“Good,” Yoki says. “Let your mind expand. Let the walls surrounding your consciousness disappear. Let your wolf-self wander and explore.”
As I’ve done in all our meditation sessions up until this point, I try to let my guard down, to access the part of me at the core that’s pure wolf, but everything is different this evening, each action or thought is bigger than normal, and I’m scared of what’s beyond those invisible walls.
To my right, Omar drags a mallet around the inside of a bowl, causing it to ring out like the extended ping of a bell. He does this again with a different bowl, one with a higher pitch. And again, until three chords are ringing in harmony.
Yoki hums, the sound coming out all nasal and reverberating in my ears.
The vibrations of Yoki’s voice and the metal bowls wash over me like waves, tingling my muscles, enlivening every inch of my skin. Omar or maybe Yoki, one of the two, picks up another instrument, this tube filled with dried beans that sounds like rain when it’s flipped. Almost, I feel as if I’m being rained on, the cool wetness of each drop refreshing and revitalizing me and my senses. Suddenly, the cry of a wolf pierces the melodic soundscape, and without thinking my eyes dart open. But when they do I find I’m no longer in the desert.
It’s raining lightly in the forest. I’m standing in a clearing and I lift my face and let the cooling water drip onto my skin. It’s night, the woods are dark and quiet, the only sound is the hoot of an owl somewhere in the branches arching overhead. Between trees the shadows are impossibly dark, I can’t see beyond a few feet.
I turn in circles.
“What the…? Where am I?”
The air is cool and pine scented. Above, the patch of visible sky is heavy with low-hanging clouds from which the rain continues to tumble. Then all of a sudden the bank of clouds rolls back to reveal the moon—full, of course, and brilliantly white. I stare at her and it feels as if she’s staring back.
Then that familiar howl, the one that’s been calling to me for months, the one that always seems to interrupt when I’m trying to mind-link with Jasper or access the greater wolf consciousness. It’s high and far away, but tears through the stillness like a razor blade.
A twig snaps nearby and I spin in the direction of the sound.
Nothing, but then movement, a pair of eyes glowing in the darkness. A wolf emerges from the tree line. My wolf.
His honey-colored fur looks extra golden in the moonlight, his eyes narrow and fierce, his shoulder blades roll with every step forward.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, extending a hand palm down, a gesture of friendship you might extend to a neighbor’s pet dog. “Did you hear that howl too?”
Have I done it? Managed to access the deepest, most animal part of myself? Is this clearing in the forest the depths of my soul?
My wolf and I stare at each other.
“Hey pal.” I know this wolf is me, that we’re the same, and also that my inner wolf is no domesticated puppy, but I can’t help myself. “Are you going to take me to the crying wolf like a good boy?”
My wolf snaps his jaws at me, a thick strand of saliva flinging from his glistening jowls. I retract my hand, just barely avoiding the loss of a finger, as it turns and bounds away into the trees.
“That was not cool. Hey! Wait! What do I do? Am I supposed to follow you?”
I’ve heard people talk about spirit guides when they embark on this sort of journey. Is that what my wolf is?
I look around for some sign or other of what I’m supposed to do on this new plane, but find nothing. Yoki couldn’t have given me some kind of instruction manual for once I got here?
So without any idea what else I’m supposed to do, I take off jogging after my wolf.
The forest floor is soft, mossy, littered with pine needles. The damp smell of petrichor and the tangy scent of sap fill my senses, so starkly different from the desert I’ve gotten used to. Somewhere nearby water is trickling, I must be running parallel to a river. I become aware of some other noises—yelps and howls, and then…laughter, people. There are people here.
A group runs by a few yards away, just visible between redwood trunks. I don’t recognize any of the faces but they’re smiling, waving each other on. I watch as they speed up and finally shift mid-step, their clothes ripping apart as they turn into wolves, landing gracefully on all fours and charging off into the forest.
Behind me a single set of running footsteps approaches. I turn just in time to see Jasper, in the workout gear he was wearing during capture the flag back at the Blue Moon Festival, as he runs past me.
“Hurry up, Bonehead,” he says without slowing down. “Don’t want to get left behind.”
“Jasper?” He doesn’t stop or turn around again. “Wait up!”
With no other option I speed up to try and catch Jasper. For some reason my superspeed isn’t kicking in and I lose him just as quickly as he appeared. There’s a break in the trees so I dart between two massive trunks and skid to a stop.
“Wait…what the…?”
I spin around again.
