The Middle of October

It happened in the middle, as most defining events do. In the middle of my incoherent divorce, the middle of a major depressive episode… in the middle of October.

My best friend Sam and I were almost a decade apart in age, but I was born October 20th and she the 21st. For years we’d marked our birthdays together, but this year it felt almost imperative to celebrate. I was still suffering the aftershocks of divorce after fifteen years and three kids… Sam was in the worst throes of a years-long depressive episode. We were both laughably poor, working low wage jobs. Options were limited. But we shared a passionate love of the forest. Van camping is easy and cheap, and I reckoned trees would be the perfect antidote for us both.

Years before, while on family vacation, I had discovered the river valley of the Yankee Fork, the site of sister ghost towns from the gold rush. Exploring these historical sites, a haunting familiarity had taken hold of me, such as I’d only encountered in my own childhood homeplaces. I knew this place.

Something akin to obsession took me back, every year after. Each time I returned, between the skeletal remains of Bonanza and the handful of half-preserved structures which had once belonged to Custer, I passed a fork in the road where a wooden sign stood with the words: Frank Church Wilderness of No Return.

How long could I resist?

I hadn’t been able to convince my practical husband to go explore that area with me, and while I’d remained married the idea of exploring the wilderness without a man’s protection was absolutely out of the question. Now, I saw my chance.

“Look, you know I can find my way around anywhere,” I pointed out to Sam. “And we’ll be together! And you’ve been there before.”

“To the ghost towns, not to the effing Wilderness of No Return,” Sam said, arms folded. “You know it’s probably named that for a reason, Mel.”

I laughed.  “You can’t tell me you don’t want to see what’s up that road!”

“Why can’t we just camp in a nice, safe, designated campground?” Sam groaned.

“Why would we want to be around other people?” I countered. “I want to be deep in nature, it’s just so much more beautiful. And it isn’t that far from civilization.”

Sam frowned. She was, to be fair, not inclined to leave her house these days, let alone go foray into the wilderness.

“Come on, Sam,” I threw my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Nothing bad will happen.”

“We can go up there, but we will not be camping near those ghost towns in the dark.”

“What? No!” I shook my head. “We’ll camp a good ways away.” I met her eyes, mine warm and reassuring. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

She sighed in resignation.

I was elated. While navigating the harsh landscape of my own traumas, I also longed to help alleviate the suffering caused by Sam’s deep childhood wounds. Our mutual pain was both a bond and often the source of brokenness in our friendship. It would restore us both, to be away from the things of man in the deep woods in our beloved October, renewing our spirits together.

It’s a long drive to the Yankee Fork from Nampa, Idaho, so on that crisp October day we scurried home from school and work just after noon to toss a twin mattress, quilts, a cooler, and a few books into the back of my minivan. The drive out was a gorgeous kaleidescope of autumn landscapes. We passed the time gazing at beauty, listening to shared music, conversing about a work of fantasy fiction that we were mutually obsessed with, our jobs, our shared world. Sam seemed lighter of heart than she’d been in months. My plan was working. 

The tiny mountain town of Stanley was already asleep when we passed through late that evening. Roiling clouds were gathering above the rugged Sawtooth peaks; phone signal vanished as I drove the winding scenic highway northward, the verdigris Salmon River on our right. I made the turn up the Yankee Fork, where asphalt gives way to gravel, and with a sense of mounting excitement on my part, and growing unease on Sam’s, I drove us the remaining miles to the turnoff.

When we drew near the Frank Church Wilderness of No Return, I slowed, spun the wheel to starboard and pressed the gas. I chose: autonomy, risk, wildness previously denied. My heart pounded fear-joy through my body and brain as I navigated the rocky road that wound through woods of deepening pine, thickets of huckleberry turned scarlet, and aspens blazing like candles in the twilight.

We passed a single cabin beside the road, in good repair but with no signs of life. Within a mile, the narrow road became quite difficult to traverse.

“Just find somewhere,” Sam urged me after a good twenty minutes, voice tinged with anxiety. “You’re doing your “Just around one more bend” thing and this isn’t even a road anymore, Mel. And it’s getting dark.”

She was right. I gave in, found a place where a faint two track logging road led off to our left, and down we went. Beside a rocky, rushing creek, we found an old campsite with a stone fire ring built to shield flames from the prevailing winds. The clearing was enchanted with moss and fern and enclosed by thick woods almost blocking the darkening sky.  

No one else would ever come within miles of this place at night in the Wilderness of No Return, in mid-October, with a storm rolling in.

Sam cast a dubious eye at the clouds above, but wanted to stay put.

While I busied myself arranging wood for a fire, Sam walked the short distance down to the creek alone. When she returned, she seemed even more on edge, her eyes shadowed.

I was concerned, but her dark moods were so common these days, and I knew it was best to offer distraction. We popped open ciders and roasted sausages over a crackling fire. Rain began to spatter as we finished our meal. We laughed as we hurriedly tossed cooking implements into the back of the van, and struggled to shed our shoes before crawling into the back for the night. We exchanged jeans for sweats, lit candles, and cozied up amid pillows and blankets to read together.

We had chosen a book of druid magic and lore to read that night. Sam had ordered this book among others, as ‘research’ for the novel we were co-writing. Sam and I shared near insatiable curiosity, but here my interest was not merely intellectual.  When I’d walked out of my marriage the year before, I had also walked out of my fundamentalist Christian faith. In the void of a shattered worldview, I had felt stirrings of an ancient longing. My Celtic heritage had begun to assert itself with increasing intensity. How could I reconcile the folklore I had loved all my life with my actual lived experience, and with my peskily persistent belief in a benevolent Creator? I’d been taught these were incompatible. 

Exploring the esoteric together had a tinge of the forbidden which we both craved. Reading such a book by candlelight in such a time and place was… fraught. 

There was so much we did not know.

We soon realized we were reading instructions for practice of actual magical arts. Like teenagers fooling with a ouija board in a basement on Halloween, we felt spooked.

“I’m so exhausted,” Sam yawned, somewhere in the middle of the first chapter.

I shut the book without protest. “Poor thing,” I sympathized. “Let’s get some sleep.”

We fell asleep sometime before midnight, bundled up against the cold and back to back to conserve body heat.

It was the cold which woke me. I sat up in the dark, reached forward between the front seats, turned the keys in the ignition to start the engine, and pressed the button for the heater.

I laid back down, shivering at the initial blast of cold air, but knew it would soon be toasty.  Sam was a deep sleeper, and I was glad that she wasn’t disturbed. The green digital clock on the dash read a few minutes past 3 a.m.

Outside was properly dark, heavy, pressing in from all sides. The interior windows were thick with condensation, through which nothing could be seen. The rain had not turned to snow as I had hoped, but had intensified, hammering on the metal roof of the van with unrelenting uniformity.

My mind was fully awake. Since childhood I’d been a night owl, finding ways to read into the wee hours of the night undetected. It is in those strange hours my creativity was most potent. Thoughts of my book world, plotlines, characters… and ancient magical rites dancing in my head.  

Slowly, I became fully aware of what I had subconsciously been looking at… a pale but distinct orb of light which emerged from the fog as the windshield cleared

.

I sat up and switched off the engine, staring at the light. The moon? I discarded this swiftly. The nose of the van was pointed roughly southeast into the deep woods,where a slope rose steeply less than a quarter mile away. The moon could not be shining so low in the trees; it would have to be much, much higher… besides, it was pouring.

I laid back down, adjusting my position to better see the light. It shone no more than two-thirds as high as the treetops, and seemingly not very far away.

I cycled through possible explanations. Throughout my life I’d spent countless hours roaming woodlands like these. I knew enough to become increasingly uneasy as I watched the light, and my theories grew less and less plausible, even as the light grew somehow more ominous.

It seemed to coalesce in the darkness with the faintest possible coruscation: now increasing incrementally, now fading back at the edges… never quite stable or consistent, a brilliant orb of opalescent, blue-tinged light.

Almost 20 minutes had passed, and it had not moved from its place in the upper-left quadrant of the windshield, yet it seemed larger. I had begun to feel my heart rate quicken and, despite the warmth of the van, a chilling sense of unease.

And then, beside me in the darkness, Sam breathed, “Mel? What is that?” She sounded much younger than her 25 years.

 I said in what I hoped was an unalarmed whisper, “Oh, maybe just some campers.”

A pause. She whispered, “Firelight isn’t blue.”

“Maybe an LED lantern,” I said. An earlier theory I had discarded… hunters or campers seasoned enough to hike the steep slope in that direction would never camp on it, let alone in pouring rain. 

“There aren’t any houses up here,” she said. This I had also thought through. “No,” I said. The only cabin was on the opposite side of the valley.

I heard the quickening of Sam’s breathing and felt her rising alarm, but before I could think of some way to calm her, she sat bolt upright, threw back the blankets and reached for the sliding passenger door handle.

“What are you doing?” I sat up.

“I have to go out,” she gasped.

“Out? What? No, it’s pouring rain; you can’t–”

In that moment I realized two things with razor-sharp clarity: that she was indeed going to crawl out into the cold downpour clad in socks and pajamas, and that if she left the van something horrible would happen to her.

I reached out and pulled her hands away from the door handle. She was shaking violently. “You canNOT go out, Sam,” I said in the stern voice I used on my children when needed.  “It is cold and raining!”

She yanked away from me and reached for the door again. “You don’t understand!” Her words were a breathless shriek. “I have to go! I have to!”

I knew that my best friend was not herself. 

Sam had managed to open the door a sliver. I wrapped my arms around her, slammed and locked the door, and pulled her back. 

I was smaller, and she, stronger. 

I managed to flop over, dragging her with me. She jerked against my restraint. “It wants me to go to it, I have to go. You don’t understand: If I don’t, something horrible will happen!”

I was not sure how long I would be able to prevent Sam from getting out of the car. I glared in fury and fear at the light through the window, which now seemed absolutely menacing.

A memory flashed into my consciousness…. harrowing nights watching my six year old son Gabe wrestle with night terrors, howling in primal terror at demonic sights only he could see, unable to feel my arms around him or hear my voice. And I reached for the only thing which had ever reached my son in his hellish battlefield: song.

I began to sing to Sam: first, a familiar lullaby my children loved. Almost immediately, her frantic struggling ceased. I crooned to her like she was a baby, and when that song ended, began another. She was still tensed to fight.

The orb watched, and knew, and hated.

Like an earthly predator, it emanated attention and malice. But this did not merely want a meal. It wanted to consume all light, instill absolute terror, and wreak annihilation. And yet I knew it did not want me. It wanted Sam.

And if she left the van, it would have her.

My entire being rose in a single, desperate plea for help from the Love of All. I kept my eyes locked on the orb, and I reached for the brightest and most joyful memories I possessed, and I sang.

At first the strain was terrific, to grasp something beautiful and bright in that moment of utter terror and panic. But I found it: the birth of my first child. The surge of wonder and pure love that poured through me as I looked into her eyes for the first time and she looked back into mine, and we knew each other.

I clung to this, and reached for more. Each of my children, each moment of meeting. The scales tipped, and suddenly in rushed the force of first laughs, dancing eyes, first steps, joyful shouts, flushed faces asleep against my breast. I reached for memories of my own childhood, the honey-colored scenes before I knew the world could wound… the moment I first understood a wildflower… saw a towering redwood… suddenly knew what letters and words on a page meant… 

Sam stopped begging to go out.

I sang whatever I could summon with ease.  Some hymns I’d known from childhood, but still felt the truth of. Words of the love of the One. Words of hope and help. Some were lullabies whose near nonsense yet reaches the soul. Sam’s rigid frame relaxed by degrees, and her trembling began to subside, her breathing becoming even. 

inside my chest now I felt a living, pulsating warmth, clear as liquid gold, gathered just below my sternum. I willed it to expand as I sang and remembered, and felt it palpably pushing back against the dense darkness. It took effort. I kept pushing, now almost euphoric. I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow I knew how to do it.

I pressed the golden ball outward until it just encased the exterior limits of the van in physical space. There, I stopped. To press further was incredibly hard, but it was enough. The boundary would hold.

I continued to sing, but without urgency. My own body began to release its hypervigilance. In the darkness, Sam’s breathing deepened into the cadence of sleep.  

I swear the blue orb flinched.

I smiled. 

I continued to sing, my eyes slipping closed. The blue orb could not hurt us now. I opened them a little while later, and the light was gone. Just, gone. Vanished.

The clock said that the entire episode had lasted less than an hour.

The rain was still pounding. I slept.

__________________________________________

Sam and I woke shortly after daybreak to heavy drizzle. By unspoken consent, we scrambled into the front seats without opening a door. I grimly fought to free the van from the muddy morasse which had formed beneath us overnight. After a jaw-clenching five minutes, we climbed back onto the logging road.

I drove faster than safety might dictate, knuckles white on the wheel. We passed the lone cabin, still without signs of life. It took longer than I’d remembered to reach the wooden sign at the turn off.

We exhaled in unison. Another few miles, and we started communicating again.

But for six months, my best friend and I, who talked about everything, never said a word to one another of what happened to us in the Frank Church Wilderness of No Return. We kept, but did not touch, the book of druid magic we had taken on that fateful trip.

It was not until a bright spring day in the middle of the suburbs, that we dared at last to share our memories.

Our recollections were near identical, save on two points.

“When we first got there, you were building the fire, and I walked down to the creek,” Sam said, eyes distant.  “And I saw myself, standing on the opposite bank of the creek. Exactly me, just gray and transparent… with black eyes. She… wanted me to cross.”

I stared at her in shock. 

“I did see the light, exactly the same color and in the same place,” she continued.  “But for me… it was a doorway shape, almost…”

“...like a portal,” I finished.

We locked eyes, grasped each other’s hands tight, and shivered in the warm April sunlight, listening to a robin singing through the open window.