My plan was to hike back to the village. Only problem was I needed a bag to carry my journal in, so I walked down to the hemp shop right next to Ha-Ha Pizza, near the bike trail. “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise” was blaring from the shop’s stereo when I walked in. Music is always a little tease for my addiction. It’s a little sniff of the good stuff. Only thing better is story, and this guy in the hemp shop had one waiting for me.
“Thirty dollars, man,” the old hippie said when I brought up the bag. “Plus $2.25 tax.”
I handed him plastic.
He held up both palms. “Oh, man, we don’t take that.”
I checked my pockets. “I’ve only got thirty dollars in cash.”
“You’re cool. Give me what you’ve got and bring the rest later.”
I came back a few minutes later with what I owed, and he said, “You must be with the writer’s conference.”
I confirmed.
“Well, I’ve got a great story. See these?” He pointed to a string of tiny silver charms with a number stamped on each one – 68. “I want to make Route 68 right out there as famous as Route 66.”
“Why 68?”
“You know, Edgar Cayce. He saw his angel up near Dayton. And on the road’s south end, Joseph Smith saw his angel a hundred years earlier. There have been three other famous angels in between.”
“How about you?”
“I saw my angel right here in Yellow Springs.”
“What did it do for you?”
“Taught me how to fly across the Pacific without a plane.”
“I thought 68 was the Tomahawk Trail.”
“Nope. The Angel Trail. Lay-line, right out there,” he said, “Route 68 is the Lay-line.” He pointed to the charms.
***
Edgar Cayce is America’s most famous psychic. He’s said to have had the uncanny ability to put himself into a self-induced sleep state by lying down on a couch, closing his eyes, and folding his hands over his stomach. This meditation let Cayce connect his mind with all time and space. From this trance state, he responded to all questions put to him from “What are the secrets of the universe?” to, as one website claims, “How can I remove a wart?”
Once I had my hemp bag I wasn’t much interested in angels, secrets of the universe, or warts. I just wanted to take a hike, to find my old comfort zone. I was tired of talking about psychics, tired of talking, period. That happens in these intense writers workshops where you are the center of attention. I wanted to sort out things alone, to get my feet back on the ground, to get in touch with another landscape, something stable and real.
John Lane teaches English and environmental studies at Wofford College where he also directs the Goodall Center for Environmental Studies. His Abandoned Quarry: New and Selected Poems was published by Mercer University Press in 2011. His latest prose book is My Paddle to the Sea, published 2011 by The University of Georgia Press. Other recent prose books include The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph (Hub City Writers Project, 2008) and Circling Home (University of Georgia Press, 2007). In late 2012 Mercer will publish his latest essay collection Begin with Rock, End with Water.