to get over the pass and down to Brainard Lake or just let time slip away and find a place to stay overnight. I didn’t have a permit, so if I did that I’d really have to hide. I didn’t like to be illegal, but my mood was such that—well, how to explain—not really caring what happened.”

  I stopped talking again. I looked around. The ones in our counseling group were listening politely, but I didn’t know why they would be interested.  I assumed they were waiting for me to get through, so they could tell their stories. That Sally being had sort of shut down his aura; it was surprisingly small and dull. Maybe he was bored, or maybe he was sulking. I didn’t know.

  Counselor raised those eyebrows of hers, said “Go on.”

  But I couldn’t. I felt something in the distance. It looked like another counseling group, but they had turned toward us, as if listening to me. Why would that be? We were in this big field-like, open space that went out and out, but as I paused, I could see their auras getting brighter, and closer. I turned to Counselor for an explanation.      

  “They’re hearing you talk about hiking, about mountains, about Rocky Mountain National Park, and it attracts them. You see, that’s where they spent their last hours on Earth, too. Just as you did.”

  “Really?” I said, so surprised I knew my ‘eyes’ were enlarging and my auras brightening.

  “Are you saying they left their bodies in the Rocky Mountains?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Are they together for a reason?”

  “Support group.”

  “But there must be forty, fifty, beings.”

  “Over the years, the mountains have claimed them all.”

  “Do they want me to be with them?”

  “That’s up to you. But you have some planning to do. There’s already a way open for you to return and continue your Quest.”

  “Oh.” I was astonished. What did all this mean?

  “It means you need to go on with your story. They will listen, politely as you say. But you have more to tell, and understand.” Counselor was very firm. And notice how she answered that question I hadn’t even asked out loud?

  “All right. Then I’ll tell you something else. About the water. At one point I stopped and took off my pack to rest a few moments. I decided to pull out the big bottle and save the little one for when I was walking. I ate a half a sandwich, then took a big swallow of water.  It tasted bitter and left my throat feeling hot. It was not at all refreshing. That’s when I remembered that Ray had come running up to me, right after I had taken a few steps, and slipped that bottle into the pack I had on my back and said I had almost forgotten it. That didn’t seem right, yet what was I to do? I gave Ray a hard look of suspicion, and he just shrugged his shoulders. That was the last time we saw each other on Earth, in those bodies.”

  Counselor nodded, as if to say she understood. But some of the others looked puzzled, so I tried to explain. “I say it that way because there were a few times after I had left that body, that I tried contacting Ray. But it’s really hard to get through that thick mass of energy when you’re not in a place where gravity exists. I mean, a mind can do just so much. I knew about will power, and believe me, I used it a lot on Earth. Determination they called it there. Or persistence. Even stubbornness.  It was generally considered a good thing, quite valuable in “getting ahead in life.” But when you’re just a ghost of your former self there’s this Great Wall that springs up. Some call it a veil. Anyway, I kept banging on this Wall, and it wouldn’t budge. I’d try to ram this body against it and all that would happen is that my light rays would flatten out and I’d end up spread so thin I could hardly be seen. Even here. That was frustrating.”

  I turned to Counselor. “You were rather helpless, too. All of you. Just watched and sighed. I do credit you with staying with me. It did feel good that I wasn’t all alone. You knew, I guess, that I’d finally give up and be ready to start paying attention to you and try to see what you offered.” Counselor smiled and nodded.

  “Only, one time, there was a small break in that Wall.” I expected Counselor to make a show of surprise, but she didn’t. So I went on. It happened when Ray was dreaming. That’s really the best chance we have to get a message through. He felt me. I heard him tell my little sister that I was “right there,” and it was actually exciting for him. The same thing happened with Louise. I really took her for a hike!” I laughed. I do enjoy  teasing. “But it was so easy to keep ahead of her on the trail in tha
t dream of hers. Well, why not. This body is so light—I mean light weight as well as light—that I can make it go as fast as light, just by thinking it. That’s the key, right?”

  I look to Counselor for confirmation. She just gives me that blank Counselor look. “Yeah,” I say. I think she’s impressed that I’m catching on.  “Thinking is what gets you places here. Thinking is what gets you anything you want. It’s almost boring at times, it’s so easy. On the other hand, this business of different worlds is really strange. I got into Louise’s dream that time—or was it my dream that she was pulled  into—and she, too, thought I was “right there.” You see, we were on this trail, I skipped ahead—she always was slower than I—and then I’d stop and sit down, look back at her with a grin and wait for her to catch up. Then I’d take off again. I tried that several times before she got disgusted and woke up. I suppose that was a real waste of the break in the Wall, but it was rather fun.” I sigh. “I know there were other times she felt my presence and that’s kind of sad.” I look at Counselor.  “I suppose you’re going to get me to face up to what she meant to me in one of these sessions.” She just gave me a sly, confirming look.

  As I was giving this spiel, I noticed one the four beings getting agitated, exuding large rolling balls of mixed colors circulating around her aura like they wanted to explode into fireworks. It puzzled me. Counselor acted as if that were perfectly normal. I wondered if she ever got excited. Probably not.

   Then Counselor gestured to the being. “You want to introduce yourself now?” It was as if it had been programmed. As if this being had been assigned a part to play in this counseling drama.

  “Yes,” the being said eagerly. “Cassy, I know about that water. Ray told us one of his cycle buddies had played a practical joke on you.” She paused. “He spiked your water with vodka when you weren’t looking.” Her colors kept pulsating in vivid reds and yellows. “We, your friends and your parents, talked about what a vicious and heartless thing that was.”

  “My water bottle? The one I wore at my waist?” I stared at her and felt my own aura becoming hot and pulsing. The others even backed away as if they would be singed from this flame I was producing. Counselor spread her hand over me like a wet towel and I calmed down. “And Ray let him?” I asked.

  “Ray claimed he didn’t know until much later when his buddy asked at the end of some phone conversation how you had liked ‘that vodka tonic they had gifted you.’ Believe me, we jumped on Ray for that. He insisted his buddy didn’t really mean to harm you, that this buddy didn’t know anything about hiking and how important keeping hydrated was. We had more than one confrontation with Ray about that.” This being paused again, as if thinking whether to add something. But she did.  “Ray did seem to care about you and was really shocked about your disappearance. But then, Ray was a slippery one, as  you must have found out.”

  That totally blew me away. Who was this being? And what was she doing here? Turns out she was a friend of my mother’s. Gail was her name. Someone I never knew. “So, how did you get here?” I asked. I gathered she was a recent arrival, but since time is so relative here, that could be months,  years, of Earth time.

   “Oh, I had cancer. A slow growing tumor in my abdomen.” She kind of shrugged. “It took years. Not a good way to go.” She made a sort of fractious grin—red and black intermittent short flashes  in that mouth area. “When you disappeared your mother confided in me. They were so worried, Cassy. So pained. They’d been told maybe you wanted to disappear. You were an adult, and sometimes young people, ah, like you, single, unsettled, not apparently knowing what you wanted to do with your life, just...didn’t want to face their families with all their uncertainties. And then, when your bones were found four years later, and pieces of clothing, there still was no way to know when or how you died. Anyway, finding out that water business, made us speculate. It surely would have increased dehydration. And that alone does things to the body. Maybe the mind. Oh, Cassy, we were all so sorry.”

  Great swells of lavender and pink and blue issued from around the being like a love blanket. I discovered that if I thought about it like that, it reached out like an arm and engulfed me. I hadn’t realized such comfort, not since I was a baby in somebody’s arms. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Just let it be,” said Counselor. “Receive it. It’s her gift to you.”

  I needed a break. What with the gang out there like spectators at a circus waiting for the high-wire show to begin, waiting as if to see whether I would fall off the wire, and this new arrival with her warm blanket offering unprecedented love, I didn’t know what to do with the feelings rushing up and around me, clouds of uncertainties. “Don’t you people ever sleep?” I finally blurted out. “You’re exhausting me. You’re pressuring me. You’re confusing me. I want the spotlight off me. Right now!” If I were in a human body I would be crying. But I didn’t know how to cry back then, and I sure don’t know how now.

  Counselor for a  moment acted human, exuded a sympathetic smile, as if she did understand. “Sure. We’ll give it a break. You’ve done well. We’ll give someone else a chance to get in here. It’ll be as good as sleeping. Just as refreshing.”

   Counselor paused, and then looked over the little group of us, five arrivals from that material existence which Earth accommodated as well as could be expected, with so many of them carelessly destroying their habitat. That’s one of the things I found so disturbing in my short time there. I saw the trash left on trails and campsites, women’s bathrooms cluttered with half-used paper towels, toilet paper on the floor, sinks all splattered with soap foam and water. I could never understand how women didn’t feel the need to pick up after themselves, wipe up after themselves. And that didn’t begin to address the larger, earth-wide destructiveness that made me feel so helpless and sometimes downright depressed.

   I sighed, and turned my attention to Counselor who seemed to be appraising the Sally being. His shrunken, darkened aura looked as tired as I felt. Counselor then held out her hands, lifted them up as  if asking for a blessing, and we all watched them being filled with a shining, silver gossamer goblet followed by a glass, just as translucent. From this goblet she poured a stream of  blue light into this glass, and handed it to me. This happened four more times, until each one of us was holding a glass. Intuitively, we had all waited before putting that glass to our lips.

  “Drink,” she ordered. We did. “Now,” she said. “You’ll notice how things look brighter? How you are able to see each other in a new light? Do you wonder how you are all related? Do you see that each one of you had called out while on Earth in a moment of desperation, in a moment of wanting to escape the expectations, the demands to be ‘all you can be’, the daily duties to perform, the ever watching eyes on your behavior, your dress, your speech, until you were crying out “Stop the World, I want to get off?” Do you see how desperately you wanted to escape what it was pounding down on you, that you couldn’t quite see clearly?” She paused to let this all sink in.

  The Sally being sighed. “I do admit that it was hard to be accepted, and I really wanted to be...liked. I wanted that a lot.”

  “Dude, I know what you mean,” spoke one of the two beings that hadn’t been heard from. Our attention turned toward him, and his aura lit up like a neon flashing sign welcoming visitors to a gift shop. “I got rejected by this set of Christian missionaries because they thought I was too meek and weak. I was just a hopeless mess. I wouldn’t be able to hold my own if objectors to the message started an argument.”

  I saw great flashes of angry red jut out around him and could see why he might have been rejected. Not that I was favoring Christian missionaries. Not that I wasn’t either.  “You scared them,” I said. The words just came out without my thinking.

  Sally perked up and asked him what he had done to get here. “By the way,” he added, “I’d appreciate if you all would recognize me as Salvador, which was my real name. We’re supposed to be open and honest her
e, right?” He looked around for approval.

  Counselor nodded. “That’s correct. There’s no judgment or punishment here. These life review sessions are for planning the next steps in the Big Journey. So, Torch, you are going to tell us how you got here. And, you might explain the nickname sometime.” She gestured toward the being who was churning through the dark angry colors that took up so much space around him that we all stepped back a little.

  “I was like a torch, lighting things up,” the being said in a way that exuded pride. “I decided if they didn’t like me the best thing was to eliminate them. I didn’t need them. So I bought a gun and brought it to church one Sunday morning and sat in my car watching these dressed-up religious people going about excluding me.” Torch took a breath. By that I mean his auras sort of  pinched up in the chest area as if he were gathering them all together to exhale fire, like a dragon. And his words did make us pay attention.

  “So I got out of my car and picked off a couple of the pretty young chosen ones, the girls that were going to heaven.” Yellow clouds bellowed out from his mouth as if he were laughing. “It gave me a high, seeing them fall, seeing that red blood oozing out. They all started acting crazy, running this way and that trying to save themselves. No Jesus to save them there.” He laughed again, a kind of cackle, or crackle like burning flames.

  “I was something to be dealt with,” he continued, with a smile that stayed for a minute until his next statement. “Only, I didn’t know they’d have an armed guard, a woman sharp-shooter.” He frowned, then went on. “A woman! With the guts to send a bullet into my chest. It was a funny feeling. Really. Just one  minute that high of accomplishment and then a total collapse and I looked down and saw this body in its own blood and realized I was not going back into that mess. It was a relief, actually. A relief. So here I am.”

  “And your real name?” I asked. His story made me remember that Ray was exploring some Christian bikers who talked about target practice, about bringing their church friends up to the cabin for a shooting party. I hadn’t liked that idea. It sounded dangerous, and illogical. It didn’t fit what I thought Christians were. But I wasn’t into religion, so what did I know. I waited for this guy-being to tell me his name.

  “David,” he said, and the yellow laughing rays of light increased. “Isn’t that just the most gimpy name ever?”

  “Well, David did kill the enemy with his sling shot,” I reminded him. “David is a good name.”

   “Then you must have been my mother,” Torch/David said, looking sideways, away from me. “Somewhere in time.” His aura had withered into a reasonable looking being, but his suggestion of me having been his mother at some point was appalling. In fact it made me angry. I didn’t want to be implicated in any relationship with him. No, no. no. What was he trying to do? I felt my aura jumping about in agitation. At the same time I did realize that we had been drawn together for a reason. Unfortunately.

  Counselor observed this with calm indifference it seemed to me. But the fifth being, the one who had not yet spoken, came to the rescue. “You boys are being so dramatic,” she said, her blue, smooth aura like a calming, refreshing breeze. “Neither of you have any patience, either with yourselves or others. You’re going to have to do something about your attitude. Life isn’t meant to revolve around you. You can’t make yourselves the center and expect to be liked. That’s childish. I think you’ve got some hard lessons ahead of you.” Then she turned to me and shook her finger. “And you, little one, have got to learn that childish people have to have rules laid down early in the life game. You are strong enough to be a mother insisting they be followed.”

  I was shocked. “I was never David’s mother,” I protested. What was she talking about? And what made her so authoritative? Wasn’t she just another recent arrival? Counselor wasn’t doing a thing to monitor this exchange. She just seemed content to let us all wallow in our own emotions.

  This fifth being smiled as if she knew my thoughts. Counselor gave a little wave of her hand, that slight film of light motioning for her to continue. “I’ve known you all,” this new being said. “You’ve all come to the cabin at one time or another, though never all at the same time. My last name was Ruth Mitchell, and though I’ve been gone from Earth for quite a while, I’ve been waiting for you. The mountain cabin you called the Mitchell cabin was a retreat place. And just to be clear, this wasn’t the cabin of Cassy’s uncle Ron and aunt Amy. Our cabin was in a totally different place.” She turned to the Salvador being. “You came with a group of Harley bikers, including that Ray that you knew, Cassy. And Cassy, you were there along with them from time to time. But mostly you were there with a mountain hiking club. I was still alive when you were pulling out books to read and think about, and I saw you writing and writing. You put words down on paper that you couldn’t have said out loud. But wanted to. Right?”

  Again I was astonished. How clever of  Counselor, or whoever ran this place, to put us together this way. I trusted it was for good reason, but sensed it would take a lot more to get what it was all about.

  “Ruth Mitchell? You were like a legend. People talked about how you could do just about anything. You climbed all 54 of the Colorado Fourteeners, you welcomed just about anybody to the cabin, you were a great cook, and certainly had lots to say about a lot of things. But, I thought...” I paused,  looked at her.

  “That I had passed on a long time ago?”

  “Well, yes.  I guess.”

  “And you’re wondering how  I got here?” She laughed, big gales of blue undulating waves around her. I nodded, rather speechless. “I did live a good, long life. Almost 90 when I decided it was enough, and just stopped eating. I was in a retirement home in Denver by then, and people didn’t really notice. That was okay. The body got weaker, and after a couple weeks, the fasting was easy. Just as you found out Cassy, going without food and water, especially water, can bring on some interesting hallucinations. I suppose my death wasn’t so different from yours. Maybe more intentional. Though you did pretty well.”

  Salvador, David and my mother’s friend Gail, were looking at us strangely. I suppose I was going to have to give them more of my story, such as it is. “I had put in a few power bars in my day pack,” I admitted. “I thought that one night out wouldn’t be so bad, but I didn’t really expect to go longer. And those two women I met by that lake were really interesting. They were tough and independent and I admired them for that.”

  “Yet they weren’t hiking alone. They had each other,” Ruth said. I could see she had a lot more she wanted to say to me but was holding back, for now.

   “True.” I frowned, not understanding what she was getting at. “I don’t think that made it any safer. There were two women murdered on the Appalachian Trail a few years ago. Remember? Someone, a single man presumably, was offended they might be lesbian, not worthy of life. So he sliced their necks open, and their dog didn’t protect them either. He just stayed with them and mourned. Finally another hiker found them all.” I let out a long, slow breath. “At least I didn’t get murdered,” I said, so softly they barely heard me. I found it hard to look at them.

  “Your mother particularly was concerned that you were alone...when you died,” Gail said. “She had a hard time thinking about what happened to you.” She looked at me so earnestly that I began to squirm. I hadn’t really thought about anyone being concerned about me. But now they were virtually accusing me of being selfish. 

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It seemed a long time before anyone was ready to talk again. It was like the whole atmosphere was in pause mode. A quiet, like in the middle of the night, settled into place. An expectant stillness, as if every being was positioning themselves into floating gear, into fluffy clouds that hung about waiting.

   “You starved yourself?” Gail asked.

  I looked at her a while before answering. “Isn’t fasting what you do on a vision quest? Isn’t that what Indians did when they climbed alone to a peak where they test
ed themselves, purposely let go their bodies to gain mind over matter? consciousness over body?”

  “Were you mad at Ray?” Salvador asked  hopefully. His aura had perked up considerably.

  I considered his question. Was I? “I suppose I was.” I answered, and set about to study him. Sally/Salvador had been in a small body, which of course wasn’t his fault, but ‘puny’ came to mind as the way I thought of him. And ‘puny’ was not attractive. Ray, on the other hand, was taller than I, thin, but not skinny, and though he had a shifty look much of the time, he also had a smile that melted my insides. It was a kind of ‘I know you, and I am tender with that knowledge.’ So, when he let his buddies keep up their insane remarks and wasting my time, slowing down purposely to make me late on the trail, I did get irritated. He could have shown a little more spine and given them some strong words of disapproval. Why didn’t he?

  “Ray knew those bikers were bad news,” Salvador volunteered. “He knew they played tricks on people. And laughed behind their backs. You wanted to be tough?” Salvador grunted. “Not their tough, though. Right?” He looked at me with a kind of pity that was nauseating. “You were too good for them, and they knew it.” His aura took on a mellow, golden-grey look. I found it interesting, and surprising how often auras changed colors around all these beings. I wondered if this happened on Earth, too, but no one could see them.

  Salvador kept looking at me as if I should be grateful for his observations. I didn’t like it. I got the feeling he was about to tell me he could have saved me. And that made me mad, too.

  “So what made you think you could become one of them?” I asked, thinking I had touched on an important point. I felt my aura heating up, sort of glowing with satisfaction at my cleverness.

  Counselor raised her hand. “Stop,” she said. “You’re heading for a fight. That’s not what we want right now. Let’s go back to where you, Cassy, said you were sorry. What were you feeling when  you said that?”

  “My parents were sad. I’m sorry about that.”

   “They’re still sad,” Gail said.

  “But we can’t do anything about it, can we? We’re all dead.” I heard the consternation in my voice. I turned to Counselor to see what she would say. But she said nothing, just waited as if she expected me to answer my own question. Then it occurred to me to wonder how Gail knew my parents were still sad. Had she learned some way of looking down to Earth and observing?

  “There are certain lessons Gail has learned,” Counselor said then. “One of them has enabled her to look through the Veil or whatever name you have for that separation. She and Ruth go together to that observation room when they are in the right mood.” Counselor smiled, and Gail and Ruth nodded in agreement.

  “So, you have something like classrooms here?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

   “Well, who gets to use them?”

   “Anyone who has prepared themselves properly.  You have made a start by becoming aware of selfish intentions on your trek into the mountains without letting those who love you know you really might decide to disappear.”

  Wow. I had to think about that. “You know, I heard some Earth people say that life there was a school. Now you’re telling me existence after Earth life is a school too?” This opened up a lot of possibilities. So many, that I couldn’t begin to think of all of them. I could see that David was looking bored. His aura was pulsing out in sharp spikes like an impatient child wanting  to go off somewhere where he could pout and wallow in his own bitterness. I didn’t know what he was doing in our group anyway. Just to tell me I was his mother once? That idea still irritated me. I’d just as soon he did go off somewhere.

  Counselor knew what he was thinking, I could tell. She dismissed him, waved her aura arm at him as if to say ‘ok, go, go.’  I have a feeling she could bring him back anytime she wanted. I noticed when he left, there was a thin trail of something following him, like a string little children  hang on to when they’re in a group. Only his string was a ray of white light. I’m not even sure he knew it was there. Interesting.

  Salvador watched him go, and looked like he might follow, but he didn’t. Maybe he was still thinking about Ray and getting in touch. Maybe he wanted to learn to take those lessons Gail and Ruth had taken. I guess I did, too, actually.