edge of wonder

It is New Year’s Day, 2001. I am soaking in a thermal spring, high in the mountains about two hours south of Nelson. The heady alpine air mixes with the brimstone of the pool. Clouds develop in the mountain passes and over the steamy rainforest. They drift below and aside me like non-corporal beings. The bush is thick and fern-filled, the hills very steep. There are many small animals around, mice, possums, and black rats with no sense of fear. This is their forest and we have only set a clearing in this sulphuric zone. I inhale and exhale towards a mountain that looks like the sacred Fuji. Snow at his peak reminds me his powerful reach and the water of his Vulcan heritage. It has rained here and the trees are dripping. An old tree exhales a breath of steam from its weary branches. The ferns hang their bodies and weep the dew. Birds call with a complex cadence. I feel enchantment approaching.

The mountain shimmered in the light and breeze. I sat up to breathe in the less sulphurous air. Clouds swirled in turn. Was this it? Was it a beam of sunlight piercing the valley or was it a rapturous vision? What else would come through this gash in the mantle and firmament? I look around. Weeping ferns, ancient trees, and black rats ruling the landscape, sulphurous air, heavy stones, strange marsupials and the heat of magma in the water.

“Who lurks in those hills, my son?” a crackled voice asked me. I could not see his face, but his voice was ancient. “You got me,” I replied, “life is only holding on to edges here, no place for humans.” “None indeed,” he said. “I have been watching you. Watching you since you came to this land. It is not the cold arboreal forest of your birth. This is New Zealand, a lonely island, where all life hangs onto edges. You will need to learn that to survive in this land. It’s also a land without the mighty death of winter.”

I inhaled the sulphur and replied. “I am here but I have not escaped winter. The dark and the cold are like the evil in men’s minds. It is an expansive void where you feel yourself slipping towards death.” “You speak as though you know something of evil,” he retorted. “You know nothing of evil, my son, to know of evil you must first have known goodness. You must know a sacred mountain at a glance, hear the trees speaking to you, and taste the sweetness in water. You are here to seek these things; you do not know them. You have only felt winter’s breath on your neck. You live and try to deny cold’s existence. You know something of darkness, but that is not evil. Evil is a quite a different thing altogether.”

I drew a breath and spun around in the pool, all I saw was the back of an old man heading up the path. I thought about calling after him, but I was at a loss for words. I was angry and felt I had failed some kind of test. What really happened there anyway? I had completely lost the feelings I had -- had looking over the timeless landscape and feeling the air on my skin.

The old man’s voice kept repeating in my head. I was building up a great case of: If I had only said. Who did he think he was? Yes, Toronto’s four million is not like roughing it in the bush, but I’ve been around. I’ve seen life on edges before. It’s in my blood; it’s my other solitude. So I’m not the most adventuresome person in the world. There is an artic wolf that lives in my soul. “Jeez,” I said out loud, “this is turning into some kind of high school English class.”

“What,” inquired a familiar voice. “Huh,” I replied. “You woke me up saying something about high school English.” I had awoken my wife, Janet. “Oh it was nothing, go back to sleep,” I said. “You were there again weren’t you? In that place you call Thoughtspace.” “Not exactly,” I replied, “I usually reserve Thoughtspace for complex problems. I was just thinking and waiting for Margaret Atwood to show up. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t even know I was surfacing.” “Well, Edible Man, why don’t you tell me about it?” she asked.

I was nonplussed; Janet had never awoken in the middle of the night and asked to hear about my thoughts. Usually she complains about my alleged snoring. I told her the whole thing from the mood of the hills and sky to the voice behind me and the strange assertion that “I know nothing of evil because I do not know goodness.” Her conclusion was simple and succinct; it was the sulphur affecting my brain. I could not accept this. I argued that she was just coming to the quickest explanation so she could return to sleep.

“Wrong Ken.” She said. “My conclusion is evidenced by the fact that I was sitting beside you in the water the whole time and I never heard anyone speaking. You experienced a verbal hallucination at your exhilaration of being in New Zealand.” “Ha, you rationalist,” I chided, “suppose it was an angel or a demon or suppose we have stumbled into a mystical place where rationality breaks down.” “Go back to Thoughtspace and give Maggie my regards if she ever shows.” She said, rolling over.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the vision of the mountains from the pool. “I am still here my son. A dream is not a vision and you have never been tempted by a demon or a god. Have you figured it out yet, my son? Am I a demon or an angel? Am I the trees and the light, the sulphur or the memory of winter’s cold breath? Or am I New Zealand?” He laughed a crooked laugh. His face was obscured in the darkness. “Get out of here!” I yelled. “If you want, I shall go. It has always been up to you, my son.” I got up from bed, my skin crawling on my bones. I turned on the lights and Janet peaceful sleeping was all that I saw. “What are you doing?” she groggily asked.

“Janet, remember what I just told you about. About the old man behind me while I was in the pool?”

“What?” she asked without opening her eyes.

“Janet,” I asked, “do you believe in angels and demons?”

“Are you crazy? Go back to sleep.”

“No,” I said emphatically, “just answer me.”

“All right, if you go back to sleep. Angels sure, demons, I really don’t have time for that stuff. Now sleep and don’t start snoring.”

I lay back in bed; I had no idea why I had asked her the question. I thought to myself, no problem with the snoring tonight dear. Dawn will meet a tired eye. A wolf lurks in me, I thought, that’s great Ken, an inner wolf in a land of sheep. They are going to love you here.