The Spirit of Laura(Charles E.J. Moulton) The Spirit of Laura

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton

I can safely say that I spent the most magical years of my childhood there among the Appalachian mountains, fishing, picking mushrooms, telling stories by the campfire. Most of the stories we told were made up, some of them were real folklore: bell witches, giants, little folk, talking reindeer and fairies, the occasional ghost story, as well.
One or two times, our Dads would tell us about the camping trips of their own childhood, getting lost and finding their way back, that sort of thing. My father even had his first sexual experience in the forest with his first girlfriend. Oh, I drank my first beer by the campfire one late July evening under the stars. I loved it. Larry hated his. He swore never ever to drink beer again. He changed his mind.
The region, the nature, the experiences, the late night talks, stargazing, the stupendous scenery, the sudden midnight visits from lightning bugs, the coyotes howling in the distance, all of it to us like a scene from a Hollywood movie. Both Larry and I looked forward to these trips just as much as our fathers did. Every summer seemed to take us closer to the year when we were old enough to go there on our own. Our fathers told us as much, maybe because they had been told the same thing by their own fathers.
This was a family tradition.

For other guys in what would become our junior high school year it was all about Superbowl parties, major club nights, cruising highways, beach volleyball tournaments or Star Trek Marathons. For us, this was all about hiking in the Appalachians. The Blue Ridge Mountains had everything we needed, the mountain view reflecting in the lake and the stars up above absolutely miraculous. Our long walks in the mountain region ending in fishing excursions and campfire storytelling. It was like diving into another world.
We’re all hikers by now, three or four generations of us. In fact, we love meeting a wild elk or a shy deer, even seeing a snake or a big insect now and then. My daughter yelled “Yay!“ when finding a real honest-to-God spider last year, back in our vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Now, twenty years later, Larry and I plan on going back there for a camping trip, dragging our fathers along for the ride. After all, we learned so much from them. The least we can do is return the favor. Grandparents, children, grandchildren, wives, maybe even a few buddies. We would be a party of about fifteen campers. Do you think we can pull that off? I think we can. Where’s the obstacle? Well, hah, Larry’s a scriptwriter for Paramount and all of us know how much work that is with most industry movies going through about fifteen rewrites.
Virginia and West Hollywood are far apart.
Do we still talk about Laura? In the twenty years or so that has passed since, we have mentioned her every time we talk. It is with a sense of wonder, deep reverance and a touch of miracle. I still do not really fully understand what it was that actually happened back then. That doesn’t matter, though, I think. We saw the afterlife.
It connects us, our gem of consciousness. I do not believe anyone can say they share an experience like that. Not that I know of, anyway.
I know Larry basically chose to write what he writes for a living because of that experience. He gets to work on all the fantasy stories, the magical romance and the new-age stuff. The otherworldly tales of heroes journeying to forgotten worlds.
And as for me? Well, I majored in Geology to earn a living, but my focus on philosophy and spirituality is the fabric of my soul. It always was, but after what happened, it became even more so. It gave me my nickname: Gordon “The Guru“ Garland. Arranging camping excursions to the Blue Ridge Mountains with my students has become a favorite occupation of mine, not only because of the summer camping trips, but mostly because of what I saw and experienced that last summer. I’m addicted to that place.
Especially my female students eagerly hope to see what I saw back then, but so far they have had no luck. I think most of the gals that have made the trip have chosen to settle down with their tents next to lakes and waterfalls, pretty much out of the way, just to find the vibe. That’s very Californian in a way, but when I realize that I know now that being a bit Californian is a very good idea.
Laura changed our lives. I suppose her spirit, or a portion of it, has a home there in the Appalachian region. Larry gave her that name because of a teacher he had a crush on at the time. I will admit that the spirit we saw, and it was a spirit, looked like our gym teacher.

My two Geology students, Kimbie and Natalie, claim to have seen something. Maybe they did. I think Laura has a liking for her human sisters. From what I understood, Laura was a recluse up to the point of seclusion. I have a feeling she only appears to any human being once every twenty years, much due to frenetic modern society. And yet, she seems to be an integral part of everything that exists. Kimbie and Natalie are harmonizing their chakras and are even going to India for a week to train with a Yogi just to prepare to see her again.
I tell them that Laura chooses very carefully who she appears to. Well, Kimbie keeps saying that they feel almost like her sisters. That’s a wonderful line. If she appeared to two lanky high school students twenty years ago, she will certainly appear to two twenty-something women, eager to see the truth behind all of this. I think it is sweet that they make an effort. That, after all, is what Laura is about. I believe so, anyway. She is a spirit and she thrives on the effort of love. First and foremost, she does not want to be controlled. Patience and intuition are her emotions.

It was a big year for us, camping wise. We had known for years we would be making this trip by ourselves at age 15, so it became like planning a major event. Maybe it was fate that had led both couples to have sons and daughters. The guys went camping while the girls went to a beauty farm. It sounds like some corny old movie, too good to be true. But it was true, all of it. And it lasted for eleven years.
I think fate arranged for us to go alone. Originally, we had wanted to take our girlfriends along for the ride, but that would have been a disaster. Luckily, in retrospect, they dumped us both pretty much at the same time. Larry had dated the high school sweetheart, everybody’s darling. Susie was what Pamela Anderson had been to the guys in the 90s. Every guy danced around Susie like moths around a flame. She also rivalled Pamela in boob size. So no wonder. Their six month romance had been like a half year long vacation at a travelling road show, spunned sugar and lollipops. And I don’t mean the candy store version. From what I heard, they had been at like bunnies everywhere, literally. Larry had sported an erection most mornings with Susie insisting on sneaking into some cupboard on their way to school. Susie actually openly complained in class that she hurt real bad down there, but that it was glorious pain. She received three afternoons of after-school-studies in the principal’s office for saying that in home-room. In a round-about-way, that actually led her to break up with Larry. He was so embarassed.
“Never ever say that in home-room again, Susie.“
“I’m solidifying your repitation as a stud, dumb-ass!“
Well, I knew while overhearing that conversation that the relationship would not last much longer.
I was Larry’s best friend, so I was not gonna tell him that we all could see his lump through the trousers, but we all knew it. As for me, my girlfriend Ola had dumped me a week earlier because she found me boring.
“All you talk about is nature, nature, nature,“ she whined, popping her bubble-gum. “Gimme a break.“
So, I chose to let myself give her a break.
Funnily enough, Ola and Susie are now living in Vermont as a lesbian couple with an adopted child. Larry and I still laugh about our girlfriends dumping us pretty much simultaneously to end up living together. Are we to blame? Nah.
So, there we were, two guys, a month away from our planned camping trip. Larry was happy that we didn’t have to take our unfair ladies with us and that we actually could end up hiking together, two best buds with a couple of buds and loads of nature around us.
Our parents were not worried. By then, we were more experienced than most campers ever could be. My mother knew that we could find ourselves out of any snag. My father even said that in that decade I had become a better camper than he was. That, if anything was a huge compliment.
We chose the same place for our little little makeshift fort that our fathers had chosen for us for ten years. It was clean enough, safe enough, light enough and dark enough. The view across the lake was stupendous, a patch protected by gorgeous trees, the stroll to our morning swim was amazingly easy across extra soft and open grass where we would lay and look at the stars, telling randy stories about old girlfriends.
Larry had brought his ukulele along, so the first night was pretty cool with us sitting by the campfire, barbecueing chili dogs, drinking beers and singing songs like ‘‘Mmh-Bop‘‘ and ‘‘Livin‘ On A Prayer‘‘. I thought Larry’s imitation of Jon Bon Jovi was awesome, that with his perfect pitch and all. I did my best to tag along with my vocoder rendition of Ritchie Sambora’s mike-and-guitar-gear. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard us performing hard rock on ukulele with me doing my nut in the infamously arrogant “Ooh-Aah-Ooh-Aah-Ooh-Aah-Ooh-Aah.“
The night our lives changed forever was crystal clear to the point of making the night sky look like a Chris Foss matt painting. In fact, we had that campfire burning all night. Larry stuck to root his Jim Beam and Cola mixture, which I thought was really bad-ass, considering that his Mom had asked him to stick to root beer. Anyway, I drank my real beer – yeah, also bad-ass for a 15 year-old – so we were a bit drowsy when we ended up on that grass patch, looking at the stars. We had pretty much 20/20 vision, so we had no problem identifying the Big Dipper, the Orion belt and even the Andromeda galaxy in its middle. We even wondered what that famous black hole in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy was like and were the heck we would end up if we slipped inside it.
Was it the incredibly eerie silence that caught our attention? I mean, Larry keeps saying, even today, that the squirrels had stopped jumping in the trees an hour or so before. I kept saying that squirrels sleep at night, but Larry was adamant that my animal guide, the squirrel, had been active until midnight. I knew I had heard a coyote in the distance at around 11:30, which gave us the idea of inventing a scary story about a magic wolf.
I noticed Larry growing silent, pricking up his ears, trying to detect something. ‘‘That’s a C,“ he said, out of the blue, sitting upright in his grass patch, looking like a Timon from ‘The Lion King‘. He had the same hair-do back then, too. His long face looked a bit horrific, mind you, in the light of that campfire, the flames lighting up his red hair to make him look a bit diabolical. But I was by no means a Pumbaa.
‘‘I beg your pardon?‘‘ I inquired. ‘‘A what?“
‘‘C. The tone C,‘‘ Larry said, his eyes glowing. ‘‘I thought I was kidding myself, man, but the last half-hour I’ve had this hum in my head. I thought it was tinnitus. My gramps had that, buddy, but some Arapaho medicine man cured it. Now, I thought I had gotten it, too. But …‘‘
I sat up, as well, sitting up next to him, that fire burning almost on its own. I listened to the silence, the buzz of a few lightning bugs close to our lantern giving our camp an even more eerie atmosphere.
‘‘It’s a melody,“ I whispered. “I hear it, too.“
‘‘Sounds like a pan flute,“ Larry said, his slight half-lisp and bouncy lilt him making sound positively Californian. It seemed to invite the angels. “What the hell ist hat?“
I listened to that sound, the sound of the Blue Ridge Mountains at night, the lightning bugs inspiring the magic.
‘‘Who is out here at night playing the pan flute?‘‘ I whispered, knowing fully well how wacko that sounded.
‘‘Mother Earth,“ Larry said, so seriously now that I would have laughed if he had not looked like he was reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy. He gazed at me for one second, his eyes so very serious that I got the chills. Really, I had goosebumps all over my back, travelling up and down my spine. The weird thing was that I knew, somewhere in my heart, that he was right.
“Mother Earth plays plays the pan-flute?“
We’d been here for years, this spot was ours, and we knew for a fact that no one ever came here at night, just squirrels and the occasional deer, some lightning bugs and a lost bunny. The coyotes kept their distance.
‘‘Mother Earth? Honestly?“
“It’s a song.“
I listened. Damn, Larry was right.
I heard that minor key melody, F-G, D-E flat, B flat-C.
Larry now sounded like Carl Sagan in his series ‘‘Cosmos“, a lilt of Kermit-like philosophy in his baritone.
‘‘They say the Earth hums in the key of C-minor,“ he whispered, ‘‘it’s the color of the root chakra, the red of blood, the flow of the night, the moving of the tides, the wind in the trees above the core of the Earth pumping like a heart.“
‘‘Color has a sound?“ I wondered, now very much aware of the miraculous atmosphere of this place. Damn, we knew this place so well by now, it was almost like home, and yet, I saw it now in a completely different light. There was a presence here. A spirit. It was so clear, so pure. There was something here around us. ‘‘You feel that?“
‘‘You bet your ass I feel that,‘‘ Larry said, so much under his breath that I barely heard it. “The whole place is vibrating.“
“What is it?“
“The Spirit,“ Larry almost sang in a daze. I looked at him and he now seemed to drift off into what to me had to be another dimension. I wasn‘t kidding myself. I was there, too, in that dimension. I had never felt this intensely about anything before. I had the feeling the pan flute melody was the sound of the vibrations she was giving off. A soft and soothing melody that sounded like love. That sounds awful corny, but the sound was nice, man. A very tender and beautiful sound with a graceful awe. It made you listen and respect.
You know when you walk into a temple or a place with a very clear atmosphere? I had that sensation in Rome on a family vacation of ours. We walked into the Chapel of St. Birgitta close to the Palazzo Farnese. Nobody dared to walk to the altar of that chapel, the feeling was so holy, even the loudest tourist grew silent and sat down in the back.
“Reverance,“ I said, now innocent as a rose in spirit. This had nothing to do with age or gender or anything else. This was the origin of life. That inspires modesty. We were in the presence of Mother Earth, the original spirit, probably the spirit that had been here when this planet had been created billions of years ago.
„Unci Maka.“ Larry looked over at me, blinking. “My father told us that legend. Remember?“
I looked over at Larry, nodding. “We are the land. The Arapaho guy that cured your gramps of Tinnitus, he said that, didn’t he? We are the land. We are part of the Earth?“
“Unci Maka. Mother Earth. Yes. I know. I remember.“
“Holy crap, do I have to crap myself?“
“No, Gordon, this is nothing to be afraid of,“ Larry told me, laying his hand on my shoulder. “You know what my Dad told us. This is sacred land. That’s why we have never been robbed even once here in over a decade.“
The night was all around us now, the fire that we had kept alive for the past range of hours, every ten minutes a search for more fire wood, now burning on its own, even the bugs seeming to fly in slow motion.
The spirit that had yet only been a feeling producing a six tone melody in 528 Hz. The red fabric of C minor.
She was here now.
I don’t think we were thinking anything when she appeared. At least I can say for myself that my brain was totally devoid of any clear thought. Strange, huh, when you are sitting in the middle oft he forest at one o’clock, feeling completely safe? That has got to tell you something.
When you see something so miraculously different that your worldly brain just stops asking questions. Well, most of you probably don’t. But trust me, when you see an otherworldly female apparation hovering above your campfire, a female being of light swaying like a falcon over the hills, it changes who you are. Had we secretly anticipated this? Not intellectually. Emotionally, certainly. When the spirit was there, it felt like coming home.
The being was luminously beautiful above the ground in flowing robes, shining in different shades of white. She gave the whole region a light that touched our hearts in a way that only true revelation can. It was everything we loved and more.
“She looks like Laura,“ Larry whispered. “Our gym teacher. You know, the one we all have a crush on?“
I didn’t laugh, I didn’t even pant. I just said: “Uh-huh,“ way, way under my breath. I felt as if I could touch the air. I mean, as if I could see the energy of light buzzing in the night air. It was not just that it was a being filled with light. It was light. Not electric light, but light in a sense of feeling. That flowing brownish hair that seemed to flow in the sway of its own energy was like silky passion. Purity. Sheer abundance. Her long hair with a flow to it was way more beautiful than any other human being was capable of having.
The amazing thing, and I do believe I speak for Larry here, too, is that this was her soul. The spiritual beauty of nature. The song of the blue whales, the droves of penguins who found each other amongst the millions by the sound of each other’s voices, the dance of the birds of paradise in ordert o impress their mates, the sweet and open and even childish gaze of the Burmese monkeys, the mysteries of the deep sea fire fish, all of that energy was in this being with transparent and somehow nougat skin, the dancing gaze in her eyes and the long flowing hair. And you know what? When I saw this being, flying in mid air just feet away from our campfire, I realized the beauty of any soul that shone inside her. I realized that her beauty, the beauty of Unci Maka, the spirit of Laura, Mother Earth, was that everyone was beautiful.
What had Whitney Houston sung?
“I’m every woman, it’s all in me!“
It was all in Laura, all of it.
Nature, beauty, creation, love.
Pure love. Unconditional love.
“Laura,“ I said, very apprehensively, almost in awe of what had to be a magical presence. She looked at us, through us, smiling, her gaze connecting with our beings.
“Can we call you Laura?“
She closed her eyes, smiling modestly, her head nodding ever so slightly, her luminous robe flowing in what seemed to be the light of another dimension. If Max Planck and Werner von Heisenberg were right about everything in the universe being just vibrating energy, then we were part of her energy. It felt as if she was here to connect with us. If we were residing in bodies or not, we were doing the work of the heavens if we were spreading light. This woman was the embodiment of that energy, that vibration. Our vibrations came from her.
“I like that name.“
Connection. As we felt connected, realizing the connection, Laura now took a very subtle fly toward us. It was an attempt to get closer, like a shy reindeer taking a step toward new found friends, safe to be around, daring to fly around, through us as the presence of God, a divine creature, flies to what it loves.
Feeling her was what it must be when spirits make love. Having Laura fly through you, it feels like taking a trip to Alpha Centauri and seeing star seeds dance inside you.
It was the spiritual equivalent of making love.
I make that comparison on purpose, because I believe sex at its core is two beings wanting to become one. This being shining in various shades of light, I did not see her speak or her lips move, but I did hear what she said in a willingness to inspire unity. She spoke to us with her mind.
“Who are you?“ Larry began.
“Your origin,“ she whispered.
“Our origin?“ I spoke.
“I am love, I am nature, I am the land, I am a part of divinity.“
We smiled, both Larry and I reacting the same way to this charming approach. When we smiled, she did and we saw ourselves in her.
“You respect the land,“ she said, swaying over the flames.
“The land?“
“Your truth is their truth, the birds, the fish, the trees.“
She gestured up and down, left and right.
“Their joy is your joy.“
Mesmerized by her presence, unable to speak, we listened. “You are among the few that have not lost what nature has not lost, either. You focus on the feeling, your feeling, your truth,“ she crooned in a distant, tender mezzo that sounded a bit like the crooning chocalate caress of Cleo Lane. “Your spiritual awakening is focused on your dearest memories, the deepest love in your heart connected to your loved ones and their connections to nature. Not the intellectual version of what you think or have heard what spiritual awakening is supposed to be. That is the grave mistake so many beings incarnated into flesh do. They think they have to follow someone else’s truth to become spiritually awoken. Either that or that they will give up a part of their identity when transcending. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you think you know who you are now, wait until you get to the next world. The next world is connected to this one. All you have to do is feel it. Everything is more intense there, here, everywhere. When you get to the very core of your being and who you are, there is just one more step to finding God within yourself. You are your inner truth beyond everything that exists outside of you. Your spirit is now.“
Laura took a flight, her energy whirling around us in what felt like a kiss. The light felt blinding, but so beautiful that it did not hurt at all. She spun around us once, circling around the fire one or two times, conjuring up more flames, inspiring more light, making love to every spark that was her and us.
Have you ever been at one of Jean-Michel Jarre’s shows? Or witnessed a performance of Cirque de Soleil? Gone to one of those IMAX 360 degree movies? I think the closest thing to understanding what it was like to be in Laura’s presence is comparing it with a spectacular event. But its dazzling quality was more subtle, tender and humble, every shade of her flowing robe vibrating with humility. She not only lit up the forest, she lit up our souls. I am sure that if I had looked over at Larry, I would have seen him with his mouth as open as mine. We were dumbfounded. No Susie, no Ola, no money, no riches, no fame could live up to the Spirit of Laura, Unci Maka.
“Tell who you trust about me,“ she said. “Tell them that nature has an energy that is linked to me through patience and intuition. You are the land. When you respect it, you respect yourself.“
I heard Larry’s flabbergasted whisper speaking a few words that were quite soft, but still as clear as a bell. Laura looked over at him with a wide-eyed gaze I will never ever forget. There was a very solemn sensation of her being truly touched that he was showing her his respect and love.
“An Arapaho shaman my father knew told us that when we try to become one with everything around us through our perspective of life, we heal all the pain our souls are feeling.“
Now Laura smiled. It was a dignified and highly joyous smile. Not the one that wishes to dance and sport its own love. This was profound gratitude in meeting a spirit that knew what it all was about. She raised her head to the skies, looking up at the starry night sky above her. It was even as if she became one with the stars. I couldn’t even say if there was a difference between her and the Big Dipper. There might have been, but I didn’t see it.
She approached us now with such grace that it nearly took our breath away. I think she even flew so close to us that her countenance was inside our faces. We saw inside her facial beauty. There really were stars there inside that being. Little dancing lights that all swayed and breathed. She carried little angels inside her.
“Ooooh,“ the being mused in a legato of depth, her laugh a respectful rainbow of gratitude, “you really are two of the most gentle and dignified souls I have met in a long time. And I appear only once every twenty years to anyone here.“
She raised both her hands and caressed us with them. You know when someone you genuinely care about caresses your face and you get that tingling sensation in your body? Like that wonderful feeling that something else, some other angelic energy, is at work? Your very first kiss? That time when you felt you actually would take off and fly away above ground? Well, that was Laura’s caress. I even think I felt God at that moment.
She withdrew, very sweetly, a thousand kisses in her spirit, the swaying dive of a million orcas in her soul, songs under the night time sky.
“You still vibrate in the key of C,“ I spoke, impressed by myself that I heard that it was the same tone. “It sounds like the pan flute.“
She nodded, half-grinning at me.
“The key of Mother Earth,“ she sang, biting her lip, “sounds like the sweet minor-key vibration of bamboo.“
“A-ah-are you … M-… Mother Earth?“ I continued, tingling all over. There was no other way to describe this. I literally tingled from head to toe. It was like that feeling you have when you have the flu, rushes up and down the spine. This time, though, it pure not the flu. It was pure joy.
“I have been here since the planet was formed,“ she cronned, giving me the feeling that I was listening to an old tune by Petula Clark. Everything she said sounded like song.
“Were you born with this planet?“ Larry asked, now getting this matter-of-fact and very familiar tone of voice. As if he spoke to a very old friend.
She shook her head, approaching us again and actually flying through us, giving us those goosebumps again. Now we had to chuckle when she did so. It felt like a mother tickling her children’s feet. She flew around us a few times as we sat there on our blankets. It got to the point that we grew dizzy with that being in her midst. All this light, conscious light at that, it was incredible.
“Souls are never born and they never ever die,“ she sang, now sounding a bit like Nathalie Dessay while singing Olympia’s aria from ‘Les Contes d’Hoffmann‘. I swear, Laura was doing little coloraturas while she spoke.
“You sound as if you were singing an aria,“ Larry laughed. What followed astounded all of us. There was such a connection of heart here, one that I never have felt before or since, not with anyone or anything. I felt her mirth when she reacted, her eyes looking downward in modesty, sparkling with excitement.
“Who do you think gave all those composers the idea to write those coloraturas?“ she said, lifting one eyebrow in a coy manner. “Who gave the Mona Lisa her smile?“
Larry gestured with one finger at her. She nodded. Here, it became really like three friends talking, just sitting and chatting. The only thing missing would be Laura grabbing herself a beer and putting up her feet. No, I felt the sensation inside her joy.
“It doesn’t matter which music it is,“ she whispered, “when the darling buds of May awaken in a person’s spirit, when the need to express the beauty of life, the beauty of anything, on paper or in voice, in stone, in marble or in any form what so ever, or even in the creation of love or a human being, I am there automatically in your spirit.“
“Are you a face of God?“ I asked. I do not honestly know where that question came from. It just popped out of my mouth. Maybe she inspired me to ask the question so that she could answer it.
Laura now very slowly, very carefully, very beautifully, approached me, her lips carefully touching mine, a taste of eternity in her grasp. The lips were not physical, although I could feel them against mine. The touch was not corporeal, although I felt the tingle of her touch. The tenderness was not linked to her skin, although I felt the rush of her fingers against my cheek. We did kiss, it was a long one, but within that kiss I felt the beauty of the universe. Every kiss ever kissed, every love ever loved, every child ever created was in her lips. Everything that had ever existed, everything that would exist. In my mind’s eye, I saw the making of love and the creation of love, the beauty of love, the preserving of love, the caring of love, the embrace of love. And I understood that conscious love was God. That God had created all of this just to see himself in us. A mandala of love and trust. A painting of souls performing a dance of gentility. Little waves on the ocean a part of the sea. Little flowers on the lawn a part of the grass. Little branches a part of the tree.
Laura withdrew from my numb lips. When we opened our eyes, and it really was like me kissing myself and nothing else, she looked at me as if she was me. In fact, I literally saw myself in her. I saw in her the shy deer that we had encountered close by three years ago on this place. I saw in her my animal guide, the squirrel, that had sprung from branch to branch above my head just last year. I saw the eagle that had appeared all of a sudden when we packed together our stuff ten years ago at this very spot. I saw in Laura the miraculous sky above our heads when we had ascended to the Blue Ridge Mountain top just seven years earlier.
I heard Laura ask me if I understood who she was, without her even opening her mouth, and I nodded in response. I don’t even know if I nodded with my head, I just nodded with my soul, responding with an inner yes.
“We are all faces of God,“ I heard her whisper. “You are a part of the ocean.“
The soul we had come to know as Laura literally flew back through the still very bright campfire, bursting with flames, her very much part of the element, seemingly dancing before us in lights as fire light. She made gestures with her arms to the right and to the left, creating images that we knew as our culture. Bon Jovi performing “Livin‘ On A Prayer“, Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, the early humans writing on cave walls, Charlie Chaplin’s vagabond walking down the street with his hat and cane, Indiana Jones riding his horse, Frank Sinatra singing his tunes, Mozart writing his symphonies, people kissing, families eating breakfast in parks, teenagers with their diplomas in hand throwing up their hats in the air on school and college stairs. Hope, joy, prosperity and the greatest abundance of them all: love.
Then, Laura bowed, honorably, sweetly, her long flourescent robe flying in what seemed to be a heavenly breeze. “Endeavor to become one with everything. For, in truth, there is no separation. You may not see me, my dears, but if you feel me in your hearts, I will be there. Always.“
And just as miraculously as she had appeared did she disappear. We believed to see little tingling lights in everything we saw during our days in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She never left. It was as if she actually had given us a bit of her own sparkle. We waited for her return, but she never did. We were sad, but realized that her love had entered our lives never to leave us again.
We spoke very little for the next few days, Larry and I, only the necessary words. We did a whole lot of walking, climbing, running, cave exploring, treasure hunting, stone collecting, bird watching, waiting for animals to appear, star gazing, thinking, feeling. Our connection had seemed to increase. We knew what the other was feeling while he felt it.
Although we did not say much after that – what is there to say after meeting Mother Earth? – Larry and I both agree that we said more during those days than we ever have before or since. We did say one thing aloud, though. We solemnly spoke of the moment of the last kiss. Larry was hundred percent sure that Laura had kissed him and not me. He had even wondered if I had been jealous that she did not kiss me. I had been sure that Laura had kissed me. He had even seen himself in her. We came to the conclusion that we really, for one moment, had been one being through Mother Earth’s kiss.
That is what I take with me from that experience. The truth. In all those years since that day, I have grown much more quiet. I try to feel reality rather than see it or obeserve it or hear it or taste it. I say only what is really necessary. I sit still much more than I used to. And feel. And when the night comes, I look up at the sky and hope that I somewhere in the distance, I detect the holy spirit of Laura.

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