Lion's Den

There are times I have taken drugs whereby what actually happened is clouded, subverted and twisted by imagination or hallucination… sometimes it is merely an innocent lie… an exaggeration for the sake of telling a good story.  I have told this one so many times in bars, around campfires and to friends in confidence that I don’t truthfully know what happened. I found myself across a draw with a rifle in my arms… I don’t remember how I got the rifle or from whom; but there it was and where I was I made out a figure of the cat between some rocks… I watched and waited. Principally, it was to see whether what I saw was real. After all, the ground was still vibrating and the trees still had auras. I thought I saw a cub falling out from between the rocks and a large paw pulling it back. As suddenly as the cub was pulled back the lion put its face out in plain sight. I drew a bead on it but the idea that she had a cub… or maybe two… behind those rocks let my finger on the trigger slip back down with my grip on the hilt of the rifle.

     It was mid-day before I took my leave without taking a shot. Did I even have a rifle? Was there ever a cat? I can’t say for sure… too many brain cells gone. I never… ever… never blacked out on psychedelic drugs before or since but I am certain I took that hike and vividly remember details that seem too real to be mere peyote induced hallucinations. It confuses me that I did so on such a monumental trek. I do remember, however, jumping boulders and letting one foot fall in front of the other in a jog down hill… stopping and resting and imagining seeing the cat on the opposite ridge as though she was escorting me away from her lair. I wasn’t running to escape… it was just the easiest and fastest way to get downhill… let gravity take the legs swinging like pendulums during the daytime and hunching over leaning slightly forward letting the arms drop down to feel the way at night.

     I arrived at the mesa at sunset… smoke from evening chimneys rising over the pueblo and the sound of meals being prepared greeted my senses as I gave Charlie goat a nod as if to apologize for not avenging the kid that had been taken. Going back to the A-frame I lay that night and dreamed… was it all a dream? Had I actually gone? Dopes it matter? What was real was that I had my vision and that vision of the cat stays with me today. It was a vision of a protector spirit… the cat Kachina… or something like that. After I would eventually leave Morningstar I would need all the protection I could get.

     The days that followed were a distraction and I soon felt that it was time to move on. I was able to breathe in the experience of the vision quest at my A-frame in the goat pasture. The rest of the time I was there we never lost another kid to mama cat. It was as though some sort of cosmic agreement had been made between us on that spring day in the canyon. Some people would say that it was just a coincidence but I felt that I knew better. I drew pictures with lines in the dirt near my fire pit of the cat and the two cubs. I filled in the lines in with different colored soil and ashes and offered up a prayer. I thought about it after that as time passed, and even though felt a bit embarrassed at the superstition; I could never shake the impression that a special bond had been formed with that cat in particular, but with the spirit of cats in general. Years later, when I see a cat; whether it is a mountain lion, a house cat, or a tiger, I sense a bond. I came to understand this was a bond with a form of spirit-guide: like the ones spoken of by shaman and medicine men or healers almost universally. It was most certainly the high point of my stay at Morningstar.

    Something else had happened to me on this quest. I wasn’t compelled to tell anyone about it. Part of the way out into the wilderness I had taken note of all the wonders I had experienced and couldn’t wait to get back to civilization to tell someone about it all. There was a point where I had merged so totally with everything around me… that I was in it so deeply… there just wasn’t any way to describe it with words. Once I did want to tell someone I went to someone… maybe I think, Byron… and sat with him an hour. I couldn’t say much of anything. I would start, “Uh… yes. Trees breathe… I saw them.” And Byron would simply nod in agreement: he’d already been there.

     “I was there breathing with them.”