Chapter 1: Jack Thought It Was Laughter
Jack thought it was laughter. The wind blew so hard it actually forced his soul outside where his body would follow. It was at the clearing by the creek where he first saw it. It looked like blood as the wind laughed at the absence of his reflection in the snow. He didn’t know how to feel and for the first time in this most familiar place, he was really lost. Fear blanketed the trees and he was alone inside himself. He was now forced to deal with the result of years of living with only one eye open. He had blinded himself to something he had always denied and was confined to a place where men often become the victims of their greatest undoing.
There were no bear or wolf signs to match the lingering bad intent that was now spread all over the trail. He looked around and the colors called out to him but there was no rainbow only a prism trapping his unborn redemption inside a false red image. He moved forward slowly unsure of his direction but unable to do anything else.
Fighting this enemy would be much harder now, as fear burrowed deeper and deeper inside. The harder he fought, the harder the fight became. Inside himself, he could feel the object of his intended destruction growing stronger. In the distance a lone wolf howled — at least it sounded like a wolf. Its cry loomed high above as a mocking echo to his silence calling him in its direction as it then changed into something Jack had never heard before.
Why do men have to go on journeys such as this Jack wondered? All he saw was darkness as the tunnel bored ever deeply inside him forcing him through the whiteout to the uncertainty beyond. He wasn’t sure of anything as it howled again encircling him with its cry in the darkness. It was imploring him in his darkest places to finally do something. The far off cry was daring him to finally stop this killer, the one who was hunting in the corners of his affirmation, slaying with its fury all his hopes and dreams.
Suddenly It Stopped
If it was an animal, it had left no tracks to where the wind had been laughing in the dark. It was laughing at a joke Jack still had not heard while creating another memory of something he still had not become. Do men only hunt for something that in the end makes them less of themselves?
Jack grabbed his quiver and bow, secured his pack, and continued North up the trail.
The Red Stains In The Moonlight Beckoning Him To Follow
Chapter 2: Jack Crouched In The Darkness
Jack crouched in the darkness. The tracks looked almost human, but the only heartbeat he could hear was the one now beating inside his own chest. He’d been following these tracks for the last thirteen hours. The blood trail had now stopped, but the animal creating it hadn’t. Jack estimated the loss of blood at over four pints.
What mammal could continue in this cold after losing so much blood? Jack crested the next hill and saw something moving in the thicket seventy-five yards ahead. Instinctively, he took an arrow from his quiver and laid it loosely inside his bow. Would this finally be the moment that he would blow away the myth about the Hairy Man? Would this be the time that Jack would finally come face to face with his own manhood or would it just be a turkey or a deer hiding behind the thicket now less than thirty yards ahead?
Jack now switched from tracking to stalking mode. He lowered his body position at least two feet and tried to regulate his breathing. The movement inside the bushes had stopped, but the tracks leading to them were fresher than ever. It had snowed during the night and the tracks a mile or so back were rounded and contoured around their edges. These tracks were sharp and defined with loose snow falling down their sides as if freshly made.
The bushes moved again, and it was just then that Jack noticed it. The top of his bowstring had come undone and slid six or seven inches down from the top of the bow. Panic started to set in as Jack searched for a patch of hard snow to brace the bow against to reset the string. From the corner of his eye he now saw it. A large dark figure was stooped and hunched down in the shadows to the left of the thicket as if positioning itself and getting ready to strike.
Jack pushed and pushed on the bow trying to get it to bend. Every time he did, the bottom of the bow would slip on the wet snow and ice and the string would once again slide back down and go lax in his hand. Again and again he tried always with the same result. There was a tree just twenty feet to his right. The hard bark surface would give Jack the pressure he needed to bend the bow and force the string back up inside the notch.
The only problem with this new strategy is that Jack would have to turn his back on the thicket bush. If he were to survive this encounter, he would have to rely on just sounds, feeling, and instinct, as his vision was now turned away from the threat up ahead. Just as the bowstring snapped into place, Jack felt something large, very large, collide at high speed with his left shoulder. In a daze he was spun around and thrown face down in the snow and knocked momentarily unconscious.
When his head finally cleared, he saw the same tracks that he had been following all morning on both sides of his fallen body. They were now heading straight back in the direction from which they had come. Blood no longer accompanied these tracks, and Jack had to face the fact that maybe, just maybe, what he had been following all day would now be hunting him.
… And That There May Be More Than Just One
Chapter 3: Back Down The Trail
When Jack was able to once again walk, he headed off in the direction of the southbound tracks. He went no more than two miles down the trail when he saw a large deadfall off to his right. The logs and branches were all disturbed as if something or someone had walked right over them. Jack followed cautiously. With one arrow in his mouth, and one on his bowstring, he stepped carefully over the tracks that led around back.
It was around back that he saw the blood trail resume. It had been over two hours since he had seen any blood, and this worried him for reasons he did not yet understand. Behind the deadfall, and totally hidden from the trail he had been on, was a clear set of tracks. Something or someone was traveling or being carried or dragged behind these tracks. The blood was evident in the snow, right in the middle of the wide swath it made, at intervals of every ten feet. The blood was heavier than before. The trail had turned and now headed due West up the 15 degree incline toward the tall mountains not two miles in the distance.
What kind of animal, other than human, drags away its dying or its dead? What other animal would put itself at such risk for something in such bad shape? Wolves and bears will stand and fight to the death to defend their young, but there have never been stories or tales of them carrying off their dead and wounded. Only humans do this. But the tracks he was now following were too big to have been made by any man. There was now less than twenty minutes of daylight left and soon Jack would be alone in the dark. Being in the dark, and in search of what he didn’t know and now feared, was something that was beyond his control but not beyond his haunting imagination.
One question had been lingering in his mind and bothering Jack all day since his encounter with whatever it was that ran over him and knocked him unconscious. Why had the animal only knocked him down and not then stopped and finished the job? Jack was unconscious and totally defenseless. Why was he left alone in the woods just dazed but not seriously hurt? Why was he left alive to now ask these questions?
Jack had to decide whether to continue following the blood trail or to camp for the night. He had both a visceral and foreboding feeling that he was not only tracking the animal, or animals, ahead, but that something or someone was also following him and watching his every move. Being caught out in the dark and alone at night and trapped between what were now at least two monsters was more than Jack could stand. He decided to stop and wait two hours and watch and listen before going any further.
With loaded bow in hand, Jack started to climb a seventy-foot -high Douglas Fir that sat about ten yards off the trail. The tree offered both easy climbing and good cover once Jack was fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. He had not eaten in over twenty-four hours and now that he had stopped, his ravenous hunger started to set in. He had been eating snow all day to maintain hydration, but there was no visible food source that Jack could see in the snow. The only food he had brought with him was in the pack that was knocked from his back when the animal charged. It was nowhere to be found when Jack regained consciousness. The animal must have carried it off as it headed South and back down the trail.
The wind blew through the lowlands as it headed toward the mountains and carried with it Jack’s fear — although he knew he couldn’t turn back. Turning back was now for lesser men, one’s that would then lead lesser lives, separated once again from themselves. Before the two hours had passed, Jack again heard what he was not able to see. At least two large animals passed below him on the trail and not fifty feet from where he sat high in the tree. They were also headed West straight for the mountains that were barely visible in the quarter moon’s light. Jack could tell there were two because he could discern the differences in their breathing. In the deafening silence, their breaths were first high and then muffled then high and then muffled again. They made no other sounds, passed quickly, and were then gone. Jack decided to spend the rest of the night perched and hidden high up in the tree.
Abandoning all attempts at denial, Jack now reasoned that it was possible he had at least three and possibly four of these monsters headed in the direction that he was committed to follow. He wondered again … Had they seen, smelled, heard, or felt him up in the tree as they passed closely and quietly below? Did they know he was there and have no fear of him at all. Had their understanding ******* his in what had just happened? Jack felt a strong Deja-vu overtake the prescience of the moment and a drive stronger than ever from inside him told him that he had to go on. He felt he was being lead but by who and for what purpose he did not know.
Daylight finally broke, and Jack dropped to the ground and headed slowly West following the now wider trail as it climbed higher into the trees. There were now large tracks on top of other large tracks but one thing had not changed. Massive amounts of blood were everywhere and the blood was still wet. It took Jack until late afternoon, with dusk setting in, to climb the now steep trail to the mountain’s base.
Just beyond the tree line and in a secluded depression of the mountain to the northwest, the tracks ended. Hidden in the recess of the mountain’s crease appeared to be the entrance to a large cavern or cave. Jack walked to within a hundred yards of the cave’s entrance, crouched down, and watched for any movement or noise that might be heard. In thirty minutes, no sound or motion came from the entrance. The only thing out of the ordinary at all was the now almost totally red trail — created by the blood leading inside the cave.
Now was the real moment of decision or indecision. Now was the moment that all Jack’s life had been preparing for. Now was the time between myth and reality where the price of the discovery could be the discoverer himself. Now, it was Jack’s moment.
It Was His Time
With one life-affirming step, Jack moved towards the cave realizing that no matter what, he could not turn back. He dropped to one knee as he stepped inside the cave trying again to control his breathing as his heart tried to beat through his chest. With just small rays of moonlight coming over his shoulder from the east to guide him, Jack now crawled into the darkness his bow still in hand. He traveled not more than fifteen feet when he felt a sharp object underneath his right knee. As he looked down and let his eyes slowly adjust to the very dim light, he saw that someone or something had made a circle out of rocks about twenty-four inches in diameter — a cooking circle. He put his hand in the center but the ashes were no longer warm.
With his left knee he stepped on something hard and flat. When he reached down to pick it up he saw it was a club or a crude hammer. It had a rock attached to a shortened tree branch with vines and some mud. It was a rudimentary tool or weapon, and whoever or whatever had made it was not a bear or a wolf or anything Jack had encountered in the wild up until now.
As he continued forward his head bumped into something hard. He reached up into the darkness and realized he could now stand up, and as he did, he felt an enormous stone structure in front of him. As he felt in the dark, he could tell it was a giant boulder blocking his way over six feet wide and at least eight feet tall. Something or someone had dragged, pushed, or pulled the boulder in front of the narrowing passageway blocking further entrance to anyone who might follow. Was this done by those on the other side of this huge rock or by someone or something that was still hiding on this side? Jack pushed and pulled and shoved with all his might, but no matter what angle he chose or how hard he tried, the boulder would not move.
He could sit there and wait, but wait for what? Surely Jack thought: “Those creatures must have another entrance or exit available to them. What if they did the same thing to the cave’s outer opening?” Jack would then be trapped inside a prisoner of no known reality and unable to finish the journey that his life had set him upon. He now questioned what chance he would have had with his one small bow against creatures so endowed. He realized then that he hadn’t questioned before because the question didn’t exist. With just his bow, hunting knife, or only his bare hands, it made no difference. Jack’s spirit was powering this hunt, and in its completion, his soul would hang forever as a trophy he could truly own.
It was at this moment that Jack’s epiphany happened. What chance would he want to have against these creatures? They had outran, outwitted, outmaneuvered, and outthought Jack every step of the way. Why should he think any further pursuit would be different? With a silent prayer he backed away from the boulder with a reverence only known by those no longer in fear of death. As he walked back through the entrance of the cave and into the moonlight he stopped. He removed the arrow from the bowstring, and as he did, he heard a primordial cry calling out from the wilderness. In his thirty-seven years in the back woods he had never heard such a sound before.
And It Was Calling His Name …
Jack had counted coup on his greatest adversary, and his spirit was now free. He realized that he had finally been absorbed into the great mystery. The one that must stay the way it was — the day before — and the day before that. It was a new sense of himself that Jack would carry with him to the grave and beyond. In failing to confront the Hairy Man, Jack found himself while alone inside that dark cave surrounded by his fear and passion for something more. As he headed back down the mountain, he realized for the first time that it was not about what could be killed in the night but about what was promised with the dawn of a new rebirth … Jack never hunted again.
The Wild Man Calls From Deep Inside Where Only The Brave Can Hear
Epilogue:
Is the Wild Man only in the thickets and caves or now accepted inside your heart? What did that boulder really have locked behind it? Who really had the power to make it move? Is it a boulder we put in front of ourselves feigning entry to who we really are? These questions and more puzzled and bothered Jack as he stood alone in the dark.
Who does the Wild Man cry out to and from how far away?
How often have we heard his unanswered screams that we immediately translate into something of our own lesser choosing and something we more than anything want to control. The Wild Man is the connection to our future, present, and past. Laying dormant in our denial, he stalks the hidden trails of our hopes and dreams, leaving blood for us to follow on the one’s that we are most afraid to walk.
Shedding his blood for the misguided, he suffers in our attempt to pretend he isn’t there. The only part of us that was, is, and always will be, is that which he carries inside. He dies because it is something he cannot keep. He lives only by giving us back to ourselves usually at our greatest moments of fear and indecision. He hides away on a dark mountaintop waiting for us to walk the trail of our own darkness, freeing us during our greatest moments of doubt, then allowing us to turn around and walk back into the light.
Who was it really that was being dragged up that mountain bleeding — and dying of unrecognition?
What Jack had always believed in was the source of his fear. Tonight, he was at the crossroads of his destiny and all creation. The choice on this night to not believe would have in its undoing — left nothing of Jack.
Before, in always choosing between what to believe and not who, or who to believe and not what, Jack lived his life in the dichotomy of a false existence. Tonight, that dividing line was erased.
The Wild Man lives inside us all! In exposing the lie that more protection offers us safety, Jack finally found himself. No longer doomed to search endlessly through the deep snow, he was free to marvel in the connection of all that surrounded him.
I wish the same for you!
Recognize and release the Wild Man you hide inside. Refasten the eternal connection between what you fear and who you were meant to be.
Kurt Philip Behm
July 15th, 2010