Pylimitics

Wilfred Cummings first visited the Dust River Valley when he was 17, on a camping trip. The place stayed in his mind the rest of his life, and he visited six more times, when he was 23, 37, 47, 53, 61, and 79. On his first trip he was suffering from a rash on his shoulders. In each subsequent trip he had another, different complaint. 

At 23 he experienced a ringing in his ears.
At 37 his knees were sore.
At 47 his vision was intermittently blurry.
When he was 53 he suffered from heart palpitations.
At 61 he developed a cough; breathing felt difficult.
When he was 79 he battled cramps in his feet. 

In each case the symptoms plagued him before and during his visit to the Dust River Valley, but disappeared afterward. 

The Dust River Valley is a captivating place. There are things there that glow in an undiscovered spectrum that no one can see: 

• the first opening of a fawn’s eyes
• a memory of the heart broken at Sunset Rock
• the unheard echo of a cry for help in September, 1906
• the reflections at midsummer day long ago when the river still ran with water, and the water still shined
• the feeling of a hand slipping out of yours for what would the last time
• a disembodied smile, improbably noticed through layers of leaves and branches, and never connected to any face
• the clarity of the sunset air on the last day of the last autumn 

It’s a place where there are clues to the true nature of existence, if you know how to see them. Will Cummings hiked all around the valley and passed close by some of these clues, but did not at the time understand them. 

• a desiccated pine cone half-embedded in the soil on the northern slope of Briscoe Hill
• the 13th hawk
• one (only one) of the fist-sized worn-round granite rocks where the water flowed briefly east
• an undiscovered cave three hundred twenty-four paces southeast of the fist-sized rock; the opening lies between two huge boulders. Will once sat and rested his back against the northernmost of those boulders, but did not see the cave. 
• the echo of a mountain goat’s hooves as it managed an impossible but successful leap on the crags high above a hidden glen
• reflections from the eyes of a mouse living beneath the pine tree that dropped the cone, for such secrets are drawn together by a separate magnetism

If you were an author and had the idea of hiding a manuscript somewhere, in the hope that it might be found, you would smile to yourself in your study, imagining the moment of discovery long after your death. You would be writing such a manuscript just then, in fact, and on a whim decide that this manuscript — this very one — would be your secret gift to the future. You hoped, of course, that a manuscript from your hand would be significant to some future generation. It’s something you can’t know, but it’s a worthy hope. You might never have heard of the Dust River Valley, and you might never have visited it, but nevertheless the place includes several excellent locations for hiding such a manuscript:

• You might seal it into a plastic box and bury it beneath a cairn atop Sunset Hill.
• If that is altogether too modern and contrived, you could protect it between sheets of lead and hide it all between that unusual rock formation two miles from what was once a lake. You would mark it with an obscure carving in the rock itself. 
• That might be altogether too much effort, so you might find an unmarked headstone in Sorrow Meadow and dig down until you found a coffin. You wouldn’t disturb the coffin, because although you don’t like to admit it even to yourself, you’re a bit superstitious. But you would place the manuscript in a wooden box, place the box carefully upon the coffin, and replace all the dirt. Before you left you would say a few words that you made up in the moment, thinking it felt proper. 
• When all those possibilities seemed simplistic and silly, you might encode your manuscript into the DNA of an ant colony living on a south-facing hillside. It was sheltered from the worst of what happened.

The Dust River Valley wasn’t visited by many, but there were always a few hikers and campers about, as well as a few who were there for other, less definable reasons. A handful of people even appeared to live there, somewhere and somehow. Will Cummings met some of those people on his trips, and one was a man he believed to be some sort of guru. The man had an air of serenity, as if he had passed beyond desire and hope. The man himself believed that, but he had not himself noticed that he still harbored four desires:

• to swim in cool water as clear as air
• to feel a gentle touch
• to enjoy the satisfaction of a success
• to share the luxury of weariness

The man was older than Will, but not as much older as Will assumed. Two years after meeting Will he left the Dust River Valley and lived out his days in New York City, where he lived an ordinary, if quiet, life. He worked in a warehouse, and was well-liked.

There are sounds in the Dust River Valley that have never completely faded from the river basin air, but which can no longer be heard by most ears:

• the early spring morning call of the 13th hawk at 700 feet. It once caused 18 people to simultaneously look to the sky
• the primordial hum of heat engines of a design that has not existed for a long time
• the second chord strummed by a beginning guitarist beside a campfire. It was not the correct chord but quite by accident matched the resonance of the world
• tones from wind chimes that hung outside a hand-built cabin near Briscoe hill. The cabin is no longer there, and the wind chimes have not been found where they lie beneath the dirt. The woman who built the cabin is still alive, living on a boat somewhere near Thailand.

Deep beneath the dry riverbed, near Heartbreak Ridge, there is a very unusual crystalline formation. Few people have passed that way, but at least four hikers have passed through. Their random thoughts as they walked by are somehow preserved in that formation:

• I wonder how old I really am.
• W won’t he speak to me?
• What is that glow?
• Seven…no, eight.

There are trees in the Dust River Valley that have hidden significance:

• The pine fifth from the top of Sunset Hill on the east side. An answer would be easy to find in the patterns of its needles.
• Two maple trees separated by 8.3 miles on a straight east-west line. They are identical down to unimagined levels of detail; so identical that they are perhaps a single tree, except for their locations.
• A sapling in Sorrow Meadow. Will Cummings took a Polaroid photograph of the meadow in 1968 when he was 37. It included an excellent view of the sapling. He misplaced or discarded the Polaroid, but if he were to find it and compare it to the way the sapling looked on any of his subsequent visits, he might have noticed that the sapling had not changed a bit. Really, though, it was not the sort of thing Will Cummings would notice.

There is something about the way time passes in the Dust River Valley — or maybe it doesn’t pass — that is unique to the place. In particular, throughout the long history of the valley there have been four events, or points in time, that are linked in some way. Each was observed by just one person who was either there in person or experienced a powerful, realistic dream:

• the cataclysmic flood that originally created the river basin
• an unusual moonrise that prompted calls and responses from creatures neither observed nor named
• he evening during which an unusual glow was temporarily visible
• a moment when the hidden nature of stone was readily apparent

If those four people had met, and discussed their experiences, the connections and significance of those points in time might have been apparent. But they never met, and each discounted their private experiences. 

There were other events in the Dust River Valley that could have been greatly instructive, but once again they were not explored. This is because some of them were not observed, and also because the events that were observed were, as other events, simply discounted by people who did not understand the importance of their own existence:

• Before history began to be recorded, a man called Klimpa threw a rock over the low cliff at Briscoe Hill. It should have splashed into the river, but there was no sound. Klimpa had not listened for the sound, and did not notice.
• The 13th hawk, soaring at 750 feet, suddenly plunged precisely 96 feet and then resumed soaring, never having moved its wings. No fully mindful being witnessed this, and the hawk paid it no mind. Soon afterward it caught a small rabbit.
• During an evening when an usual glow was visible, the river ran backward for several seconds. This went unnoticed by the 11 people camping nearby because of they were only thinking about the glow in the sky, which was comparatively insignificant. It was really just a forest fire. 

There were people who lived in the Dust River Valley, even though it wasn’t widely known. One of the reasons you’d move there is exactly that; to disappear into a place where everybody know that nobody lived. The residents of the Valley tended to be solitary, and even when they met didn’t discuss anything very personal. Thus they never discovered that they shared yearnings. In particular there were four yearnings shared for 27 years or more by three or more residents:

• to see the ocean
• to meet whoever or whatever lived in the hidden glen on the other side of the lake
• to recapture that dream when the stone turned strange
• to resolve that odd feeling that arose whenever one looked at the fourth pine tree near the summit of Sunset Hill

Visitors to the Dust River Valley where there for the hiking, and the views, and the solitude. There is something about the place that led to moments of unusual clarity, but because these were intensely personal, each visitor thought the effect was unique to them alone. Several experience moments of clarity so intense they remembered them for the rest of their lives. Not a single one ever mentioned anything about it::

• Josh Ringle, when his booted foot first touched the rocky crown of Briscoe Hill, suddenly imagined a machine that was little short of miraculous. He never tried to build it. He harbored a mild dislike of machines and tried for years to put it out of his mind.
• Anne Parminter was sitting beside the river when an ambitious and historic plan unfolded in her mind, complete and clear. Even years later she still knew it would have worked, but had forgotten why she had never tried.
• Rashid Singh was walking beneath a tall oak tree near the lake when he saw how he might win the love he wanted. The courage he needed was within reach for a few moments, but he never found it. He continued to search for it for years, and eventually died alone. 

Four tears were shed in the Dust River Valley.

• The first was for her most remembered moments.
• The second was for his hopes.
• The fourth was for silence.
• And the third was magic.

On the naming of places

Places have names known to people and they have other names, some older, some deeper. Some are false names. 

Although most people believe they themselves are the source of names, this is not alway the case. There are a few places that have names not given them so much as emanated from them, and the only role of people, if they have any role at all, is perhaps to know those names when they are able to. 

There are few people who know about emanated names, and fewer still who can understand or discover what those names might be. Some names of places are signposts, easy ways for people to remember a place, or to give them something to associate with their experiences. “Andrews Beach was where I found a beautiful shell,” they say, or “That was a lovely trip to that valley where everything seemed strange.” 

Emanated names are not the same. A given name is like a map; held in the hand, even as the mapped place is in sight, it is separate and is a thing of its own. Emanated names are not separate. A given name can be changed upon a whim, or new names given. That may be Mount Willow, but it is called Sunrise Mountain because of a random morning. 

An emanated name cannot be changed , and lasts as long as the place from which it emanates. It was once believed that an emanated name came before the place and was the thing from which the place itself emanated. Part of that belief was that the name came both before the place and remained after. The names, it was said, were real, though most could not know them. 

The Dust River Valley is not a colorful place, but there have been instances of rainbows there:

• In the days when it still rained water, there were sometimes rainbows.
• In the days when Listening Falls existed, there were often rainbows.
• Some of the rainbows were seen by eyes that perceived all the colors, and for them a rainbow filled the sky and all the air.
• Now that the rain is no longer water, there are vibrant rainbows, if only you know where to look.

The Dust River Valley has been visited for millennia, and you would think that in all that time and all that hiking everything would have been found. This is not the case. Undiscovered things in the valley of the Dust River:

Far to the south of Sorrow Meadow, in an unexpected and hidden glen, there is a fountain that has never been seen.

• Three and one third miles to the north of the fountain the ground rises in a mound, and beneath the mound is the reason there is sleep.
• Three and one third miles to the north of that mound is a hidden pool of clear water for which no source would be found if the anyone were to search.
• Three and one third miles to the north of the pool of clear water is metal wrought deliberately into a shape that exists nowhere else.
• The imaginary line connecting these four undiscovered things, if seen from high above, points to a fifth thing.

Visitors to the Dust River Valley are often there to see things. They think they keep their eyes open, and although they usually do, sometimes their eyes close without them noticing:

• Six times in the river valley eyes closed unnoticed because what was behind those eyelids was the same as what lay outside.
• Five times in the river valley eyes closed unnoticed because the next time they did not.
• Four times in the river valley eyes did not close, although they seemed to.
• Three times in the river valley they were not, finally, eyes at all.