Lila Blue (23 page)

"Here's the deal," she
said. "Janice is in trouble. She was driving home from work, drunk, and
she ran into a parked car. She’s okay, but both cars are wrecked."

"She never used to be that
drunk at work," I said, hoping it was true.

"She lost her job, and she got
a ticket for driving drunk."

"So she's madder than
usual," I said.

"She's upset, yes. Mad may be
the correct term, in the sense of insane mad, because she's still drinking and
maybe using something else that affects her brain."

"She's not her best
self," I said.

Lila smiled and nodded,
"That's exactly right."

"So what can we do? Besides
pray, I mean."

"Prayer may be the most
powerful thing we can do at this point," Lila said. "She says she
wants you home, but she doesn't have a plan once you get there. I told her I'd
pay her rent for three months, so she doesn't have to worry about a place to
stay, and I told her I'd keep you here as long as you want to stay, but I won't
send her money."

"Good. She'd drink it
up."

"She might. But more
importantly, she needs a reason to get a job. Sometimes poverty is a great
motivator."

Lila went on, "I told her I'd
send temporary custody papers for her to sign in case you'll be attending
school here in September."

"I want to stay here," I
said.

"I told your mother I think it
would be best for you to stay here for the school year. That would give her
time to get things together or let them fall apart even more, which sometimes
needs to happen before we wake up."

"Yes," I said, feeling
that writing everything down in the letter helped make my dream real enough to
grow into something solid and strong. "Did she agree?"

"She did not disagree. I think
there is hope," Lila said. "So we can hope and pray."

"Good plan," I said,
feeling relieved and happy. Before I came to stay with Lila, I thought
"hope and pray" meant there was nothing that could be done. Now I
knew hoping and praying could be the most powerful actions in the world.

Tuesday Lila wanted to go somewhere
for a change of scene, so we decided on Dragon's Head Preserve, a natural area
north of town where there were trails through old growth forests to the top of
headlands overlooking the sea and the Big Fish River estuary. Hiking was new to
me, so when Lila said it would take about three hours all together, I was
nervous. Walking down the beach and around to the cove was the extent of my
hiking experience.

"You'll be surprised,
Cassandra," Lila said when I looked horrified at the idea of a three-hour
hike. "You're in excellent shape now from walking every day. You'll love
it."

I wasn't so sure, but I figured I
could always fall back on impeccable honesty and tell her if I had to turn
around and go back.

We packed backpacks with pears,
cheese, and blueberry scones, along with plenty of water. We had little fold up
rain slickers, hooded sweatshirts, and cloth hiking hats, so we were all set. I
even remembered to tuck in my emergency lady's kit, because the calendar
predicted my third menses would start soon.

The morning had been foggy, but as
soon as we got on the road headed north, the fog clouds broke up and
disappeared, leaving clear blue sky with no wind. The sunshine coming through
the car windows was actually too warm, so I rolled down my window and let cool
air wash over me. My braids made riding with the windows down more fun, because
my hair wasn't slashing my face and eyes the way it did when it was all long
and wild.

There was a low stretched-out
bridge over the Big Fish River wetlands, and right after the bridge, Lila pulled
over and stopped the car on the broad shoulder. Down in the wetlands was a herd
of very large brown animals. At first I thought they were a new kind of cow or
maybe gigantic Oregon deer, but Lila said, "Our golf course elk, seeing
what mischief they can get into this morning." She counted out loud until
she got to seventeen. "They're all still alive, looks like."

"Golf course?" I asked,
wondering if it was a special breed. She handed me binoculars from her
backpack, so I sighted in on what looked like the leader, a huge animal who
seemed dumb and annoyed at the same time, someone you would cross the road or
the river to avoid.

"We've had a running feud in
the county for years between the folks who like having a herd of elk as
neighbors and those who want to murder them for tearing up the golf
course."

"Golfers versus Elks," I
said, handing her the binoculars.

She laughed. "It gets pretty
serious though. I wrote a reasonable essay discussing both sides of the
controversy, and I got hate mail from both factions. I decided to avoid the elk
issue."

"Good thinking," I said.
I could see the guys down at Rainy Hardware in the run down stuffed chairs by
the TV wall, plotting ways to murder the elk without getting caught. "Was
anyone hurt?"

"Two years ago, right down
behind one of those houses, Abe Jacksly shot a couple of the elk who were
trampling his rhododendrons. Instead of scaring the herd away, it made the bull
mad. The bull charged Abe, who dropped his rifle, grabbed his wife, ran out the
front door, jumped in his truck, and drove off."

Where she had pointed I saw half a
dozen houses with big green back yards. Each property had a little boat dock on
the river. The houses looked well cared for but old and unplanned, not like
houses you'd find in a California housing area. I could imagine the whole elk
herd in someone's back yard. Yikes!

"Then what happened?" I
asked, laughing but feeling sorry for Abe at the same time. Other cars had
stopped now and other people got out to count the elk.

"When they came back the next
day, their big back porch had been ripped apart and all their flowers and
shrubs had been eaten or trampled to death. Plus they had the two rotting
carcasses to dispose of. The elk lovers said that if he had let them be, the elk
wouldn't have torn up everything, which is probably true. They would have eaten
all the plants they wanted and moved on."

"What did he do with the
bodies?"

"That was a chore," Lila
said. "He got a backhoe out there to bury them in his yard, but the county
officials and fish and game people wouldn't let him because it would pollute
the estuary. He finally paid to have the dead elk hauled off and buried
somewhere else. His wife told her friends his little shooting spree ended up
costing them more than a new kitchen would have. She may never forgive
him."

I laughed and laughed. When she
grinned at me with a puzzled look, I said, "Grandma, living in a small
town is fun."

She laughed too. "Now you're
getting the idea, Cassandra. TV is ever so dull compared to life in Rainbow
Village."

We got back on the highway and
turned up an unmarked gravel road that wound around for several miles before we
reached our destination. At the preserve trailhead, there was a graveled
parking area and a brown port-a-potty. There was one other car, another little
old Honda like Lila's, only dark blue. I guess hikers drove the same sort of
cars. No Limos or new Caddies here. The trailhead was marked with a carved
wooden archway featuring dragons on either side of the name
Dragon's Head
Preserve
.

There was a little covered station
with a log book so you could let park officials know who was on the trail that
day. Lila signed us in with the date and time we entered. The rules were posted
nearby, and they essentially said don’t touch one single thing and don't put
one foot off the marked trail or else something terrible would happen to the
delicate headland ecology. I thought they were being a little extreme, but with
idiots around willing to shoot anything with eyes, I guess you had to be
specific.

The trail was steep and muddy. Lila
went first stepping over huge exposed roots and giving me her hand to help me
find secure footing. "It levels out soon," she said when she noticed
I was panting.

I was twelve and she was
sixty-five, and somehow I’d thought old people weren't as strong or energetic
as kids, but I was wrong. I was beginning to think my grandma could do
anything. I tried to imagine Janice on this trail with her tight jeans and high
heeled sandals, and I started laughing. "Let's don't take my mom here when
she comes, okay?"

"Not her cup of tea?"

"She'd despise it."

"Then she'd miss a rare and
beautiful thing," Lila said, kneeling down and showing me where the
tiniest orange capped mushrooms were growing underneath a rotting fallen tree.
They were perfectly adorable, like a bit of magic I almost missed.

We stood back up and I felt the
trees looking down on me. They were so tall and so big around they seemed
ancient. "How old are these trees, Grandma?"

"These are old growth, which
means they've never been cut down for timber. Many of them are more than a
hundred years old," she said. "Great great grandmothers, these old
ladies." She bowed Namaste to each of the nearby ones, and they seemed to
bow back, their top branches swaying in a breeze that didn't reach us down on
the trail.

"That would be the
1880s," I said, trying to imagine such a long time to be alive and
standing in one place on the planet. Wow. I bowed to them too, and I felt their
love pour down on me like misty light. "Grandmothers," I said,
feeling small and blessed.

Soon the trail leveled out as Lila
promised, and I followed behind her as silently as I could. She stopped often
to point out colonies of tiny purple flowers or a single white trillium, a
delicate flower standing fearlessly on its strong stalk.

Farther along we crossed little
streams that trickled under wooden plank bridges. In the wet banks of one of
the streams grew clusters of leafy skunk cabbages with yellow flowers and the
strong odor that gave them their name. I was happy to move out of their range.

After about forty-five minutes of
walking up the mountain, we stopped to sit on a fallen tree and have a snack.
Everything tasted so delicious I couldn't believe it. "Grandma, these are
the best scones I've ever eaten. And the pears!" I was groaning with
pleasure and she laughed.

"This is why people hike,
Cassandra. Spending an hour in nature away from the noise and pollution of
society awakens the senses in a way nothing else can. We're visiting heaven.
Spend enough time hiking and you can hear angels sing."

"Angels sing? And see fairies
dance? Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. I've heard the
angels and seen the fairies with my very own ears and eyes. Pay attention. You
will too."

After we snacked and sat enjoying
the music of the breeze in the tops of the grandmother pine trees, we drank
water and packed everything in our backpacks and started walking single file
again on the packed mud trail. Before we had gone a hundred yards, Lila
stopped, alert, touched my arm to stop me, and lifted her chin to direct my
gaze.

Barely thirty feet from us were a
doe and two fawns. They had stopped still and were looking at us the way we
were looking at them. The fawns were so pretty and delicate, and the mother
looked as beautiful and healthy as her babies. They were in a grassy clearing
up the hill slightly from the trail.

Lila started talking very gently to
them. "What beautiful children you have," she said to the mother.
"So pretty, clean, and healthy. You are a wonderful mother. Beautiful
lovely creatures, all of you."

Lila was practically singing them a
little song about how pretty they were. The doe relaxed and winked at us. Then
she bent and started licking her babies' faces, first one and then the other.
The babies moved closer to their mother for more attention.

Lila kept murmuring to them about
how beautiful and sweet they were, and the mamma deer seemed to be replying,
Yes, my babies are perfectly wonderful, and thank you very much for noticing.

We stayed there about ten minutes
admiring them. Finally Lila bowed to them and I did too, and we slowly went
ahead on the trail. The doe and fawns lifted their heads to nod goodbye and
slowly moved up the hill away from us.

Conversing with deer was almost as
good as seeing fairies dance. I didn't realize you could talk with wild
animals. I knew dogs and cats and even Buster the parrot would interact with
you if you talked with them, but I didn't know wild animals could understand
English. My Grandma Lila Blue talked with deer.

Before long we moved beyond the
trees into the headlands where there were only tall grasses and endless sky. We
kept ascending on the narrow dirt path until we came to the top of Dragon's
Head. From the trail we could look up and down the coast of Oregon in both directions
for miles and miles. It seemed we were on top of the world. The trail took us
close to the edge of the cliff, not close enough to look straight down, but
plenty close to see the ocean all around and know we were high, high above it.

To the south we could see the
entire Big Fish estuary, where the mouth of the river spread out to lovely
white sand beaches in each direction. There were two boats down on the river
leaving white trails, and they looked as small as flies from where we stood.

Along the trail a little farther we
could look down to a small black sand cove where wave after wave crashed
violently onto the rocky beach. The high tide line was strewn with huge drift
logs, all gnarled and bleached by the sun and water. I wondered how many such coves
were hidden up and down all along the shores of the Pacific Ocean. What an
amazing place to be on the planet! I felt very lucky to be standing on top of
this wild mountain overlooking the sea.

We kept going a ways along the
trail that angled north. Lila said we would turn around and go back soon.
"A couple of miles farther," she said, "are the northern
trailhead and parking area. Sometimes people take two cars and hike from one
side to the other." She said she'd done it a few times with friends, but
she preferred the southern part of the trail, so she usually went back and
forth on it, like today.