Vision Quest

This is the missing chapter from the Amazon Kindle Edition of A Time Ago and Then. The book is being edited once more as the wrong manuscript was transcribed. I am so sorry this chapter was left out because it is a pivotal point in the story... enjoy.

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I crossed the mesa the next morning to Brian’s place at the Pueblo where I was welcomed in. Brian wasn’t happy about the whole situation but I was surprised to find him remorseful for his own reactions the other night. He spoke slowly and deliberately in the dark of his place with only a kerosene lamp for light. It flickered, adding eeriness to the scene that caused me to pay attention closely.

“When we left California we were visited several times like this. We had gone up there to Mahayana Ranch hoping to get away from the hassles of the city after it all broke loose in the summer of ’67. Trouble followed.”

“You think it will get worse then?”

“I’m hoping it will settle down once we get ourselves established and we can be taken seriously. Right now we seem to have become a magnet for run-a-ways and some shady characters.” He laughed at what he’d just said, “Look at me. I was going to fight Billy last night… all the booze and so on.”

“Yeh, I’m not all that proud of myself either. I came out here to escape that crap too.” I found myself caring deeply about Brian’s contrition.

“I haven’t had much opportunity to get to know you, Max. I hope you find what you came here for.” Brian pulled a book out from his shelf and opened it. I could see it was well worn and a valuable text of some sort. He read aloud a verse in what sounded like Sanskrit or something then he recited in English for me… something about change and blissful peace.

“What is that from?” I was honored to be sitting in this dark room with this mysterious and helpful man. I had been starving for something like that “blissful peace” and I had very little idea how it was attained.

“That is from the Diamond Sutra… a Buddhist text.” Brian said calmly without pretense.

“You know, the reason that incident last night between you and Billy got to me was that I quit drinking a while back and now I drinking again. I’m not too much different from Billy. I don’t want to drink and it seems I can’t get away from it,” I confessed because I wanted to know why Brian had gotten so fired up too. It might have done us both some good to get it out.

“I have been around all kinds of abusive drunks in my life. My dad was pretty bad but you would never know it. He was a professor of English lit but he had a secret life we saw at home.” Brian hung his head from side to side, “I swore I would never drink like him but, every once in a while, I drink and I can’t tell what will happen next.”

I told him about my first trip in Waikiki and how I’d stayed away from drinking for three or four months after that.

“So, I thought I saw that in you. You ought to go on a vision quest.”

“I’ve heard of vision quests. What would I do?”

Brian gave me a leather pouch with a three or four buttons in it. “Take this medicine and go on a fast. Head up the arroyo to the wilderness area. When hunger hits you… take a bite or two from one of these.”

“Yeh, how long do I go?”

“Go until you have a vision.”

“I’ve seen some pretty amazing things… like the Peyote Ceremony and all… all the coincidences and wonders on the way here and so on, but visions? The most powerful aspect of it was of a calm and serene love… a love that not only was at one with other people, but with the prickly pear cactus and the sage… and, of course, the goats.” I had a feeling that what Brian was talking about wasn’t just some more hippy bull-shit. He was talking about a vision… a real vision and it seemed that if anything would make that happen perhaps peyote might.

“There is only one way to find out, eh?” Though Brian was slightly rotund in physique he still had an intrinsically mischievous elfish quality about him whenever his face took on a sly smirk like it did then.

I went back to the goat pasture with my pouch of buttons... er, Medicine. I figured I ought to get the booze and the acid out of my system a few days before doing anything as serious as a vision quest. I was about a day into a fast when, in the morning just before sunrise, a commotion with the goats broke out. There was bleating and some rather furious noises that could have only come from a cat… a big cat. I went out to where I’d heard the ado and saw the evidence of big cat tracks, fur on the ground and a little blood here and there. Charlie escorted me to the spot where I put two and two together. I didn’t like the idea that a cat could take one of my kids. I did a count and, sure enough, one was missing.

I didn’t have a rifle but I sorely needed one now. I figured Mason might have one because I had seen a deer hide stretched out for tanning Indian style at his place on the island.

I approached Mason’s place and was glad to see smoke coming from the chimney.

“Howdy, stranger!” Mason called out from a rock above the cabin behind me.

Startled, I spun around to see him coming down off the rock.

“I need to ask you something kinda irregular.” I called out.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up. We need to sit down and smoke a bowl over it then.” Mason went inside and came out with what looked like a classic Indian peace pipe, beaded and adorned with feathers. The pipe was packed with Bull Durham tobacco and sage but not pot. We smoked and passed the pipe between us before I brought up the goat and the cat.

“What do you want to do about the cat?” Mason asked.

“Huh?” How did he know? “I was wondering if you have a rifle.”

“I know… You want to kill the cat?”

“Yeh, I can’t see letting the goats get picked off one by one.”

“You know anything about cats?”

“Not really. Just that one of ‘em is eating my kids.”

“Didn’t we eat one the other day?”

“Yeh, we did.” I took this as a rejection of my request for the rifle. More disturbing however, I was afraid the whole idea was sour to Mason and I respected his judgment.

“If you gotta do it….” Mason paused a few minutes as though he were weighing my character. “Big cats, they kill in the hour before and after sunset and the hour before and after sunrise.”

“Very well, then all I have to do is stay up an hour after sundown and get up an hour before sunrise… throw rocks at ‘em if they go for any of my goats?”

“It is likely it is only one, probably a female cat this time of the year. Wouldn’t you rather have a rifle?”

“Yeh.”

“You know how to use one?” I liked the idea that Mason asked me these questions. It was one of those things I have about guns. I’d been raised to respect guns and to use them safely.

“You know the rifle that Angelo came into the Peyote Ceremony with?”

“Winchester .44, lever action,” I thought it looked like it was at Little Big Horn.

He went inside and came out with the rifle. I wondered if Mason knew Angelo would show up the way he did at the ceremony. Mason handed me the rifle and a box of ammo with only five bullets in the box. I checked it out to see if the chamber was empty and was pleased it was well maintained, oiled and clean. I wondered how old it was and found the stamp with the date: 1886: I asked, “Was this rifle handed down from Custer’s Last Stand?”

“Little Big Horn was in the ‘70’s. This rifle would be almost a Vatican relic to the Ogalas if it had been. It sure wouldn’t be in my hands if it were.” Mason snorted. And then he continued, “Now, cats have a range of seventy or eighty miles. But they will carry their kill only as far away as their den. You probably won’t find her anyway.” Mason went back inside his cabin and turned to say, “Go do what you must and nothing more.”

“With five bullets… I’m pretty safe on that account.”

  I went back to the pasture and put together a small kit. I would combine the vision quest with the hunt. I had to get going while the trail was still fresh. I wasn’t all that sure I was good enough at tracking to find and follow it anyway. I had my coat and good Army Surplus boots I’d nabbed while in Spokane as well as a warm flannel shirt and jeans. I only carried a small day-pack I’d sewn together out of some scraps of canvas that had been lying around.

I launched out at sunrise the next morning. At first there were signs of blood and unmistakable goat hairs on bushes that led towards the arroyo between the Hondo and the mesa. I lost the trail several times as it progressed up through some farm land higher up on the mesa. I paused in the draw I had been following up and opened my pouch of peyote the first time since I’d begun the trek. I hadn’t seen any sign for at least a half a mile and now I was to cross some acreage owned by ranchers who would not take kindly to a hippy toting a rifle on their property.

I sat there for over an hour resting after taking a bite from the medicine. I was inspired to head over north to the Rio Hondo thinking that perhaps the cat would not like crossing farm land either. I was crossing the rim road that coursed its way towards the Carson National Forest above the Rio Hondo when I saw several perfect paw prints in the dusty shoulder of the road. Where there had been dust on the weeds it was clear to see a trail weeds bent and absent of dust too. My vision was sharpened at this point. “I see where you are going now, mama.” I softly said to the winds.

I followed that trail down a draw into the arroyo. I began seeing the landscape with a clarity that I found most pleasant. It wasn’t so much that I saw colors that weren’t already there but I saw in the colors a heightened intensity. I passed the junipers and pinions. It was as though their presence was extended out from them with an aura or vibration that I actually felt as I passed. I began melding into that flow, like a wake left by a boat through water, the path the cat had taken. I sat near the waters of the Rio Hondo and filled my canteen, taking the cup off the top at first then cupping my hands and swallowing the fresh cold molecules that tweaked my senses all the way to my stomach. The rocks also took on an aura and I sensed what was meant by the biblical prophets who had declared that the rocks would preach if they didn’t. As night fell I found a comfortable spot to curl up on my haunches but I didn’t sleep. I listened instead to the sounds of the night. The coyotes in the distance and the soft flutter of an owl swooping down to grab a field mouse. Indeed, the hills were alive around me.

The second day I had finished off one piece of the medicine and started on the second. The wake of a trail left by the cat led me up a steep canyon. I felt as though my boots were too harsh on the earth. It was as though the earth was lifting up to cushion my feet; they found their way around the sharp edges of the stones or gently folded around them like a snail would on the razor’s edge. The higher I went the more snow was on the ground but I rarely saw any sign of the cat in the snow. The cat knew better and somehow I sensed that the cat knew I would follow her. My feet felt no chill or cold and I kept following slowly through the next night up into the forest.

The third day, after a night of sitting and listening, I approached on the far side, down-wind of the canyon. I stripped off the rest of my clothes wearing only a rope sash to hang my medicine bag and the rifle sheath strapped over my shoulder. I felt the presence of the cat.

She was very near me.

There was no fear.

I came to a place on the shady side of the draw where I could see a collection of rocks that had an overhang making a sort of entrance to her den. I took the rifle out of the sheath strapped over my shoulder. Looking down the sights I saw mama cat looking straight into my eyes from her spot in the cave. She crouched and turned suddenly to give her attention behind her. There I observed one cub, then another, she gently pawed them back out of sight. Mason’s words came to me then, “Do what you must but nothing more.”

The chamber of the rifle was loaded and I had a clear shot. She was no more than a hundred feet away. My heart saw mama and I understood. She killed the goat-kid to feed her cubs. The kid carcass was probably stashed somewhere nearby. Her breasts had done the job up ‘til now but it was time to feed her cubs some meat. I lowered the rifle and stood… not being sure what she would do at that juncture. Would she attack me to protect her brood?

 I wasn’t able to do anything but turn my back to her and walk away. Throughout the day, I walked down the canyon. I felt her presence behind me at times… ahead or along side of me at others. I caught a glimpse now and then. She let me know she was escorting me away from her den. There was a special affection, like the love that filled my heart after the peyote ceremony, which never left me for that cat. After all, as Mason said; we, at the communal feast, had eaten one of the kids too. As far as I was concerned the score was even.

I neared Mason’s cabin: Mason was standing at the door grinning. Fully dressed now, I handed over the rifle to him. Reaching into my day pack I passed over the box of ammo.

“Still five in it,” Mason observed.

“Yeh, still five in it.”

“You found her though?”

“Yeh, I found her.”

“Did you have a vision?”

“Yeh, you might say so.”

“You might write it down someday.”

“Yeh, once I figure out what it was, I will.”

“That might take some time.”

“It will.”