This morning, I was standing over the spot where I´d buried Cain , eyes and heart both leaking, when a man and two very large dogs came walking up. In Spanish he asked, ¨What are you doing there?¨with a gentleness I didn´t quite understand from a stranger. One dog, the white one, laid down like a sphynx on the mound of earth that is now Cain. The other, black and furry, stuck his head up my dress so that I couldn´t help but giggle even as I responded in Spanish, ¨My dog is buried here. Has been for three days now.¨He apologized and asked what happened. A crocodile, I told him, and though his eyes got wider, it was only a flicker. This is normal for the people who live here. ¨Something bigger will eat that crocodile now,¨ he offered kindly, ¨It´s the way.¨ I told him I understand and looked back at the ground. ¨This is your place to meditate now,¨ he said, surprising me so that I looked up quickly. ¨Your dog is here,¨ he said looking me straight in the eyes, ¨but his spirit is everywhere.¨ I smiled and didn´t need to say again that I understand. He told me he was going with his dogs to visit a waterfall. A small one, but beautiful, and very close. And as he turned to go, parting palm fronds to pick his way into the jungle, dogs in tow, I knew I had to go along.¨Amigo!¨ I called after him. He peeked back through the green. ¨Can I come?¨He hesitated only a moment before saying, ¨Of course. But this place is a secret. You can´t tell anyone about it...¨ I nodded. Off he went between the leaves. As I passed into the jungle, he turned back and said, ¨It´s better if we don´t talk while we walk here. Make it your meditation.¨ ¨I have a little fear,¨ I said, looking around at the land ahead and beneath my feet that must be under the river when the tide is high, which it is half the time. I couldn´t help but hesitate, thinking of the crocodile that ate my dog less than a week before. ¨Don´t,¨was all he said as he walked on.
We walked across sodden earth, parting leaves and fronds and branches as we carefully chose our steps. We balanced our way across downed trees where we could to cross the river. In other places, we walked ankle deep, sinking into sandy bottom. At one point, some dark mud sucked off my Havaianas. I stood there sinking in barefeet, cursing. He turned back and looked at me as if to say, ¨I thought we agreed not to talk.¨ Then, walked back, helped unearth my flops, and said, ¨Tranquila chica. It´s better without your shoes.¨ He handed them back for me to decided and walked on.
He was right. Armorless is better. I let the ground absorb through the skin in the soles of my feet and continued on.
A few more turns following the river brought us to a clearning. Water poured down a concrete wall, maybe 3 feet high, and flowed between our ankles toward the ocean in the direction from which we´d come. I confess to a mild disappointment, remembered he´d said it was small, and decided to be grateful for the journey there. I thought briefly, searching for some meaning to the encounter, that perhaps this was the path that Cain had taken before washing up to say goodbye. Then, realized my friend had disappeared again. I climbed a rock, crossed the stone wall, and stood stunned and ever more grateful. Friend and both dogs stood immersed waist-deep in river with a waterfall rushing down moss-kissed rocks behind them.
Jose and his two dogs, Candy and Ladona (he´s Italian), bathed in moving water as I watched from the sandy riverbank. ¨Massage,¨ he said over one shoulder as he began climbing rocks. I felt the quiver of fear in my low belly as I thought of dipping into the water, but then realized I´d been led there to find peace. I slipped off my sundress and stepped ankle deep, waist deep, chest deep, and waded across to the falling water. Rock by rock I climbed my way up, past my new friend sprawled on his back, and found a place of my own where I could do the same. I lay back on the rippled rocks, stiff at first, until the water showed me how. Truth after truth washed over and through me as I lay there, breathing, opening. These rocks will hold me up, as will the much larger one beneath it, like always. I can trust it. I can let it. (Soften. Melt.) This water can wash me clean and remind me what I´m made of (Flowing strength. Like it. I AM.) The sun above can light you up, warm you up, into even the darkest recesses, but only if you´re open to it. (Absorb!) This air contains everything I love, everything that lives, everything that ever has. (BREATHE!) Tears flowed into the water coarsing over me. The same. And as I allowed myself to melt and mix, I realized I was steeped in God. I was the most alive I have ever been. The only way we lose anything is if we cling to how it once was.
Plunk! Plunk! Plunk! called me out of my trance. I looked below to see Jose face down in the river, feet kicking. His bald head popped up, dripping, smiling, as he motioned for me to descend. ¨Try,¨ he said, and pointed to the falls. I climbed cautiously down the rocks, tentatively lowered into the pool, planted my feet, held on with both hands, and put my head into the cascade. It ran like fingers through my hair and deeper still, washing out every sound but the roar of life. I stayed until I needed air and came up smiling too. He stepped back to give me space, pointed, and said, ¨Again. But this time....let go.¨ I remembered his kicking feet, felt mine sunken up to mid-calf, and lowered my head again. This time, I lifted my legs into the flow as the water, source of life, rushed onto my crown and down to my toes. My feet didn´t plunk. They fluttered. I floated gracefully, feet like remembered tailfins. Breath, held out, I was suspended in that place where there is only truth. Where shadows disperse in the light within. When I came up for air, that light shone forth on the entire scene. The world was brighter.
Jose said it was time to go, but we had to make another stop first. Another waterfall, he said. The ritual is not complete until you´ve bathed in both. And so we hiked, barefoot, pure, and fearless. We turned a corner and found nearly identical beauty and paused long enough to bathe ourselves in it. Silently. Me, my new friend, and his two dogs, one black and one white. We hiked back along the river, this time in the direction it flows, in silence, to the place where we´d met. A mound of earth in a circle of trees, marked only by some lovingly placed coconuts and a tug in my heart. It was different somehow.
Before I´d started pushing dirt back into the hole, I´d dropped a coconut in beside Cain. He loved to shred them down to the seed inside and then play catch with ´the ball´. Maybe someday a tree will spring forth. A cycle within a cycle, complete. I realized as I stood there, embracing myself in all this new space I contain, that more than just a tree will grow from this.
As I stepped through the trees onto the beach, I found a woman and her little girl lying where Cain had washed up a few days before. The same place where I´d sat and prayed for something good to come of this. The little girl, in a yellow ruffled swimsuit, had stuck a branch in the sand exactly where Cain had been, its limbs stretching skyward like a tree. She was decorating it with whatever she could find, shells and seaweed, little seeds. She was covered in sand. Bathed in sun. Breathing the same blue sky as me. And playing joyfully with symbols of life in a place that could be heavy with death for me. But isn´t.
