A Day to Remember
It was a beautiful summer day in the great mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the girl and a couple close friends decided to drive up to Timber wolf peak in search of sacred quartz crystals that she had heard about from another crystal collector. Being an experienced mineral collector, she knew it was best to bring along a couple of friends just in case she needed a helping hand. Her friends were very happy to get out of the city for the day. The trip started out per usual, she loaded up her Toyota with all of the necessary rock collecting tools, packed her lunch, grabbed a bottle of water and she was ready. The drive up into the mountains was glorious; she saw a red-tailed hawk and several eagles soaring above. She then looked to the right and in a green pasture, the greenest green that she had ever seen, stood a heard of Western Elk. She was delighted and told her two close friends that today was going to be something special, to get ready for an adventure to remember.
A couple hours later they arrived at the turn off onto the old dirt road, rarely traveled, she took her time driving her beloved Toyota pickup up the steep grade into the deep forest. Through the woods she drove, stopping every once in awhile to read the map that was given to her for this quartz crystal digging area. Time drug on and finally she was at the very top of the mountain, and sure enough she could see where other people had dug in the past. Feeling very excited she found a place to park and gathered her tools, lunch and water for the short walk to the digging site. Before getting to the task at hand, she gathered her loose sage and tobacco and made an offering to Mother Earth, in thanks for the beauty she found her self in. This mountain so full of life, she could feel the pulsating energy of the Universe all around her, the arms of Mother Nature surrounded her in this sacred place. It is hard to tell you how much she loved the great out doors; the lovely wild flowers, green flora of Salal, and mossy ground under her feet. When she was away, far away from her city, among the fir trees, she could be the true person that she knew she was. She found truth in those mountains, deep in the woods. The best word to describe how she felt was SUBLIME. Free from the boundary of every day life, she was in her church.
She thought to herself that the day would be short, so she immediately began looking for a crystal bearing area to begin her search. What she found was a digging hole already a good two feet down, thanks to another collector earlier in the year or maybe from last summer. She was in the middle of a huge forest of evergreen trees, some she was sure to be from ‘old growth’, which was never cut down to make the lumber that our homes are built with. The air was moist, and she could smell the dense woods, that musty, earthy smell that she grew to love. Looking to the right, and a bit above her, she could see a huge granite boulder that had rolled down from the very top of the mountain some time ago, easily the size of a VW Bug she thought as she began to dig into the earth with her ‘lucky shovel’.
Her two friends hiked around the area, checking out the various birds and finally decided to find a place near their friend to have a bite to eat. Of course, all they could see was her “back side” as she whole-heartedly dug away, shovel after shovel of deep brown soil. Every once in awhile she would find a ‘teaser crystal’, part of a small quartz crystal or maybe a quartz embedded rock, just enough to keep her interest. When searching for crystals one needs to realize that you only do it for the sheer joy of adventure, you may not find one crystal digging all weekend. It was now late afternoon, she had found four small crystals so far, hoping to dig out that one ‘glory piece’.
By this time her friends were getting ready to head back, but being the crystal head that she was, she pushed to stay a bit longer. With her small Army issued shovel in hand, she made one last strike towards the back of the dirt hole, hoping to find a larger crystal before she left, all of the sudden the huge granite boulder decided to come down directly on her. In a blink of an eye, she found herself out of the hole and her body a foot away from the huge VW sized rock! All she could say was “My shovel is under that rock”! Acting as of nothing had happened, that this was an every day thing, it seemed to not affect her in the least, however, she was a bit angry for losing her lucky shovel.! Then she looked to her friends, all who were speechless with faces of white. At that point she could remember feeling a pair of hands on the back of her shoulders pulling her out of the hole. But neither of her friends could have been that quick to climb down and then proceed to pull her out of a two feet deep hole.
It took her some time to realize that she had almost passed on that day. Actually, it took years until she finally realized the magnitude of that day, that it was not her time to leave, that she still had work to do here, that her Guardian Angel or whatever you wish to call it, had intervened and saved this girls life. Come to find out it scared her friends deeply, it was one of those life experiences that they will never forget. To this day, they speak of that crystal digging trip and how they saw her mysteriously jump backwards out of a two-foot hole just in the nick of time.
Every time she drives over that mountain, past the crystal digging area, she looks over to where all of this happened, and still thinks about that darn shovel.
