The Way Home by Ben Katt

Author:Ben Katt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

White Mustang in the Desert

Half a year after the owl encounter, I was driving across the desert for a work trip that would also involve wandering among the wild places of the American Southwest.

Nico was with me. I’d invited him because the meetings were relevant to his role in the organization, but mostly because I really wanted to get some of what he calls “windshield time” with him so we could talk. I also thought he might like to do some desert wandering with me. When I initially asked him, he immediately said yes, before telling me to bring my sleeping bag.

“We’re spending a night outside,” he stated.

“We are?” I asked. “Where?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said confidently.

Apparently he had been feeling the call of the wild too.

The trip felt enchanted from the moment I arrived at the El Paso airport when the rental agent called me “Mister Cat,” and then directed me to a complimentary upgrade, a white Mustang convertible. Both were significant omens because I was in the midst of my jaguar apprenticeship, and the horse had become Nico’s guide. Getting a convertible was a bonus—even though it was during the cold of January—and it gave the whole adventure a bit of a Thelma and Louise fleeing-across-the-desert vibe.

I had a few meetings that afternoon before I returned to the airport to get Nico. He was ecstatic about the Mustang. We put the top down and drove west out of town under the stars into New Mexico. After a little while, we pulled over to the side of the road to put the roof back up so we wouldn’t freeze to death. Our conversation was immediately bouncing all over the place between our kids and college stories, existential questions and updates on our respective marriages, with the occasional freestyle rap mixed in for good measure.

It was exactly what I needed. I had felt a growing need for his anam cara presence. For a while, I had been experiencing a lightness of being, an emerging contentment, and a slowly growing creative energy. But then I started to feel the encroachment of some negative energy, like Gollum lurking in the shadows and trailing Frodo through Mordor. Once again, it was my Impostor.

This, it turns out, is to be expected. Passage through the Falling phase is a long and arduous road, filled with many trials. There’s always another mountain to climb, another river to cross, another dragon to slay. But I was slow and stubborn when it came to acknowledging this. And it left me worn and weary, which is why I was so thrilled about the hours of drive time I would have with Nico to spill my soul. I needed his support. Unsurprisingly, everything we talked about as we rode across the desert in the white Mustang that first night turned out to be the preparation I needed for the conversation and encounter that I would have with the wild the following day.

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