Explorations of the Infinite: In the Pines

In the Pines

I sat reading at a coffee shop in Savannah Georgia. Shaking slightly from my second cup of green tea, I finished the last chapter, shut the cover and gave it to a friend. I walked outside for some air and ended up in a conversation with someone. I mentioned that I was looking for a new book, they told me to come to their house to find one. After a good walk across town I was in their living room in front of a bookshelf. From the collection of titles one stood out, "The Vision" by Tom Brown Jr. I carried it over to a man with a hollowed-out tree for a digeridoo and asked if I could take it, he consented enthusiastically. I was immediately engrossed in the stories, reading whenever I had the chance. When I finished it in Charleston, I went straight to a computer and signed up for a class at the school the author had created. A month later I was there in the Pine Barrens at the very spot where Tom had camped with his friend Rick, learning from an old Apache scout who they called Grandfather. From what I had read, Grandfather's knowledge seemed as endless and powerful as all the wild places of the Earth. He existed in two worlds, the physical and the spiritual and was able to sense what was happening anywhere in the forest. The path he took to reach this heightened level of awareness was imparted to Tom. Now this knowledge was being passed on through a series of courses to whomever attended the Tracker School. The shear volume of information that the instructors presented was staggering. We would wake up early and receive instruction on a wide variety of subjects well into the night. Fire, shelter, water, food, every detail of living off the land, even down to the way your eyes should perceive. "Wide-angle vision" as it is called, was one of the most emphasized skills of awareness. By taking your focus away from one central point and diffusing it out to the edges of your periphery, you can pick up the subtlest of movements. If you combine this with the silent, deliberate gait that they call the "fox-walk" you can pass through nature without disturbing it. The students slept amidst the pines wherever they pitched their tents, bathed in a beautiful amber stream lined by cedars and moss, and drank from a hand pumped well. The one thing that bothered me was my constant concern of tics, it seemed like everyone was talking about lyme disease. I had to check my whole body several times a day, often in the company of others doing the same. Fortunately the beauty of the pines and the freshness of the air kept my spirits high. As the week progressed I noticed a change in the level of my vibration. By the last night, I had reached such a high frequency that it was hard to stay still. In the golden glow of the setting sun, I danced around a large pile of embers, the birds and the trees my only witnesses.