Beware October Nights!

It was a cool and windy morning with leaves blowing around and that peculiar electric feeling you have when magic is in the air. I wasted no time in getting to Native Grounds and, wrangling a cup of the hot and steaming, I seated myself in the Den of the Secret Nine near the corner next to the English phone booth. Bob was there and greeted me with, "October is my favorite year of the month of the year."

"I couldn't agree more on both accounts," I said and I meant every word. October is the month when the blustery winds from the Bad Lands spread all across the continent; the rain falls like it's trying to break the old 40-day-and-night record; and the nights are black as the inside of a cat. It makes waking up in the morning an exciting prospect.

Just last night the wind howled and lightning stabbed the grounds of Chatsford Hall like a blind assassin, and thunder rolled around the hills like troll laughter. This was a little storm as maelstroms go but it had rolled up its sleeves and was getting down to it. It had no doubt been hanging around the rural areas for some time, getting practice with a few summer squalls, making contacts and getting ready for the big time. Now an opportunity had opened up late in the year and it was doing everything it could to get recognized by one of the major weather patterns.

Looking out my bedroom window, I thought I could see three stooped and hooded figures in the glare of the thunderbolts on the knoll behind the apple orchard. They were gathered around the embers of a small fire that gleamed like the madness in a weasel's eye. Above the Crash! Boom! Bang!, I thought I heard a voice shriek, "When shall we three meet again?" Could have been my imagination.

The Egyptians believed that magic held the world together and kept everything working smoothly. A  matter of opinion if you ask me. One thing I do know about magic is that it gathers in the mountains in the western regions of North Carolina and is stored in the quartz crystal that form the foundations of the Blue Ridge. Geologists say that quartz granules washed down from the mountains and carried by the rivers and waterways to the sea are the reason for the whiteness of the Crystal Coast beaches. It follows then, that North Carolina is a magical place.

And now it's October and we're on our way to Halloween--season of the witch. I love this time of year because it makes me feel really alive. Well, we're all living of course, but the act of being alive requires active participation. Simply living, on the other hand, is a passive experience.

I've had two experiences in my life that catapulted me into the dimension of being alive. One of those experiences was a traffic accident that brought me to the Doors of Death and allowed a short conversation with the Master of the House. The second was a screaming match with the Thirteenth Ghost. It's not in these annals now. Perhaps later. Still, I can't think of Halloween and not think of these two experiences.

My responses to the both sets of events were apparently the correct ones because I was left with an exhilaration--an ecstasy--of living life fully engaged. Both contributed greatly to the development of the principles of Fierce Qigong. Live comes hard and fast--be ready for anything. And in case, if I don't speak to you before the magical night--Happy Halloween!

Go On Then!

I enjoy long road trips, as a general rule, but we all have our limit. Mine is a high threshold--perhaps higher than yours-- but still. Life can be enjoyable outside the front seat of a touring vehicle. You may have to look for it, but it can be found.

For those of us who crave the experience of hands on the wheel and the open road before us, the realization that we've had enough comes when we're usually about 20 miles or more from civilization.

So it was after many miles of driving from Natchez, Mississippi to Alexandria, Louisiana that I discovered I didn't like blue sky, green fields and puffy white clouds as much as when I started out. I'd had enough. I tried to apply the healing balm of music to the tired spirit and it did help for a while.

Now, when I'm listening to music in my car, I'm not simply singing along with the lead singer, I become the lead singer. First I was Mick Jaeger and after that George Harrison. I was getting into the role of Graham Nash when suddenly, out of the blue, I was struck with that feeling one sometimes gets that I was going to die in about five minutes if I didn't get out of that car.

It was at that very moment I saw him, or her, lying on his or her back by the side of the road, legs all wiggly and neck craning to make sense of an upside world. It was a familiar sight, one that makes you question intelligent design, if you follow my meaning. A home on your back is all well and good but if you can't right yourself when overturned, well, I'll risk getting wet in the rain thank you.

I whisked by at high speed and was at least a mile or two away when all the details fell into place in my mind, if any, and I turned round and drove back slowly. I found him again about 50 yards from a country church with empty parking lot. Serendipitous, if that's the word. I parked Wind Horse in the church parking lot and took a bottle of water out of my pack, for it was a hot day and no way to know how long this tortoise, if that's what he was, had been lying there viewing the world upside down. Or she.

When I arrived, she pulled his head in, which any turtle rescuer knows is a good sign. I turned him over and his head retreated completely into the recreational vehicle he/she wore. I picked him up carefully and crossed the highway, knowing that he was intent on moving in the direction that his head was pointing. If I hadn't helped her cross the road, she would have continued from where I found her, which meant she would end up like all the others of her kind that lay on the shoulders of the highway in a more or less smashed condition. I placed her, right side up, in a drainage ditch and gave her a dousing with the bottled water.

Having performed my spiritual duty, I headed down the shoulder of the road back to my car and I found that this Good Samaritan effort had energized me. The spirit soared. I am not allowed to actually run anymore due to a silly misunderstanding between my immune system and my spine, but I think it's fair to say that I jogged back to my car with head high and a tra la la on my lips.

It was at about that time, after commending my soul to God and preparing to slip back into the car and out onto the highway that I heard a voice coming from the vicinity of the church.

"Hey," said the voice and I turned to see a rather unfriendly looking man, about the tonnage of Willie Robertson and wearing a beaver on his face very much like the one Willie sports. He must be a member of the Duck community, I said to myself. I watched him scurry toward me from across the parking lot and realized, not without a little dread, that he was carrying, which I believe is the term for being armed with a lethal weapon.

His weapon, if that's what it was, wasn't concealed in the manner of the responsible family man, as I believe these gun-slingers like to phrase it, but revealed openly in a way that said this fellow chose to live and die by the second commandment. No, not commandment, I mean to say second amendment.

As it turned out, his concern was that I could possibly be the perpetrator of vandalism that visited the church a few days prior. I suppose it was my out-of-state license plates that stirred him up so. These rural inhabitants are distrustful of anyone of unknown parentage. It seems outsiders are always roving into the community and causing trouble. I'm sure you've noticed that yourself.

At any rate, even though the fellow questioned me while sucking on the muzzle of his pistol, it was just a slight distraction for the Genome and having shown him my ID to confirm that I was neither undocumented nor blacklisted, I proceeded on to Houston.

It was amazing how much bluer the sky and fluffier the clouds after that little encounter. Not because I'd been able to slip away without the need to talk to the local constabulary but because I knew that somewhere in the marsh a tortoise was telling his buddies about the good Samaritan that happened by at just the right time. And that made all the difference.