Secret Time Traveler

An eleven foot tall prehistoric mama bear stood on her hind legs on a beach, staring at us. Her six foot tall cub peeked around her side.

A shiver passed through me. None of my friends at home knew about my secret time traveling. I was here alone with my Mystical Dog.

Before we landed here, the winds of time travel swept us off course, and we missed the right landing era.

The gusts of time still whirled. I grabbed my poet's fedora hat with the colorful Peruvian hatband before it blew off.

Then I reached to pull my supernatural four legged companion closer.

My Mystical dog raised the midnight fur on his neck, and lowered his front end, like a panther.

Earlier that day, we were spinning through the labyrinths of time. I was traveling by the seat of my pants and lost concentration.

We went deeper, deeper, and deeper on down, sliding through the spirals of time.

The Mystical Coos Bay Bear, part dog. part Black Bear, and part supernatural being, showed his gleaming white teeth in a smile and his dark eyes shimmered like stardust.

My heart felt warmed when I saw him so happy. He loved these time games.

The day so far was smooth gliding and I stopped paying close attention.

I was not focusing, instead traveling by the seat of my pants, and I lost control.

I blamed it on inheriting a few threads of my father’s devil-may-care personality.I missed our landing at the Paleolithic Era.

We caught hold of time a little farther back at 14,000 years ago, Pleistocene, closer to the Ice Age.

A blur of sand and sea became sharper. We began to feel heavier. Then we were standing on a sandy beach.

I looked up into the puzzled, curious eyes, of an eleven-foot tall, Giant Short-Faced Bear, standing on her hind legs 15 feet away, her baby watching from behind her.

My amateur archeologist brain went into paleontologist mode and clicked out facts.

“The Arctotherium of the late Pleistocene age, 12 feet tall when standing. Fastest running bear that ever lived."

"Capable of 40 miles per hour. Also called the bulldog bear. Around 1500 pounds. Extinct after the late Pleistocene Age.”

Her baby, a bear cub who was a mere 6 feet tall, was peering past her furry, brown shoulder at me.

A quick glance around showed a dense forest meeting the sandy dunes, a long beach, and the sea.

It was not so different from my home on the Mystical Coast.

On one side rose reddish volcanic cliffs with twisted trees hanging from the sides. Large cave openings led into dark caverns.

A creek rippled where it met the ocean with splashes.

Tidepools swirled across the beach. I heard waves crashing and felt the sting of a sea breeze that smelled salty.

The size of a giant boulder, the Arctotherium, the Short-Faced Bear, took a few steps toward me.

Short-Faced Bear’s nose waved back and forth, her tiny eyes showed she was trying to decide what to do.

She sniffed the air. A strange scent. She made a low growl, a mama bear, showing motherly love and care for her cub.

I admired her power and strength, knowing Mystical Animal Bear inspires healing and protection, dreams, introspection, and being at ease with solitude.

“Eeeesssyyy,” I crooned to her.

“Eeeaaaasy friend Bear.”

I turned partly sideways, my head a little bowed, body relaxed, and kept my eyes slightly averted from hers

Trying to avoid an eye lock, I hoped she would not think I was directly challenging her.

"Weeeeeee’rrrre friiiieeeends,” I sang to her in a slow, low voice. But she did not know me.

She raised her massive paws with their long claws.

I stood still and raised my arms over my head to look larger, using the Black Bear strategy that we used back home, thinking fast of ways to escape.

"Go Away Bear, Go Away…Go…. way!“ I called to her, making as much noise as possible.

“After using part of my energy to get here,” I thought to myself, “would a time leap of 13,000 years to return home be too much?”

Even then, the risk-taking side of me enjoyed the excitement.

Next to me, Coos Bay Bear, my Mystical Protector, decided to take action. He turned his penetrating gaze to the bear’s small eyes on the giant head.

Coos lowered the front of his body to a crouch, slowly, so slowly, crawling forward ominously.

His eyes locked on the bear’s eyes. His iron spring muscles coiled. With his jaw dropping open, he eas smiling with the challenge - teeth, and tongue visible.

With his powerful, hypnotic eyes he has herded a whole group of cows alone before, each weighing over 1,000 pounds.

His dark-haired, gymnastic body slinks next to the ground, in a predatory crawl, then goes flying over the earth like the wind.

His intense gaze flamed like twin beams, controlling other beings.

They felt his psychic presence in their minds.Size meant nothing to Coos, he of the magical gaze knew his power.

Coos stretched his head out, herding dog style.

His dark, athletic body crouched like a black panther in the jungle, his bright, hypnotic eyes bored into the small orbs of Short-Faced Bear.

She cocked her boulder-sized head as she watched. Her nostrils flared, ears flickering as she listened, eyes wondering.

Her thoughts entered mine, and I sensed she said, “What are these strange beings in my home area?”

She continued to study us.

Then she hesitantly stepped back, the two animals still sharing a gaze.

Short Face was still looking puzzled, as Coos continued his Mystical Animal handshake with his eyes.

“We’re friends.”

The moment she decided she knew us her eyes blinked and relaxed their stare.

She had received the message from Mystical Animal Coos.

“Gooood doooog!” I said softly.

Coos looked up, his eyes like dark pools. A flash of love filled me. He was smiling wide and proud of himself.

"You deserve this," I said, removing my poet's fedora hat and placing it on Coos's head. His grin grew larger.

I found a moist, melt-in-your-mouth dog treat in my pocket and slipped it to his smiling lips as he glanced up at my face.I felt his soft nose nuzzle my fingers and the snack was gone.

Now I breathed deeply, relaxing, letting my vision soften and blur, feeling the spell of the blue light begin.

AAAAhhhh, I could feel time-travel beginning.

“Coos, let’s go home my love.”

I began dreaming our way back home.

A vision appeared floating over the short-faced bear’s head of the wilderness lake near our house.

The evening light made the water on the lake glow with the spell of the blue light, at Alder Dune in the forest.

I could already hear my Mystical Friend Wild Dove calling to me, and I could faintly see Blue Heron’s wings flying over the lake.

My synapses and neurotransmitters began firing differently. The brain waves were reacting, subconscious activating, molecules humming.

I put my arms around Coos, he gave my face a quick licky kiss. We snuggled together.

Slowly we became part of the vision, merging and flowing through time again until we were home.

As the spirals of time in the era-verse brought us to the sandy beach on the lake, I recognized the familiar branches overhead. I heard the night sounds of animals speaking and moving.

It was good to be home.

Coos Bay Bear sat with me on top of a rustic picnic table. He leaned against me, my arm around him, and we enjoyed the peaceful feeling.

Years ago, after my father showed me time traveling, in his story “The Spell of the Blue Light,” I kept experimenting.

Taking many risks, I began to find my way through labyrinths in the circles of spacetime webs. Then I began going into a dimension of time eras, existing as a separate world, known as the Era-verse.

At first, I would only move a few years into the past, but I kept going farther, farther around the spirals of time.

I was not afraid and it was beautiful. There would be a slight dreamy energy, close my eyes, drifting on time waves like a dolphin rising on ocean swells.

It was important to stay focused with sensing the time target and to return to the same moment of leaving.

Now back home in the wilderness by our coastal lake, Blue Heron watches me.

He is silhouetted against the greenery, neck stretched skyward, feet resting on the grey limbs of a fallen tree in the water.

It is easy to see why Blue Heron inspires soul searching, honor, and virtue. I sit under the forest canopy, with Coos at my side.

Living in two worlds, both the current time Universe and the Era-verse of time travel, can be a balancing act, and my skills are still evolving.

These days in present time, I sit at my desk, wearing thick glare-prevention glasses, slumped in front of the computer screen.

I am a remote worker, paid to write website code, or do search engine algorithm analytics.

Previously, at a large tech center on the California central coast. fellow workers knew me only as an award-winning computer tech at a Fortune 500 company.

During our mid-morning breaks, we practiced putting golf balls up and down the rows of cubicles at work.

Management thought this let our minds take a rest from the frenetic pace. During lunch break, we played ping pong.

Then back to frantically answering phone calls, watching a call timer, and scanning a desk full of screens.

After work, we walked down the long rows of printed data posted daily on the walls, with analytics of our daily work output scores.

After I quit and moved to the wilderness coast, my complex computer and time travel life had a better work life balance.

Now, when I’m on vacation from work, I will trade those glasses for my much used, gray, poet’s fedora. I found it in a local thrift shop, and wearing it helps me switch out of my computer tech personna when I time travel or play the part of an amateur archeologist.

My archeology friends smiled when they sae me peering out from under the hat brim.

They said I was a female Indiana Jones because he wears a crushed fedora.

But, I am not a version of anyone else. My hat's colorful, handwoven Peruvian hatband seemed to have special properties, helping transport me and make the identity switch from tech nerd.

Instead of Indiana’s bullwhip, I have Mystical Animals who accompany me, filling me with love and inspiration, and they can jump, fly or swim to protect and assist me.

I have a poet’s heart and these journeys fire my imagination.

Time and travel have led me to the Oregon coast rainforest, the Chilian Andes, the Savannahs of Zimbabwe, the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, the Himalayas, an archipelago near Australia and New Zealand, and the Icelandic landscape.

Now I prepared for a meeting of our Storytelling Weavers of Wonder group.

The meeting with Pleistecene Era Bear would make a good story for it.

The group would think I was inventing a tall tale.

Our diverse group is from everywhere.

My friends and I sit around a wilderness campfire in the evening, voices rising and falling, bonding as we share food and our tales.

Now we sent out word across the planet to our diverse group of storytelling friends to gather.

It would be a night of full moon energy flowing with our Mystical Animals.

The Storytellers from The Weavers of Wonder would be competing to outdo each other.

I was ready with my Prehistoric Bear tale.

Having all these time travel experiences gave me plenty of unusual stories.

Yet, some of the other Weavers of Wonder also had unique tales. Almost as if they had really experienced them.

I looked at Coos Bay Bear. He was still wearing my poet's fedora with the colorful hatband, tilted over one eye. Our psychic thought connection stirred.

I wondered. Could some of the Storytelling Weavers of Wonder be secret time travelers too?

Coos narrowed his eyes and nodded.