You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight & sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead– your next stop, the Magical Realism Zone.

She named herself Traveler because it was apt. Ironic, because she didn’t travel much outside the worlds within her head. A tale of motion, across a 6-14 million yr old massive lava flow, made the name a wise choice. Drifter or Vagabond suggests less intent. A vision of an aged, lame canine materialized out of the ether. Traveler decided to bring the wee wolven home. She shrugged the recluse title & set out…pausing for only a slight adjustment.

‘Some omissions are necessary in stories,’ Traveler scrawls. Mystery, for instance, can’t be built when everything’s laid out in a clue dump. Even though she isn’t concocting a mystery, there’s an actor that needs to be bumped off. She unwrites the character, effectively erasing their existence. Once plucked from the timeline, a more peaceful journey is had. There are those who would call this revisionist history; they are not spinning this tale.

[#s 45 & 47, for example– depicted as a large orange rump– could be unwritten from history & a people sigh with relief. Just sayin’.] 

Down through the southern edge of an evergreen state, ford a mighty, rolling river. Then east, out of the garden. The driverless stagecoach bumped along in a sprawled open land, a Sergio Leone location epitomizing isolation. A being is vulnerable out here. Water’s a dream someone somewhere is having. Dust devils dervish across the trail, spin out the beginning to an end.

‘Which volcano’s eruption created this high desert?’ Traveler wonders briefly. It’s merely a fleeting curiosity. A cataclysm millions of years older than the most famous fossilized hominid remains. ‘Oh Lucy– I’m home!’ she thinks, because tv is ingrained & someone in Mary Leakey’s team took the liberty of naming bones.   

The Dalles: a parched scrub country dotted with black standing scabs of basalt, the very face of the land chafed. In this place where color goes to fade, the coach crawled through the scenery like a petulance brewing, a vehicle that held a grudge. Unscheduled stops drawing out the road ever longer. Traveler was anxious to get to her destination; the coach gremlin-minded, wrenching the works.

Translucent fingers of heat wave as Traveler trundles across the sea of sage & baked earth. A stretch of ground that looks like at least 100 years of solitude. Little scribbles for the sparse brush, amongst huge dark squares of extrusive igneous rock. She smirks at the baldly lyrical description. ‘Really?’ she balks, ‘mirth in a literary vein? You’ll only amuse yourself.’ Then reflects that those who can’t amuse themselves have a dearth of humor. People do read, FFS.

She stopped the night before to stay in a haunted mansion. The mansion-turned-inn was tucked behind a long, curving drive flanked by poplars. Leaves shushed with the breeze, corvids croaked nearby. ‘An ominous approach?’ Traveler speculates, appreciating the atmospheric welcome. It certainly looks deserted, as no one was about the grounds & no lights shone. She felt the tingling of a liminal space.  

The gloaming came on, a slant of rays winking out. Large windows gaped in the warmth. Traveler stood entranced by an almost deafening chorus, sung by hundreds of frogs, o’er the soppy lower lawn. The most a spirit did was slowly creak open a closet door. A bashful, mannerly haint. Traveler awaited a sudden slamming that didn’t take place. Poised for a night circus that never comes to town. Only the frigid water in the tiny bathroom the next morning elicited a teeth-chattering. The dead were a no-show.

There weren’t other guests in the inn. It was still off-season, & the kitchen was yet to be fully stocked. A sumptuous meal was prepared, though. Perhaps fish in an herbed, buttery sauce, long beans, & rustic bread. Someone else might’ve complained about the limited fare, but Traveler was pleasantly sated, whatever that meal. She did not note the repast in her journal. Not everything is interesting.

She knew the provenance of the tiny wolven animal. T’warn’t folks in their right minds. She often left that question blank herself. Seemed only fitting to meet others on equal footing. Yet it takes a particular level of WTF to amass a passel of critters just to hold in misery & squalor. Glad there’s those who swoop in to provide safe haven, without feigning love in the time of cholera.

A slip of a canine, curly black hair with bits of gray, a midnight sky with stars. She’d lived so long in the cramped quarters of the crowded home that she lost a leg. The overwhelmed human occupants hadn’t noticed. When they surrendered their animals, they couldn’t explain the amputation. As though her leg was written out of the script, who knows how long ago?

At a clean, bright way station, where rescued critters go, the smidge of wolven was fussed over. On the grooming table, where all the mats plastered with filth fell away, a new leg grew from the depths of the fur. The rescue staff applauded the phantom limb made flesh. 

From timid & anxious, the midnight wolven’s traits slowly emerged. A plucky nature at times– full of renewed youth & vigor. There was someone traversing the grit of this land to meet her, & she tappy-danced with 4 fine legs at a tentative hope.

Traveler knows this landscape eventually free dives into the riparian Columbia Gorge, but that won’t come fast enough. Excitement mounts at greeting an old dog who learned a new trick.

Large birds rock thermals above that gorge. Turkey vultures, perhaps? Traveler tucks a lyric into her journal: A 3-legged dog sniffs round in the charred debris / carrion birds circle high over a dry creek. A scene for a post-apocalyptic song one day, maybe. The Missoula Floods at the end of the last Ice Age formed this stunning gouge. An apocalypse already long gone. Too early for the current mass extinction event.

Finally they’re face to face. Traveler gives her a new name to go with her new leg. It’s the most fitting one. They climb into the spectral coach & fly away. Back to an emerald city, a place of many verdant shades, a verdigris of pine tree shapes, jade ocean at the end of the lane. A tinkling patter of teensy wolven paws, eyes drinking in foliage passing beyond the window. ‘Oh please,’ Traveler thinks, ‘that’s just needlessly poetical.’ Mosey goes home.

*Though I’ve yet to get around to reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, I cheekily borrowed its title. Those familiar with the genre might recognize some other titles too. Here’s hoping the nonfiction story hiding in this homage is evident.