The rhythmic thrumming of the rain on the tin roof had put Brio Thomas into a daze. It was hypnotic and even borderline paralyzing. He didn’t know how long he had been on the sofa at this point. He was in one of those in between stages of laying on his back and sitting down in an unglamorous posture that definitely didn’t exude the gentlemanly side of him. His mother would have told him to “sit up straight before your back becomes crooked!”. He scoffed to himself at his own mind’s fantasies of actually possessing a gentlemanly side and lumbered his eyes behind his eyelids.
He had almost picked out a rhythm within the droplets as they pitter-pattered above his head. It was almost as if listening between the cacophony of a heavy downpour he could pick out the beat to a tune that seemed familiar, but at the same time exotic. It could have been simultaneously Persian and Celtic. These were the thoughts that were keeping him in a lazy trance on this rainy evening and why he hadn’t moved in long enough for his coffee to get cold.
It wasn’t as if he had any big plans. He never had any big plans for any given night. Work, sleep, rinse, repeat. There are worse things that he could be complaining about of course. But then death by monotony wasn’t exactly appealing either. He found that his nervous tic had returned as he was tapping his foot along to the phantom rhythm that was now in his head, and expressing itself through a muscular twitch. He made a conscious effort to stop doing that before he became an annoyance to himself.
Groaning, he sat himself upright in the chair and looked across the darkened room. A stuttering flash of lightning became a temporary part of the decor through the curtained window followed by a bellowing grumble from a far off cloud. It sounded like the thunder was complaining about being called into action. The flashing reminded him of the rapid succession of camera flashes when someone important ambled fancily in front of a crowd at some high class event. He definitely wasn’t important, and he definitely wasn’t fancy. This thought crossed his mind as he looked down at his still worn leather boots that he hadn’t bothered to take off when he came through the back door earlier. Still dusty from the day’s walking, he had managed to mark his trail through the Bordeaux colored carpet that he hated. It was like a treasure map to the most disappointing treasure at the end in the form of a lounging man with a half tucked shirt and dirty boots.
His stomach grumbled and he remembered that there was a cold half eaten pizza in the refrigerator that he had a sudden and incessant need to consume. Ambling past the cold coffee laden end table, he made his way to his quaint kitchen. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had actually cooked a meal here, and that realization caused a pang of regret deep within him. He so loved to cook in another life. “Perhaps” he thought to himself. As if it would help him self motivate toward a home cooked meal. But not tonight. Tonight there was cold refrigerator pizza.
Unceremoniously he withdrew the greasy pizza box from the bowels of the humming Westinghouse and began eating his dinner still standing in the middle of the kitchen, dusty boots and all. It didn’t matter really, he just wanted to ease the grumbling in his stomach and mark off “dinner” from his basic and quite lazy mental to-do list. Done.
He finally kicked off his boots and carried them to the linoleum that acted as a mud room at the foot of his entry way. He dropped them with a clatter causing a new puff of dust to evacuate the weathered cowhide and likely make a new home on top of a shelf or television somewhere within the house. Turning back into the room, he noticed that the rain music had ceased and it was eerily quiet except for the hum of the fridge coming from the kitchen in the distance.
That’s when he noticed that he was tapping his foot again. And somehow there was still a rhythm playing softly behind the cover of the other ambient house noises. He strained his ears against the quiet and heard all of the typical noises of a household that we have learned to tune out. The hum of the refrigerator of course, the crunch of the ice maker. He heard the annoying drip of the faucet dribbling into the sink in the bathroom down the hall. He has been meaning to fix that. But no, that wasn’t it. There was a faint pulsating mimicking the beat of the rhythm that he had almost convinced himself that he had invented into existence a few moments before on the sofa as the rain poured down.
His stomach growled contesting the cold pizza that he had barely tasted earlier and the rhythm remained somewhere in the background of everything else. Straining toward the sounds of the house was beginning to annoy him. But yet, there was something…pleasing about it. It was a lullaby of reverberations, echoing into the space of his head. Regardless he felt the need to escape it. He had left the mail outside when he came home earlier in a moment of mental neglect, and now that the rain had stopped, he decided that now was as good of a time as any to go and retrieve it. He slipped his dusty boots back onto his feet and opened the back door. The bullfrogs song hit him squarely in the chest as soon as the door was opened. Normally he tuned them out with some mindless television show to lull him into a state of sleep on a carbohydrate induced intentional evening coma.
Something tonight was off. It wasn’t the croaking frogs, though they were truly in full song this evening, but no it was something different. Behind the screech of the tree frogs and toads, he could hear a rhythmic chanting. The bullfrogs were there croaking, and it almost seemed like…No it couldn’t be that. For a moment he thought they were singing in chorus with established parts and harmonies. He thought that he was losing his mind. But as he stood there on the back stoop of the house, finding himself standing absolutely still, he hadn’t realized that he was holding his breath until that very moment. It was there. There was a symphony of frogs developing in the darkness of the damp evening. Ebbs and flows of harmonizing tones using the instrument of a frog’s throat were surrounding him. As he found himself enveloped by the sound he started noticing strange subtleties beneath the easily discerned sounds. Drops of rain leftover from the storm found their way from the eaves of his house into puddles that matched the rhythm of the frog song. The crickets chirps in the distance harmonized perfectly with those of the other present sounds. Occasionally a nightingale cooed her accompaniment to the melody that he was not only hearing, but somehow feeling.
Brio wasn’t an introspective man. In fact he was decidedly happy to get lost in a distracted state so that he didn’t have to think too much about what was going on around him. He figured that the reason he drove a delivery truck for a living was simply because there were a lot of hours spent doing nothing but daydreaming while on the road. On this moment though, he felt the goosebumps forming on his arms. Raising his forearm to eye level and looking at the now moonlit night after the clouds were parted he could clearly see the bumps raised from the surface of his skin. The fine hairs on his arm were standing at attention and picked up the glow from the moon. There, clearly, he could see that those luminescent hairs were, for lack of a better term, dancing. They were vibrating to the developing melody around him.
He started walking down the driveway to the end of the lane. Something was definitely amiss. As he walked the same short path toward the mailbox that he had walked thousands of times after he had forgotten to retrieve the day’s post, the cedar trees that grew along the drive were there, but they weren’t as he remembered. They stood at attention, branches lifted toward the sky in an act of silent reverie. The moonlight, as it did on the hair upon his arms, was lighting up the edges of the branches’ needles giving them a near bioluminescence. The drive itself wasn’t what he expected either. The normal gravel that would crunch under his boots as he walked along its surface was gone. In its place there was a carpet of budding wildflowers. He saw tiny clover flowers, dandelions, and lavender.
Brio inhaled deeply realizing he was still holding his breath as if he was trying to not disturb a creature in slumber. The smell of petrichor, lavender, and rosemary filled his nostrils. They were carried by the foundational scent of raw cedar. It reminded him of the herb section at Jennings’ Grocery but even more stark and exotic and beautiful. This deluge of sensory stimulation sent a chill down his spine. It wasn’t fear, but amazement.
He stopped in the middle of the driveway in bloom. Kneeling down because he had the sudden and overwhelming urge of steadying himself, he put his hand and a knee into the lush surface. At that moment, the glow from the moon increased starkly. It was if it had been on a dimmer switch and someone turned the voltage up to “high”. He closed his eyes against the unexpected light and that’s when he felt it. The song. The rhythm behind nature’s synchronous beat, he could feel it. It started at his fingertips that were upon the verdant surface of the ground and immediately reverberated into his chest. It was like a second heartbeat. Not unpleasant, but foreign. It wasn’t enough cause for alarm to make him move however, as at the same time the internal rhythm had made itself known, a warmth was passing over him. It was the same feeling of taking a mouthful of an expensive whiskey radiating from the inside out.
Eyes still closed he was imagining himself entwined within a great web the color of moonlight. Each tendril he followed led to another and another, and within that same web he could clearly see the trees and the forest and the animals that resided within them. Lakes and rivers, oceans and caverns all spanning the great web. The warmth was increasing as was the brightness outside of his eyelids. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed and dizzy. Maybe he should lie down for a moment.
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When Brio awakened he felt like he had slept a thousand sleeps. He was lying on his stomach and he felt something tickling his cheek. As he tried to raise his arm, there was a resistance, though not a forceful one. It felt like he was was stuck to the grassy surface that he was laying on like a piece of hook and loop Velcro on a child’s shoe. He noticed tiny tendrils of roots dangling from his arm that were easily brushed away. Looking where his arm had been previously placed, he watched as the tiny roots receded lazily back into the grass. Still feeling the tickle on his cheek, he reflexively grabbed at his face thinking that something was crawling on him. He pulled his clenched hand away from his face clenching a dandelion. Looking beyond the flower in his hand, he could see nothing but green and a blue sky above.
He was acutely aware of something that he never paid attention to before. He could not only hear, but feel his heartbeat. That same rhythm was there, the one from before. He didn’t realize it until now, but the song from the rain, from the frogs, the crickets and the droplets among the puddles was what he was hearing now, except it was emanating from his chest. The tell-tale lub-dub of a heartbeat.
He reluctantly rolled to his back looking into a carpet of blue overhead. Faint whisps of white clouds lazily drifted across cerulean sky. A red-tailed hawk floated from one edge of his periphery to the other silently. His eyes were beginning to focus. Using his arms to prop him up he began trying to take in his surroundings.
Expecting to be lying in the middle of his now green-covered driveway which is the last thing he could remember, his confusion was accentuated as soon as what he saw began to process within his brain. This looked familiar. In the distance he could see Bonnie’s Hill. he’d recognize it anywhere. It was named after Bonnie Carter who was said to be the daughter of Hedrick County’s founder Malachi. He could see it from his front porch in the daylight. This was the same angle but there was no porch, only lush greenery. There was no Kerry Lane where he drove to and from work every day. There was no Mrs. Langley’s house next door where it should have stood. The power lines were missing, the road was missing, everything was gone aside from Bonnie’s Hill itself. It always made him think it had looked like someone had taken a bite out of the top of Bonnie’s hill. It was shaped like an apple with a nearly symmetrical piece missing from the western slope. That’s how he knew that it was the hill he was used to seeing every day that until this moment had mostly faded into the background of his day to day life due to how familiar it was.
Today, though, it was just green and covered with trees. Poplars, cedars, and loblolly pines were there, but the cedar dominated. It never lost its hues of green even in midwinter. This time of year they were all green and lush as they climbed the face of Bonnie’s Hill. The trees continued down the slope into the valley that should contain everything familiar. From Lawley’s restaurant to The Blue Note Diner. Hendrick Elementary, Middle, and High School. His entire life, well everything that mattered had happened in that valley.
Suddenly as he was beginning to realize that he wasn’t dreaming, something that he was desperately trying to convince himself of since he had awakened. A carpenter bee hummed near his head and he felt the tiny breeze from its wings. He carefully stood up, making sure that his feet were firmly planted before fully extending his frame. He hasn’t forgotten the dizziness from last night. There was nothing but the natural world surrounding him now. The visage was what he recognized as home, but askew. Totally devoid of anything that would have indicated that humans had ever been here. Lub-dub. He could feel his heartbeat reverberating, but he wasn’t out of breath. Listening to that sound for a few moments had a calming effect for him. he was thankful for that, because in his state of confusion anything that helped ground him and keep him calm was a godsend. Strangely, that internal warmth from the night before was still brewing inside of him. From his throat to his toes he was awash with it. Like a belly full of alcohol without the associated drunk. He was somehow not frightened, though on any other day in his life this entire experience would have been too much for him to handle. He paused between breaths for a moment to the underlying sound of his heartbeat. The warmth on his skin from the sunlight that was still creeping over the horizon from the East, and the internal warmth gave him the sensation that he could be glowing.
He closed his eyes and there it was again. The melody. It was in the bird-song and the breeze, and now his heartbeat was in synchrony with it. It was a strange sensation to hear music when it wasn’t music. The instruments were all around him, and he was contributing his accompaniment with his pulse. It was as if the rain brought in a song the night before and washed everything else away. It seemed as if the world around him was cheerily celebrating all around him. The goosebumps made their presence known again. Even without looking he knew that the vellus on his arms was dancing along. That’s when the march began. It wasn’t even a conscious decision and he couldn’t help it. Something told him to move, and without question, he did. One foot in front of the other he walked along what would’ve been Kerry Lane this time yesterday as he was driving to work. Only now it wasn’t Kerry Lane, it was a lush field of dandelions and soft grasses. Seeing the direction and the position of the sunrise, he knew what time of day it was. It was an old familiar scene for him but at the same time alien. The dew upon the ground seemed to be giving him a sense of surety and purpose. Travel. He was stepping in cadence with the world around him and that internal warmth immediately heightened yet again.
He could hear the rustling natural cymbals of a body of running water in the distance that he had never noticed before. Before today that is. He couldn’t think of any creeks or rivers that might have been along the road that he had lived on for 14 years now, but it was the unmistakable sound of natural running water. With the water song in the background everything felt different, and everything smelled clean. He was acutely aware of the wildlife surrounding him. Occasionally he would see a chipmunk dart toward a tree trunk. Butterflies hovered on the breeze along the valley floor. He even caught a glimpse of a whitetail deer as it fled toward the tree line. He hadn’t seen one of those around in years.
That’s when it caught his eye. Looking back toward Bonnie’s Hill as he watched the deer running away, he caught a hint of a glimmer out of the corner of his eye. It was reminiscent of something metallic catching the sunlight off in the distance like a signal mirror. It was far away, almost at the base of the hill, but something inside of him beckoned him toward it. It was as much necessity as it was curiosity, so he started heading in that direction without much further thought.
As he reached the tree line and found himself wandering into and through the forest, it occurred to him that there wasn’t any underbrush. Not only that but the trees were massive. He couldn’t ever remember seeing trees like this except for a few camping trips in the old growth forests in North Carolina in a past life. It was overwhelmingly beautiful. The rhythm was still there underneath it all. It tingled down to his bones. And he only noticed because his pace had increased and the rhythm itself seemed to accelerate its tempo if only slightly. He felt his pulse quicken in situ. It was a calm excitement brewing in his bloodstream, though he had no words to describe it.
He left the tree line on the opposite side of where he entered the forest some time later. Could have been a mile and could have been ten, the sun was his only gauge of the time. Considering that it had risen higher into the sky, and he could feel the sweat beginning to bead from his skin, it had to have been several hours. He noticed the droplets that were forming as they vibrated down his skin in tempo with the underlying rhythm of not only his heartbeat but of the natural world unfolding all around him. His footsteps were still falling in lock step. He hadn’t noticed how much time had passed as he was happily within the trance of the moment.
Hearing the birdsong flittering from the treetops, he was now staring into a river valley. It meandered itself around the jutted small hills and rocks that were sprinkled throughout the tufts of sage grass and clover. He stopped for a moment to listen to the gurgle of the water as it tumbled perpetually over the rocks on the riverbed. The landscape beyond the river gradually began an incline as the path was littered with cedars. The cedars were thick and prevented him to see what was beyond. The river reminded him of the murmur of an approving crowd brimming with excitement for an upcoming show that they had been anticipating. His heartbeat was still quickened from his brisk march through the trees.
Walking to the edge of the river, he was standing below a lazy waterfall and could see the source of the soothing sounds he heard from the forest’s edge. The water tumbled happily down the face of time smoothed boulders that jutted from a rocky hillside. Looking at them, he pondered the millennia that they had been carving this rocky path through the landscape and leaving their mark. The stones were massive but weathered, and he could clearly see the erosion in the bedrock where the river danced down the face of the stone. Below the falls, the water was serene and shallow. Looking into the clear water, he could see small minnows dancing among the glimmering surface of the waterfall churned pool. Darting in synchrony and snatching small flying insects from the surface on occasion, the fish were performing their own choreography.
The bottom of the riverbed was strewn with smoothed pebbles and was only calf deep. He removed his dusty boots and rolled up the legs of his faded denim jeans. Standing barefoot on the riverbank, the grass and the dirt were sun warmed and invigorating. It felt as if the earth was vibrating. Under that pleasant quiver he could feel the same rhythmic pulsation as if it were a whisper. He could still feel his own pulse as it ticked along in synchrony.
He dipped his feet into the water’s edge. The cold water was nearly sensory overload as it washed over the tops of his feet. His entire body tingled from the sensation, and for several heartbeats he just stood there. Inhaling scents of sage and lavender, the cedar branches were undulating in a cool valley breeze. As their branches waved back and forth, they were causing a flickering strobe of sunlight as it was blocked and then unblocked in a slow rhythm down into the valley. Closing his eyes it created a light show against his eyelids and he was able to count one strobe for every 4 heartbeats. All of these sensations playing in harmony with one another beckoned him onward to Bonnie’s Hill. He had to be getting close to the base now.
Strolling across the riverbed without incident, just as he was exiting the cool waters, he couldn’t help but picking up one of the smoothed stones from the shoreline. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, but the greenish hue reminded him of the color of moss. He put it in his pocket. He didn’t bother putting his shoes back on. The ground was littered with the needles of evergreen and created a carpet that was as soft as a sponge to walk on. In that moment he imagined himself a celebrity being ushered to his destination on an elegant tapestry. He was smiling as he began to ascend the incline of the cedar adorned path. The sweet scent of cedar permeated everything around him giving the air a sugary aroma. The dampness was well maintained inside of the thick canopy of trees, and in combination with the shade it created a near perfect climate for him to walk through. His breathing was increasing as the incline became a little more steep, but he didn’t mind, as each breath was another opportunity to take in the complex bouquet of his surroundings.
The trees began to thin and he could see that he was now within a few hundred yards from the base of Bonnie’s Hill. He recognized Turtle Rock immediately. The high school kids had spent decades adorning its face with spray paint and graffiti, making their nicknames or crude gestures the focus of attention. It was called Turtle Rock because, well, it was shaped like a turtle shell. Made of granite, the water had over time created crevasses in its surface that looked like the ridges of a reptile’s carapace. Today it stood pristine and blank, devoid of any defacements as far as he could tell from this distance. It was almost white.
The surface of the stone was sparkling. It had to be what had caught his eye so many miles ago from the grave of Kerry Lane. He decided that since he had come this far, he had to get closer to investigate. Reluctantly he left the shade of the tall cedars and wandered up through the clover field toward the stone monolith.
The closer he got, he realized that Turtle Rock was more magnificent than he could ever remember seeing it. The surface was littered with quartz crystals that reflected the sunlight when he moved his head creating a glimmer. It was like looking at the surface of a lake at midday. He bobbed his head to and fro watching this natural sparkle. That’s when it caught his eye. The red contrasted with the white and glimmering stone, sticking out sorely upon the surface of the otherwise pristine rock. The paint wasn’t fresh, it was weather-worn and faded, but still easily legible. The writing in red spray paint read: “Brio was here”.
No other name but his could be found. The “was” in the spray painted statement being past tense felt wrong. Since this place, and the way that he felt now, felt alien and unknown to him. Though the scenery was familiar, its presentation was so much more that what he could remember. No longer from this vantage point could he hear the traffic noise from Highway 9 below him. No longer was the pervasive trail of steam littering the sky in the west coming from the steel plant. The smell was in the air was sweet and ripe and nature born rather than stale an tinged with sulfur. He had learned to tune out the unnatural aroma of his hometown after so many years occupying it, but now that it was missing, he realized how abrasive it had been. From noise to smell, this place was fresh and devoid of the influence of people. Except for the graffiti indicating his presence so long ago.
His heartbeat was still bounding in his chest, audibly and physically it was an underline to everything else that was going on. The birds sang along with it, and the breeze seemed to blow in puffs in time with the song as well. It was overwhelming. Grass under foot, and the vibrations there still pressing, he felt the need to sit down. He had been walking for miles, and although until this moment his activities had felt carefree and merry, he was suddenly filled with a remorse. He didn’t understand whether it was the realization that everything familiar was nearly gone, or if it was that he was realizing that everything familiar was all along foreign. Whatever the case may be, was was feeling dizzy and needed to still himself. Dusk was approaching. He had been walking all day.
Placing a hand on the still sun warmed surface of Turtle Rock to steady himself, he unconsciously decided that here was as good of a place as any to rest. He sat down with a thud and leaned back against the stone. Closing his eyes, there were many things going through his mind. If you were looking at him from a distance you could see that he was right under his old haphazard signature on the rock. It was like a billboard over his head as he hung his head downward in exhaustion. “Brio was here” just above Brio himself seated on the ground beneath it. If he could have seen the visual from a distance, he would’ve likely laughed.
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When he woke up it was dark. Night had fallen and taken over everything around him. His dreams were strange and he felt like he hadn’t rested, or maybe the feeling was one of too much rest. His dreams had indeed been restless though. He felt as if he was at the top of a tree, waving in the breeze. It was unnerving and thrilling all at the same time.
He slowly opened his eyes and found that there was a chill on his skin causing him to shudder. No, it was more than that. He felt numb, but he tingling all at the same time, especially in his legs. Trying to draw his knees closer to him, he found that he couldn’t. He felt as if he was stuck to the ground. Looking toward his legs, he could see the culprit of the sensation. Whips and tangles of roots and foliage had entwined themselves around his feet and legs binding him to the ground, albeit gently. There were small white flowers blossoming from the matted vines. They weren’t so much tight but they seemed to be part of him. It was like they were growing into him, or maybe growing from him. He could feel the pulsations of his heartbeat in his legs and from outside of them at the same time. A nightingale cooed in the background in tempo with the pulsations. The air again smelled of cedar and lavender.
Struggling for a few brief moments he was able to free himself from the roots and vines and they seemed to recede back into the earth around where his feet once were resting. Now drawing his knees to his chest, he could feel the sensation returning to his lower extremities. Peering out across the valley at the base of Turtle Rock, the fireflies had developed a light show in cadence with everything else. How could he have never noticed this harmony that seemed to permeate his surroundings before? Ever since the sing-song rain song at his house, everything had changed. Perhaps he was going crazy. Perhaps this was all a dream. How many times had he thought those very thoughts today?
The cool night air felt real enough, and the stone that he had been propped against for the past several hours was definitely there as he grazed his outstretched palm over it. Blinking his eyes in rapid succession, his present circumstances didn’t change. It had to be real. But watching the fireflies as they seemed to gather and amass into a concentrated congregation sure felt like fantasy. They were forming a line and meandering through the valley, past Turtle Rock to the left of where he was seated, and were traveling upward, ascending Bonnie’s Hill. the side effect of this was what could only be described as a lighted highway toward an unknown destination. The glow was eerily similar to the one that he experienced the night of the storm as the moon cast its post storm hue against everything around him. The path was cast in that same ghostly azure blue.
What other choice was there but to follow them? It seemed like a logical continuation of today’s absurdities. Nothing in his gut was signaling a warning to the contrary, so to his feet he arose and began following the line of luminous insects into the unknown. He had never traveled to the top of Bonnie’s Hill, but had always wondered what was in the dent in its side. The one that looked like a bite from an apple. It was a strange sight looking on from miles away and the kids in town used to joke that it must be a sleeping volcano like Mt. St. Helen’s and would erupt again one day. Being at the base of the Appalachian’s this wasn’t likely, but with the eyes of a child it was easy to imagine.
Bonnie’s Hill wasn’t a large mountain by any means, but it did tower over the rest of the town and provided a backdrop to everything that had transpired throughout his meager life. It felt fitting that he was now climbing it one step at a time at the whim of a sentient flying line of insects. The pulsations from their tiny bodies of course matched his beating heart. As he traveled upwards, the trees seemed to be folding in around him. He didn’t interpret it as malice, but merely as an attempted embrace maybe? It was as if the world was reaching out to him. The synergy in the metronome, the vines reaching for his limbs, the forest attempting to embrace him. None of it made sense, but at the same time he felt that it was all culminating into something necessary.
After ascending for what felt like hours, the ground started to level off. He didn’t feel the strain in his thighs any longer as if he was having to will himself further upward in altitude. He was indeed walking flat now. looking around him, the fireflies still led his trajectory, but they were amassing somewhere in the distance. It was creating a glow like an oversized street lamp At the dark edges of his vision ahead of him.
As he got closer to the source of the light, he could see the giant tree. It still had green branches filled with leaves and foliage emanating from a massive trunk, but the top of it had been broken and leaned on the earth at its massive base. When it was whole it would’ve been hundreds of feet tall and he imagined that it must have been what the Redwoods that he had never seen in person must have looked like. Every other tree that shared this hill was minuscule and normally sized in comparison, though larger than any he could remember in his small slice of the world. To add an accent mark to the strange visage, the fireflies were landing on the surface of the tree as they reached it. As a result, the tree was taking on an ethereal aura against the black of the night. It was as if the spirit of the tree was haunting this valley and making its presence known.
That’s when he noticed he was standing in the “crater” of Bonnie’s hill. He could see the carpet of trees extending in every direction, and the rocky crags of the bowl shaped cavity he was standing in reaching into the night. It was warm here and the wind was blocked completely as the air was still. He could smell evergreen on the breeze and the warmth in his chest increasing its radiation. He chuckled thinking of the game you played as children that caused you to get warmer or colder the closer you got to a hidden object. Maybe the tree was what he had been searching for all along. His bare feet felt the earth beneath them, and the soft forest floor was pleasant to walk upon. Before he could consciously make the decision he was walking toward the arbor colossus.
“Lub-dub” sang his heart within his chest. The illuminated tree pulsed in reply. He was magnetized to it. He was being drawn in and the tempo of his heartbeat was replying in anticipation. He was within 20 yards of the tree now and its enormity was even more breathtaking the closer that he got.
A rumble from the heavens signaled thunder, and the sharp scent of ozone and petrichor was developing in the air around him. At that moment, a streak of lightning danced across the sky high above the once whole tree. The flickers of electric light pulsated in time with the insects and his heartbeat, and the pulse of the earth at his feet. All things in tune.
Reaching the base of the trunk he reached an outstretched hand toward it. Tiny sparks of light resembling the lightning in miniature of the show above his head in the heavens began to form. It reminded him of the glowing glass orb toys that caused electricity to jump toward your fingers whenever you touched the glass surface. There was no pain, no sensation other than warmth. He pulled his hand away at first as it was startling but quickly reached to recreate the image. A comforting warmth as his hands approached contact with the ancient bark skin. When his had made contact, everything around him dissolved into light. He could feel the bark enveloping his skin and he was no longer simply touching the massive tree, but was now stepping INTO its surface. There was no resistance, only warmth. At that moment the heavens illuminated in a cacophony of strobing electricity and the thunder rumbled deep within his chest. One last flash of light against the smell of an impending rain found his nostrils before he was consumed by the tree itself.
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The valley below was beautiful. From this vantage it feels as if you could see the entire world. Indeed the vision stretched all of the way to the edges of the horizon in every direction. Beneath you tumble the rivers and run the fox in pursuit of a clever chipmunk. The clover upon the tongue of the deer tastes sweeter than any candy. Pollen collected on the tiny hairs of your legs to be taken back to the hive for Her Majesty to feed the younglings. The buzz of your wings carrying you faster still through the flowering meadows. A new life is born just as a last breath is taken all within the span of a single heartbeat. Flower petals opening toward the sun and absorbing its life upon dewy fronds. Your pollened petals provide the bees the ability to cultivate golden magic. A bear lumbers along a creek bank searching for the salmon that gives up the swim for the bear’s sustenance. The salmon had just laid its eggs and knows as instinct that its offspring will make the same journey come next spring. After the meal of fish flesh, the bear smells the honey on the breeze. His scat leaves a fertile trail through the forest in which the wildflowers bloom.
Everything has purpose. Everything is intertwined by the destiny of nature’s majesty. Everything matters and no being is too small, no creature less important. The harmony creates a song in the air that carries on for eons. The melody is carried sweetly on the breeze for generations. All is well when all is connected. Everything is connected. As the great tree atop the mountain, you see it all unfold beneath you. You feel the winds, the rains and the snow. You are a landing for the fingers of God as they flicker through the heavens from storm laden clouds. Sometimes the fingers set you ablaze with fire, but you live on again through it all. Your remnants being the future bed of growth for young ones just like you. The dance and perfect choreography of life is being performed all around you and you know that you are a part of it. Everything is connected. Everything matters.
As the thunder roils above you, another night of storms transpires. The clouds bring the waters to quench your thirsty roots, and to swell the rivers for the salmon to swim and the bears and foxes and deer to drink. The rains will feed the roots of the wildflowers and the innumerable family of flora. And the wheel turns. The pulse beneath it all, is there. The song of the earth that is shared among the many playing the background music of their lives. It all made so much sense from this height. Nothing questioned, everything understood.
From frost to snow to glaring sun and rain. Through wind and hail and the weather at its own whim. Wildfires and droughts, all playing a part through these years. And one day it will end. That end is near for you The Great Tree.
Mighty your roots have been and long have you stood. A testament of time and a monument to those with no language. You hold their stories as you have watched them play out for millennia. And now you have shared it.
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Brio had tried to convince himself that it was all a dream as he awakened on his sofa next to an empty cardboard pizza box. He had almost convinced himself that it was just a remnant of slumber, but some nagging reminders crept into his life as the day progressed onward. He couldn’t be at peace while pushing away his experiences as fantasy. First, his boots were missing. He knew that he had taken them off near the river and never put them back on. He wouldn’t have left them anywhere else as a good pair of boots were hard to come by. Second, as he was taking off his soiled denim jeans, they smelled of cedar and were stained with dirt. Not only that but inside of the front pocket was a smooth green stone. Just like the one that he had taken from the river crossing.
He never returned to work after that. Many years had gone by since then. Instead of driving his delivery truck, he told his story in hopes of helping another find the song within their chests. He became an outcast and an oddity to most but beloved to others. He was a an advocate. The greenery around his old one bedroom house on Kerry Lane was a monument to the earth in which it stood. Flowers and vegetables, trees and bushes had been carefully cultivated in a circle around his house. Every day he stood on the lawn, closed his eyes, and tapped his foot to music that it seemed only he could hear. Many people have religious experiences throughout their lives. Brio never considered what happened to him to be one of those. Instead it was just the day he began to pay attention. It was the day he heard the song, and the day that everything changed. It was the day that he found his own instrument.
Some nights when the storms were looming and the rains were pelting and soaking everything around them, Brio couldn’t be found in his home. Some people said that they had seen him wandering the river at the base of Bonnie’s Hill, always bobbing his head or tapping his foot. Others still had tried to coax him from the treetops on a windy day but he cheerily replied that he was merely taking in the view. A great many of the townsfolk dismissed him as simply being the town’s local lunatic.
Nobody was ever able to find the Great Tree in the basin on Bonnie’s Hill. And they did try. Brio had a way of making you feel like you were stepping into a magical realm with merely his words, so it wasn’t surprising how many had made the pilgrimage. What they did find, however, was a world of scientific marvels. It turns out that the night of the storm there was supposed to be a land development approval for a new subdivision that they called Cliffside Resorts. An entrepreneur had bought the land from the city in hopes to bring in more revenue. At Brio’s persistent insistence, the city had contacted several organizations to inspect the property and several endangered species that were once thought extinct had been found to occupy the space. And a new undiscovered species called the Thomas Lampyridae or “Thomas’s Firefly” was found to occupy the peak. It was larger than a normal firefly and cast a bluish glow. Apparently there was a high concentration of catena-trioxyge present due to having the perfect altitude and the lightning rod effect the granite mountain contained. To the layman, that meant that it had a higher than normal concentration of ozone and was easily lightning struck. It was in part due to the river below and the warm gulf breeze that funneled in from the south. It was a natural oddity and an atmospheric aberrancy. It was a marvel to the scientific community and people from all over came to study but not to disturb the area. It had become protected land after a while. After that declaration, it would never be developed under federal law.
You could find Brio there when a storm was nigh in the atmosphere. He always knew several days before it actually happened, and as far as anyone knew he didn’t even own a television. He was among the cedars and the rabbits, and yes the fireflies that were named after him. It had become known as Firefly Nature Preserve. Some had even said that he could be seen glowing in an iridescent blue as he ascended Bonnie’s Hill at dusk, but most dismissed that as merely being a trick of the moonlight. Fables and myths have a way of growing in a small town after all.
Many people had approached him for an interview for television or radio, or any other arena of public entertainment. Word of the newly discovered species spread quickly. He had made no secret of trying to get his story out over the last 20 years to anyone who would listen in Hendrick County. These days, though, he simply replied “just listen to the wind in your chest”. It seemed as if he had proven his point.
As I stand here at the base of Turtle Rock and look at the trail that ascends beyond its base, the stone is clean except for one inscription:
“Brio Thomas was here”