Made in Australia: Part III

When experiencing things from awe, the memories remain in the compartment of the mind that has no patterns and nothing to relate with. These unique happenings bubble up in our backward looking thoughts in a way that makes us ponder if they ever actually occurred. This mystifying phenomenon gives Jebediah the continued impression that all of it is heavenly.

Together they head down to the docks. The day is grey and the sea is flat. The air is moist, but that doesn't matter anyway when the plan is to get wet. They are invited on-board a small ship that plans to find creatures of deeper waters. As the ship navigates through the waves breaking upon the barrier-reef, the members aboard instantly turn from sea-sideliners to oceanic-observers. Migration season places the blow-whole giants right before their eyes.  The sprays and silhouettes from shore are now showers and mighty-swims from lazy tails. On the open-ocean it is difficult to understand the size of these living submarines, especially with their slow rolling motions allowing only portions of their bodies to be seen at once. However, other happenings of the sea help to give a better perspective.

Soon the attention of the ship was on a fin darting around the boat and between the whales. As the fin grows larger the tail and body also emerge. The shape of a dark-sand colored hammer-head shark appeares. In the presence of the massive mammals the man-eater seems cute as it loops nearer to the onlookers.

Not awhile later two fins appear and produce synchronized flapping towards the ship. An oceanic manta-ray flutters briefly on the surface to give a glimpse. Its gaping mouth could filter through a body boarder and its smooth back could hold cuddling lovers. However looking like a mere stingray in the foreground of the landless elephants, the egregiousness of the whales becomes more apparent. The crew buzzes with excitement as the marine displays are so wonderful and it is still morning. The passengers and sea people begin to intermingle and the duo are in the captains perch with the skipper and his first mate. Once again in awe, they smile and share enthusiasm in short spurts of words. Suddenly the first mate began belting an obnoxious howl, obnoxious only until all eyes fixed half a football field in front of the boat. Side by side, head to tail, fins wide opened, two entire Humpback Whales raise them selves above the water. Their white speckled bellies face up with arches elevating their core. They suspend as if being hoisted to the grey skies until with a geyser of a splash, they are gone. The entirety of the ship wails with applause and at last the gargantuan Humpbacks are fully unveiled. The spectacular state of awe was now shared between all.

The seas' jewels are being seen from the boat, but the diamond they all set out for is yet to be seen. In rare parts of the earth an enormous fish rises from the depths for brief moments. They surface to feed then disappear to parts of the ocean that are un-documentable. The Whale Shark is a being that will never be fully comprehended with a superficial perspective, however in this moment, Rosetta and Jebediah slip off the stern of the boat into the waters awaiting the sight of the elusive Whale Shark.

The water is clear, but in the vast emptiness of deep waters there is no understanding of distance. From the turquoise mist of the sunlit water a wide, thin ellipse becomes visible. As it comes closer it spreads into an oval. The head of the Whale Shark comes into full view. Jeb and the fish, and Rose and the fish, are eye to eye; only a fishing rods length between. The beast's head passes them and they watch it sucking in water, taking only the plankton and emitting jets of water out its rippling gills. They swim along side in line with the front fins. The animal is so big and they are so close, all they can see is white-teal spots and gills fanning open gently over a grey-blue skin. The fish moves its body slowly but its immense appendages displace pods of water, propelling it quickly to feed. Jeb kicks hard to keep up.

Jeb looks to his side, and through dive masks, looks at the eyes of Rosetta which have taken on the full depth of the open ocean. Witnessing a familiar being in an unfamiliar place allows Rosetta to appear as a marvelous tropical creature. He watches her watch and swim with the Whale Shark and sees three eternities all at once. He sees his own inner workings ticking and winding this moment into the compilation of moments that creates the galaxy he lives in. He also sees that she is in her own galaxy, that he will never truly experience. The third eternity is the Whale Shark's simplicity of swimming and eating without the monstrosities of the human experience. In swimming with the Whale Shark Jeb and Rose pass through a glimpse of its peace.

Jeb stops swimming and stares to watch all eight meters of the care-free giant glide past him, like a stranger waiting on the sidewalk for a bus to roll by. Now behind, he can see the tail fin is, from top to bottom, a length taller than he is. Jeb can see the grace of the Whale Shark's entire body. The massive tail wagging side to side across his field of vision resonates a flow up her entire spine like the flow of a trailing cape. The side wings span out and glide over imaginary sea winds with ease. This creates within Jeb the image of a loving demon and leaves him in awe. The world's largest fish begins to dive down with a simple majestic motion. The oceans fog begins to grow between Jeb and the Whale Shark. A haze of darkened spots remains but only for a long moment. She disappears, then nothing is left. The massive creature came to gain food, and left without harming a single life more than was necessary. She moves on and takes nothing with her. It is the kind of world that Jebediah and Rosetta dream of living in and it vanishes far from humanities reach.

Only an empty dark blue remains in Jebediah's galaxy. In the lack of all else, for only a brief infinity, he lives in the neutral space where all the stars of every galaxy sparkle from. He is in the world of Rosetta and in the world of the Whale Shark. However, by the time he is climbing back up on the boat his understanding of these worlds is lost. The water begins to dry from his body, and the entire encounter slides away into that compartment of the mind that can barely be recognized as reality.

Again sitting with the skipper Jeb looks to land and sees deep into the cape-range gorge covered with land-life and filled with mist. The creatures that dominate the foreign environment he entered on this day were once able to swim through the landscape he is accustomed to now. The rocking of the boat helps to steady his mind and he thinks; How can this story be told? Do the Humpbacks preserve the tale of how they came from land to sea? Does the Whale Shark recall when the hills were ocean floor? The truest nature has no dramas; there is no perpetual thinking to link the events, to relate the conversation. There is no need to tell the story.

The Osprey opens her wings, the Roo falls from his bounce, the Turtle brushes you by and the beings are detached from the displacement of space. Everything turns to nothing the instant it becomes, and nothing is...

...The skipper cuts the engine and the new silence brings Jeb's attention to the swaying waters just beyond the bow. Deep blue suddenly turns to rapid turquoise and out of a white upsurge The Father Humpback erupts into the air. 

 

The End...

 



Made in Australia: Part 2

It could be that Jeb has never woken after that moment; Rosetta may still be in a dreamy repose. The voyage continues and it is perfectly possible that they travel in a connected dream through natural perfection. The Mother lets down her hair and continues to show what gems are woven into her flowing locks.

Birds the size of a man and some the size of his hand come close enough to speak with. They are calm-blues and passionate-reds. Forests begin as scattered bushes and gather into dense walls of growth. Palms are sprawling fans catering to royalty and climbing vines escort rain drops gently to the forest floor. The tree gatherings, as wealthy as gold, are like a green endless sky.

There is a log across the path, with a teasing tongue. Of course it is a python, thick and long protecting her nest. The value of the diamonds curling down her back are unmatched in the human world. This world that still holds unimaginable streams of water leading their flow to sacred pools. A hidden gully in the rocks lets float a single lily sprouting a purple blossom. The flower hovering above the water is as auspicious as the final star that still remains in the early daylight. 

It all rises into view, just as lost treasure always comes up from the sea. Even the sea rises from her own depths when The Mother whispers. Jeb lays on a board pulling water with his arms and the wave lifts him as it approaches. Their momentum becomes one and Jeb stands to greet the wave. He glides across the surface of the wall of water. It still builds and he looks up to its peak as a boy looks up listening to his father speak. The rush takes him, the rush takes it all.

They arrive at dawn. Precise, persistent, pure fields of prairie bush sprawl and climb into a low mountainous range. Pale yellow light builds upon the scene and the land becomes as welcoming as the yellow drops in Rosetta's eyes. On the other side of this sun's cycle the yellow doesn't return. In the evening a radiant tiger's eye turns the day's youthful land into a limited sanctuary of the earth. The duo walk into the dazzling light to find hopping. Kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos graze and bounce everywhere. They enter the field from every direction; it is a ballet of marsupials. Jeb has never seen such a show before and it even delights Rosetta as if she too were a foreigner. Awe continues.

Out in the back of the carnival of hopping, two Kangaroos stand tall in confrontation. One leaps off his feet and and lunges forward, springing himself off his tail. He extends both legs in a furious kick. The boxing partner defends the thrust with jabs from his stubby arms. This act goes back and forth and then as if there was no tension at all the grappling stops and there is no evidence that peace was disturbed. The dusk dance continues all around.

As Jebediah witnesses the boxer's interactions he forgets he is watching animals. He mistakenly projects the troubles of the human mind onto the Roos. He wonders; do they like the adrenaline rush of the fight? Are they frightened of the violence? Does the winner walk away feeling superior and perhaps having flutters of guilt? Does the loser feel ashamed and regretful? However as stillness returns, Jeb becomes disillusioned from his own mind. He sees that the regret and sorrow are only creations of the human mind, of his mind, and they do not exist in nature. The simplicity of being a beast is apparent to Jeb as he understands that the animals experience desire, excitement and pain, but they do not have the tragically complex thoughts growing off these feelings. As the Kangaroos stand down from their powerful postures the risings of the moment evaporate and dissipate. The encounter produces an insignificant effect on the environment and no evil spills into the next instant. To prevent intruding further on the peaceful grazing, Rose and Jeb leave the field; or maybe they leave to follow the attraction humans have to the setting sun. Either way they now head towards the beach to worship the heart of The Mother.

They sit on the cape and appreciate the adaptation to its place in the universe as being so unique that it can been mistaken for a different world. And with the going down of the sun the stage is set for the silhouettes of the sea to perform. The creatures of this place pop up out of the water as puppets drop from the rafters. Triangle fins run in waving lines through the amber reflections; a feeding frenzy brings fish twitching above the water in fright. Spouting streams of mist spray into illumination. Rolling arches from giants give partial form to the blowhole show. The incomplete secrets of the ocean reveal themselves, but when the eye (another world all together)  gets a glimpse of what is beyond it finds an infinite number of mysteries that are yet to be discovered.

The following morning, with snorkel mask and fins, Rosetta and Jebediah enter the water. From the shore the shallows seem like empty space. From inside it is apparent that they actually support many lives from a deep space. Coral clusters of poison-blue stick and stack like a pile of watery jacks. Others look like hundreds of violet brains and show the immense intelligence of it all. Further there is brilliant green-and-miniature Himalayan mountains. There are countless fish here as there are countless prayers repeated there. Rosetta sees an octopus defending its home with a swipe of the tentacle.She has a good eye for seeing the sea and Jeb hears her calling his name above the surface.  He looks towards the voice and sees her arm pointing through the water at a large sea turtle flapping its wings with a grace only found in this dimension. Jeb dives to see its face as one would when meeting someone new that they know they'll be spending much time with. The ancients used to think that the earth was a plate on the back of a turtle propelling through the universe. Jebediah wanted to rest on this shell and be carried away through the timeless space of the under-water.

In the infancy of another day Jeb sees the full-moon at dawn, a gold coin emitting reflected warmth into the brisk morning. He looks into a mirror showing the horizon at sunset half the globe away. He stares into the reflected eyes of those watching the spherical furnace lay down across the Americas.
Rose joins him and together they watch the sun and the moon trade places in the sky.

When experiencing things from awe, the memories remain in the compartment of the mind that has no patterns and nothing to relate with. These unique happenings bubble up in our backward looking thoughts in a way that makes us ponder if they ever actually occurred. This mystifying phenomenon gives Jebediah the continued impression that all of it is heavenly.

...Catch the final part soon and WATCH OUT!!!

Made in Australia: Part One

When a person seeks out what they desire they follow a thread that takes them further and further away from the norm. Unless they desire the norm, of course, and this is not the case for Jebediah. On his great ship of travel, each change in current leads to a more exotic culture. Across the pond in Europe, language was a new song. Further into Eurasia, Christianity was still medieval without even the trace of a cross. In the Middle East, the womb of civilization, he found fellows who fell to and raised up from their knees in prayer. Far East and heading South from there, even basic life functions were new rituals to be learned. In Asia's dense sub continent worship was found where flowers floated on the surface of water, while frozen crystals of the Himalaya hold solid the fluttering offerings on the roof-top of the human world. Just a moment at that peak altitude is all Jebediah shared before heading back to sea-level and so far East that he stepped back into the West. After experiencing a life's worth of wonders, entering into something familiar seemed a bit strange.

Australia is a vast island with only a few plots of its' land occupied. Here the youth gather in the cities. After they have accumulated enough supplies and have begun to turn grey, they turn to the beauty that is this country. Respect and appreciation for the lands and waters of Australia is a deeply rooted ritual of this piece of Earth. The worship here is to go out to the back where the dirt glows ocher and is glorified as a giver of life.

Jebediah grew in independence and internal sustainability while in the East, however in the wild palace of Oz there is a local bird to show him the way. Rosetta nests when she needs to, soars when ever she gets the right winds and forages for a smile where ever her heart lands. This pair of warm-blooded creatures plans a road-trip and ignites the hum of adventure.

Rosetta and Jeb toast the moment with a look in the eye and sip in the commencement through grinning teeth. The compass spins around and the only plan is beneath them in the pavement. Slowly slowly, they move away from Australia's newly built-up cities. In a port town, that barley sizes up, there are veterans of the road and a rough weather front gives them all an excuse to get along for a while. In the creeping shadows they catch some stormy swells, cook some sup, and chat about a dash of the deeper things. It turns out to be the last fluent conversation with others there'd be for some time. Just before the rains fell their heaviest, an Osprey spread her wing tips wide, gliding in the shallow sky.

Little by little all the steel fades in the rear-view and the sun climbs. The sun peaks and the pint-sized caravan rests under some beach-pines. Resting is a source of life, but the day and tyres move on toward the rise of the stars. Just before the sun's final descent they rumble off the paved road into isolation. They find nothing but the most valued human contribution, footprints. From this moment they became embedded in awe for The Mother. This awe, our most primal instinct.

There's a sandy swamp, a salty grove of bush, and a camp-spot on the dune of a shelly beach. In a place just close enough to the high-tide mark Jeb and Rose lay looking out upon the scene. They lived and they watched.

Blue-charcoal clouds mask the sun and pink-pastel strokes reveal its ever presence. She focuses her eyes, unsheathes her talons and swoops into view. With sprawling wings she drops onto the ocean-world and lifts a motionless fish from its final swim. The pair drift to sleep in awe.

It could be that Jeb never woken after that moment; Rosetta may still be in a dreamy repose. The voyage continues and it is perfectly possible that they travel in a connected dream through natural perfection. The Mother lets down her hair and begins to show what gems are woven into her flowing locks.

....Continuing soon, unless this guy gets you...

Perthin' It

The Deli: House of creation and stimulation; home to the art, the music and the lives of Perth's young-finest 

 

The used-to-be delicatessen catered to a flow of sensual expression and gave the space for progressive partying, until now. 

All of life's demolishing-downs leave at least one wall standing to tag-up. The Deli is no more, but a pile of rubble is the perfect platform to build upon and jump off into the next dish.  

Between Walls

Within Memories

The Beat Lives








Surface Tension: the next dish

Annapurna Piece

Selfless bursts of petals

A silent blooming mouth 

Showering this plain with great stillness

India Is

What is the human containing that gives us the power to think, 

that gives the brain the power to activate? 

Mysterious is the source of life, 

nothing is without the impulse that births the universe. 

India knows the sacred thread within all existence. 

...The Sun rises next in Nepal...

Thanks Friend

What is a friendship if it isn't a union of mutual teachers and learners? What is any relationship if not a mirror that reflects us as a lesson and shows us to be a student. It is the miracle and tragedy of societies; we all have something to teach and we all desperately need to learn.

Our evolution is a struggle  Within the community the lessons we can offer one another are too similar. We know the same things as our neighbors with only subtle differences in the knowledge. It is true when the subtleties surface, between our different understandings, the effect of the shared knowledge is profound. The moment that it becomes clear that our buddy sees from a different perspective, our own perspective changes. Perhaps it is just a hair-line alteration, but when it happens, when our vision shifts, it reveals that the ingrained idea we held just a moment ago is not the absolute. We detach one thread from the stitching of our beliefs and we experience the phenomena of learning.

The situations within daily society are repetitive and most of the experiences are shared. No matter how different we think we are from one another the truth is, at the blood-deep level, we agree. Success is important, lovers make us happy, what we think is who we are. In this homogenized-mix of interactions it can take a lifetime to learn even just a few new beauties. It takes a real brewing of people to put enough time into communication to uncover and accept the differences we do hold. It is slow and we know there is often suffering, but it is not the only way. The key to expedite the education is to meet your friends between the societies.

Fall into the cracks where our intellectual-quests rarely go and be a gora on the wall in the world's cities of adversity.  An uncomfortable condition can be the magnified glass placed over our subtle differences. In the confusion and chaos of uncharted cultures we can quickly see and agree on how we have been conditioned differently from our companions. On the dusty-crumbling-road the malicious bugs and murderous drivers are so unknown to us that we have no shared knowledge for an agreed upon response  Our differences are revealed in the one beat our heart skips when the blind-beggar grabs our shin, and the unmatchalbe universes of our dreams unfold in the time it takes to watch a human-body burn.

Our response to the unthinkable leaves our thoughts naked and to see a friends's bare-mind can undress all our own beliefs. Standing there vulnerable in the streets of a foreign land is the most efficient route for seeing that our way is not the only way. The education of companion-travel lets us know that what you belief is not the same as what I believe and we are both wrong. In-between all the societies no assumption holds true; if we can understand and accept that we've graduated the world...

The quality of experience is amazing while traveling with a friend and it is amazing how much I've traveled with some friends without ever leaving home.

A Moment in Hampi

Wonder and ponder down to the ancient river-swamp. A poster-cow grazes, hooves deep in the muck. The black and white blotches, perfectly distributed over her bulk, are exploiting in the tremendous green. 

Rose-stone boulders pile everywhere along the banks and two birds stand on her back. Marvelous white cranes watch the scene. With clear eyes above a pal-yellow beak, a color most beautiful when found in nature, they look at me as I look at them. 

Head down, she munches grass as the three of us continue to look out and admire. One crane enters flight, but not from fear, soaring out of sight behind the line of coconut and banana trees. Then the looping flight reappears overhead completing a cycle. 

The sunlight penetrates through the wingspan and reveals the intimacies of each air-birthing feather. A shimmering-black butterfly dips about the breeze, open and gliding on its red and white speckled wings. 

As my observation is with this thin-winged animal of flight, the second crane finds a new point of interest too, and takes off. Between the rustling flows of palms and grasses these ears get a glimpse of the appetite of the cow. Her chewing is one song of happiness in these ancient interactions. 

Must the sun set to unveil the magnificence of a place...

Krishna Blue

Jebadiah effortlessly found his way to the lake. It is hard to get lost when all the roads lead to the same place. As he walked he noticed a selfless warmth in the eyes and smiles of the men in this town, Pushkar. It was conspicuously different than the stares and approaches of people in other cities in the state of Rajastan. Here, there seemed to be an un-intrusiven intent coming from the inhabitants of the street: simple human interaction. The food vendors, garments salesmen and musicians spoke the language of kindness rather than the slang of greed.

The musicians played sitar, flutes, and drums all around the lake. They never approached the water; they stayed mingling on the landing above the steps that fall-down into water. Jeb sat between the music and the water and observed. The Holy Lake of Pushkar lay awake before him.

Shrines had been built encompassing the Holy Lake, the animals are fed generously in presence of the Holy Lake, and the people ritually bath to feel the Holy Lake. Jebadiah remembered many lakes he had enjoyed in his past, each hosted a different style of enjoyment and ritual. Some lakes were for cliff jumping, some for fishing, some for canoeing and some for skipping stones. The body in front of him and all lakes in is memory reflect a certain type of serene image off their waters. In wonder he thought, why is this lake the Holy Lake?

It had been hot as Jeb walked down the dusty roads, but suddenly as he sat the angle of the sun fell below the threshold of heat. It is the distinct moment that the afternoon recedes and the trademarks of the evening begin to step forward. Now, just warmth fell from the sky and the musicians recognized this as a sign to begin their accompaniment to the sunset.

Captured by the Grace of Sara

The blazing glow slowly nears the horizon and the intensity of music and prayer increases. The attraction between the sun and the earth fuels the energies of the moment. The rituals of the lake thump, like the heart of the earth as its celestial lover approaches.

Again Jebadiah thought, why this lake, what makes it Holy? He let his observation tighten into contemplation, searching for the answer. He noticed the rhythm of the drums echoing off the water. The music leaving ripples on the shimmering surface. He witnessed the vibrations of sound running through all the images being reflected off the lake.

The flight of the crane reflects back as a spirit gliding through the lake. The cow drinks in its own wavering reflection, uniting god and form. The distorted sun spills across the lake not as mere light, but the manifested soul of the water. On solid land the sunlight ends where the cow stands, and the crane's flight must avoid the human, but in the mystery of the Lake all can reflect on top of one another. All can occupy the same space.

A Hindu in India dreams of making the pilgrimage to the Holy Lake of Pushkar at least once in his life. Here now, Jebadiah was beginning to understand the experience of the religious seeker, or at least Jeb was dreaming of an understanding. He imagined that the pilgrim sees a heaven on earth when he looks in the lake. In the moment and space that the light from the external becomes the internal reflection of the lake the pilgrim sees souls beyond the earthly forms. Jeb imagines.

Jeb Imagines and the pilgrim crouches his body closer to the lake to offer a holy flower. He sees not his face, not a body on earth, but an angel resonating in a different dimension. With his mind and intellect focused on the one-point of his body holding the stem, he places the flower into the lake. Becoming wet at his fingertips.

For the smallest moment, the slightest part of the pilgrim is submerged in the holy lake. He enters the reflection and part of it disappears. The refection has a void, but the pilgrim feels the completeness of a spiritual triumph. Jebadiah continued to think. The missing portion of the reflection creates no emptiness in the pilgrim. Instead it enters him dismissing incompleteness, unrest, and unhappiness.

A bead of sweat rested patiently on Jeb's brow from before the heat surrendered. Now it rolled into the corner of his eye. He removed the drop with a twist of a finger. Looking at sweat on the hand holding a small rose blossom, Jebadiah wonders why not this piece of water too? Closing his fist loosely around the flower, the sweat absorbs into the vein-red petals. He raises his palm to his nose and inhales fully. The familiar floral sent enters his body and glides just beneath his skin, filling his chest, circling around the length of his arm and seems to reenter its source at the end of his body. The sensation of the scent stayed as a subtle vibration spreading all around him.

Jebadiah continues to breath. The pilgrim walks away and dries his hand on his pants. A resident of Pushkar skims the flocks of flowers out of the lake to sell to the next day's spiritual arrivals.
Finally, the sun completely enters into the earth's horizon, and the music stops. 

There is No Short-Cut on the Way Back Home

Switching back and forth up the ever rising Himalayan foot hills, Jebadiah attentively stepped aside, off the narrow path. Two donkeys sporadically hustled down the way to obey the yelps of the man following them with a thin stick and a thin grin.  Up this high, where you would think there was nothing, a scattered village looks down into the valley which, from here, looks like there is nothing.  Rice paddies appear to be emerald steps for the gods terracing up the hillside. Women thrust bright garments against stream-stones as if they are straining to leave color on the rocks. And finally Jebadiah passes the last speckle of the scattered village and heads out of the grazed-to-grey cow pasture and into the pines. 

He walked a barley visible trail without any need to attend to anything but his movements. In only a few moments he was alone with himself. Without any need to go further he headed towards a near by opening in the dense trees revealing a great light. He headed over to a cliff-ledge. At the moment he arrived two pheasants squawked and took flight straight off the edge. One was brown with white and pale-blue markings, and the other had deep-shimmering blue feathers, a patriotic-red head, and a long tail like a trail of ornaments.  Jebadiah stood and looked out into the final dip in the landscape before the earth began its climb into the monumental Himalayan peaks. He slowly raised his line of sight up past the last spots of vegetation towards the enormous rock-faced walls and tried to imagine the evolutionary journey the planet had to take to reach these results. Focused in contemplation Jeb didn't notice his eyes continue the climb. Without warning he was startled by the blazing snow-capped tips he was staring directly into. The sun gleamed an outstanding reflection and left him blind of sight and stunned of thought. From neither his sight, nor hearing, nor mind, formations began to emerge from a space unknown to him. 

He observed himself on a noble journey. He walked through the dazzling streets of marble cities. He felt the life-draining drudge across seas of desert, and he passed through the violent interruption of waves across the open ocean.  The salt water spoke. "The longer you give to bare my wake the sooner you will return home." 

He witnessed himself leaving each thing he carried with him along the journey. Piece by piece he was completely-lightened. Yet he saw in the end unveiling bundles of fine silk, parcels of rare spices and precious stones for all before him.
   
Again he became alone and there laying behind him were all the market places of all the world. The languages from everywhere melted together and carried to him, "pockets turned inside-out there is nowhere left to turn." With clarity beyond the capabilities of vision, he saw himself turning straight down the only road there is to take alone.  His feet appeared on a forest path, much like the one his body stood on now, and he experienced the awe a child feels while looking up at a balloon vanishing into the sky. 

Jebadiah's eyes finally adjusted to the glare, and the images of the magnificent mountaintops took him away from that auspicious space that silently spoke to him. Made timid by the overwhelming power he had just experienced, Jeb decided to go back. He had to will himself to take a first step.  One foot lifted and then fell forward. From the pine-needles beneath the step came a sound... 

"There is no short-cut on the way back home."