The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [43]
THE GREAT COMMISSIONING
After three hours of tough hiking, we made it to the first paved road. Earlier, we had waited a long time for Coleman, thinking he might try to get across to where we were. We even thought about going back to look for him in case he was hurt, but we found our way blocked by a host of police cars and Forest Service jeeps racing in a cloud of dust toward the mountain. We were all tired and shaken except for Wil, who was buoyant about what had happened.
“You know,” he said, at one point, “all that happened was showing us exactly what we needed to see. I haven’t seen a group of people spontaneously open up to an experience like that ever. The Document says we can’t handle violent ideologies alone, that we need to have a Breakthrough and find our Protection, and that’s exactly what happened.”
I nodded, too fatigued to comment.
“There will be plenty of time to rest in Jerome,” he added. “And I have a feeling Coleman is okay. We’ll find him.”
Jerome, I knew, was an old mining town west of Sedona, now favored by artists.
“Why there?” I asked.
He gave me a smile. “That’s where the Hopis are waiting for us.”
Without talking any more, we caught a ride with a rancher to the nearest pay phone where Wil called Wolf, and within about twenty minutes, he arrived in the same Mercedes. As we all piled in, he caught my eye and grinned at my dirty clothes.
“Have any visions?” he asked, snickering.
I nodded, then collapsed into the backseat. Wolf took us up to the hilly mining town and then past it about a mile to a small homestead. The house was adobe, covered by a new tin roof with solar panels built in. Across from it was a pole barn and corral, holding three well-groomed horses. A flock of chickens scattered as we drove up.
We were greeted by two other Native Americans, an older woman of about eighty and a teenage boy who looked fifteen. They quickly served us a huge meal of corn fritters, chicken, and guacamole with onions. In an hour we had showered, eaten, and sleepily erected our tents, barely saying anything. By sunset we had all turned in.
I slept without dreaming and didn’t awaken until a ray of sunlight shone through the flap of the tent and hit my face. A chorus of birds sang in the small cottonwoods over my head. As I pulled on my boots and crawled out, I saw a fire and sat down beside it. For the first time, I noticed that the landscape sloped away from the house to an acre-size pond bordered by another very large cottonwood. Several crows cawed from a rocky area beyond.
Looking out at the landscape, I felt as though the past several days had been a dream, and I was back to my old self. I deeply needed the cup of coffee the young boy handed to me.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Tommy,” he said in perfect English.
I nodded toward the older woman who was standing nearby. “Is she your grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Grandmother.”
“That’s her only name?”
He nodded.
Just then she called to him and he ran over to her and hung on to her neck, beaming back at me proudly.
I sweetened my coffee with some honey from a jar sitting in a basket near the fire and then sipped it slowly, not wanting to think about our experiences. I knew there would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, I wanted only to sit and appreciate the simple beauty of the place and feel the normalcy for a while. A crow suddenly flew over the corral and landed on a post nearby to stare at me. I shook my head and looked away.
“Up already?” Rachel abruptly asked from behind me. The timbre of her voice was slightly different from when we were on the mountain.
“Yeah,” I responded, standing up. When our eyes met, I blushed for some reason and avoided her eyes again, as if we had just had a one-night stand or something.
She sat down on a burlap cushion near the fire and the boy served her coffee as well. Reaching into her sweater pocket, Rachel pulled out a dollar bill, which he at first refused to take, glancing at his grandmother. Rachel insisted and he smiled widely and stuffed it into his jeans.