DEER CREEK-The One Taste Cafe

She clicked her shaped ruby slipper backcountry skis together three times and glided off to home, to no place like home, no place like home, into the dazzling Akanistha domain of perfect peace and plenty. The rising sun activated the bright gems on the skis sparkly finish, creating a garnet light show that contrasted with an infinity of diamond white-faceted crystals all over the blanketed ground. The laser beams triggered some sleeping DNA that awoke from its state of eclipse into mirth infused with meaning. Red and white, action and purity, were the signatures of the day. She skated uphill feeling the easy glide, the easy rhythm of leaving everything behind that was no longer of any use. She renounced all the complications in her life if only to have a glimpse of enlightenment. A cleansing, a purification of body, mind and spirit was born. The perception of barriers between this, that, those and these quickly broke down. The unified field of instantaneous interconnection said hello again with a sultry archangelic whisper. She was Rose Red in a holly berry down vest on the way to everywhere all at once. Shhhh, the skis sang psalms on snow. Shhhh, the sanctuary of serenity. Shhhhh, the swooossssh and cadence. Shhhh, the switch to sanguine sanity. Shhhh, the stillness of snowy space.

She skied into a familiar hangout. A swirling snow squall arose near enough to suddenly seek shelter under the arms of protective Engelmann elders, the medicinemen of the forest. They gathered in tall eminent groves as if in reunion at a winter warriors’ solstice sundance. The great masters were many up here and existed in the form of five elemental energies that together manifested a rainbow body of wholeness viewed as plentifully painted innumerable pixels. She found a large rock and placed a foam pad upon its cold stony outcropping, conveniently next to a blue spruce backrest. Upon the new snow she drew Tibetan symbols in dakini language in gratitude for the rare and precious existence here, the opportunity to sit and appreciate the wonders of the high altitude alpine world. Carefully drafting them with curves that matched her own, they invoked a sacred presence, as if it wasn’t already there and you hadn’t noticed. An Ah for transcendence, a Tram for equanimity, an Om for comprehension of three vast expanses, A Hum for mirror-like clarity, a Hrih for discriminating wisdom. She breathed the corresponding colors into them, swallowed them whole into her heart then breathed them out. Green, yellow, white, blue, and red. An exhalation of frosty mantras froze in mid-air and dropped as whole syllables upon the snow, forming a transcendent bas-relief. She took refuge in the possibility of release from everyday tedium and in her mind’s eye visualized obeisance to an ineffable, liberated, open life. She conceived an offering of every good thing that ever was caused by some unknown boundless source. Another different perception was spontaneously catalyzed by simply being in radiant luminosity. A drop of blood from a small cut on the thumb feel upon the snow and set the calligraphy into motion. The action of living red began its work. Hot, active, red, redder, and reddest yang balanced the cold inactive white, whiter and whitest yin of winter.

After a few minutes of adapting to the closed-in hideout, she hunkered down out of the wind and bided time ‘til the blustering passed. There are all sorts of activities at hand in the wilderness while you wait it out. Make tormas out of snow as offerings to the wild mountain deities. Carefully sculpt circular mandalas and come back in a week to your personal award-winning ice masterpiece. Make snow hearts with your name and his etched in the center. Write “true love” under it. Kiss it a few times to make it so. Go for the total yabyum visualization with you sitting in union on his lap, at one with indescribable juicy essence. Finally fix the irritating ski hardware that occasionally causes cable release. Adjust the safety straps more carefully. Decide whether to carry on up to the cabin nestled in the trees, considering the time it might take to shovel out more than just a few feet of snow to open the door, makes steps to walk down and prepare kindling for a bit of warmth in the oil drum stove, that is, if there’s fire starter there at all and the flue is in place.

She remembered to bring a fire kit with lint from the dryer, paraffin coated matches that lit on her zipper, a magnesium block, and a knife with a thick, strong tang to make large shavings that would ignite with just a few sparks formed by deliberate downward strokes on the slab. She could make Sherpa Tea with Shih Chu Heaven Grade 16 red ginseng root and time the boil at this altitude. Make a round snow table in the grove to return to later next week. Decorate the site with an irregularly toothed spruce cone arrangement. Use proper feng shui. Wonder about the Fibonacci series of the scales. Substitute spruce needles for daisy petals and pluck off white-green 4- angled spruce slivers from a hairy twig while saying, loves me, loves me not, loves me. She braided a haphazard loves-me spruce needle keepsake to put into a golden locket for the remembrance of being here now. After long gone moments into the distraction of love she considered the probability of accepting the proposal by the wilderness for marriage in this lifetime and next few. The wilderness was her match. There was no other acceptable possibility that she could think of at that moment, or even any other. She imagined peace like pure white snow. She sat silent for as long as it takes for time to go away.

Digging into the pack she removed the smallest stove in its compact triangular red plastic case, just right for a daytrip up to high altitude. White gas was chosen to prevent any flickering. She primed it well and lit it while protecting the fragile flame by positioning her back towards the wind. A little fire in the spruce grove was not completely out of the wind, but provided enough warmth. A heat exchanger surrounding the cookstove helped shorten the time to bring water to boil. Add one minute for every thousand feet above 6000’? Taking into account the decrease in atmospheric pressure water comes to a cool boil at about 194 degrees at 10,000 feet. She stirred powdered herbs from Uzbekistan, Siberia, Mongolia, and China into one Asian concoction, then added the remaining loves-me needles for local alchemical power. She added a little of this and a little of that. The rhodiola foamed up and she stirred it again with a slender stick to prevent its bubbling over. She added more Siberian ginseng, more gymnostemma, and more Reishi mushrooms to thicken it into a rich aromatic broth. It was a hardy drink, tasty, and satisfying. It would oxygenate the tissues and increase endurance as the trek moved into higher, more challenging terrain. The additional warmth was welcome.

There was no room for anything more but the precious present. The XTC of being took over like a favorite South American psychotropic vine without the nausea. Trees transferred their words aloud with whispering boughs. Transmissions were freely given in the pine language of immortal Taoist chiens and in the spruce language of ancient omniscience. They were neither spoken nor written but something you pick up intuitively by just being there and listening. The trees say, “Be still and watch with awareness.” They sway with the zephyrs like wings of awakening to nirvana. Their breath conceals hidden jewels of wonderment, a treatise on the nature of reality. Their scent is the remedy for despair. The cure is instantaneous.

She inhaled as much oxygen and resiny evergreen aromatics as possible at this great height. It induced a state of heady joy. Colors were more vivid and there were more of them than she recollected, possibly in the ultraviolet range. Our heroine reeled with love abiding in her heart, with a conjugal connectedness for all her relations in the wild, with streams, rocky ledges, and exalted peaks. She swooned from the magic of this sanctuary with it mystical messages that mesmerized the mind.

In a mere few minutes the sun flirtatiously broke through and lit up the snowy hexagonal microcrystals like prisms in a chandelier. Into the top of the pack went the outer shell, mitts, and hat. She skinned up, carefully laying the gluey strips down the centerline. She crossed the creek at The Flashes, avoiding wet snow. The little rivulet ran into the confluence of the Snake River and Peru Creek. Six years it would take one drop of this creek to make its way to the great ocean. Six years. And that was only if the water wasn’t frozen off and on for 8 months like it is up Deer Creek. Up, up, up to the steeper climbs, steadily gaining elevation, pacing with slower steps, increasing the pulse rate to maximum target zone. The breathing becomes labored and the stride more deliberate. On the right side of the trial down the creek bed the slope was iced up.

She sampled what seemed to be the first day of creation, fresh and new with falling flakes in wonderland. She remembered a first unforgettable never-ending circular kiss here and knew that if she never experienced a kiss again, the memory of this one would overpower any future kisses and probably linger beyond that. He said, “ I think this is the right place for a first kiss.” It was an eternal kiss beyond the beauty of anything one could imagine. This kiss, in the winter here above The Flashes, in their cozy snow cave, warmed her from the inside out. With that kind of memory one is never cold again. There was hope for unconditional love in this world as the gift they gave to each other was letting go again and again. It was a high-altitude attitude to give up attachment, expectations and and anticipation and dwell in kindness and compassion towards each other more and more. And with that thought, she stripped off another layer from the heat of passion blazing up from within. The thought of a harmonious relationship bore its fruit. It dissolved the biting arctic chill of the afternoon air as the sun sank behind the trees in the west. Cool, grayish blue shadows made their debut, prompting one’s attention to get down soon.

Breaking trail up a wind swept ridge with exposed rock was not the thing to do today. The snow depth increased, and when it reached just above the knee, the going grew harder. The telltale quad burn told her to descend. It was still early in the season. There was enough time tomorrow or even next week to make a longer day of it. There was no hurry, no gotta-get-it-all-in echoing around the brain. Peace was totally present. The powder trail down from the top was a silken ribbon of simple turns and she sped up as the depth decreased and turned to a packed surface. The S-shaped oscillating patterns linked moments of surrender and spacious rapture into near soaring freefall flight.

In due time, as the sun went down, her antenna picked up an earlier conversation with the mystery mechanic at the One Taste Café. Pink peaks murmured a gentle yet firm farewell. The rosy sunset kissed her peachy cheeks goodbye. She would be late, at the least. The lascivious attraction to the Wild was no match for even the company of a delicious man today, not that is wasn’t desirable in a distant sort of way she barely remembered anymore. She was tanned, blond, and disheveled and even more appetizing now, having descended from the heights with an attitude expansion in unavailability and independence. The silent sojourn was good despite the flurry of thoughts that came and went like clouds. They were non-existent now. She had become emptier and emptier and the more empty she became the better she felt, released from the world of cyclic suffering and ongoing chatter. The firmament of the mind was clear, a pure sapphire blue of galactic limitlessness. Snow. Big ocean. Wide sky. When dark set in, she would reluctantly come down. Down to town, as large as the smallest town should ever be. Down to the red pickup truck awaiting her with a good heater and dry socks. She was resurrected, renewed and ready. A sweet song wrapped itself around her like a long lost lover never known. They danced and held each other tight through the singing night.