Copyright 2010 Roberta Osborn. All rights reserved.
Dreams of the Borderland
Encounter
I am climbing on the rocks near a deep rushing river on a brilliant blue-sky day. I am strong and
confident. I am careful to avoid the waterline where the rock is slippery. My shoes are soft and
grip the surface as I stretch from one steep platform to the next. Finally, I am up on a large
boulder with many surfaces that reveal its internal planes. I climb around to a large sun-baked
area and stand there in the fresh breeze. The river drives forcefully over an entire field of rocks
like this, making turbulent eddies around miniature mountains, disappearing between forested
rocky banks. The river is a dark, indefinable color, a gray-green-brown- almost blue, with dashing
white flings
where it meets
obstacles. I
climb around
the rock higher
and higher, until
I find a
comfortable
niche with an
exquisite view
where I sit and
have my lunch
in the shade. I
am chewing
and viewing
when a hawk
swoops up,
intending to
land. I freeze.
She arrests her
flight as though she just realizes I am here, and in that instant, I am eye-to-eye with this exquisite
hawk, her wings outstretched to four or five feet, wing tips furled, feathers detailed in every
combination of brown and white. She pulls up and flies over the rock, immediately out of sight. I
am breathless. I feel a deep sense of gratitude and wonder. I realize that we have a need for
encounter, for sudden recognition of those aspects of ourselves that we have not extended, a
refreshment of our sense of what is possible in ourselves. I look for a nest. There is none here,
but I pack up and climb down.
I am in a cabin on a lake in the woods. I am standing before a large picture window with an
exceptionally beautiful view of the clearing and the lake. Three people walk fearlessly with perfect
balance on various tightropes that cross the lake. I know these people and their unerring
competence and I am not the least bit concerned that they will fall. My friend is putting tight-rope
walking shoes on well-muscled feet. I see a bob-cat bouncing across the steep hill on the other
side. My friend observes this as well for a few moments and asks if we should close the cabin
door. "I suppose," I say, "I suppose we could get a bob-cat in here some day." We laugh and my
friend leaves the door open.
I am in the office on a Saturday with the chief financial officer. She has brought her granddaughter
to work with her, and I am introduced. The little girl is three years old. She looks directly into my
eyes, shakes my hand, and responds directly and simply to my inquiries in a gracious, unaffected
manner that astonishes me. I have never seen such self-possession in any child. Her poise would
do justice to any adult. I feel as though I am connected to a pure being with neither the positive
nor the negative artifice of ego. I am quite simply honored to meet her, and I leave the office
feeling like a different person myself. I am amazed to realize that I wish to be like this three-year-
old child.
We are driving down back country roads in the dark on a summer night when one friend bursts
out with a stammering "Look! Look! There are little… little things in the road!" It is so important to
stop us that she hasn't had time to remember what they are called. We stop to let the mother
possum and her trail of precious little possums cross. They are silvery with pointy faces, dark
feet, and naked tails. They walk deliberately, unhurried by our glaring headlights, into the deep
woods where they immediately disappear. We review the content of the yell that brought us so
effectively to a stop and laugh until tears roll down our cheeks. When we recover, we continue
down the road with a heightened alertness for "things."
