The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [20]
Wolf laughed and then walked closer.
“Remember,” he whispered, “canyons are for purification, but mountains are for finding Vision.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but Wil was motioning for me to follow him. As Wolf drove away, we headed into the canyon. After about a mile, I moved closer to Wil and asked, “Is there a larger mountain near here?”
Wil stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. “Why do you ask?”
“Something Wolf said.”
“There’s a large wilderness called Secret Mountain a few miles north.”
He walked ahead again, then turned and added: “One aspect of Wolf you should know about—he often knows what’s going to happen.”
I had heard of Secret Mountain but knew only of its general location. One thing for sure, the wilderness it was part of was huge. I figured we would have to wait to know what Wolf had meant, and surprisingly, I was content to do so. I should have been apprehensive about our sudden flight into the wild, but the deeper we penetrated into the wilderness, the more energized I felt. And instead of the spooky feeling I had experienced the last time I was in Boynton, I was now feeling the opposite emotion—a sense of being at home somehow, and trusting that whatever might happen here was going to be beneficial.
We were now walking through an area of juniper and mesquite interspersed with huge red boulders and outcroppings. A sky of brilliant stars made the flashlights almost unnecessary.
“Why,” I asked Wil, “do the Hopis believe this place enhances purification?”
“Because of its impact. It repels anyone who isn’t ready for a breakthrough of some kind. But when you are ready, the power of this place helps you.”
“You mean energetically helps?”
“Yes. According to legend, if you go far enough in here, say at least a couple of miles, it inevitably tests your assumptions about life and inspires a reanalysis of how you forge your way in this world. Again, it makes perfect sense that we are being led into this canyon to study the Laws of Spirituality.
“All this is up for people because of the economic downturn. During the material age, we tended to think we were creating our subsistence with our knowledge and reason, the common assumption being that if you used your head and worked hard, you could prosper in life.
“But in reality, everyone knows there are intangibles at work in determining who has success. You can be equally as logical and hardworking as the next person and not do as well. There’s always been an unknown factor concerning who is fortunate and who isn’t in this life, and we’re about to figure it out.”
He stopped suddenly and gazed out toward a flat area above the trail to the right.
“Let’s go up there,” he said, “and set up camp and sleep for a little while before dawn.”
We made our way up to the location, and in just a few minutes we had both tents up and the food bagged and roped in a tree to protect it. Afterward, another question came to mind.
“So you think the missing factor is this Alignment thing?”
He nodded. “According to my Hopi friends, the Third Integration says that during a time of transition such as we’re in, when economies are faltering and people are acting crazy, we’ll all be shown a new way of getting our worldly needs met.”
Wil was already climbing into his tent.
“Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
The next morning, I was awakened by tree limbs breaking outside and Wil yelling. I pulled on my boots and looked through the tent flap. It was barely daylight, and Wil was running toward the tree where our food was tied. When I got there, I could see the limb was broken and the bag containing our provisions was missing.
“Did you see her?” Wil asked, pointing up the slope. “She was big.”
“I couldn’t see,” I responded.
We looked around until we found some large tracks.
“Strange,” I added. “I didn’t think there were many big bears around here anymore.”
Close by were several freeze-dried meals that had fallen out of the sack as the bear had dragged it away.
“We could track her,” I said, picking them up, “and try to recoup some of the food.”
Wil just looked