A Door to Another Reality

It was a sunny day and I was walking in my yard, recognizing — you know that feeling — time spacing, that maybe I’m not enjoying some of the things I should.

So I stopped. Looked around. Looked at the sky. And down at my feet, there was a yellow wildflower. Small thing. The guy cutting the grass had missed it, which meant it got to be there, which meant I got to see it.

I looked down at it. I knelt next to it. Then I decided to just sit there. And then I ended up just laying there on the ground, looking at the sky next to the flower.

That activity triggered a crow. Apparently I trigger these higher level activities.

Immediately — the weird crow emergency call. She started circling around, very frantically. And I got sucked into the world of pretending I was unconscious. Just laying there. And I’m wondering: what is happening in Crow world right now? Is he calling his friends? What is the alarm even for?

I’m just laying there trying to take it all in, staring into the sky.

And way, way up — I want to say it was like an angel, but it was like a very faint, flying angel. Faded on the corners. Tilting like it was a piece of a kaleidoscope. I watched it for a while before I realized: that’s a vulture. Way up there. I could barely see it.

I’m laying there thinking: could he possibly see me? It’s so far away. Does he see the crows circling above me? Does he see me?

A second crow showed up. Not quite as off the chain freaked out as the first one, but there.

And then — the vulture started to come down. Over time, the triangle changed its shape and it became more defined. Very surreal. Probably not even a half-hour had passed. But I was back, going back, really quick — body already cold, ready to pick the flesh from the bone, back to the earth from whence I had come.

That’s when it hit me. This was a genuinely interesting way to step out of my world into a different world. Right wherever I wanted to make that door — I could just stop, put my thoughts and my consciousness there, and drink it all in.

Eventually I decided the game wasn’t very fun anymore: how close would I let the vulture get before I showed that I was alive? What happened was he kept getting bigger and bigger and I was realizing he was actually coming down. And then I couldn’t see him anymore — meaning he was close — and I’m like, okay. This part is not the cool part. I got up.

To see large birds in person, alive, moving around you in the wild? Don’t kid yourself. That’s something.

All right — that was my getting back to nature.