Did I tell you about the time Old Jack took me to see the secret stream? I was younger then and didn’t understand the threads that are woven between us all and our surroundings. In those days, I based my world only on my senses and on what they could pick up from my external environment. I hadn’t learned yet about invisible connections. I didn’t know then about the other vision.
One day we took the secret path together through the
forest. Instead of following it to the
end like I usually do when going to the pond, we veered off to the right about
halfway through and kept on a less tidy path.
I didn’t remember ever seeing this path before, but when you're with Old Jack, you get used to that. In any event,
here’s what happened:
Old Jack and I went out and we chanced upon a brilliantly
clear and fast-moving brook. The water
was lush, beautiful, and crystal clear.
My eyes were filled with its beauty and I longed to drink from its
depths. That’s when Old Jack pointed
upstream a bit to a girl sitting on a large rock near the brook. She was dressed all in gray and was crying
and crying and wailing, her tears falling endlessly into the brook. I couldn’t bear the sound! The sorrow was too much for me, and I thought
I must do something to help her. I could
hear Old Jack hiss “NO!” at me as I ran off to help her, and I thought it was
rather mean of him. I figured I’d talk
to him about it later. So off I went and
I comforted that poor girl. She looked
terribly confused but finally stopped crying. Then she ran off without saying a word, and I was left scratching my
head. Old Jack was nowhere to be found.
 |
| The dried-up brook. |
The next day I went back, lucky enough to have found the
path again. I couldn’t find Old Jack
anywhere, but there was another young girl all dressed in gray, crying and
wailing terribly. Her tears ran in huge
drops from her eyes, down into the brook below.
I decided to comfort her as well, and the same thing happened as the day
before. She was confused, finally
stopped crying, and ran off without saying a word. I was so perplexed, but it didn’t end
there. For six more days, the same thing
happened until the eighth girl ran away.
I was still no closer to an answer.
I looked around slowly, scratching my head. I noticed, as if seeing it for the first
time, that the brook had run completely dry.
How odd! Only last week it was so
full of luscious water! Much of the
plant life was browned and dying. A
squirrel came up and peered into the dry bed, followed by a deer. Each walked slowly away, dejected. It was then that I noticed most of the
birdsong was gone. In fact, it was
suddenly very quiet and lifeless.
“It’s the water,” Old Jack said behind me. “It’s gone and they need it.”
“What happened to it?” I asked, but he just smiled and
slipped off through the brush, gone within a few seconds as usual.
I went home slowly, not understanding at all. When I got home, I received some bad news
about the death of a friend. It wasn’t
unexpected because I knew she was dying, but I had hoped for more time with
her. Now she was gone, and I couldn’t
even tell her about the dried-up brook and the crying girls. She would have been so interested, and I just
know she would have had an answer for me.
That night I went to bed in more sorrow than I have ever felt.
But then came the morning, and I knew what to do. I got up very early and slipped down the
secret path to the dried-up brook. I sat
down on the large rock and I thought about my friend. And I cried.
I cried and cried. The tears just
kept coming and I couldn’t stop them, so great was my misery and pain. When I looked down, lo and behold! I was wearing a dull gray dress. Then it hit me. Now I was one of the girls in gray who cried
at the large rock by the brook. And now
at last I understood. Those girls were crying
because they needed to cry. They had to
cry for whatever reason was bothering them, and I unwittingly had stopped
them. By stopping their tears, which had
filled the brook, I was stopping their ability to get their sorrow out and so
life could not go on.
So I cried and I cried and I cried until the brook was full
again. Then I got up and left. Old Jack was waiting for me with a little
smile. He patted me on the back and
called me a dummy, as he usually does. I
asked him about the other girls, if they would be okay, and he said not to
worry and that they’d be back.
And I guess they did come back because even though I never
went back to the brook, I can hear it bubbling and rushing away in the distance
from the path anytime I go down it on my way to the pond. I
find it very comforting.
