Following Light

We were lost somewhere in New York's mountains in an unreliable car. Neither of us knew that part of the country. So we were going up and down mountains, headed nowhere it seemed. But I had insisted I was not going back to the Midwest where there was a recession and no good jobs, and my beloved stepfather was dying, but my difficult sister upset him whenever I tried to visit, which upset my favorite sister, while in another neighborhood, my mother had disowned me again. So 900 miles away, surrounded by New York mountains, we stopped for gas at a truck stop. That's when I saw the person on another road a great distance away with the deep blue mountains looming around and behind him. What struck me was the light streaming from his head straight up into the sky: literally a beam of white light. I'd never seen anything like it before and never have since. I had no idea who he was or how old or what he looked like. All I knew was that light. "We need to pick up that hitchhiker," I said. "Why?" I didn't know why. He could have been dangerous. But that light gave me a certainty. So we drove around the mountain and found him on a roadside. He had direction and money and a list of people and places on the way. And eventually, this would take me to a place where everyone was trying to live in harmony, as impossible as that may seem. That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't followed that light.