Buried Alive

We are digging a hole, Stan, Josh, Maria, and I.  A hole to spend the next 4 hours living a slow death.  Death of the old Mike and birth into a new. 

This will be new to all of us.  Never in my wildest dreams would I think being put into a hole, alive, and being completely buried up till  my mouth and nostrils were the only thing exposed, .change my life forever. 

Generations of indigenous experienced this right of passage, now it was my turn.  As I lower myself willingly into this ‘ hole of life”, I call it, a pulse of adrenalin pumped into my head, like I was about to bungee jump from the highest bridge, but with no cord for my safety net. Now laying flat on the cool, sandy soil my fellow Questers began to slowly cover me.  Starting at my toes, then slowly moving up my naked body, except for a bathing suit to protect my privates, every cell of my flesh began to tingle.  Breathing slow and relaxed, the way my elders advised me to do.  With each breathe the dirt and sand around me readjusted and tightened its embrace upon my entire body.  The last thing I saw was the tree limbs and canopy of the near by pitch pines above my head and the sun to my immediate right peaking in and out of the cotton ball looking clouds.  Maria laid a bandana across my mouth and nose to stop any dirt from getting in my way of breathing.

My mind has to be free of distraction not worrying about my next breathe.  The last hand full of dirt were placed around my head and now my friends slowly left me there to die my little death. 

My mind needs to be clear, but it is a tough struggle.  Relax, breathe, stop thinking about 80 pounds of dirt piled on my chest!  Relax, relax…. stop it Mike.  As I started to relax, I started to feel a tickling on my stomach.  What is that?  It is driving me nuts.  I know it’s a small bug, but it had power over me.  I can not remove it.  Just let the feeling pass out of you Mike, and it did not bother me anymore.  Well, actually, I think the bug just moved on. 

All of a sudden I heard a low, muffled, deep sound rumble.  It started at my left ear, went across my whole body to finish at my right ear.   Then it happened again, only I felt it first in my feet and it past to my head.  Just then I got really worried.  It is a huge truck coming through the forest and I am going to be squished!  Then I remembered my friends were out there in the vicinity and they would stop any truck. 

What seemed like a long time went by.  But I really can not be sure.  You lose track of time, and it could have been two minutes for all I know.  I also could not be sure of was this new, unexplainable but exciting sensation I was experiencing.  I just could not figure out where my feet and hands were.  Now, I know they were still attached, but for the life of me they could have been two feet away from my body or twenty!  I felt that I was almost melting, losing the physical sense of my body itself. 

And then, the most incredible 5 minutes ( or not) of my experience began to happen.  I felt one rain drop hit my nose threw the thin bandana.  It then began to sound like pork was sizzling in a Wok.  ALL AROUND ME!  In front, behind, left and right, then a drop of water hit my mouth.  It was raining.

But as the ground began soaking up this moisture, the most incredible feeling came over me.  I actually felt in my body the roots from all those pines around me begin to draw up that precious moisture.  I felt it in my body and I felt it in my soul this water being drawn through me as if I was becoming part of the soil, part of the rain and then my felling of becoming part of the pine tree drawing up the life force into it.  I had no sense of the physical boundary that was my body.  We are energy, we are the life force.  I feel part of things around me!  This notion came crashing into my head like a tsunami.  For one second I became one with everything around me.  It only takes one second to change a life. 

Just then my friends began to unearth me from my grave.  And back in my body I was, looking up at the canopy of pines in which I was one second earlier, a whole new Mike.