Rhea and Charmout

They traveled up the steep embankment and as they did she thought to herself, half mumbling and half entranced from the exhaustion of the long journey.

‘A road would be nice. I am not a fan of spiders, why do we have to whack our way through the overgrowth and the spiders?’ or ‘I wonder if we'll ever have cake again?’ Her mind mostly wandered to random topics. That made it easier to ignore her sore back and the sharp, stabbing pain from her worn out knees.

She was getting too old to trek like this; too old and too weary from time spent worrying about things that she now realized don’t matter. Too tired from a millennia or two of being bound to this planet without her lightness of being. She had forgotten almost entirely what it was like to be weightless and carefree. She toiled as they walked; conversation was null, just the sound of their bodies pushing through the jungle plants, the occasional crack of a twig, no birds, nothing but overgrown ferns whooshing past them as they trudged along. The quiet was sometimes welcome and sometimes maddening. She didn’t want to talk, but the lack of distraction made the journey seem endless at times.

They had been walking for months, it seemed. It seemed that way because they had been walking in the grey mist of the Pacific Northwest Rainforest for more than a week. Charmout was a good guide, he stopped every few hours and handed Rhea a cup with water, some nuts and dried berries. In the early evenings he found soft places where she could rest her legs comfortably, like under a tree surrounded by thick, soft moss, and he would lay down a blanket for her to sit on. He was mostly quiet during the day, but in the evening he told her stories of great spiritual significance and his fires never lacked heat or protruded much smoke. His skin was dark, Middle Eastern maybe or Indian. She wasn’t sure but his gentle nature defied her perception of men from those regioms so she tried to see him only as a soft spoken man and not a person with colored skin different from her own. It was not important to their mission and so she tried not to care or think much about it.

Rhea was once the most beautiful woman a person could describe. Her skin was healthy and flawless, her eyes glowing, bright, blue-green in color, hair long, wavy and dark brown. She was fun and full of love and life; but too long on a planet that tilted and turned a different way than she understood was dragging her down. A planet that was becoming increasingly disturbed without peace and . It covered in filth. It had been such a wondrous and beautiful place when she first landed here as a newborn child.

Charmout walked on ahead, his steps were consistent and methodical and sometimes he started to hum a little; nothing recognizable, just a comforting medley that occasionally broke up the monotony of each days hike through a dyeing yet still, wild and bright forest. He too was getting older, his frame was thin and slightly bent forward now. His once bulging muscles seemed softened by time, even though his demeanor showed no signs of tiring or weakness. He picked his steps carefully to avoid crushing anything unnecessarily. He watched the ground just slightly ahead of him so he could do his best to only trample on the mud and dirt and leave the plants and bugs intact. Rhea noticed this on their first day and did her best to follow his example. With the pain in her knees it was more difficult, but, she felt, it was the mindfulness of trying that was important, the fact that she cared enough to try to see all the living creatures and vegetation as the breathing organisms they were. That is what mattered, that was the ultimate truth they needed to be aware of as they walked mile after mile through the dense, lush forest.

On the fifth day of walking Charmout stopped as he normally did around noon and set up a soft area for Rhea to sit and eat some lunch. Their food supply was running low but the forest was abundant with berries and edible plants that he knew how to harvest and cook. It was spring and the fiddleheads were abundant. He would pick them, send thanks and prayers to the earth for supplying them, and then cook them over a small fire, they were good roasted or steamed and he carried a small box of seasoning salt that helped with the monotonous texture of all the plants they ate. On this day however he pulled a cloth bag out of his backpack and brought it over to Rhea. She opened it and inside there was two more pieces of cloth one was rolled up and the other one was folded. She started with the one that was rolled and opened it to find some elk jerky. Neither of them was particularly fond of eating meat but after 5 days of travel Charmout insisted that a little protein was now necessary. There was 4 long strips, and they sat together and chewed through the tough leathery meat in silence. He was right. Rhea’s spirits picked up and her energy level increased.

The second piece of cloth had in it some dried leaves. When they finished chewing the elk Charmout stood up and took a medium sized pinch of the leaves and put them in his mouth and began to chew. Rhea did the same, they did not speak, and she watched him to see what he would do with the leaves after they were chewed. He did not swallow them, he did not spit them out; he left them in his mouth and he sort of rolled them around with his tongue. Rhea did that too and in a short time she began to feel something quite strange. She began to feel all the aches and pain melt away, her mind began to loosen up and the things she tended to worry about began to fade away.

Charmout held out his hand to her and she took it. He pulled her off the ground and led her up a hill that seemed as though it would finally be the top of the mountains they had been climbing. Just a little further up and she could see something more than trees, she thought. She felt her body lighten up. She felt her thoughts begin to flow like a river flowing through a vast universe of starlight. As they climbed up, her steps became lighter, her body began to change and the old bones sloughed off the calcification and arthritis, and she began to feel and look like she was young again.

The trees began to sway in a light breeze and a bird began to sing a pretty song, then another sang back to it. All the sounds of the world were now quiet, except for the lilting song of the birds singing and the light sound of the breeze. The trees no longer rustled, though they still swayed, the ground no longer creaked or cracked, and it felt soft and lovely. There were no smells of dirt or earth, and slowly as he led her up the hill and they neared the top of the highest peak in the forest, all of her senses gave way and only the sense of feeling existed. Soon even Charmout disappeared, and the universe opened up to her, it took away her form, her body, her pain and left only the feeling of total and complete happiness. In fact, it was more than happiness. It was pure joy, total comfort. She was completely without need, she was home now, she was her original true self, no worries, no questions to answer and no concerns. The universe was one with her and she with it, and only a sense of beauty, love and light existed. It was her final truth. She was brought here by someone she did not know, but followed with grace, trust, love and respect. She believed in her true self again. She believed that no matter what happened all was as it should be and for her trust and belief in Self she was now returned to infinite calm, joy and love.