The Other (by Timm)

photo: "Hidden Waterfall" Timm O'Cobhthaigh

"Okay, I'm here. Now what," Jordan stated as he plopped into the camp chair he just pulled from his SUV.

He was a little skeptical about taking off for the week, taking a break and trying to gain some perspective on his life. His career was at best a standstill - unfufilling and nowhere near where he had envisioned his life being when he dreamt of what his furture would be like. He wasn't married and as far as he could see there wasn't even a glimmer of change on the horizon. When he got honest with himself, he really couldn't complain about his life, after all there were those who were far worse off then he. It's just he expected there to be more. Something was missing. There was something else out there, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Going camping was usually his way of sorting things out. "Disconnect from the world and get quiet," is how he often explained it to his friends. There was something about walking in the woods, listening to the wind in the firs, smelling the sweet, pungent smell of the earth as it was touched by the sun, watching the sunset off the Pacific Northwest coast, painting the sky in golds, orchres, and violets. It touched him in ways he couldn't quite explain - it whispered of a life othere then the one he had. Not in the sense of career, marriage or the other aspects we often attribute to our seventy-plus years on this globe, but of another kind of life.

"There's a lot of God up in those hills," a co-worker had often said of the sense she got when she and her husband went to their cabin high in the Colorado Rockies. "There's just something there I don't feel anywhere else. A presence, an other," she'd relate as she struggled to put into words feelings that seemed beyond any other she had known.

That was what Jordan tried to connect with - the "other" he felt when here. It seemed to never answer his questions he carried with him, instead it just put things in perspective.

It was late morning when he had pulled into the state park on the Southern Oregon coast. All of the hustle of getting here was no over, it was now time get down to the business of why he was here. Hence the question: Now what.

He looked around at his neighbors campground, overflowing with tents, Coleman lanterns, coolers, stacks of firewood, boxes of food products strewn across the picnic table that became the epicenter of their forested world.

"So much stuff," he thought to himself, always amazed at how much people take with them when they are trying to get back to nature.

He spent the next ten minutes unpacking his truck, erecting the tent, arranging the things around the site, then grabbing his knapsack he set off to explore one of the many trails.

It would take several days for Jordan to finally calm down enough to gear down and relax, a fact he was always well aware of when he went camping but always forgot. He'd take books that he'd planed on reading, but they would hardly be touched. No, most of his time was spent moving - riding his biking, hiking a little, but mostly driving around in his suv, running back and forth to town to pick up more "necessities."

By the fourth day a change began to steal over him. He lingered longer in the campsite that morning than usual, in no great hurry to go anywhere. When he finally did leave he spent all morning wandering aimlessly along a trail that skirted a ridge high about the crashing waves. There was a growing awareness of the "other" he had experienced so many times before.

At times he would try to put words to the feeling he had - a sense of peace, connectedness to something that was steady, permanent. Some called it God, others nature, but he just accepted as something that was just there. The longer he allowed himself to allow himself to be conncected, the stronger the sense became.

Life was vibrant, the wind seemed to sweep through his being in the same way it move tree branch that hung overhead. At one point, he glanced out on the ocean only to find a bald eagle floating a mere thirty feet away, gazing intently at him. He wasn't sure why he was of such interest - just grateful that he was. It was as if they acknowledged each other and he was accepted as being apart of this place.

As the next few days passed his awareness of being a part of grew in ways he'd never known before. He'd walk through the old growth forest that lined the coast, oblivious to everything but that which was right there. Time was fading, in it's place was something else. The "other" was growing. More than just a presence but a host of presence.

One evening he sat by a stream that ran into the ocean, a vantage point he enjoyed to watch the sun dip beyond the western rim. His attention was drawn to the sound of the creek to his left and he noticed a droplet of water hanging with anticipation from a blade of grass. It was slowly growing as the mist gathered and ran along the stem, swelling the growing bead. Finally, it let go of it's perch and fell into the stream below.

Was that what he was sensing in the woods around him? A stream that was made up of so many individual drops - still individual, but melded together? Yes, that was the best way he could explain it. He too was a drop, but he couldn't seem to become a part of. It was something other than he. Was it spiritual? Maybe. Native American cultures had developed tales to explain the same things he was feeling. In fact, indigenous cultures around the globe had wrestled with putting into words the same thing. Maybe it was dimensional, the old story of parallel universes that he'd heard as a boy. Could be, but it seemed to be more than that. That was it - it was more than all of this. The Other was beyond any feeble attempt he'd ever heard anyone use to explain it.

It just was there.

The morning of the sixth day dawned with a sky devoid of the clouds that tended to occupy the Oregon sky. There was an excitement that Jordan felt as he emerged from his tent, not knowing what it was but just feeling himself drawn by it. He took a familiar path through the woods, winding past the centuries old firs, spruce and redwoods that filled the wood. He climbed a hill that once crested revealed an sweeping panorama of ocean and sky. The presence was stronger today, it was almost as if he could see it. They were everywhere around him, but it wasn't a crowd of people, no, it was something else. A stream, a fabric, a movement, that's what it was, a movement. Submitting to the presence he realized it wasn't jus a random movement, but more of a swaying dance. A rhythm that wound it's way through the world.

Once again, it might be spiritual, but nothing like he was aware of. It was the droplets - each distinct but at the same time they were a single, larger whole. Much like the river he sat next to the other day.

They were calling out to him.

"Join us" was the invitation he sensed.

"How" he thought out loud, painfully aware of why he referened to the presence as "other". It was something that he could sense, almost see at times, but not be a part of. The "other" was not confined by the walls of man, nor constrained by mortality.

-- December 2006