Winter Moon

that these ranchers' love of home seemed touching--even spiritually

uplifting-- rather than morbid or strange.

Heather cleaned out the refrigerator too, and they filled it with

healthy foods for quick breakfasts and lunches. The freezer

compartment was already half filled with packaged dinners, but she

delayed doing an inventory because more important tasks awaited her.

Four evenings in a row, too weary from their chores to cook, they drove

into Eagle's Roost to eat at the Main Street Diner, owned and operated

by the steer that could drive a car and do math and dance. The food

was first-rate country cooking.

The sixteen-mile journey was insignificant. In southern California, a

trip had been measured not by distance but by the length of time needed

to complete it, and even a quick jaunt to the market, in city traffic,

had required half an hour. A sixteen-mile drive from one point in L.A.

to another could take an hour, two hours, or eternity, depending on

traffic and the violent tendencies of other motorists. Who knew?

However, they could routinely drive to Eagle's Roost in twenty or

twenty-five minutes, which seemed like nothing. The perpetually

uncrowded highways were exhilarating.

Friday night, as on every night since they'd arrived in Montana,

Heather fell asleep without difficulty. For the first time, however,

her sleep was troubled.... in her dream, she was in a cold place

blacker than a moonless and overcast night, blacker than a windowless

room. She was feeling her way forward, as if she had been stricken

blind, curious but at first unafraid. She was actually smiling,

because she was convinced that something wonderful awaited her in a

warm, welllighted place beyond the darkness. Treasure. Pleasure.

Enlightenment, peace, joy, and transcendence waiting for her, if she

could find her way. Sweet peace, freedom from fear, freedom forever,

enlightenment, joy, pleasure more intense than any she had ever known,

waiting, waiting.

But she fumbled through the impenetrable darkness, feeling with hands

extended in front of her, always moving in the wrong direction, turning

this way and that, that way and this. Curiosity became overpowering

desire. She wanted whatever lay beyond the wall of night, wanted it as

badly as she had ever wanted anything in her life, more than food or

love or wealth or happiness, for it was all those things and more.

Find the door, the door and the light beyond, the wonderful door,

beautiful light, peace and joy, freedom and pleasure, release from

sorrow. transformation, so close, achingly close, reach out, reach.

Want became need, compulsion became obsession. She had to have

whatever awaited hen -joy, peace, freedom--so she ran into the cloying

blackness, heedless of danger, plunged forward, frantic to find the

way, the path, the truth, the door, joy forever, no more fear of death,

no fear of anything, paradise, sought it with increasing desperation,

but ran always away from it instead.

Now a voice called to her, strange and wordless, frightening but

alluring, trying to show her the way, joy and peace and an end to all

sadness. Just accept. Accept. It was reaching out for her, if only

she would turn the right way, find it, touch it, embrace it. She

stopped running. Abruptly she realized that she didn't have to seek

the gift after all, for she was standing in Its presence, in the house

of joy, the palace of peace, the kingdom of enlightenment. All that

she had to do was let it in, open a door within herself and let it in,

let it in, open herself to inconceivable joy, paradise, paradise,

paradise, surrender to pleasure and happiness. She wanted it, she

really did oh-so-eagerly want it, because life was hard when it didn't

have to be But some stubborn part of her resisted the gift, some teful

and proud part of her complex self.

She sensed frustration of him who wished to give this gift, the iver in

the darkness, felt frustration and maybe anger, she said, I'm sorry,

I'm so sorry.

Now the gift--joy, peace, love, pleasure--was thrust on her with

tremendous force, brutal and unrelenting ressure, until she felt she

would be crushed by it. The darkness around her acquired weight, as if

she lay deep in a fathomless sea, though it was far heavier and

thicker than water, surrounding her, smothing, crushing. Must submit,

useless to resist, let it in, submission was peace, submission was joy,

paradise, paradise. Refusal to submit would mean pain beyond anything

she could imagine, despair and agony as only hose in hell knew it, so

she must submit, open the door within herself, let it in, accept, be at

peace.

Hammering Dn her soul, ramming and pounding, fierce and irresistible

hammering, hammering: Let it in, let it in, in, In. ... IT ... IN.

Suddenly she found the secret door within herself, pathway to joy, gate

to peace eternal. She seized the knob, twisted, heard the latch click,

pulled inward, shaking with anticipation. Through the slowly widening

crack: a glimpse of the Giver.

Glistening and dark. Writhing and quick. Hiss of triumph. Coldness