The gathering dusk lends its shadows to the darkening world around the sleeping boy.  Peering into the shadows one might see for a fleeting moment a dark hand lovingly caress his forehead.  Seth’s dream is the beginning. What? Shh, knowing won’t help him, not this time.

A red breasted Robyn meets the sunrise with a joyful song at the very tip of an ancient oak outside the boy’s window. Afterward wind quietly speaks to the Robyn who becomes still, waiting, in this place as she and as her ancestors have done over many years. Almost time whispers the wind.

Easter 2023, Mexico, the Earth we once knew is no more. Butterflies sheltering on the pine trees are slowly falling off the branches like fall leaves, dying. One here, a few there, the night becomes colder. Resurrection is unlikely.

Dawn. A shaft of sunlight sends a thousand beautiful rainbows shimmering off of the ice in the trees. On the ground butterfly wings flutter in a swirling wind. We hope they are alive. Wind will breathe life into their faded wings won’t it?

The ancient pine standing for hundreds of years in the place of its ancestors feels the death of its children during the night. Summoning the only warmth it has left, the tree gives its own life to the last Monarche butterfly on Earth. Branches rustle “ Live”. In shafts of colour movement breaks perfect frozen beauty.

Seth awakened as he always did with a feeling that he needed to remember something really important. Getting dressed he forgot, as usual. He hopped, skipped and jumped down the stairs to breakfast. Well sort of breakfast. Nothing was normal anymore including breakfast, not since droughts, fires and storms became the new “normal”. Dandelion greens again! Mom!!

Seth’s family was weird as far as he was concerned. Both his parents were eggheads, you know scientists, and had little sense of what feelings were. The intellectual discussions at suppertime were interesting, exciting sometimes, but he always felt something was missing. His heart ached when he thought about this. Breakfast done he wandered over to look at the big old oak outside the living room window. The huge trunk and the green leaves often called to him, spoke to him. He decided to go outside and sit in the branches of the tree.  Just as he got to the front door a dog came ambling over and sat beside him. He looked down and said Patches what are you doing? Patches looked up at him and drooled on his shoe. As always thought Seth smiling to himself. Opening the front door he and Patches went out on to the front porch.

Sitting up in the branches of the wise old oak tree Seth watched the world live around him. If he had been able to describe what he felt in these quiet moments he would have said-curiosity. He liked to watch people walk by and not see him watching how they walked, what expressions were on their faces, what they said. Seth felt the rough bark of the tree against his body. An image of the roughened hands of his grandfather holding him as baby floated through his mind. He leaned into the memory against the old tree. What happened to you grandfather? One day he was laughing at dinner with us and the next he was gone, disappeared really thought Seth. Where? No one ever spoke about it. Why, he thought?

The wind picked up, the branches swayed in a rhythm that slowly lulled Seth into sleep. He found himself in a place that looked familiar. Old ruins, brown stone, a tunnel, something frightening in the dark, what the?, he woke up with a start.

The butterfly stirred, warmth slowly filling its body and wings. In its cold slumber on the tree a dream had come. Waiting until the sun warmed its body and wings the butterfly flew away from the dying tree. The sun helped guide and warm the butterfly in the beginning of the journey. Her name was Pepen. There would be no mating above the trees this year, she flew on. A final leafy tear fell from the dying tree, “Good-bye dear one”.

Seth’s mother looked out the kitchen window at her son sleeping in the oak tree. She often saw him there taking everything in. Seeing that he was safe a memory surfaced in her body.  Her son’s birth, Seth didn’t cry, he was awake looking around. A look of… yes she thought- curiosity. From the very beginning of his life Seth had a special connection to nature. Letting flies land on his chubby baby tummy, crawling around in mud outside in the garden. Animals seemed to come to him out of curiosity or they would stay near. What was this behaviour? Maybe she could do a research project on it at some point. She wandered off thinking about research grants. Then she remembered the change. Now all research was vetted by the Ministry of Profit

In Texas the spring weather was off again. Well screwed up in the meteorological vernacular of the time, very hot and dry. The severe drought of many years continued. Milkweed, what remained after spraying, grew sparsely and was very small. Pepen flew into this inferno and was not afraid. She came from a long line of very tough large winged Monarchs. She flew higher where it was cooler keeping an antenna alert for birds. On she flew over the huge dust bowl until at dusk she floated down to the cooling earth and on to a milkweed plant by a spring. Here water still flowed. Her ancestors remembered this place and they live in her. Pepen unrolled her black proboscis and ate her fill. The milkweed felt her need.

Seth climbed down from the tree and went for a walk. He was on Easter holidays and so even though it was Monday he was free to wander. Well free wasn’t exactly the best word to describe it he thought. Constant observation by cameras and bad ass miniature drones was a better way to think of the experience. And if this wasn’t enough the high level drones saw All. Being 14 he wasn’t bothered too much except when he tried to be alone. The hummingbird drone sitting on a branch in the oak earlier came to mind. He could have tried to kill it but if he missed then he might go to solitary for a week or more. Well that angry Robin took care of it anyway

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Introduction

Climate change, ecological devastation, economic and political instability, resource wars, rising violence and despite all of our reason and logic human beings are unable to stop this civilization from destroying the biosphere of the Earth.  We are experiencing the collapse and death of the stories forming the ground of our present beliefs in human progress, justice and equality. Humanity and the natural world are poised at the edge of the abyss, the place where each of us is at the edge of things, the crumbling lip, where the ground is not so sure, at the transition zone between what is known and the great unknown. We associate the abyss with extremity, chaos, destruction and death, a nasty place, a place to be avoided at all costs, hellish. Our anxiety and fear want us to pull back from the edge, from the edge of uncertainty and deny that we are there, that it even exists.

Yet Mystery also lives in this place and calls to us, all of our lives.

Wait what is that? Leaning over the edge scared I might fall, I cup my hand to my ear to listen. There can you hear it? Yes, at the very bottom of the pitch black void is the faint bubbling of water. My imagination goes to work. A bubbling voice bringing new water from deep down, from the depths, a spring which sings new life into being, a new future. But way up here at the edge the voice can barely be heard. Something stirs in my heart. What? Ridiculous, you want to go down there?

To hear the voice more clearly is not for the faint of heart. A descent is required, one must go on a journey into the darkness to find this spring, to hear its song, to drink of its waters. This is a journey into the abyss of you. It is here that one finds their own unique soul song. Some die in the attempt and at bare minimum if the journey is undertaken with courage there will be death, of this I am certain. A death of old stories, the beginning of an end to ways of being that are like death to the heart of life, to your heart and to the tree of life within oneself and the world.

There are various possible paths in to the depths. I will describe one that is less known, walked less than others. It is here that our story begins. It begins with a message for you the reader.

Be content, at home, with the Mystery of what you read, “be” in the uncertainty, doubt and vulnerability the story evokes in you. With luck you might notice yourself analyzing what you are reading using our dying society’s stories and ways of understanding . Stop if you can; just be in the tale. And one other thing, listen for the sound of the tiny watery voice in yourself. That’s all I ask of you, the story will do the rest.

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