Transcription
Around the Cosmic Campfire by Tony Wright
Chapter 7: The Unheard
It was an incredible spring day when we arrived at the riding stables near Iowa City. What a great departure from singing in nightclubs at night, staying up until dawn playing cards, and sleeping half of the day. What a new concept for all-day motel sleepers! This great outdoors.
Some months earlier, I happened to find a trail ride through some of the thick woodlands nestled in and surrounded by the growing cornfields of Iowa. I was playing a long musical gig with my trio in Iowa City, a great university town not far from the stables. We often searched for recreation while traveling on the road, and besides swimming in the pristine waters of an old hidden quarry, this trail ride was a great find. The horses were slightly above mediocre, fairly predictable and slow, yet mostly adequate for me and my non-horse-city-girl writing partner, Ruth. Not being a seasoned horsewoman, I pretended I was on quite a wonderful steed and would enjoy the day outdoors, meandering through the hidden fairy trees of magic all around me. That’s how I think—always trying to elevate all that I do, making really sweet lemonade out of fairly sour lemons.
One lone man ran the stables, living on-site in a way-beyond-rustic cabin. On the inside, the cowboy cabin didn’t look like it had been loved or cleaned up for quite a while. Bandana and cowboy hat and in his 30s, he was already a bit leathery from ranch work. He was certainly the closest version of Robert Redford’s character I’d seen for a while. He seemed like he was a loner and was a bit clumsy talking to women, looking down at his feet. He was incredibly shy, but every time we came to ride the trails, he tried to always send us out on the best deeds he had and let us ride as long as we wished. I was sorry he was so alone, as I felt he was a lonely soul of a cowboy. On one ride, he escorted us out to the trail and took me aside, and although I barely knew him, he asked me to marry him—joking or not. That is one lonely cowboy.
On this particular sunny day, we headed out on our horses from the corral, and before we even got to the trails, I started to feel some familiar light sensations in my head. Ruth was the wife of our bass player, who was on the road traveling with us. She was ahead of me on the trail, and I was happy to follow her lead, as she was an extreme equestrian. I knew if my horse got improbably feisty with me, she would help me out. I was quite content. I love the sound of myself moving against the saddle. I love the smell of the saddle. I love the safety of the saddle. I believed I love saddles more than the horses. My horse and I were following her, as we had done a handful of times in the past at these stables.
At one point, as we walked the horses towards the official trail, she turned around and hollered at me and finally stopped altogether to wait for me. I got back on my horse to catch up with her. I got off my horse again. Then back on. I got off my horse again. “That’s enough! Why do you keep getting off your horse, for Pete’s sake?” she hollered back to me. I was hoping it was all right to tell her—of all people, she seemed quite receptive about unexplained things that I do. “I was picking four-leaf clovers,” I hollered up to her. She was quite a moment shading her eyes from the Iowa sun. “What? I was picking four-leaf clovers?” She was stumped. The horses were putting their heads down trying to graze as we stopped. I wondered if they were eating any of my four-leaf clovers. I decided to move towards confessing; if I was nonchalant, maybe it would go unquestioned. “Well, I’d just find them. I find thousands upon thousands of four-leaf clovers. I have since I was a girl.” She was still stumped. “Do you mean you could see them from all that sitting on top of your horse all the way down to the ground?”
I thought a moment before answering. Is she safe? Will she still like me if I tell her the truth? Should I just say, “Uh, never mind, I’ll tell you later,” and perhaps she would forget? No, I would just jump in with both feet. I walked my horse up next to her and leaned in as if I was telling a secret. “Well, Ruth, I hear them.” She stared at me for a moment before replying, “I always knew you were a weird one, but… no… okay… okay… well, I’m not sure what to ask, but do you want to tell me more about it?” She seemed kind of thrilled that this wouldn’t be just a typical day. She was not a really usual person either, if truth be told.
We decided that we would continue on the trail side by side and talk a bit. The trail supported that, as it was wide before entering the trees. It was interesting walking our horses through the same woods we had been in months before when we saw something in the sky during a night ride. Lightning bugs were flashing through the trees at night, and it was like something from a movie set back then. As we came out of the woods to an open field to run our horses into, we saw something moving in the night sky. It looked mostly like a star; its distance was very far away—extremely distant—not in this atmosphere. It just stopped, then it went down and moved to the side and then stopped, then started again and went straight up and then out of the atmosphere. This was the first time I had ever seen this unexplained foreign activity in the skies, and not the last. Luckily, there were a half a dozen other witnesses who explained this. It was amazing to see something flying above that was not of humans. My last footnote on this is that night riding is magic for sure.
So I started to tell her the story of my special ability and of the first time. Most people have their memories of firsts: the first day of school, the first day they had their driver’s license, the first time they got kissed or made love. Adding to my list: the first time I heard voices of things growing. Yes, I know that was kind of a secret first. I don’t tell anybody for many, many years about that. I was in grade school and was walking through my parents’ front yard on a Sunday afternoon on the way to Don’s house two doors down in Des Moines. It was the 50s. I heard something as I was skippity-doo-dying without thinking of it much, and it was a tiny little sound like fairies or something like that—whatever they might sound like, I had no idea. Well, maybe like tiny little munchkins, or like Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz munchkins or something. I even turned around and walked back to the spot where I thought I heard it because it was so odd—it was trying to find out what was happening. Then I heard them much clearer and louder, and I sat down in the grass and to a spot of dozens of them. I knew there was such a thing as four-leaf clovers, but I had never seen one before that time, or I’d even looked for one. But there was a handful of these little things. I didn’t know what to make of it, and I told no one. I never forgot it, however, and wondered if I’d lost my mind. I was tingling. That was the first time. Down to the years I would hear and feel clovers all the time. I wondered if I just had an eagle eye, but that was not the case. I knew when they were there, and they just called out to me—not in actual English words, just in little sounds. If I translated it, it would be more like, “We’re here, we’re here, come and find us,” like a game of hide-and-seek. I could always find them. They didn’t mind me picking them, and I saved thousands of them for my years. Pre-Preston books. I almost tried not to hear them and to pretend it was something that really didn’t happen and that I would just grow out of this silly sensation, but it never did; it just intensified.
One time I was at my future in-laws’ house at the kitchen table when I was only 16. We were all talking, and I suddenly had to go to the back part of the yard, being pulled out there almost like a zombie, and there was an entire colony of four-leaf clovers. The in-laws saw me do this, and of course I had no explanation. I swear I think they took the matter to church. Another time I was in a park with a friend in Mississippi River talking, and I heard a colony and walked the width of the entire park directly to that colony. I always feel so relieved when I find them. This I cannot explain. It’s almost as if they are telling me that I am not unusual—to keep the veil income, to keep developing the not-unusualness. Don’t be afraid, as if they’re saying, “Look, all kinds of not-unusual things are all around you.” To this end, I always seem to know that things are not usual around me, including people. It was like a little reminder to keep developing myself as a not-usual person.
One time I had just taken my daughter to a new school for first grade and walked her to the door. On the way back to the car, I heard them so loudly I could not ignore them. I remember looking around and hoping that no one was looking out of the school windows to see me on the ground doing God’s—no, God knows what. I had to sit down in the middle of them. There were four, five, six, seven, eight, nine-leaf clovers. I call those “leafers,” as I grew to call them. My heart was racing. I could not believe my eyes. I adored them, and they took my breath away. It seemed as if I could feel their hearts beating as well. Did they have hearts? Of course not. Or do they? In that case, should I ever pick them? They said, “Yes, yes, pick us.”
Down through the years I have picked them and put them in miniature little vases all around the house. I’ve book-pressed them. I have put them in people’s salads when they have come for dinner, and they usually don’t even notice them. How could someone not notice them? But they keep calling to me, one by one or colony by colony. They feel like some sort of inexplicable friends, and I just honor them and sometimes share their story. They seem to enjoy being consumed and appreciated by me. I have a short life being trampled, left unnoticed, mowed down, living in their not-unusualness for naught. Indeed, they enjoy being noticed. That’s not all speculation, as they have communicated this appreciation to me. They know they are different than the others and call to others who are different as well, which of course I am. Perhaps those of us with different vibrations are always silently calling out to others with the same vibration. Who knows? Do some of us listen to a God station? Do we just tune in? I believe so.
When I was in my 30s, I finally discovered I was not alone. I found out about the Findhorn group in Scotland, which is a group of people who live communally and garden and farm together and have the ability to communicate with elemental beings. They have been doing this since the early 1960s. They listen and hear messages from the plants—or perhaps you could say plant divas—on what they need to survive and thrive in their gardens, and they have a symbiotic relationship with the earth in this way. I was immensely relieved when I discovered them. But how did we get this way? This I cannot truly answer. I mean, how I got knowing and why so many other humans do not plug into this particular outlet, I’m not sure. In Findhorn, they believe it is a message from God. However, I know so many faithful people who commune with God, and they cannot hear clovers and plants, no matter how hard they try. It’s an anomaly, and once again a sweet find in my year 55 of communicating in this way. On my birthday, I found a sixer—that’s a six-leaf clover—and that had been an extremely trying time, and it just reminded me that all is well—to remember I can manifest anything I need. I always appreciate every message, every reminder, every clue to remain not in not-usual and in the end to remember to be grateful for my differences.
So way back then, I finished my clover story to Ruth. She digested it a few minutes, then looked back at me and said, “Thank you for sharing that. Really, nothing is as it seems, is it? Nothing is as it seems. Okay, let’s ride.” She still liked me. Ah, I got lucky. She moved on up ahead of me, and we both trotted out of the woods and into our own separate lives, as time would have it. I have somehow lost her whereabouts and have lost any knowledge of the lonely young cowboy who would have been content to take an almost complete stranger for his companion, to curry the horses and have beans with on the campfire in a hot can. But I know that all is as it should be. I truly know we are all on such a lovely and mysterious journey, and I am grateful for my life, for my plant friends, for my privileges. I can admit, as I live reclusively in the woods surrounded by 23 acres of trees, woodland animals, and lush green mosses and lichens, I am where I am supposed to be for now—here with the plant divas, here in nature. How could I be anything but complete?
However, as of this week, this is not quite the end of the story. As I was writing this story, I got a random email from our old bass player, Bill, Ruth’s husband at the time, back when she and I were on the road with him and we traveled with our trio and she was my horseback riding partner. They later divorced, and she moved to California. He remarried and had two children, and I had not seen either of them or spoken to them for almost three decades. I know they hadn’t been married for even longer than that as well—maybe over 30 years. How was it that he emailed me in the middle of writing this story? I was shocked. He found my email address through my professional public records, and I excitedly answered, wondering if he knew where Ruth was and how I could locate her to say hello. The next day he sent another email with an attachment—a photo loaded slowly onto my screen, and before my eyes I saw him from the now with his arm around dearest Ruth. Wait, what? He had gone to California just a few years ago after his Mississippi divorce and packed up Ruth, who was suddenly alone. He packed up her exotic bird collection too and drove her back to Mississippi where they are now happy and also remarried. There they were—familiar faces from my past on the screen now with a few aging lines and definite gray hair. There they were, moving towards their final life chapters, back on track in each other’s story. I squealed with surprise and delight and was amazed at the synchronicity of them looking for me—the very week I was channeling out the story which included them both. Wondering how to find them. What a great example of transmitting and of people living with their antennas up, who are without a doubt receiving us. Is it a God station? I don’t know, but I suspect so. How wonderful for all of us on strangely separate but intertwined journeys to reconvene once again at last! To all of the unexplained, to all the amazing synchronicities, to every player of mine in this mysterious game of life, I say with simple appreciation, thank you, and much, much love.