I awoke around five in the morning on our last day in a remote wilderness lodge. The sky was still dark, the silence thick.

After having experienced an exceedingly luxurious few days of natural beauty, vibrant cuisine, and digital detox, I woke up with a sadness in my chest. Lying in the dark with a view of a pitch black sky, I felt the presence of a grandmother. Not mine, but a grandmother born of this place. She ached. As I laid in-between the expensive organic cotton sheets, I felt the first layers of her longing. She showed me that for all of the pristine settings and happy people currently inhabiting this valley, there were old stories and old wounds that had been erased. Pain that’s been cast out will find a home anyway, and so it dwelt in the bark, the waters, and the spirit of this place. It wasn’t hard to attune to, but the settler mind is so loud and busy that it had been easy to ignore. I let this grandmother’s presence draw near. She wasn’t angry or despairing, she just emanated the truth about how empty this valley was now; empty of honesty, ceremony, and animal-knowing. She didn’t ask me to do anything except feel that deficiency of relationship, and so I did. I whispered words of sorrow and thankfulness into the darkness.

After a time, her presence waned, and I continued to lay there, contemplating what just happened. My alarm went off about an hour later, and my husband Chris and I got up and started packing to leave. We went downstairs for one last indulgence in the dining hall and as we ate our breakfast, dark clouds emerged over the ridge, bringing the storm with them. Thunder pulsated through the lodge and lightning flashed over the very forest we were about to hike into. Not expecting rain and having to pack very light, we had no waterproof gear for the 8.5-mile hike ahead. The staff took pity on us and brought us garbage bags, which we tore head and arm holes through. Shielded only by a thin layer of petroleum-based plastic and still sore from the arrival hike three days ago, I could feel the peering judgment of everyone else breakfasting in the lodge. But we were determined to get home in time to see our children before they went to bed, so we set off.

The first mile is a punishingly steep incline toward the top of the ridge, and as we hiked in the rain and shook from the thunder, we were getting closer and closer to the vicious lightning overhead. After about 30 minutes, it felt too dangerous to keep going, so we threw our packs on the trail and climbed up to the base of a small pine tree, where we sat and humbly asked To Whom It May Concern that we be kept safe. We held hands and witnessed the intensity of the storm in front of us, fully surrendered to its power. No cleverness, cell phone service, or friends could be called upon in that moment. We were at the mercy of the loud, cackling dance in the sky, and I felt pure presence with what was occurring. Every electric vein above us was shouting:

You are alive!
You are alive!
You are alive!

It was a charged dose of awe: that special blend of transcendence, terror, and Earth-knowing. Eventually, the lightning began to travel across the valley, farther away, and we resumed our trek underneath a light rain. Emboldened by the chorus of heat and electricity we’d just witnessed, we made good time as we finished the incline and could hike on more even ground through the wilderness, which was so alive in its storm-induced stillness. Two miles beyond our lightning storm pit stop, we paused to look at some neon-green lichen that had fallen on the trail.

Chris picked it up and asked if I thought we should bring it home for our kids. I said “yes,” and as I did, I saw something moving beyond his shoulder. My eyes narrowed and I saw that it was the largest black bear I’ve seen, walking slowly and heavily through the trees about 30 yards away from us. I breathlessly told Chris to turn and look, and we were grounded in presence once again, witnessing pure power and instinct in its own home. While certainly not as fast or as bright as the lightning storm, it was almost as if the lightning had borne the bear: as if they shared the same thundering presence, a kind that I have only rarely encountered. The bear had no interest in us, but an old and awakening part of me felt shaken by a wordless kinship with them. With love and blessings, grateful there were no cubs in sight, we continued down the path, away from the bear.

Photo from the Eagle Cap Wilderness by me, August 2022

By now, my blood was pumping hard, and I thought it interesting that the hike into the lodge three days prior had been so uneventful - scarcely a chipmunk or squirrel in sight. I knew that since we were on the trail so early, before other hikers were out, we were a part of the land’s awakening and unencumbered activity. I also wondered if Grandmother had her hand in any of this.

We ventured on, feeling fast and fit as we passed the halfway mark and got closer to the trailhead and the comforts of a car. We were hiking on the dirt trail in silence as it began to curve downhill and to the left. Chris was in front of me and was about to enter the decline of the trail when in the periphery of my view, I saw something move again. To the right of the trail, about 20 feet in front of us among the trees, I saw a cougar ready to cross the trail in front of him. The cougar’s body was in the slinking posture of a stalk, and a primordial instinct infiltrated every cellular connection within me.

I yelled “There’s a cougar!” and quickly ripped up the largest branch I could find. I became a version of myself that has scarcely been exposed to the light: wild, big, fierce. I screamed from my belly and hurled the stick around, banging it against the trees. I felt the adrenaline sharpening every one of my faculties.

Total presence.

Wildness responding to wildness.

You are alive.

After an eternal few minutes, I heard the cougar journey up the hill, back into the woods and away from the trail. I couldn’t see them, but their presence felt farther from us. We slowly backed down the trail, senses still sharp, me howling fiercely and holding the large branch overhead.

I worried we would meet some other fearful creature in the distance between us and the end of the trail, but a small voice reminded me of the mythological principle of three. In many myths, there are three challenges, teachers, or days that must pass before the protagonists can integrate what most needs to be known. The number three is the middle way: not left nor right, but through. Lightning, bear, cougar: three teachers who appeared and brought me into the full and wild Now. I hear the words of D.H. Lawrence:

“What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.”

Weary from an adrenaline hangover and the last brutal mile of incline, we finally made it to the end of the trail. We peeled off our wet and sweaty layers and collapsed into the sheltered mobility of steel, rubber, and oil. As we drove down the forest road and closer to civilization, I knew that I would need time to understand what this experience had to teach me. For a year, I have kneaded this experience in my being and expect that it will continue to illuminate new meanings as I work with it. Some might say that it was just a coincidence - that Chris and I were in a remote place where it’s normal to encounter such cathedrals of power as these. And yet, while I know that Grandmother, Lightning, Cougar and Bear don’t exist for us, I do believe that they showed themselves to us for a reason.

This was a three-dimensional, embodied encounter that deserves more than distillation, but if I can attune to one of the gifts from this sublime hike, it’s that it brought me into a severe focus. I could do nothing but really and truly feel the aliveness of that place and of myself inside of it. It was as if the half-knowing was stripped away, and I could see very clearly the contrast between You Are Alive! and the half-living that I do on many of my days. I was shown that my nature is their nature: unencumbered, majestic, and ferociously here.

Guardian Cougar, Hunting One
fear of you gave birth
to my deep scream.

Ponderous Bear
I became heavy nothing in your dark
presence.

Thunder, Lightning
you dance power,
and I worship.

Grandmother: you took me
to the black ground, and
I saw something.

Wildness knows wildness
And I’m humbled
to be seen.

What is it to be alive? It’s not only the mundanity of our life-making days and tasks or the shocking ferocity of scaring off a cougar. It is a third path: one that has space for the mundane and for what lies in the wilderness. Martin Shaw writes, “Myth proposes the paradoxical view that we are to dwell in the tension of a “crossroads” of Village and Forest, and that this very complexity provides the grounding of an authentic human life–a strange accord with ego and soul, rationality and vision.” For those of us quilting together lives inside of piecemeal, concrete villages, it’s very easy to succumb to the numbness of economy, obligation, and conformity. Some of this is chosen, and some of it is forced upon us as captives of civilization and capitalism. When a vision of wildness lumbers through our sights, whether it’s a strong wind, a bunny near the wood pile, or a dorsal fin spotted off shore, we take heed and remember that that is life, too. Holy Life will continue sending us signs if some of us will continue to look for them. If we can hold the tension of the crossroads that Shaw refers to, then Lightning, Bear, and Cougar will continue to wake us from our slumber and remind us what it is to be vibrantly alive on this Earth.

To be this Earth.

Three Strange Angels: Visions in the Eagle Cap Wilderness