Heinz Trucking

William Heinz 03/20/07

Jasmine closed the hatch of her charcoal grey Sabella and glanced up the road she had just driven down. She looked at the pine, maple, and locust trees and breathed deep the air, still moist with the dew of the morning though nearly noon. The arms of the mountains climbed steep around her, holding that moisture in and shading her from the harsh glare of the June sun.

“Flo,” she said to the car, “I promise that if you get us back down that road, you get a tune up and a wash.” The “road” was little more than two deep gouges in rock in some places. In one place the weary hatchback had driven through a shallow rocky creek. A broad smile graced her lips at the memory of Sam’s white knuckles as he gripped the armrests and tried to look calm. This trip was his idea. She looked around for him.

She spotted him coming up the road from the other direction. A shirtless plus-size woman in a rainbow skirt, farther down the trail, walked away. The woman’s beautiful golden hair hung down her back to her waist. For no obvious reason this person carried a shovel, pickaxe, and some sort of heavy metal bar over five feet in length. Jasmine’s head tilted in surprise and confusion at this odd apparition. Were they building something, or burying it?

“Hey Jazz,” said Sam, “I guess I screwed up my mental calendar or something. As it turns out, today is the solstice and, since everyone’s busy with the ceremony, no one is available to dig shitters, which are needed; so I’m gonna do that. Will you be okay to find your way alone?”

“Is it far or something?”

“Well, Hugger says it’ll take about an hour to hike in. We love Mother Nature, so there’s almost always a hike into a Gathering.”

“What do you mean, ‘dig shitters’? There’s no port-o-potties?” Her brain worked to organize her pack load so that she would not have to walk back to her car tonight. “And what’s with the ceremony? I thought you said this was a festival.”

“It is a festival sorta, but everybody throws down their own input to keep things running smooth instead of paying someone else to do it. It’s National forest, money’s illegal here. That’s why it’s a free gathering, dude. Absolutely everything is contributed freely by the attendees. That’s why we bought that huge bag of taters…”

“Everybody cooks and eats together too? That’s cool, but I don’t think my camp grill will cook enough for very many people.” Inwardly, she also added that money could not be illegal. She did not say so out loud because people tended to look pitiful and hurt when you disabused them of some silly bit of misinformation they have latched onto.

“Yup, there’s a kitchen. Look Jasmine, I’ll explain more, later. Right now that diggin’ crew needs a pair of hands.” He gave her brief directions through the woods to camp. “Oh, there’s one more thing. Most of the grown-ups spend solstice morning in silence, so if nobody talks to you don’t be offended.” Sam spoke as if his words explained everything, but Jasmine began to feel dubious about this trip.

She briefly closed her eyes and heard some children squealing and laughing. As their excited voices faded in the distance, Jasmine’s smile returned. “Sure. Okay, I’ll see you later then.”

He trotted off in the direction Jasmine had seen the woman Hugger walking, leaving all his camping gear on the ground next to the car. She munched on the last of her candy bar and sincerely hoped there would be dinner. There was no room to include food in this load. After shouldering her pack Jasmine set out down the road to the trailhead, past cars parked in preposterous spaces off the gravel to either side. A bed sheet hung over the trail and boldly announced, “The Family That Prays Together Stays Together.” She barely noticed the Forest Service sign, “No motorized vehicles beyond this point.”

As she walked through the moist dark green Jasmine hoped this was not some sort of religious thing. The Family that Prays Together? Ceremony? The subject of prayer reminded her uncomfortably of her mother. In their last conversation Mom chided her that she would miss her niece’s baptism if she went on this trip. Knowing well that her mother was encouraging her to get involved in her family affairs, Jasmine instead took the opportunity to argue with her mother about church, a bone of contention between them. Sarah, Jasmine’s sister and mother of the niece, knew how she felt about church and would not be offended in the least.

A strange snuffling sound reached her ears. She stopped walking, a bit startled, and turned around. A bright ribbon dangled from a limb down a branching trail. On the marked trail a chubby black dog lay on its back squirming and snorting like a happy pig. She would have missed a turn if that dog had not alerted her. When she reached it, the dog rolled to its feet and stared expectantly, tail wagging. Jasmine obliged for a moment, noting the grey muzzle and grey eyes on the old dog.

The sounds of a small cascade trickled down the trail, and soon the path came alongside a creek. It climbed a bit and turned a corner, revealing the waterfall, smaller than its sound. The trail stepped up some rocks and leveled off at the top of the small falls. She reached a level area where the sun shined more fully on her cheeks. The trail emerged from a shady valley into warm light and green life. Trees grew with space between them, in contrast to the thick rhododendron that crowded the shady hollow she left. The valley walls seemed to open. She breathed in the smells, pine and campfire. A blissful expression brightened her face before a scowl replaced it.

She wondered why people met for worship in stuffy places like churches. Would this idyllic scene not be better suited to a baptism? A pretty pool languished just over the falls where the warm sun shone down in contrast to the cold mountain stream. Why did her mother entreat her to endure those stuffy dark buildings? Somber old churches never inspired Jasmine, not in any way that made her feel the presence of God. She felt that mass was man locked forever in contemplation of his own image, not God’s. If you would honor God, then do it by honoring His gifts, or Her gifts, or whatever. Honestly, the whole subject frustrated her so that she would rather not think about it.

A splash snapped her to the present. Jasmine realized she was not alone. She tensed and looked to see a man standing up next to the creek, wiping his face with his shirt. As he turned to her, long goatee dripping with water, he put a cap on his bald head, a t-shirt that stated in bold characters, “I ♥ Naked People,” on his chest. He smiled broadly and bowed.

“Hello, I’m Jazzy,” she began. The kind-faced man walked over to Jasmine and hugged her. He then walked a few paces in the direction Jasmine had been walking and, looking back with beaming grin, waved her to join him. Confused, she walked on, keeping abreast of the silent man.

Here and there, a few dozen feet from the trail, camps of one to three tents began to appear. Suddenly a child ran past them, bright blonde hair flowing out over some sort of prop butterfly wings. Jasmine turned to see a slightly older child in a cape with dusty brown hair, about nine, walking quickly toward her. With a concerned look under the rainbow painted on her face, the girl asked, “Do you need help?”

“Where can I camp?”

“Wherever you want, just don’t camp on the trail and camp away from the water supply.”

“What… what’s going on?” The man’s smile, impossibly, grew at Jasmine’s hesitant question.

“Oh,” the girl glanced down the trail anxiously. “Well, the kid parade is starting any minute and then the grown-ups have the solstice ceremony.” She hopped twice. “The kitchen is right down this trail and that’s where the water is. If you want to go to the meadow, follow me! I gotta go!” She watched as the child ran ahead of her down the trail twenty yards and ducked down another to the left. She glanced at the silent man, who gestured another invitation.

The child ran until quickly out of sight, but Jasmine walked slowly, secure that her quiet guide would lead her correctly. Jasmine enjoyed her surroundings far too much to race down the trail. Still, the man walked quickly and soon the valley became broad and flat. She could now hear children chattering excitedly, but they suddenly quieted.

A sarong, hung in a tree, caught her eye as the children began to chant together, just a few, then all together. Ignoring the song, she tried to make out the symbol on the cloth as it flapped in a brief breeze. It looked something like a deep green three with accessories, on a field of light brown, and blended well with its surroundings.

“Earth my body, water my blood,” the children sang as they walked in procession toward Jasmine on the path she stood upon. She now listened to their words, “Air my breath and fire my spirit!” She stepped aside, making brief eye contact with the silent man. "Earth my body," understanding passed. He wanted to hurry on. She would remain. "Water my blood." As he turned away the children arrived. "Air my breath and fire my spirit!" Kids aged a few months to twelve years danced in a disorganized parade along the trail. There might have been twenty of them. Jasmine had difficulty counting them as they moved about, every one in some strange costume, or mismatched combination of costumes: ladybugs, princesses, fairies, mages and more. That lion costume looked hot. Some of the wee ones had adult assistants. These helped everyone remember the words to the song, which seemed to have another part, easier to remember: "Hey-yanah, Ho-yanah, Hey-yah-nah."

The last three passed, an adult and toddler both dressed wearing rabbit ears and butterfly wings and a thirteen year old boy with clown nose and rainbow afro. The mama was singing and dancing, but the teenager just marched along and waved his arms. "Earth my body." Jasmine thought this looked like fun and decided these people might not be so creepy after all. The parade soon burst into a meadow.

The midday sun and the song reminded her, as she emerged from the forest, that she had hiked for some time and needed water. "Water my blood." After loosening her pack and dropping it to the ground, she unceremoniously fished out her bottle and sunglasses. The circle opened to accept the children’s parade and closed again. In the parade, or ceremony, or whatever it was the adults cheered and joined in the song while the children danced around a fire at the center. "Air my breath and fire my spirit!" The whole group began to move in a general counterclockwise fashion. Some people sang the lines in harmony; others now sang responses to lines. Jasmine briefly lost herself in the act of drinking water, holding her breath like a skin diver. The bottle came away from her lips empty, but her thirst was not stilled.

Many people carried drums and shakers, and it was these that drew her attention back to the circle. She strolled closer to watch the goings-on. The adult’s costumes varied as much as the children’s costumes had, but some wore no costume at all. Here stood a man in cut-offs, his pentagram tattoo visible beneath a blend of tan and sunburn, his grey dreadlocks tied into a knot at the top of his head. There danced a brown-haired woman with glasses dressed in some sort of fur bikini. Around her neck she wore a silver cross that shot tiny splinters of the mid-day solstice sun. A small number of people did not dance, but remained stationary in circle. These had bowls or mugs of some sort in their hands, except for one bald guy in a cowboy shirt who carried a Frisbee. The circle ceased rotating and the children ran off in several directions while the adults cried in unison, “We looooooooove yooooou!” Jasmine gave a joyous laugh at this.

The drums quieted and another shirtless man wearing a bird mask talked, but Jasmine could not hear what he said. After a silence a blonde woman decorated in henna drawings and wearing a broad-rimmed straw hat, began singing one sound, one note. Quickly others joined her, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…" A dark haired woman in a dark dress, covered with glitter, and wearing a mask that depicted a crescent moon, joined in near to Jasmine. She thought the woman sounded a little off-key, but somehow blended perfectly with the other voices, "…mmmmmmmm." Jasmine stopped moving as the sound washed over her. Her body seemed to soak it in, until it pervaded her and blurred the edges of her being. After a few heartbeats she joined in, barely noticing that she did so. This one-word song, this one word prayer, faded slowly into a comfortable silence.

Across the field Sam, Hugger, and three other people arrived. They carried many water bottles, which they set down in a shady patch before running to join the circle and the sound, the Om. One of them, a man in black cape and shabby matching top hat, turned and left the way they had come. Perhaps she would find more water that way, she thought.

She pulled her pack on to go, but stopped at the entrance to the trail. She wanted to understand exactly what kind of ceremony she witnessed. A hairy, dark haired man spoke an invocation to a direction facing out of the circle, his voice as deep as his chest. South it was. Now she was thoroughly confused.

What were people wearing crosses and those wearing pentagrams doing worshipping together? The Om reminded her of recordings of Tibetan monks, but she was pretty sure that directions-as-spirits was an indigenous American thing. She watched as others invoked other directions, but they were too far away to hear their words.

Sounds on the trail behind her alerted Jasmine that people approached. A man, a blonde woman, and a child, obviously the woman’s daughter, arrived. The man bore the queue of a Hare Krishna, but wore a t-shirt that read, “CONFORM or be free,” instead of robes. The adults carried a medium size soup pot between them. Jasmine smelled fruit, particularly melon, from within.

Jasmine asked, “Could I have some of that cantaloupe?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said. “This is going to be served to the fasters in Circle, but there’s some breakfast left back at the kitchen. I’m Cedar, by the way. Welcome Home.” He said to the child, “Li’l Butterfly, would you show this sister to the kitchen?”

The child’s face clouded, her lips pursed with resolve, and her arms crossed. “I wanna serve the fasters in Circle,” she said with resolve. “Besides, it’s just straight down that trail.”

Jasmine jumped in before L’il Butterfly got upset, “Well, I bet I could find that. Thank you very much.” She looked at the adults, who were putting the pot down while they waited, “Is that where the water is as well?”

“It sure is,” said the woman, hugging Jasmine, “and welcome home. I’m Cora.”

“Jazzy.”

“They’re calling for us,” Cedar interrupted. “Would you like to join us in Circle?” A song had begun. The melody and a simple drumbeat, like a heartbeat, drifted clearly, but the words were lost.

“Thank you, but I really need water.” Jasmine turned and walked onward. The valley walls began to close in again and the trail sloped gently upward. A melody drifted through her head, familiar but unplaceable. She found a great plastic tank stationed on the right side of the trail. It was translucent and white. About one third filled with clear liquid, a pipe poured into it from uphill. Another pipe led out of the downhill and trail ward side of the tank to a strange contraption of white plastic pipe and black tape. The melody persisted, a simple thing. From there the pipe led to a spigot tied to a stick in the ground. Hung from the stick a little sign proclaimed, “Drinking water – Thanks for turning off the spout.”

The little bottle filled up with the clear water and then emptied into her mouth. People played stringed instruments and laughed just a little way down the trail. Some sort of tarp set up stood beyond the next rise and a row of trees with low boughs. She refilled her bottle, looked again at the big plastic tank, and wondered how in the world people carried it out there. Jasmine shut off the tap and walked the few yards to the kitchen. Two boys dodged around her; one chased the other down the trail.

The trail emptied into a space under a large system of four or five tarps, two of them forming the primary shelter with smaller ones arranged at the edges. It stood at the edge of another meadow, much smaller than the first. Three counters, supported by dead wood legs, and a row of large propane burners formed a rough square in one half of the shaded area. In the other half was an open space where eight or so people were sitting, standing, and kneeling in small knots. Every single one of them had a mug of coffee in his or her hand, the scent of which, mixed with tobacco and wood smoke, now flowed past her nostrils. Drums, packs, and an empty camp chair or two lay here and there on the ground.

Once Jasmine entered, she became immersed in singing, strings, drums and laughter. Two ladies were slicing garlic and onions on one of the counters. One of them said, “Welcome Home,” with a big toothy smile to Jasmine and added, “There’s coffee in the carafe and pancakes under this lid from breakfast. Fruit is in the box there on that shelf. Condiments and pancake fixins are on the coffee counter. If you help yourself to food, please use the hand wash over there.”

The man she had seen earlier wearing a cape and top hat sat on a bucket playing the guitar and singing the dirtiest song Jasmine had ever heard. She could now see he also wore a theatrical half-mask. A redheaded man in overalls played the mandolin along and a third man kept a simple rhythm with a hand drum.

The carafe pumped welcome blackness into her “to-go” mug and the woman that oriented Jasmine, introduced as Meghan, and served her some pancakes, which were purple. As she ate, a dreadlocked teenaged girl led the players in a reggae version of a gospel song peppered with political lyrics. Jasmine closed her eyes a moment and held her breath listening to the girl’s song. For a moment, the tune in Jasmine’s head on the trail returned loudly, but fled again as she tried to identify it. She opened her eyes.

Meghan emptied her chopping into a lidded chrome bowl, washed her hands and joined Jasmine at the edge of the social area with more pancakes. Her light colorful summer skirt, engagement ring, and long straight brown hair stood in effeminate contrast to the black leather collar on her neck, the bold bullring hanging from her nose, and the vivid tattoo of a caduceus on her sternum.

They chatted and shared the pancakes. She found out there was to be a sweat lodge that evening. Meghan also provided her with directions to and reviews of all of the trench latrines, “The one up that trail above the compost pit has a little rail to hold onto.” When she saw Jasmine’s blank look, she gave her instructions on trench use and hygiene. The conversation ended, after directions to good unclaimed campsites, when several people demanded that Meghan sing, “that song.”

Her pack required attention before Jasmine could make her way, so she listened to Meghan and the man in the top hat trade verses in a blues tune even raunchier than his earlier effort. She walked out into the small meadow, looked around, and spotted a likely flat spot just under the trees. This time her pack struck the ground with finality.

Trampling the plants in a circle and gathering dead wood laying in her tent’s space reminded Jasmine of a portion of a book she had read as a child. The bawdy song left behind in the Kitchen continued in her head, slowly changing until it became the unidentified song from earlier. She ignored it by trying to remember the book.

In the book, an entity came into being by accident in the midst of chaos. There was a big name for the chaos that she could not remember. This being slowly cleared an ordered space in the chaos. As Jasmine piled the deadwood outside her new camp, the melody in her head almost formed words. She hummed it for a moment while she arranged a little display next to the “entrance” to her camp. She made sure to include Harrison, a plastic toy carried since childhood. The little brass safety pin through its nose, she was sure, would frighten away the fiercest invaders.

She pulled the tent out of its bag and extended the poles. What was the name of that book? Jasmine suspected it drew on Dante and Milton, but never bothered to read those more intimidating works. She pitched the tent in a flash. The book had a partial quote as its title, "To Reign in Hell." That was it.

She stopped humming and sang out, “Come to set the cactus free!” She burst out laughing. “Not cactus,” she exclaimed. “Captives!”

The song that had nagged her for over an hour she had learned as a child during catechism prior to the sacrament of Confirmation. Her friends in the back row had sung the word, “cactus,” in practice because it went better with the word "desert" in another line. The tune endured in her memory because she had made mischief with it. What were the rest of the words? She chuckled again, tossed her pack into the tent, and decided to enjoy a moment in the sun by herself.

She stretched out a blanket and did some yoga, immersed in sunshine for a few minutes before a fast moving cloud obscured it. Meghan and the masked man enjoyed the afternoon on a blanket nearby. When the sun emerged again a baby’s cry briefly broke the silence. Jasmine continued her sun salute while the couple sang softly together:

In the womb I feel the heartbeat of my mother.
In the womb I feel protected and safe.
In the womb I feel the heartbeat of my mother.
In the womb I feel her comfort and love.

When I feel afraid and when I feel unsafe
I return to the heartbeat, I return to the womb.
When I need comfort and when I need love
I return to the heartbeat, I return to the womb.

Sacred waters of the womb surround me with love
And when I flow within I let the pain flow out.
In the waters of the womb I find my balance
And walk through life a little lighter now.
I walk through life a little brighter now.

When their song ended a strange silence came over the area. Jasmine looked up to the sky and another cloud passed, scattering the sun’s light into a crepuscular display. The sky put her in mind of the giant rose window at St Al’s. She remembered how beautiful that window appeared during her Confirmation. Peace is flowing like a river. A smile drifted briefly across her lips. That day, while that very hymn played, a vision, or perhaps a daydream took her away from there. Flowing out from you and me. She had flown with the angels that day, but forgot.

She shook gently with anxiety before the silence of the meadow relaxed her and flooded her heart. Flowing out into the desert. Today she had heard hymns and bawdy songs, witnessed prayer and monkeyshines, smelled incense and sweat, and felt both comfortable and nervous, sometimes simultaneously. It was not the crude or strange things that made her uneasy here, but the sacred and profound. Come to set the captives free. Though she often denied it, there had been many moments in Jasmine’s life in which she had touched the indescribable, many experiences one could only call spiritual. The trouble, for her, arose in communication.

Could her religious mother ever understand that personal prayer enriched her more than what she considered ritual-by-numbers? She could not exactly tell her pastor about an out-of-body experience she had had during sexual climax. Would the deacon administering Eucharist ever see that eating a meal cooked and served with love was to Jasmine a far greater sacrament? It seemed that everyone had a short list defining the sacred and a little box in which they experienced it. To bind beauty, love, to eff the ineffable in this way was blasphemy.

Her spiritual community regarded such thoughts as heretical or worse; her intellectual community considered them taboo. Friends and lovers greeted any remotely spiritual topic with ridicule, rank prejudice, and rhetoric about rational thought instead of rational thought itself.

Increasingly, Jasmine kept thoughts on such topics to herself. "When I feel afraid and when I feel unsafe." Eventually those thoughts all but disappeared from her conscious mind until she would not listen to others’ views on spirituality. If they refused to listen to her ideas, she thought, why entertain theirs? An important part of her Self starved, unacknowledged, nearly gone. "I return to the heartbeat…" No, not starved, just untended. She still experienced the sacred, but communication is important to assimilation of experience. She needed to share this stuff.

Her thoughts drifted to the day of her Confirmation. No memory remained of it at all, save that beautiful light streaming in through the rose window, the hymn, and the gentle hand of Universe, revealing for just a moment the sheer heartbreaking beauty of existence. Joy in the memory made a bittersweet mixture with the grief of self-imposed silence. However, that gentle hand touched her still, and her silence broke under it. Happiness rushed into the void.

Sam had said that the attendees contributed everything here. That would account for the varied influences in the ceremony. Perhaps there was room for one more contributor, because she would be damned if she remained quiet any longer.

“Jazzy,” Sam’s voice tentatively called her back from meditation, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m…” Jasmine stopped. The laugh that came was wet with tears; “I’m so…” a wave of laughter stopped her from going any further.

“Sort of overwhelmingly happy and sad at the same time?” Sam asked, a gentle smile on his face. Many people drummed together in the distance. The sound was indistinct, but beneath it a "thump-thump, thump-thump" reached Jasmine’s ears clearly. “You missed dinner circle, and food is an important asset when tackling the Mysteries of the Universe.”

“Yeah, I guess I was just…elsewhere. Having one of them…whatchacallems? Catharsis! No…” Sam jumped into her pause, “I think I know what you mean. I don’t remember the word either. They sometimes happen.”

By the light, it seemed an hour or more had passed since she lay down in the meadow. The couple on the other blanket was gone. She asked, “What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam replied, looking at his bare wrist. “Later than it was. We didn’t get very far on the shitter. We decided to attend the ceremony and then it was dinner; kind of early I thought. I spaced out. I didn’t notice you weren’t at dinner until the pots went back to the kitchen. I brought leftovers, sorry.”

He stood up and said, with a hint of pride, “I’m gonna help finish that shitter now. I reckon we got about two good hours of daylight in this valley.”

“Hey, I met a girl who said there were two functioning shitters.” She eagerly grabbed a spoon from her pack.

“Yeah, but they fill up.” Jasmine nodded at this while opening Sam’s battered plastic container of food. “Hey, I want that bliss ware back,” he added, “and clean.” She nodded again.

Sam asked, “I will see you at the heart fire after dark?”

“Pro’ly, and Sam,” he looked up at her words. “Thank you for digging. You mentioned the heart fire in the car. What happens there?”

“We sing!” He shouted, walking away, and picked up a shovel where it leaned against a sapling. “And drum!” He continued this down the path through the meadow. “And talk! And dance! And recite poetry!”

She knew that Sam made a sacrifice by spending hours digging trenches in mountain terrain. The guy spent the entire car journey talking about the people he would see, the great fun they were, the amazing drum circles, but went to work as soon as they got there. “Shitter-diggin’,” as he called it, was a sacrament. People must have spent similar hours erecting the kitchen and cooking and a dozen other things. She determined to help in the kitchen as soon as she could.

Soon she finished her meal. A small bag from her tent provided shelter for the items she wanted to bring to the fire. Along the way, the low angle of the sun cast the trees’ shadows across the trail. She remembered another detail of her confirmation: that the vision occurred during the exit procession. The pews had cast shadows on the aisle in the same way that day. She would have a song for the fire.

When she emerged from the silent darkling wood into the meadow, the sky was still bright, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. A blaze of light and sound stood where earlier had been a comparatively mild circle of people around a modest fire. Drums quickened her heartbeat. The fire stood a tall as her shoulder. Three-dozen people danced, drummed, stared, juggled fire, and carried and cut wood. Some talked, but most everybody sang:

We are an old family; we are a new family,
We are the same family, stronger than before,
We honor you; we empower you to be who you are.
We honor you; we empower you to be who you are.

I am a wise woman; I am a storied woman,
I am a healer. My soul shall never die.

I am a strong man, I am a lovin’ man
I am a stargazer. My soul will never die.

We are an old family; we are a new family,
We are the same family, stronger than before,
We honor you; we empower you to be who you are.
We honor you; we empower you to be who you are.