A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

As the helicopter at Whitmore Wash carried 15 passengers from the river to the rim, returning with replacements for the final three days on the Colorado River, Robby pulled aside those of us who had been on the trip for a week or two. "You guys have run Lava Falls," he said, "and Crystal Rapid, and you've floated down the Little Colorado and picnicked along Havasu Creek. Now, I don't want to say all the good parts of the trip are over, because they're not. The lower Canyon is beautiful. But the biggest rapids are behind us, and some of the most spectacular scenery. I don't want you to lie, of course…but if you all talk up the places you've already seen, it might spoil the trip for the new people. So, all I'm saying is, try and focus on where we are in the next couple of days, instead of where we've been."

Today, we call that being "mindful". It was a radical concept in the '90s, but I took it to heart.

Five of the newbies were retired ladies from New Jersey who were traveling together. In their painful-to-hear New Jersey accents, they spoke of their extensive camping experiences on New York State's Lake George.

"There's an island on Lake George," Patsy, one of the ladies, explained. "Every summah we went camping on that island. This nice younk man took us there in his canoe. This ye-ah, we decided to really rough it. So heah we aw!"

This speech was given between sips of "kwawfee" and drags on cigarettes. (On the previous two weeks, hardly anyone smoked, though several of the boatmen occasionally chewed tobacco.)

The first task the newbies faced was selecting and fitting their life jackets. That was easy. The second was loading their dry bags. That was hard. People who sign up for a week or two of Canyon rafting tend to be experienced campers. People who sign up for the three-day "Canyon Sampler", on the other hand, are usually less experienced. Accordingly, while the week-long campers packed lightly, the ladies from New Jersey had overpacked. In addition to several changes of clothes for each day, Patsy had brought her enormous wicker purse!

Packing all this stuff into their dry bags was a real challenge. These bags are made of rubber. You have to roll down the lip a little, squeeze out as much air as possible, then roll the lip down as far as it will go. You then feed straps through a pair of buckles and pull them as tight as possible. The fuller the bag, the more difficult the job.

"What did you expect to buy?" I asked, the pitch of my voice rising as I got more frustrated, throwing all my weight onto her bag in an attempt to push the contents down far enough to close the lip of the bag over the purse. "There's no stores down here."

She just looked blank. Not take her purse? The possibility didn't exist in New Jersey Lady World.

Rob had to take me aside. "Let these people have their own experience, Paul!" he urged. "Not everyone is as experienced a camper as you." Under his mellow guidance I caught my breath and returned to help in a more neutral way. It wasn't easy, but I tried to love them as children rather than resent them as annoyances. After all, no one was making me help them.

That evening, I found the ladies trying to set up their tents—but they had just one tent, and they were trying to set its fly up as a second tent! "Who set up your tent on Lake George?" I asked curiously. All five ladies looked at each other in astonishment. Apparently it had never occurred to them that their tent wouldn't just be there.

In the morning, Patsy approached me and asked if I had any Advil. (By now I was so brown and helped the boatmen so much, most of the new people thought I was one of the boatmen, which I made no effort to clarify.) I did, and gave her some. "I am so so-wah!" she complained, taking the Advil. "I have nevah been so stiff in awl my life!" I tried to think what in the world made her so sore? She had arrived in the Canyon the previous day by helicopter; she had not gone on any hikes or even done anything more strenuous than get in and out of a raft…once. I had even put her tent up for her!

She heaved a heavy sigh. "Well," she said, "hopefully this will kick in soon, and then I'll be ready to face that awful job again!"

"What awful job?" I asked.

She looked at me, surprised I wouldn't know. "Why, closing that damned dry bag!"

At least she was facing the consequences of her bringing the purse.

This was the stretch of Grand Canyon I had rafted previously with my daughter. It was true the rapids weren't so rough or the terrain quite as spectacular as they were upriver; but it was still breathtakingly beautiful. On the night before last, Robby took us on a very special hike. Most of the passengers chose to not go—just one of the newbies went, a 22-year old grocery clerk traveling with his mother. So it was Robby and Cathy and Rusty guiding, and Larry, Matt and me. We stood before a five-hundred-foot-high pinnacle of rock. Robby pointed to the top: "That's where we're going," he announced.

If it wasn't for the fact that the Canyon walls dwarfed it, the pinnacle would have been considered a small mountain. (Florida's Mount Dora is only 200 feet high.) I couldn't see any way up the steep, rocky sides. "Where's the trail?" I asked.

Robby grinned. "No trails," he said. "Let's go!"

So we climbed boulders and skidded on loose stones and climbed some more. I began to sweat with the exertion. Cathy ran up and down the side of the pinnacle like a little girl skipping in her driveway, but for us passengers it was more work than that. Still, eventually, we all made it to the top.—Even Larry, who had long since abandoned his notion that the Canyon should be made "safe".

The view was amazing! The river so far below, the gulf between us and the Canyon walls beyond, the sky just starting to take on the ruddy glow of the setting sun all combined to make my heart nearly burst with emotion. We hopped from one rock slab to the next, and picked some of them up and dropped them over the side, where they fell a half-a-thousand feet and then exploded into a billion dust-sized pieces. The thunder of the detonated rock was accompanied by our laughter, the laughter of children. The sound echoed into the Canyon and came back, surrounding us.

Then it was our last night—another excellent meal, a thin crescent moon making the beach and the walls glow eerily—and then our last day. Terry and most of the other guides had left with the rafts the night before. "It seems really odd not to have the boats around," I told Robby. He agreed: "Boatmen hate not having their boats. That's when we're our most vulnerable. If anything happens, we can't leave."

Technically, we had already left the Grand Canyon; our final camp was on the shore of Lake Meade, although it looked much the same as the river. But a change in the current—it stopped—had told Robby and the other guides just where the river ended and the lake began.

The next morning began with a roar: right after breakfast, a whine drifted across the water and became a big metallic jet-boat named "The Tin Can". We boarded with our gear and soon were tearing across the lake surface at 50 miles per hour. We were quiet, partly because our adventure was ending and partly because no one could talk over the roar of the jet boat, anyway. But the adventure wasn't over yet—because, a couple of miles before we reached our Pierce Ferry take-out, the jet-boat roared into a sand bar and grated to a stop.

Now the silence was deafening. The sun burned through the sky above and those of us who'd been on the trip from the beginning wondered how the newbies would take this. For us, it was just part of the "Grand Canyon Experience".

While Robby tried to contact an over-flying aircraft with his portable two-way radio, a few passengers waded to the shore of a nearby island, where some explored while others swam. Robby finally made contact and a replacement jet-boat came to get us. The majority of the passengers were returning to Las Vegas and had to make connections; we said good-bye to them and those of us who remained, including Larry and Matt, returned with Robby and Rusty to the stranded jet-boat. Freed of its passengers it was much lighter; so while the other jet-boat pulled, we all got in the water behind it and pushed—and, after a strain, it suddenly came free of the sand bar.

We then helped the boatmen load up the gear. None of us minded helping; we didn't want the trip to end. But even that job couldn't last forever, and then we were back in a motorized vehicle for the first time in over two weeks.

The trip to Flagstaff lasted somewhere between five and six hours. Larry and Matt and I had dinner together. The next day I drove to the O.A.R.S. headquarters for a final good-bye to the guides, and found Larry and Matt there ahead of me. We said goodbye again, and then as I was leaving Rusty jogged over to me and invited me to go to lunch with him.

Would he finally reveal his true purpose to me, I wondered? He insisted on driving me in his truck. On the way to the restaurant, he mentioned casually that he had a gun in his glove compartment.

I instantly thought of Arcadia showing me her pistol in the Dutch Pantry, but all I said was, "How nice for you."

"I had it with me on the river," he said. "Just in case."

"Just in case what?" I asked. "Just in case someone tried to steal the porta-potties?"

"I am an officer of the law," he said. "I have to be armed at all times. If someone proved to be a threat, I would have to shoot him."

"Gee," I said. "And all this time I thought officers of the law merely arrested wrongdoers until they could stand trial."

Rusty shrugged. "I'm a dead shot. I don't kill someone I shoot unless I mean to." He turned into a shaded, dirt driveway.

"A bit out of the way for a restaurant, isn't it?"

"I have to see someone first. You don't mind, do you? I'll only be a minute."

We stopped at a ramshackle building; there was one other vehicle in the yard. Rusty hopped out, ran to the door, and knocked. In a moment the door opened and he went inside.

And there I was, in the truck. In front of the glove compartment. Where, I'd been told, was a gun.

All I could think of was Arcadia's purse, left open in my hotel room while she spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom. This, I felt certain, was another test.

But a test for what? To see if I wouldn't ransack Rusty's glove compartment to check out his gun? To see if I would? Perhaps he'd only been telling me where his weapon was, in case he got into trouble in the shack, whatever he was doing there. I used my ability to look around corners; but I couldn't sense that Rusty was doing anything but hanging out with someone he knew.

And what was that about needing to be armed "at all times"? He wasn't armed if his weapon was in his car when he's inside a building.

Ten minutes passed. Twenty. If this wasn't some sort of test, it was rude. Just as I was about to get out and check on him, the door opened and he emerged. I never did see the person he had allegedly stopped to see, and he didn't discuss the stop or the gun further.

We went to a little Mexican restaurant in old town Flagstaff. After ordering, Rusty managed to work a little homophobia into the conversation. "I was really nervous about sleeping nude on this trip," he said. "With those gay doctors along and all."

"They seemed to be quite happy with each other," I said. "I don't think they were interested in you at all."

"Too bad that Judy was," he groaned. "I woke up the night before we hit Phantom Ranch and she was in my tent! I was about to tell her I had a headache when she threw up. God! I hate drunken women."

"Not a problem I often have to deal with," I grinned. "So what did you do about it?"

"I had to sleep in the open the rest of the trip. I never could get the smell out of my tent."

"Well, if it bothers you to sleep in the nude in the open, don't do it," I advised.

"It doesn't bother me," Rusty declared.

"Is that why you warned me you sleep naked the first day we met?"

Rusty laughed. "I don't care what people think."

"Really?" I said, one eyebrow raised. "If you truly didn't care what people think, you wouldn't be compelled to challenge them by making statements like that. You'd just do what you want and to hell with anyone else's sensibilities."

Rusty ate quietly for a few minutes. I got the impression that, whatever he had intended our lunch to be about, I had gotten past that and brought him to new ground he'd never expected to walk.

"I've really enjoyed being on this trip with you, Paul," he said, finally. "If you're ever in Pima County, be sure to look me up."

"I'll do that," I said. "If I'm ever in Pima County. Wherever the hell that is."

He dropped me off at the airport where I caught a flight for Phoenix to meet with my publisher; and flew from there home. I was back in the real world.

Or was I? Is the real world this veneer of highways, planes and business? Or is it 1.2-billion-year-old schist, 10,000 CFS water and people relating on the basic levels of eating, hiking, sleeping? I think the latter. I knew the first time I rafted the Grand Canyon—when I was a newbie on the three-day "Canyon Sampler"—that I would come back, and I did. When the Canyon gets under your skin it gets into your soul. Just like Robby and the other guides, just like (I suspect) Larry and Matt—I knew I'd be back.

But now I had to play catch-up. I had two-and-a-half week's worth of mail to sift through; I had to get online and check in with the Abductee Support Group. After the next Tuesday's meeting, I found Arcadia trolling.

The story of Arcadia killing Billy didn't feel right to me. I just didn't believe it. In fact, it was easier to believe there'd never been a Billy—even though I seemed to have met him—than to believe she'd killed him. Not that she wouldn't kill someone; I just didn't believe another psychic would be so easy to knock off. I also had the definite impression that Arcadia was just a little too full of herself. But I politely continued the chat.

I sat back in my chair, closed my eyes and pictured Phobos, the Martian moon that revolves about its parent in a retrograde orbit and is shaped roughly like a potato.

I didn't have a lot of confidence in what I thought I'd seen. After all, I've never (as far as I know) been to Phobos. But the key to doing psychic readings is to not filter, not edit. Just let everything out. And that's what I'd done.

Besides, I found it more interesting that Arcadia had just implied someone was reading her screen. Or, at least, was in the room with her and to whom she was reporting this conversation. Was she really that dumb, or did she think I was?

I said goodnight and went to bed. It was Tuesday, and I expected Arcadia's warm tingle. However, this time when the sensation arrived, it was somewhat different. It was harsher, and lower down, more on my chest than my shoulder.

It was also more intense. I felt a pressure on my chest and it became hard to breathe. If this is Arcadia, she's missing the mark, I thought. But maybe it wasn't Arcadia. It "felt" different than her.

In any case, I was going to have to do something. My heart was pounding and I couldn't breathe. I felt as if I were about to black out. The only thing that occurred to me was to follow the energy that was weighing on my chest to its source and send a message. It didn't feel "right" though, to send an image; and I already knew that a verbal message wouldn't work.

So I sent love.

The love of puppies, the love of flowers, the love for a baby. Pure love. It was easy, mentally, to let it flow through the energy connecting me to whoever because love is the energy of the heart. I knew immediately my message was getting through, the same way you can tell by his expression that the person you yelled at across the street has heard you. I was astounded at the amount of love I could channel. I realized it was coming from the greater Being from which we all arise. I sent it in waves, each wave more powerful than the one before. Love! Love!LOVE!

There was a sudden squeak of astonishment—I felt it, didn't hear it—and the pressure was gone as if it had never existed. I was puzzled. What the hell had happened? If that was Arcadia, she had certainly lost control of her "touch".

The next Tuesday, she wasn't online. And there was no psychic contact with her. In fact, I never heard from her again. We are now past the "statute of limitations" for keeping secrets for people who've disappeared, which is why I have finally told this story.

I found myself wondering about that last contact with her. Had she tried to kill me? If I'd thought so at the time, she might have succeeded. And she had tried to set me up to believe it by telling me she had killed "Billy". That's how voodoo works. But, for some reason, the thought hadn't entered my mind at the time; and obviously my instinctive response was the right one.

Looking back, I wonder if my refusal to come out as gay on the rafting trip hadn't made me ineligible for her agency; and when she tested my ability to do what is now called "remote viewing" my success meant I was a threat to the secrecy of her agency or group or whatever. So she had tried to do away with me.

Or maybe it was someone else entirely—someone, for example, who had eavesdropped on her confession that she'd killed Billy and decided to get rid of both of us.

It makes sense that a person who is a "full clairvoyant" and can use those gifts as weapons would attack someone's heart. The heart is the location of the Heart Chakra, which is our Connection to the Creator energy of the Universe. The heart chakra is a conduit through which we get all our Energy, our Light Energy. I'd been taught this, among other things, by the aliens and my heart chakra was about as open as it could be. The attack was intended to close it, so I wouldn't have access to all that energy for fighting back.

In any case, the attempt on me had failed and Arcadia now seemed to be out of the picture. So I figured, why worry about it? If another attempt was made, I'd know what to do.

The mistake I made, of course, was in thinking the second attempt would be similar to the first. After all, there's more than one way to attack a heart.