Walking To Damascus

Chapter 1: The Demon in the Grass

The day was hot and dusty; the desert landscape bleak and unforgiving. Hazy mirages of cascading water shimmered and swayed in dull blue and silver striations on the horizon, tantalizing but tenuous through the thick film of unreality.

Up ahead my guide Ishmael paused and turned to face me, smiling at my inability to keep pace. His robe sparkled in the sun, impossibly white against the gritty landscape. So white that it could easily fade to nothing, along with his whole countenance. The only thing that kept us tethered to the same plane of reality was his bright blue braided belt. If I could only concentrate on the belt, I could walk on his path for as long as I needed.

"Where are we going?" I asked when I caught up.

"Damascus," Ishmael said as he turned back to the rocky trail.

Ishmael looked to be late middle aged. A full white beard and shaggy white hair sprouting around the edges of his fur-lined cap. Deeply tanned and creased facial features. He carried a tall wooden shepherd's staff. A biblical prophet right out of a Hollywood movie.

"Why are we walking to Damascus?" I questioned. "Couldn't we just start at Damascus?"

"Sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination," was his reply.

We walked on and I spent my time wondering what it was I could learn by walking on a desolate desert road that wasn't even really there. And then Ishmael was gone; I had lost him.

And I was back in my own world. I was walking a secluded trail but I was alone. The weather was hot but moist here, seeping with humidity. Cabbage palms and tall scraggly pine trees crowded the trail. Oak trees dripping with Spanish moss spread out beyond in clammy meadows, dank with the odors of rotting vegetation recycling into new growth.

The loud drone of cicadas permeated the landscape. An armadillo, stirred by my steps, rustled and ran beside me just off the trail. A second one darted from a clump of low bushes and joined the first in a mad scamper back into the safety of the bushes.

The ubiquitous white peacock butterflies preceded me on the trail, flittering low amongst native grasses. Bright yellow sulfur and southern white butterflies flew higher, guiding my way. A solitary yellow-spotted swallowtail butterfly darted by my face, circled behind and flew in front of my eyes again. I once asked Ishmael if there was any significance to all the butterflies I see. I encounter many more butterflies than a person would expect to see.

"Butterflies are how we gesture we are with you." Ishmael was referring in the plural to himself and my other guides. "They are around you because we send them so you know our warm feelings for you. They will surround you when you come. Your own little society of mascots."

I knew I wasn't far from my destination and I needed to be prepared. I carried my iPod with me in a pocket of my cargo shorts. I slipped the headphones on and started the pink noise. I also had selections of white noise and something called Brownian noise on my playlist, but I found pink noise to be the most effective. It took a couple of minutes, but I finally started to hear the familiar refrain of, "We are with you. We are with you."

It was my father who had suggested I try to use the iPod to hear him and my other guides. It took me weeks to train my ears, but finally I started to discern voices in the rhythms behind the noise. It was a crude manner of communication but it allowed me to communicate with my father and other guides in real time.

Off to the right of the trail I spotted the brown structure of a rustic horse corral. The thick pine logs still looked to work as a serviceable construction, but it was terribly overgrown with vines and bushes.