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The writings of C.S. Lewis also had a strong influence on me at this time. I was particularly impacted by his two books: The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters. In The Problem of Pain he engages with the problem of evil and suffering in our world, and how that reconciles or doesn’t, with our human conceptions of good and evil. I appreciated his rational and logical reasoning around these issues, and his sincerity in grappling with this most difficult subject. The Screwtape Letters is a humorous fictional series of letters written by an accomplished demon to his nephew giving him advice on how to be a successful demon through the best methods for leading humanity astray. It is poignant as well as humorous, and I enjoyed the insights it provided into the nature of our struggle with sin and the role the fallen angels have in our daily battles.

It isn’t intuitive to know how to interpret the Bible, and since it is so complex and in many places confusing or shrouded in mystery, I needed to learn how to interpret this book I loved so much. I began to learn many of the tenets of the protestant perspective on this matter, without understanding that they were only one approach; I just accepted that they were the correct approach. I learned about the concept of sola scriptura in which we believe only what is written in scripture alone, which sounded very good and very simple and straightforward, until I discovered that even the founders of the protestant point of view diverged on many points of scripture right from the start while supposedly using this concept of sola scriptura, which was supposed to provide a self-evident interpretation based on a comparison of scripture with scripture, without any outside influence. Still, I didn’t know any alternatives to this idea, and even though this concept seemed flawed to me for this reason and other reasons as well, I kept it as my working hypothesis for many years, trying to make it work, and ignoring the evidence of its shortcomings.

Another approach to the Bible that I inherited at this time was to read it literally, as a work of historical and scientific truth, as if it were intended to be used as a history book and as a science textbook. Certainly it is filled with historical truth and scientific accuracy but these aren’t the reasons it was written or given to us by God. The Bible tells us about the nature of God; who He is and what He has done, why He made us, who we are in relation to Him, what has happened to us and why, and demonstrates His love for us, His plans for us here on earth, and His plans for us into eternity in the world to come. Understanding this purpose allows an entirely different approach to interpreting and understanding scripture. Had I understood this at the time I might not have allowed myself and my faith to be cornered by the attacks of the world and the arguments levied against my faith and the Bible by historical and/or scientific arguments that reasonably run counter to it.

I considered this dilemma: if I see the Bible, and my faith which is built upon it, as needing to be correct in every historical or scientific account found there, or else if it is in error on these points then my faith is false; if this is the point, then I am easily cornered, and my faith can easily be shaken or even destroyed by every new scientific discovery. Something seemed very wrong with this approach, but I didn’t know another at the time, so I stayed the course and tried to find and listen to intelligent and skilled apologists of the faith, and those who could reason passably in support of this approach.

The church I attended needed Sunday school teachers for various grade levels. I considered what level I was most suited for based on my ability and knowledge so I picked kindergarten. I felt I could keep up with this age group and even stay a step or two ahead of them, at least intellectually, if not physically. In addition to teaching the little ones, I also helped lead a couple mission trips to Mexico to build houses and an orphanage cafeteria. Building was great and the results were needed, but the best part by far were the relationships built with others in our group and with the children living there. My fondest memories from those trips are of kicking a soccer ball or throwing a Frisbee with the little children in the dusty streets of Tijuana and praying with the other volunteers.

It was around this time, after returning from a mission trip to Mexico, that V and I had our first real discussion about having children. There were surprisingly quite a few important issues like this one that we had never discussed together prior to getting married. As it turned out she had no interest in having children. I had imagined myself having children since I could remember first thinking about it in elementary school. However, after some reflection I could also imagine adopting and not having children of my own. But as it turned out, V wasn’t interested in adopting either, although I have to give her a lot of credit for subsequently trying to go along with this idea for several years. In the end though, she really didn’t want to be a mother of children whether they were hers biologically or through adoption.

I managed to adapt to this reality and come to peace with it, although I still thought it would be great, and harbored some inner desire for children. In lieu of children, we volunteered for an organization called The Family Connection in which we helped mentor a young single mother, assisting her in job training and how to take care of her home and her two little girls; in many cases we were baby-sitters while she went to classes or to work. Again, I have to give V a lot of credit for volunteering with me at this, considering she didn’t really feel comfortable around children. I expect she did it entirely for me.  She was kind and thoughtful.

Over the years there weren’t many things that could upset me or cause me to lose my temper but one recurring thing that easily could, which I’ve alluded to earlier in this story, was being unfairly accused of something, or feeling as though my good name was under attack. I attribute this entirely to my sin of pride and vanity, and it is the antithesis to what Christ calls us to do in laying down our lives for others, in taking up our cross and following Him, or as He tells us that we are blessed when we are persecuted, and when we are reviled and when others make false accusations against us.  Shamefully, on two occasions at least, I responded reprehensibly towards V when I felt she was accusing me, and in both cases I acted disgracefully; once throwing a dish into the kitchen cabinets so forcibly that parts of it stuck into the wood and were very difficult to remove, and another occasion calling her a ‘bitch’. Oh, how I wished I could take those words and actions back, almost immediately after I had committed them, and I apologized profusely, but they were emblazoned into the sky, and my world was forever changed because of them. As much as I wish they weren’t me, or could claim that somebody else made me do it, these things were done by me and they are my history.

Crimes are committed, sometimes in the heat of anger without forethought, such as these I’ve just revealed, while others are taken deliberately; they are measured, calculated, and executed with desire. Often we can look back on these and see that we were effectively out of our mind, or ignorant, but most of the time we were just plain selfish and uncaring. There was one such incident that occurred about a year into our marriage that even now as I write, I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes for sorrow and remorse. V never knew about it and I couldn’t speak about it to anyone for years; not until a couple years after she and I divorced was I finally able to confess it to my pastor and begin to find a measure of healing and restoration.

I met up one day with a friend, actually someone I had been in a relationship with several years prior to meeting and marrying V. We spent the day together and then we spent the night together. There were plenty of opportunities to take a different course, to say goodbye, to avert what was about to transpire, but I didn’t. I remember wondering what on earth I was doing as the day wore on and we headed towards that night. I could have stopped myself but I was entirely selfish and I didn’t. At the time I knew I was far off the mark, I was sinning, and acting unlovingly and hurting V whether she knew it or not.  Only later did I learn that I was also hurting God, as King David said, “against You, and You only have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight.” But now I believe that not only did I hurt V and God by this, and hurt myself too; but in an important way, I also hurt everyone else in this world, and I hurt creation itself. I tore at the very fabric of life by my sin, and while certainly most in the world didn’t know of my particular sin, and most will never know of it, nonetheless every act of unkindness and every action taken in selfishness and un-love has a universal effect on everyone and everything else. I cannot prove this, but I feel it to be true. As good food nourishes the body and bad food breaks it down, so too, virtuous life nourishes our world and vice degrades it and breaks it down. My heart doesn’t know if I’ve eaten good food today or bad, but over time it will feel the effects of both, so too, you may not know the sin I’ve committed today, or in the past, but over time we all feel the effects. I am sorry my heart, my love, all of you out there who must bear the suffering caused by my un-love and my selfishness because I’ve made our world a little less like paradise, a little less as God intended.

(to be continued)

~FS

After several months with V, as our relationship grew closer, I finally decided to leave the community in the spring of 1997. After all of the years of intensity with MD, the manner in which my time in his course came to a conclusion almost seemed anticlimactic. One afternoon MD came to visit me on a jobsite in Tiburon. S and J were with him and the four of us sat together on the curb in front of the home where I was working. Our visit together was quick, only about ten minutes, and I simply said that I wanted to leave the community and go out on my own. MD explained some of the cons of leaving in the midst of the course, having not completed it, but in the end we all agreed, I returned to my job and they left. That was it.

V and I moved to Santa Rosa and rented a place together, coincidentally from a former graduate student who had been a teacher’s assistant for my former good friend and mentor Professor Reynolds, the one who I had helped years earlier in his mission to distribute books for the blind throughout the world. My new landlord had just as many wonderful and quixotic stories of his former teacher as I did, and we enjoyed sharing these with each other.

My connection to MD wasn’t completely severed when I left the community. We still maintained a friendship and he stopped by my jobsites from time to time to check in and see how I was doing. These were very welcome visits because I loved him and enjoyed his company a great deal. However by the end of the year, in December, his visits to my jobsites ended because he turned himself in to the courts, satisfying a warrant that had been out for his arrest, stemming from the charges that K had brought several years earlier after she left his training.

I continued to make payments on the cars after I left, even though I never saw them again and certainly never drove them. The plan had been that the payments would be taken over by the others who remained after I left, but no payment was ever made by them. It was okay though, each of us did what we could and what we were good at, and I was good at making money and paying bills. So I made payments on their cars for a year or two until I finally gave up and had them repossessed. I suppose I could have taken them back myself and sold them but they were community property in truth, even if they were my property by law. An argument could be made that it was within my rights to sell them, since I was making the payments on them, but they needed the vehicles and I didn’t, since I had subsequently purchased my own truck, and I had agreed to let them keep them when I left. It frustrated me a little that they didn’t keep up their end of the agreement but I was determined to keep up my end, to the best of my ability, regardless of what they did.

I also reasoned that I didn’t really have anything in this world that wasn’t a gift to me anyway. I certainly didn’t make myself, or give myself any of the gifts or abilities that I happened to enjoy and make use of, so in the end whatever ‘right’ I had was insignificant compared to any debt I might actually owe for all the amazing things God had given me in this life.

In addition to the great debt I owed God for my life, I also owed my mom about fifteen grand for a loan she had given to us when we opened the auto shop in Fort Bragg. The plan had been to repay her but that hadn’t really materialized, so I assured her that I would pay her back for that gracious and generous loan, and I began to make monthly payments to her. It makes me smile now and seems so funny in a way, the financial burdens that I carried with me out of the community at that time. The reason is because while they were genuinely burdensome to me, I had also carried away such a treasury of peace and freedom within me, that these material burdens seemed somewhat trivial and easy by comparison.

In our final year together MD had directed all of us to visit local churches on several occasions. Each of us would pick a church and attend alone, not as a group. One Sunday I chose to attend Saint Seraphim of Sarov Church in Santa Rosa. This was my first experience of an Orthodox liturgy and my first time inside an Orthodox church. The beauty of the iconography, the music, the vestments and the people was thrilling, and the exotic nature of the incense and the candles and the practices throughout the liturgy made me giddy. I loved it even though it seemed very strange to me. After the service, the priest introduced himself to me and spent quite a long time answering my questions and sharing his faith with me. I was very impressed that he would take so much time for me and give me his undivided attention. I was also impressed by his humility and patience in the face of my critical judgments against the use of icons. Having come from a protestant background I suppose my sentiment was almost obligatory, but it was also prejudicial. I understood icons only as one who doesn’t understand icons; and unfortunately, in my pride of course, I felt it my duty to share my superior, though spurious knowledge with him, because in reality I knew nothing other than my own prejudice. Now many years later we are friends and I am grateful that he doesn’t remember this first exchange of ideas and my childish hubris so arrogantly displayed.

In retrospect I am not sure why I didn’t go back to this church and begin attending there after I left the community, since I was eager to find a good church and learn what it means to be a true Christian. In fact, at the time it didn’t even cross my mind to go to that church, I think because I was looking for something a little more familiar and comfortable. It seemed logical to return to the Methodist church that I had grown up attending, but I felt that I hadn’t received a very good theological education there the first time around, and I didn’t want to chance that same outcome again this time. I knew of a Presbyterian church in town that my former high school music director attended and the prospect of singing for him again excited me and filled me with joy so I went there.

It turned out, though he was still a member, he had retired as their music director several years earlier. The new director was also very good and he had a small a cappella ensemble that I auditioned for and joined. Finally, I was making music again! The joy of rehearsal; and the satisfaction of discipline and attention to detail demanded by a director who was a perfectionist! It was wonderful. We practiced intonation, dynamics, staggered breathing, enunciation, clarity of tone and everything else necessary to blend our voices into one. It was hard work and a lot of fun and we became a family.

I also began to read the Bible for the first time. I had read verses here and there before, even a few books of the Old and New Testaments, and I was familiar with the basics of the faith from my childhood and youth, but I didn’t really know the story from beginning to end. It was a profound beginning for me. I couldn’t believe how much I didn’t know, and how much I hadn’t been taught when I was younger. After I finished reading it, I started reading it over again, and then one more time. After reading the Bible through about three times, I bought it on audio tape and listened to it a couple more times while driving to and from work throughout the day. This took me several years, but it was quite an education, and well worth my time. I fell in love with the Bible and all that it was teaching me about God, man, Jesus Christ, morality and eternity. My understanding was limited but I was making a start and it felt very good.

(to be continued)

~FS

All of our vehicles had been placed in my name at the time of purchase because I was in charge of all of the bills and finances for our community and my credit was spotless. As things slowly came to an end for our community over the coming year or so, and as everyone went their separate ways, these loans would end up being the cause of several defaults on the part of the others in the group, the repossession of a couple cars, and the complete destruction of my credit for many years until I could slowly rebuild it again. But before that happened, while our community was still together I found myself in Novato when the car I was driving gave up. I took it to a nearby dealership and discovered it would need thousands of dollars in repairs which weren’t worth doing and was convinced to buy a new one.

However, when MD learned that I had bought the minivan he told me to return it immediately. As I look back on this now, I wonder if he was protecting me from further damage to my credit, because I had already quite a few vehicles in my name which would prove to be albatrosses around my neck as I worked to start a life on my own. I returned the car and found myself stranded in San Rafael with no work, no money, and no vehicle. I slept on a grassy hillside just above town at night and looked for work during the day. For years I had walked neighborhoods, knocking on doors to market our landscaping work, as this was how we drummed up the majority of our business, so this is what I did. I was walking door to door in a neighborhood in Mill Valley and landed a job for a nice elderly couple. They hired me to clean and re-stain their deck. This was easy work and paid well and didn’t require heavy tools or a truck which I didn’t presently have at my disposal. Nevertheless, I also didn’t have any money to buy the cleaner or the stain or any of the tools I would need to do the work, I also had no way to get them, or bring them back to site.

I told the couple I could do the work that afternoon but would need to go get supplies and I asked if they could give me a small down payment to help with materials. I walked to the bank, cashed the check and then walked back into San Rafael where I had seen several small used car lots. As I walked back into town I came up with a good strategy.

I went into one of the dealerships and expressed interest in one of the cars on the lot and asked to test drive it. We went through the necessary motions, they gave me the key and I drove off the lot. I knew of a Home Depot not far away and made my way quickly there, purchased the materials and tools I would need to do the deck project, and then dropped them off at the jobsite. By the time I drove back onto the lot it had been a long test drive but the dealer was forgiving. I told him I wasn’t ready to buy the car but I would think about it, and then ran back to do my job in Mill Valley. That night after I had completed the work, I had $600 in my pocket, and I finally broke the fast that life had imposed on me the past day or two at a nice little Italian restaurant in town.

San Rafael was also the place where I met the young lady who I would marry the following year. Again, walking door to door looking for work, I knocked, she answered the door and we had a nice conversation. As I left, and as she closed the door behind me, I remember thinking that this was a very seminal moment in my life and I had a decision to make. I could keep walking down the path and then down the sidewalk, and continue with my life as I had been living it, or I could turn around and go back to her door, knock again, and I knew things would never be the same after that. After a moment contemplating this, I returned to her door, knocked again, and this began the process that would eventually lead me to leave the community and begin my new life with her.

I enjoyed this semblance of normalcy in my life again. Spending time with my future wife, V, was easy, relaxing and comforting. I also enjoyed the freedom to direct my life as I wished again, to have control over the decisions that impacted my life. Although I had to admit that directing my own life hadn’t always worked out that well for me in the past, and in many ways going my own way was seriously problematic, and this concept of ‘doing what I want’ was overrated. External freedoms had led me into bondage to inner enslavement.

What had appeared as freedom to choose, the right to live as I see fit, was merely a nice way of saying I was free to enter the spiritual prison of my choice. I had followed my physical lust where it would take me and ended up being responsible, in part, for the abortion of several lives. I had followed my pride, and my sense of superiority, and wound up breaking the law in a sort of vigilante justice which I rationalized away in my own mind. I had followed my anger and hurt others by the things I said or did, or the things I left undone and unsaid. I had traveled any or all of these various paths and wound up nowhere better than I had been before I left.

That was my life before living in the community, before I had willingly humbled myself and allowed myself to be taught and directed by another, by someone who I believed could take me further than I could take myself. In the end, I think that this is why anyone chooses to follow a spiritual guide, teacher, master, or father; because of a belief in what they are or in what they know, and a faith that through obedience to them one can achieve heights that they never could on their own without this other person’s direction.

In a sense, this is no different than an athlete following the direction of a coach or a trainer. They follow in order to get better at their sport. The relationship between the athlete and her coach, or the disciple and his master is one of mutual respect and trust. If it is a healthy relationship, it is a partnership, and there is no aspect of dominance or power over the other. To the outside observer my relationship with my spiritual master in this community could appear abusive, but that was never the goal, or the intent of the course, or of our relationship. There was a mutual understanding between us and common goals were always before us.  While I failed to reach many of these goals in my four years with MD, at least to the degree that was intended, I did attain many of them to some degree.

(to be continued)

~FS

The ultimate goal of our training under MD, at least in part, was to become free of enslavement to our sin, to our addictions, to anything that would limit our ability to love others in purity and truth; and additionally, for the men at least, to be fearless in the face of danger and difficulty so as to be of benefit to others in their need, in times of great difficulty. I’m sure there were many other goals as well as these which I never fully understood, due to the narrow limits of my intelligence and perception, but also because I didn’t stay to complete the course. When I left in the spring of 1997 I had completed about a third of it so I will likely never know what more was intended.

Our final year together saw our small community living in many various locations, together and apart. We lived on the south shore of Lake Tahoe, in Santa Barbara, in an old chicken coop south of Sebastopol, and several miles up a dirt road off Highway 1, in the mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in what is known as the West Waddle Creek State Wilderness. The road in was essentially a path which led up into the wilderness and in several cases, it had washed out entirely and was impassable, and one would have to walk the final mile or two up the hill to get to the old shell of a cabin which was standing on the property which we rented. The name of the road was ‘Last Chance Road’ which I found amusing, and I wondered if there were some poetic and prophetic nuances to this which I should be aware.

While in Tahoe M finally gave up, and left the community one night after another particularly difficult scenario. It surprised me on the one hand because he was among the toughest people I’ve ever met, and he seemed to be able to endure anything, but then it didn’t surprise me as well, because he was pushed to an extreme limit repeatedly, and eventually everyone has a limit I expect.

Also while in Tahoe I was finally asked to sign the contract agreement that everyone else had signed several years earlier, acknowledging the potential dangers inherent in the course and our willingness to take part freely, without coercion. This also surprised me because I didn’t think I would ever be asked to sign this contract, especially now after so much had transpired and I had already gone through so much.

I continued to work on landscape projects throughout the bay area during the week along with S and J; and the three of us would return to visit with MD and W over the weekends. Another young woman had also joined our community during this time and she stayed with MD predominantly, although she also worked with us on landscapes. Over time she became an integral member of our community and we all cared for her deeply. So it was, one Friday evening the three of us took the long drive up ‘Last Chance Road’ to join MD and the ladies at the cabin for the weekend.

The next morning we joined MD as he was grading and leveling a large area beneath a huge pine tree on the property. I don’t recall what was going to go in this place, but he had been working throughout the week cutting and filling this location, and now the three of us came with shovels and picks to join in the work. I began to shave away at the uphill side of the excavation with a pick, loosening the clay soil and eating away at the hillside, while S and J worked together to grade the area smooth along with MD. I was working some thirty feet away from the others as I heard the familiar escalation of rhetoric and volume that denoted the beginning of a ‘scenario’. It appeared that I wasn’t involved as I continued to work, and it seemed that it was only involving S and J but I turned to observe as MD swung a shovel in wide arcs towards the others. They dodged the shovel and moved away as MD came around towards me. In a flash I discovered that I was involved in this one after all. The shovel came down upon the crown of my head and I staggered for a moment.

In the next moment I considered retaliation with my pick but I didn’t want to hurt anyone, then I considered escape over the embankment which I had been creating with my pick, just moments before, but I didn’t want to run away, so I chose to endure what was coming as best as I could. Another several blows from the shovel crashed down upon my scalp and I began to feel blood washing down over my face and neck. I staggered and fell to my knees as I raised my arms in defense. I felt the shovel blade hit my arms and I lowered them to support my weight now so I wouldn’t collapse to the ground. I felt it was imperative not to collapse and I willed myself to stay on my hands and knees against the coming blows. My world became very small now as I concentrated my consciousness within myself to endure the attack. I closed my eyes and focused all my effort to try to stand up again. I believed that I was doing it and felt myself rising to my feet and I was relieved and encouraged that I hadn’t been conquered. I thought I had risen by my own efforts but only later learned from MD that in the midst of my trial, my dear friend J had come to my side and held me and it was by his help and support that I was able to stand up again. The scenario ended and J helped me walk up the hill towards the cabin.

On the way up the hill MD walked past us by a different trail, and he and I had a brief exchange. I was covered in blood and had a number of wounds on my head and arms but I was in good spirits all things considered, and I imagined how strange I must look being up here in the woods and so damaged in my body. Maybe I was delirious, but I joked about how tough the squirrels are in these hills, implying that my wounds had come in an attack by an angry squirrel. We smiled and laughed for a moment, and then continued on our way. The others helped clean me up and bandaged me, and I went off to my small campsite across the road, out on a small rocky promontory overlooking the ocean in the distance far, far below.

Interactions like this one and others like them made me stronger, more resilient and increased my confidence.  I felt that I could face pretty nearly anything or anyone and nobody could really harm me. This of course was one of the goals of the course, but another was to be ready and willing to fight back if the situation warranted, and this goal I never reached. I just didn’t want to hurt anyone, at least not anyone I knew, if I could help it. So in subsequent altercations, when MD would try to get me to fight back and defend myself I never was able to do it.

Eventually we would be on our own again, the course would end, and we would be sent out to help bring healing to “a world at war with itself,” as MD put it, “to defend the weak against ravenous wolves intent on destruction, and to stand in the breach, offering ourselves in service to others.” My personal weaknesses precluded me from arriving at this worthy goal, but I achieved some small measure of it before I left and went out on my own.

(to be continued)

~FS

Of the many benefits to living outdoors, free from the confines of a stuffy bedroom, under a canopy of trees and stars, laying amidst a panoply of earthy smells which stimulate the mind, soothe the soul, and relax the body, one of my very favorite is the closeness it affords for interacting with other members of the animal kingdom.

Laying hidden in the grasses of a meadow, gazing up at the night sky, while a cool and then warm gentle breeze blows across my face and through my hair, it is inescapable the observation of how interwoven my life is with that of my surroundings. I exhale and the trees inhale, in the shelter of my tarp little creatures find warmth and comfort and perhaps even a little companionship.

This particular night I nested down at the edge of a meadow, under a tree, in a private setting and drifted off to sleep. Sometime in the night a doe found her way to my campsite and also nestled under the tree and drifted off to sleep. The next morning she awoke before me, so that when I opened my eyes and looked her way I saw her dark black eyes watching over me. “Good morning, my friend,” I said to her. “I hope you had a good sleep.” She shifted her weight and looked to her side. I yawned, and grabbed a sip from my water-bottle while she continued watching me. The sun was rising in the sky but neither of us were in much hurry to get started with our plans for the day. I had a job to get to and work to do, and she had food to forage, but we just continued lazily to enjoy the gathering warmth of the morning and the sounds of the birds singing from the neighboring trees.

As I began to gather my things together she pulled herself up and shook off the night sleep. I thanked her for joining me, and for giving me the honor of sharing my campsite with her, and then she slowly walked off into the brush and out of sight.

Another evening I settled into my sleeping bag at the edge of a small stream, under the dripline of a group of large, old, oak trees. I set my ground-tarp on the dry, dusty dirt beneath the trees and soon fell asleep. Towards midnight, as the full moon lit the sky and my surroundings, I began to dream a strange dream in which something was burrowing into my head. In my dream, I heard a continual scratching or a pattering, like water dripping on plastic, and I felt an incessant tugging at the hair on the back of my head. I slowly awoke and discovered this was not a dream at all. Something alive was in fact digging and scratching the dirt beneath my head, pattering at my plastic tarp, and yanking on my hair.

I didn’t move so as not to frighten whatever it was that was behind me trying to get into my skull. But it was difficult to stay still in this position, and with my concern growing, especially as I began to consider the possibilities of what creature might be behind me, practically and essentially on top of my head. I decided that it must be a squirrel trying to get at an acorn or something, so I slowly, ever so slowly, lifted my head slightly, and slowly turned to face my nocturnal hair stylist, to get a better look. All the while he continued to scratch and dig at the dirt, paying little attention to me.

I wished then that it had been a squirrel but unfortunately it was a skunk. My alarm increased dramatically but I held my position. He looked up from his labors and stared into my eyes. We were as close as lovers, eye-to-eye, and could easily have kissed, had we wanted to, and were he not a skunk. But I had no interest in being this close, yet I didn’t want to startle him by moving away too quickly, as he went back to his business of digging and scraping at the earth. I realized he had no interest in my at all, I had merely been in his way; so I slowly sat up, and then slowly slid out of my sleeping bag, and then scooted across the dry ground to a reasonable and safe distance, and waited.

In time, my smelly visitor either found what he had lost, or gave up searching, and turned and waddled away.

Not every close encounter with animals ends well. Sometimes people get eaten. As I sat on the beach in Santa Barbara watching a small pod of dolphins playing in the water about a hundred yards off shore, I reflected on a story I had heard about a poor tourist in Honolulu who had mistaken a group of sharks for a pod of dolphins, and had excitedly swam out to see them but ended up being attacked and killed by the sharks instead. I was certain the pod I was watching were not sharks however, because of the way they jumped out of the water playfully, and by their dolphin-like shapes silhouetted against the hazy summer sky.

I decided to swim out and see them closer and maybe get a chance to spend some time with them. I had never seen a dolphin up close in the wild before and these dolphins were clearly in a good mood and likely would enjoy my company. I knew for a fact that I would enjoy theirs.

As I approached the pod through the ocean surf, and as the water grew calmer further out from shore, I decided on my strategy so as not to alarm them. I would approach them not as a human, with arms extending and legs kicking, but as a piece of humble, innocent and non-threatening seaweed. My method of approach would be quiet and peaceful, as one treading water very slowly, with a smooth, long, flowing motion. I pictured myself as seaweed being carried along by the ocean currents as I drew near to them. I figured that this way I would be just another part of the environment, as far as they were concerned, and as innocuous to them as a jellyfish. In this manner, I inserted myself into the middle of their pod, as they swam in wide circles around me.

Without a doubt this became one of the truly memorable and most wonderful experiences of my life. In their midst I could hear them clicking and squeaking to one another. Two small calves stayed close to their mother as they made their rounds, lunging above the ocean’s surface, while occasionally she would stop and peer at me with a cautious eye, and then say something to one of her cohorts. These three, along with several others swam slow, tight circles around me as they spoke with one another, while another group of two or three swam at a greater distance breaching and leaping, sometimes very high into the air. I stayed with them for about twenty minutes as they continued about their business, until finally the pod moved off to the north and swam away.

(to be continued)

~FS