Mists of Time
Summer has come early to our little town of Kent WA. 83 degrees yesterday, in the Pacific Northwest that is unusual, in the Puget Sound it is rare. Am sure those folks that are having snow storms in May with records being broken for snowfall are also saying the same thing. I feel for them but somehow the sunshine has put me in a mellow mood this morning. As I was eating my Fruit Loops the ‘mists of time’ took me back to my year in 4th grade.
My friend Al and I were walking to school one fine May day, and decided that instead of going to school we should take an unscheduled field trip to Willows Pond. I like to think that I have always been an adventurer, just something in my spirit that can’t be tamed. We changed direction and started walking, that was how we did it back then in the 60’s, we walked or road our bikes, without helmets. We turned out OK even without all the safety equipment. My cousin Alvin used to skate board on this 14 inch board without pads or a helmet. He taught me how to change the world one summer. The sidewalks had been painted with a message, “No Skate Boards”. He took some mud, and put it over the word No, then came back the next day and kicked it off the side walk. No, was gone with the mud, It now said “Skate Boards”. Sorry off on a tangent, those ‘mist of time’ are tricky.
We must have walked about 5 miles to the pond. Wasted time just throwing stones, or skipping stones into the pond. A pond is an odd thing in the desert, Burns Oregon is surrounded by desert. Scrub brush, Sage Brush, Coyote, Rattle snakes, however around the pond there were willow trees. Could be why they called it willows pond. We built a raft and decided that the raft project needed more work so we kept coming back for a couple weeks working on it and just having fun in this unplanned heat wave.
Our time off from school went unnoticed for about two weeks. When our 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Grenade, that is what we called her back then, Mrs. Ganeay, called our parents and asked if we were OK and what had we been doing for two weeks. It went downhill from there. They put us on detention for a month, and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other at school. His mom said I was a bad influence and he couldn’t play with me anymore. Of course my parents said the same thing about Al and I was forbidden to associate with him.
I do think of that time as magical. Eating our lunches out at the pond, enjoying the warm weather, being out in nature. Not a soul for miles and miles, for a brief time I was free! I wonder if Willows Pond is still there? It doesn’t hold the attraction it did when I was in 4th grade but you never know when an unscheduled field trip will happen, cause they are unscheduled. What happened to Al, I like to think he is out there somewhere doing things that have adventure running rampant in the world.
What is holding you back from being free? These days as a grownup, and I use that word lightly in my case, I have to work if I want to eat well and pay bills, and have a nice place to live. Weekends and vacations are that place adventure lives now. Though walking the trails with my dogs and my friends is nice, it’s not the adventure I was thinking of.
A few years ago I had a dream. I was sitting under a palm tree, my feet in white sand. A beautiful Island girl was with me, she was hot! We were talking, “come to the Islands, they will welcome you home”. I said ‘sounds like a great idea except it is so far away’. We got up and walked on the wet beach. I looked back the way we had come and saw that her foot prints had a liquid in them. We were holding hands and both bent down to see what it was. I let go of her hand and looked closely at the liquid, it was molten glass. I turned to look at her and she was gone.
I asked a Hawaiian apprentice of mine who she thought that was in my dream. Pele often shows herself as a “hot” woman in every sense of the word. When you take your eyes off the goddess she vanishes. Leaving a trail of glass foot prints in the sand was her clue to you of who she really is. You have been invited to the islands. I would consider going, after all when a goddess welcomes you home it would be rude not to go.
I wonder if there is adventure in Hawaii. May you be blessed to live your life not just exist, may you be blessed to enjoy your time and not just survive. If there are blocks in your path lets remove them, keep moving, it is harder to hit a moving target you know. Beware of those ‘mist of time’ they seem to come around more often after you hit your 50s.
Walks With Thunder
