The Man That Fell From earth

"I have seen the Naugal, and IT has seen me".

These two phrases were the first ones I scribbled into the log as soon as I got back to the truck, but what led me to write them down on the morning of September 23, 2002, started many hours earlier.

IT started when I stopped to rest after my first  mistake that got me off-trail at perhaps the most dangerous section of the descent. Still hidden by the Venus Massiff, I found myself somewhere I didn't remember. Someplace that felt all wrong.

Even with the maximum light of the full Moon to guide me, I had to think about every step, and sure enough missed one.

Instead of going around (always left / always down), I bore right and went up and around the obstacle. This put me 15 feet up off the trail below which I could now see. I was overheating, and soon found that I had to pull my gloves off whenever I stopped so my fingers could cool off.

At that point I realized that this WAS (SEVEN LIVES JOURNEY) Flint Slope, and I'd probably be better off naked.

Well, the golf club had to go.

Not realizing I was off-trail, I stuck it into the cleft next to me and continued down with both hands free, knowing that I could retrieve it when I hiked out.

I was feeling pretty bouncy when I emerged into full view of the Observation Decks; the Moon hadn't risen too far above the eastern rim but it was lighting the wall I was on, and I obviously had all night to complete my task.

I still don't know if anyone stays after 5, but if they do, they're probably watching TV, surfing the Internet, or snoring by then.

Suddenly I wished I could know for sure, as the thought that my Daughters might like a picture of STRIDER as no one had seen him before.

I had taken the FLASH picture of WINSLOW when I left him ON GUARD, and I knew that, like waiting to take a picture of lightning in reverse, the flash; though bright, was super transient. Still, it would only take one instant to betray my presence.

Even that no longer mattered, as I knew I could beat anyone chasing me to my goal so I decided to risk it (WONDERFUL FEELING).

I went to advance the film (never do it early as YOU WILL take a picture of your pocket), and the wheel just kept on turning (HORRIBLE FEELING).

Now, in '95, ALX experienced this same moment when; as we walked out in full view of anyone coming to work early, he said: "That doesn't feel right..."

He still beats himself up for not having pics like we did in '84 (yes, that's him time-lapsing his penlight in the background on THE REPLY). Now the same thing was happening to me, almost immediately after I had talked myself into taking flash pictures in full sight of anyone on a cigarette break high above.

FORCES STRANGER STILL are at work in the Crater, and after yet another internal dialogue of trying to talk myself out of this, only to realize that there was NO WAY that was going to happen ("that was the HARD PART"...), ended with me zipping the camera away (one less thing to occupy myself with) as I started off anew.

One problem after another.

The first worth mentioning here was that the tape (not enough in the first place / my fault) let go at the bottom of the tube ALX had put the 4X4 in.

We'd had a good laugh that I probably wouldn't be able to get them OUT when the time came, and here they were sliding out with a sickening sound it took me a beat to recognize.

Every time I stopped, and sat down, the black animation tape at the bottom of the tube had been the first thing to hit the razor sharp rocks. Luckily, the contents were still half in and the Moon was still low, so I took my time; improvising the patch that then held to the end.

Everyone has had the Wave Dream: a wall of moonlit (why is it always at night?) water hundreds of feet high, and close enough to smell, and feel the change in the sea breeze as it rushes towards you. I am never afraid, as I am waiting to body surf the thing. Never do, as I always wake up from the sheer beauty of what I'm looking at.

The inner wall of Crater Diablo is a circular wave of shattered rock that you first look down on, then up at. It too, however, is benevolent. You can look across at any time and see the level you're currently on. It's amazing how re-assuring this is no matter how small the distance traversed, or great the distance remaining.

Hope...

I made it to the floor, and started toward the fenced enclosure.

As Larry points out, perspective is weird in the Crater; on the floor as well as on the Rim.

No matter where you go, it seems to take forever to get there, and then the effort is over before you know it. We're talking closed loop here though, so you can always stop and verify not only how far you have to go, but how far you've come which is also how far you still have to go. Having every other step punch through the false surface, bringing back that "Spider" story that was required reading in English keeps you moving though.

Found the SPOT where we buried the '95 FILMCAN where I expected it. What I didn't expect was how the brick I marked it with had risen atop a hill of sand like Genghis Khan sitting on a hill of enemy heads.

Must have been the Parshad.

Understand that I had never been to the second drilling site NE of center, so this leg was all new and I was pretty excited.

Coming up on any object in the dark is hairy, and I had never seen what these things (seen previously only through the telescopes) actually were.

First thought was "That's a VERY small house... what's that easel doing here?".

Covering the second shaft (YOU DO NO WANT TO END UP DOWN THERE!) is the top two feet of an 8X8 tar paper shack that NO ONE in their right mind would want to stand on (Good thing KEED wasn't along). Six feet south of it was what turned out to be a solar panel array once (still?) hooked up to instruments that I immediately confirmed I wasn't standing on.

What I WAS standing on was the PERFECT circle of brilliant white chalk that I had only seen from a distance for 22 years.

I got to work.

As close as I was, I wouldn't be done until the "package" was buried AND marked.

Of course, the tape now took forever to pull off, but once free, the FLAG slid out like it couldn't wait.

I had planned since I left to write a message on the inner surface of what was really an 8X4 folded print. Maybe "Strangers In The Night" (that should get their attention), "Happy Birthday Waldron!", or what I finally decided on... a line from Lovers' World: "What do I have To Do, To Get Your Attention?". Got out my fat red Sharpee only to find that ALX had double stickied the thing together!

See how it works?

Who knows what would have happened had any of those slogans been discovered, or what would have been the result of my forcing the prints apart to force the result I had wanted.

I let it go, and immediately ran into the next problem. Had brought four 6 inch 1/4 dia nails to peg the FLAG down with, and as I squatted to do so, had a sick feeling that they were too big for the grommets! EVERYTHING would be jeapordized by walking away from something that might blow away the next day; turned from designed art from a unique performance piece, into trash to be daily remarked on by the Guides above.

NO PROBLEMO. In they went and there it was, just as I'd hoped it would look.

JOB DONE.

I promptly fell asleep right then and there.

I hadn't really slept for two days, and though we used to work for 3 days at a time at ABEL's, there was no one, or nothing to pace me now.

I was exhausted.

Gibbo and I had hiked into Zabriskie Point on ACID, with NO WATER, and in broad daylight. He can tell you how... like a Lion in a poppy field, I finally lay down despite his warnings of hypothermia. Jack London KNEW HIS STUFF, and even as the Earth leached the last of my energy, I had resolved to stay just a little longer... The "Hand" finally helped me to my feet and I caught up w/ my best friend, When we got to his van, we dumped a whole gallon of water (left in the van...DO I NEVER LEARN?) on each other... but that's ANOTHER story.

When I snapped awake (Whoa!), the Moon had passed ZENITH more than I liked, and I realized that though I "was done", I was only half-way.

I wrapped it up, making a hair offering on the three points of the equilateral triangle in the center of the flag (THAT could blow away) for the continued happiness and safety of my 3 Girls, turned and started retracing my steps.

By the start of the Trail up, I felt confident enough to stop and meditate on Life So Far.

It's hard to describe how exquisitely silent the Crater interior is.

Most of my adult life I have searched for silence like that and here it was at last. Flashed for a moment on the CHOY of not getting out because I went INSIDE, and never came out (is that a choy?), when the creative process KICKED IN again.

Concentrating as I had on the "VSNRY" aspects of the trip, I found myself re-thinking FLYBY itself, and sure enough, THAT led me to the BIG THOUGHT.

Some of you know that FLYBY's orbiting "DEVICE" was originally a duplicate of one still buried in the still buried asteroid that formed the Crater back in the Cenozoic. Well, it's even harder to describe the total absence of life itself on the Crater floor. The rocks themselves are looking at you, and reading your every thought, but in four trips here, I've never seen another living creature except ALX.

That means an absence of energy. Maybe it's who I've been talking to lately, but there was no vibe, no aura, no nothing. The place is DEAD. Had let the buried device go too, when my thoughts turned to NiBiRu, the Hopi, YOGA, and survival.

Some of you know that at the recent meeting of Native American Elders, it was confirmed that the "White Man" had two winters left.

2004.

The un-confirmed year that PLANET X re-enters the Solar System.

Every thing I see points to preparation of the HIGHEST DEGREE to meet such an event, whether it happens or not.

Step One (the sequel), once again, appeared to be my personal "moving on" from any possible delusion that had got me this far. The thought of the oldest continuous civilization in America, living on rocky mesas (and little else) just miles away, rezeroed my counter yet again.

Turning my back on the old Me, I started up without the incalcuable weight of the Vision that had been so lovingly removed.

Boy, was I wrong.

The ascent is even harder to describe.

The joy of being "on the downside", is quickly replaced with the realization that it's "all uphill from here". Not just uphill, but EXPONENTIALLY uphill. Memories of the horrors of the descent return doubled as you look up; twice as tired, at what MUST be the miles to final safety.

Once again, I started my routine of walk / rest / walk, startled at how the "walk" part was getting ever shorter, and the "rest" ever longer. Long before I was once again hidden by the massif, I realized that Jack London was back.

I was actually falling asleep during my breaks (pant /breathe / snore... "BOW YOUR HEAD!").

The print tube, though empty, was still strapped too low, and when I found a comfortable spot I tended to stay there.

With the toughest third still to go, I nodded off, lost my balance, and awoke toppling toward the rocks below. Just the extra effort necessary to regain your balance (especially if standing) drains already dwindling resources, so once again, I seriously began to contemplate my chances, and just what it was I thought I'd gained by taking such a risk at 53.
 

Don Juan spoke of the Naugal and the Second Attention and this is what I heard him say.

"The Tonal is the aggregate of all your life ever was, is, and ever will be. It is like objects on a table; each one more precious than the other, that you spend ALL YOUR TIME focusing the FIRST ATTENTION on; never seeing anything but the table and the objects upon it; arranging and re-arranging, never satisfied with the way things are, even though they are the way you made them.

The Nagual is the valley the table is sitting in, and seeing it is the purpose of the Second Attention, and the duty of the Sorcerer."

Some of you know this moment as "UH-OH!"

Now, regardless of what ANYBODY says, VGR was the Sci-Fi prototype of the Nagual on film.

I saw them both again in 1997, when visiting Earth Camp with Spec during the Headwaters Rally, we sat at the edge of a mirror surface lake deep in the Redwoods. I saw IT first, and held my breath as I directed a future Mind Pirate to turn his head ninety degrees, and look again.

VGR LIVES!

The slanted rocks dipping into the water became a CRAFT worthy of any model shot, or the FACE of a Goddess from a planet you might not want to visit, and it worked EITHER WAY!

Neither of us were the same after THAT day.

On THIS night, the moon now as low in the West as it had started in the East when I approached a rock big enough to possibly lay across. I lost my balance (my legs were already freaking and I HAD had no water for 8 hrs...), and landed on my pack pretty hard. When I looked up, I saw what no photographer could capture, and though I've tried to duplicate a small section of it at the top of this page, that which gave it scale is missing.

I realized that I was not lying on the floor of the Crater looking up at the Moon, but hanging on it's side like a shuttle crew member in their sleeping bag... looking OUT at the Moon.

I've fallen into the sky before, but never like this.

The unidirectional glowing sphere centered in a ring of rimlit rock had been there all the time; a cosmic porthole on a GIANT ship; the REAL Rim Of The World, out which all Creation might wander by at the appointed time.

I think I must have looked around to see if anyone else could see it too. Then I thought of Don Juan and looked for him. Having moved nothing but my head I looked back "up".

IT WAS STILL THERE.

LAUGHED OUT LOUD at this point ("IT'S ART!") at how the smallest of "accidents" could have flipped me 180 degrees, just to show me something so incalcuably huge, and as I realized , so suddenly important, I would have missed it otherwise.

TIME TO GET OUT OF HERE!!!

Well, I did, but not before I couldn't find my Father's golf club; a club he didn't yet know was missing, the single most important object in the world, and the one I had to find if it killed me.

Probably NOT the best phrase to use at the time.

I finally realized that I had been off-trail and in GREAT DANGER previously, when I backtracked (BACKTRACKED!) and found the alternate route I now had to CLIMB to retrieve the shining object 15 feet above. Well, I grabbed it, and not caring how much noise I made or how clumsy I appeared (I was once again hidden by the massiff), I finally made it back to the cave where I'd left Winslow; gave the flat floor a good eye-balling, STRETCHED OUT, and fell fast asleep again.

WRONG.

For the last time, I was jolted awake on the edge of an even higher precipice, cramped up from the inactivity and ALMOST unable to correct my newest problem.

It IS wonderful how things work out. Just when I was becoming concerned about physical failure, I reached the last gentle slope up to Hotel Barringer.

Once again, finding your feet on the rim trail is just indescribable. If I could have bent my legs, I might have gotten down and kissed the ground like some Western tourist returning to the USA after his first visit to India. I had learned to take "That was the hard part" with a grain of salt, so I was content to shamble down the outer slope; short a replaceable lantern, but long on everything else I will need from here on out. 

The next day however, I started writing the new/old text that will go under the Cards themselves, and not only have I flipped "CAN YOU HEAR ME?" 180 degrees, I've watched ALX do it, just before his "it's ART!" chuckle confirmed he sees it too.

This page is finally done (took so long, Fetch! TIMED OUT while I proofed it), and this site almost so.

FLYBY will be next. 

When THAT url goes out, the "Gift" will at last truly be given.

:)

MS/TZ/10/12/2002