Notes from Paradise! Fear and Freedom

I went hiking last week alone in the dark, with the intent of finding the moon. I knew where it was and that we would meet if I could make my way up to the ridge top. There were people up there for me to meet too, my cousin and her friends who shared a hiking group on Yahoo. So my plan to greet the moon was as tame a beast as any out that night. And yet, hiking in the dark is like opening a trapdoor to the dungeons of my heart: I can’t help but see the prisoners I keep, and all the fear and questioning that sleep there.

First of all, there was my fear of the future. I had quit my job that day at two o’clock. The decision to quit had weighed on my mind for 12 days—ever since the arrival of my replacement. My co-workers had expected me to get myself fired on that first day of March, and go collect my unemployment. After all, my six month appointment of government service was only two weeks short of its final expiration date. So there was no shame in walking out the door early. Yet I had stayed, for a reason I still can’t completely explain. Call it stupidity, self-abasement, or a higher calling; two things compelled me to walk back and forth through those doors in the days past my official obligation.

Empathy was one, mostly for my replacement. A single mom from Arizona, she had had a hellish move after months of pursuit for a job as secure as this one. She was coming at an inopportune time, right in the midst of hiring for the back-country fire season. I remembered what it felt like to jump in to a crazy river of Forest Service paperwork. It had been terrifying. Yet I had had a lifeline to sanity and good humor in those first few days, in the form of my co-worker/supervisor, who trained me with kindness, patience, and laughter. Here was my chance to return the favor. So I worked extra days with the intent of helping the two of them transition more sanely.

The other reason I stayed? Curiosity. I wanted to be sure that my demons of the winter months (self-pity and bitterness) had indeed been chased away. They had taken up residence in my heart in November, when a list of “qualified applicants” had landed in the hands of our district Ranger, absent of my name. I had fought for two weeks against the unfairness of the news that I wouldn’t be considered for the permanent position I had “earned” with all my competence and good attitude as the temporary. Surprise! Government hiring is nothing like private industry. There was nothing I, nor my co-workers could do to reverse the glitch in my online application that had given no error report, and yet disqualified me from competing. That is another story for another day. Suffice it to say that my pride was at stake, and I satisfied my own inner doubts by staying long enough to witness my genuine goodwill and acceptance of the situation.

So there I was, 4 hours after leaving my job, hiking in the dark. How bold I felt! How daring! How exhilarating to think that I had only a general idea of where I was heading, (both on the trail and in my career) and yet I was embracing every moment of it with bravery and vigor. I felt that way for ten whole minutes, maybe even more, until my first real wildlife encounter of the evening.

I was running up the root and rock infested path when I heard a large rustling in the bushes to the left of me. My breath came in sharp as I froze in mid-air and realized my folly: I’d been jogging at night in Mountain Lion territory. I don’t know what you know about Mountain Lions, but I’ll tell you this much: I was not being smart. My own inner restlessness had made me impatient to get to that ridge top, and I had forgotten basic night-hiking guidelines. I’m not petite, but at 5’3” (barely), and 125 pounds, I’m not exactly an image of physical intimidation. The weapons at my disposal were few: a water bottle, a headlamp, a blackberry (the electronic kind, versus the fruit, for those of you who are slow--like me--to enter the new millennium), and a key to my car. So I pulled back quickly from the rustling and raised my arms above me. Short through they are, they made long shadows in the light of my headlamp, and gave me courage to move forward toward the rustling.

The eyes were the first thing I saw, iridescent red against a pale white backdrop. All white in the light, down to the snakelike tail wrapping around a tree branch. I dropped my arms as I took it all in: the pointy nose and plump middle of a full grown opossum. I laughed with relief and embarrassment as my adrenaline dissipated. Though the opossum was large for his type and hissing menacingly, I had never heard of anyone getting attacked, let alone taken down, by this rodent-like marsupial. I would keep my small distance but enjoy this opportunity to study real wildlife in its own habitat.

Instead I traumatized the poor thing in minutes. I was thinking about my daughter and couldn’t resist the instinct to pull out my blackberry and capture the specter on digital. Usually voraciously independent, my nine year old wonder had had a moment of mommy yearning as she saw me in the driver’s seat, and had climbed up on my lap before I drove off that evening. She had pleaded with me to stay home, than insisted on steering the car to the end of the driveway when I would not agree to this. “Okay then,” she’d said, as if she was closing a business transaction, and sprinted off to the carport to lavish love on our Lab-German Shepherd. She was first and foremost an animal lover, and would waste little time on “being lonely” for my human company.

Her passion for animals of all kinds, especially the creepy ones, was what brought her to mind as I studied this mammal who had scared me. I knew that my daughter would squeal with delight at even my most mediocre photography. You see, she had bargained hard for her own pet opossum last Spring, with her dad in a Louisiana gift store. He’d agreed to the stuffed souvenir on the condition that she part with her largest stuffed prize: a St. Bernard-sized white unicorn. “White Rose” had come from Santa the year my daughter turned five, and lived on her bed most nights since. All fine and good for a five year old. But at age almost-nine, the bedtime routine of squeezing in beside a large mythical beast had left both of her parents quite crazy.

Her decision wasn’t easy, but my daughter has always been in favor of instant gratification over long-term gain, so the opossum came home with us on the airplane. It moved when we moved, from campground, to hotel, to house in the canyon. I do have to say for the record, “O-pa-pa” looked little like the opossum I encountered last Tuesday. For one thing, the live one was ugly. For another, it had teeth that looked jaggedy and dangerous. Lastly, it had no intention of “playing dead”, which O-pa-pa did quite well (every time I so much as looked at her). So after several minutes of clicking and deleting, I pocketed my substandard rendition and continued up the hillside.

There were bullfrogs calling and answering in the creek as I crossed and their voices seemed to quiet my thoughts about me and awaken my longings for everything mysterious and lost. The water was one of these things: found and lost, found and lost down the stream. My life was one of these things: found and lost, lost and found, spinning round in a myriad of sounds and meanings too profound for me to see. The bullfrogs sang their songs as if they were singing to me: just breathe, just believe, just be.

Out of nowhere, the bat attacked me. Flying straight for my head, it was only my lifeguarding instincts that saved me—I ducked just in time and aimed my beam up, into his beady bat eyes. I know what you are thinking…. “Oh, please! California bats do not attack humans!”

Well you’re right. Using finely tuned powers of echolocation, that bat had diverted his flight path to swerve out of my way just in time. At less than one-hundredth my size, I was a frightening creature for that bat to encounter that night. Based on so many factors, it was logical for that bat to be terrified of me, but not for me to be terrified of that bat. And yet. I was still shaking from the encounter.

My fear-based reaction in the face of the unknown was troubling to me. I had been gearing myself up for the challenge of not having a boss or a job or a regular schedule each day by reminding myself of my unshakable traits: spontaneity, adaptability, and good old-fashioned common sense. I had told myself this: the hard day will come when you’re hired again and have to go back to the grindstone.

Something about this line of thought was now less convincing. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the “bravery” in me was not any different than the lack of bravery I saw in the people I could label as “control freaks”. I just liked to change my mind faster and more often concerning the things I had control of….

After all of this dungeon digging self assessment, I was quite relieved to come out of the trees and clamber onto the open, moonlit stretch of sights to see. There were the silhouettes of larger oaks and shapely Manzanita trees. There was the city down the cliff all lit with life not yet asleep and all the lights were stretching out onto the oceans waves and dips. The air was breezy fresh with hints of sage and licorice-like scents. My breath came out and in just like the breakers on the beach. Out and in, in and out. I was at peace.

It didn’t take long to find my cousin and her friends. I had struck out again, this time on the path that I knew they were using to return from their loop atop the hillside. I hardly had time to squat down behind the brush on their left so as to make rustlings to scare them. It seemed appropriate that I was only moderately successful in my attempts. I didn’t really have a need to do anything but smile and laugh and make small talk. I might as well eat every word I’ll ever say after telling you this: that small talk was blessed. Those strangers were great. Like a cold coke on a hot day in Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Shhh--No discussion allowed right now about the politics of foreign trade or multinational corporations in third-world nations…)

Blessed small talk. I usually detest it, and find it quite painful to participate in. But time alone with my thoughts gives me new perspective. It is the necessary--if sometimes scary and painful act—that I take to transform me from the person I am into the person I want next to be. I want to have more humility, more honesty about my weaknesses, and more acceptance of those who seem entirely different from me. When embraced, solitude is transformative precisely because it is painful. Not painfully bad, but painfully good, like a pregnancy or the training for a marathon. It does more than inform me about the ways I need to change, it actually changes me. And it makes me brave enough to be myself with other humans. Knowing oneself fully and yet being at peace with that—sounds like freedom.

Okay, okay, I’ll stop philosophizing already. I don’t want to bring you back to that place where you started last week when you read my ridiculous title…. I do want to bring you back once again to the poetry of William Stafford. The following poem is one he wrote while he was living in my neighborhood (off Paradise of course)…

Night Sound
An acorn falls on our roof in the night
Pattering down to the eaves;
We think our way through the quietness
To the steadfast moon on the leaves.

There in the soul grows a little star,
The heart finds a path to follow;
There in the still is a brimmed-up place,
An arrow of sky, and a swallow.

And over the hill is an always stream
And over the river, trees;
Seeking the hand is another hand,
And the blind have an eye that sees.

~William Stafford~
Los Prietos, California
September 1942

(Another World Instead, The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947, published by Graywolf Press)