CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
At the next hiking club meeting, the president and vice president sat in their usual chairs next to each other. When the group got to discussing hiking plans for the coming weekend, Stephanie had an immediate suggestion; one that she thought would please Reggie.
She suggested the Viewridge Trail in Topanga. “It’s a little off the beaten path,” she explained, “but I know a secret path to get to a real cool cave. Inside the cave are these really beautiful Chumash rock paintings. My dad took me there once when I was in grade school and I remember the cool drawings of these halfanimal, half-human figures.
“Amazing! Let’s go!” one club member yelled.
Reggie smiled at Stephanie, but on the inside, he felt so done with ancient Indian beliefs—especially knowing that tribes considered caves to be portals to the supernatural world.
“What do you think, Reggie?” Mrs. Horton asked.
Reggie scratched his bushy head, looked over at Stephanie and said, “Sure. Sounds good.”
At 1:30 on Saturday, about half-way to the trail, the bus began to sputter and chug until the driver pulled over to the shoulder. The engine popped and gasped its last breath. The driver made a phone call and relayed the information to Mrs. Horton. She turned to the kids and said, “Well, here’s the deal, a new bus will be here in about an hour. So, we can either go back home...”
“No! Boo!” the kids moaned
“Or,” she said, “We can continue on to the hike.” “Yeah! Hike!” the kids yelled.
“Okay, okay,” Mrs. Horton said, “only thing is that we can’t goof off a lot on the trail; it’s two hours to the cave and two hours back and it’ll be getting dark after that, okay?”
“Yes, Mrs. Horton,” one boy mocked in a grade-school way. Everyone laughed.
“Funnnyyyy!” Mrs. Horton said. “Now, everyone call your parents and make sure they know we may be an hour or more late. Call them now please. I’m serious.”
The new bus pulled in at the park, and by three, they were heading up the trail. As usual, Stephanie constantly snapped pictures along the way, but after a while, Reggie asked her if he could carry the camera.
“Seriously?” Stephanie asked. “You know I need to do lots of practice if I’m going to be a photojournalist.”
“I know,” Reggie said. “And I know you will be a great one, I just want to hold your hand for a while.”
Stephanie handed him the camera, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then they interlocked their fingers. They slowed to the rear of the line. The trail was quite wooded in places, and when the rest of the kids rounded a bend, Reggie stole a kiss, sometimes, two.
The group made good time with only one short rest break, and by five, they stood on top of a high ravine looking down on some large rock outcroppings with a slow creek running in front.
“That’s it!” Stephanie pointed. “That’s the Santa Maria Creek. You can’t see the cave from here, but I remember it was a steep climb down.”
Reggie looked down and felt a strange, not-so-good feeling. It was heavily wooded around the cave due to the moist environment. It’s a place Native peoples would choose to make sacred animal paintings, Reggie thought, and a place animals would come for water.
“Come on, Reg.” Stephanie grabbed his hand and started down, walking sideways over the dusty gravel-strewn path.
Behind them they heard a couple of kids slip and slide, followed by Mrs. Horton’s warnings to take it slow. At the bottom, it was quite dark in the wooded shadows, but when they got there, Stephanie took the lead, climbing over several large boulders.
Catching his breath, Reggie asked, “How do you remember so much about this place?”
“Photographic memory, I guess.” “Now I get the picture,” he chuckled.
“Good, and we have to keep this path to the cave secret so vandals and camera flashes don’t destroy the paintings. “Here it is!” she shouted. With Reggie in hand, they bent down and squeezed through a narrow opening. She set her SLR camera on macro and a low light manual exposure, and immediately began shooting.
“Look at this one, Reggie, looks like a snake with antlers.” CLICK. It seemed like the shutter clicked every ten seconds.
“Whoa! Here’s a man with big long claws for hands.” CLICK.
****
Then she got real excited when she spotted a large ochrecolored circle with lines radiating outward. By this time, the whole club gathered around Stephanie. “My dad thought this one represented the sun,” she said. “There was a full eclipse of the sun in the 1600s and maybe this recorded the event from their eyes... Can you imagine what they thought was happening to their world?”
As the kids gazed at some stick figures with rays and halos around their heads, Reggie wondered what meanings the drawings had. Was there a message for us? He wondered. Wrenching his head far back to see a drawing on the ceiling, he saw a figure in red looking kind of human, but with pointed ears and a tail. Thinking of his dreams, his head started to spin and his stomach turned.
He made his way toward the opening, his hand on his stomach. “Come on, Steph, finish shooting, will ya? This musty smell is kind of making me sick. If you want, I’ll wait for you by the creek, okay?”
“Sure, Reg, won’t be long.” CLICK.
The fresh air seemed to help Reggie breathe easier for a while, but as he scanned the dense brush surrounding the area, he knew this could be a dangerous spot for smaller animals. With the cave behind him and the precipitous climb out, and with the thicket on either side, prey would have little chance to escape.
Reggie smelled a faint, but foul odor. It gave him the creeps. He shouted at the group, “Hey! It’s getting late, guys! We better think about heading back!”
Mrs. Horton checked her watch. “Reggie’s right! Let’s wrap it up, okay?”
Then Reggie heard a buzzing sound. The buzzing of flies? He slowly followed the creek for a few yards. Then he saw it. A raised area in the sage brush, covered with leaves: two rear hoofs sticking out.
A mountain lion kill.
Without turning around, he shouted, “We have to leave right now!”
He heard and saw some kids were starting to come.
“What’s wrong, Reggie?” Mrs. Horton asked.
“This is not a good place to be,” Reggie said as he pointed to the pile. “That’s a cougar kill right there and he may be coming back soon to feed.”
“Got it, Reggie,” Mrs. Horton said. She turned around and shouted, “Let’s go kids!”
As they started their climb, Reggie didn’t see Stephanie, so he ran over to the rocky path to the cave, shouting her name. She smiled as she climbed over the last boulder, camera dangling from her neck.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said. “What’s the hurry all of a sudden?”
Reggie grabbed her hand. “Come on, there’s a cougar kill nearby, it’s dangerous to be here.”
As they caught up with the rest of the group, Mrs. Horton was nudging some of the kids up the ravine, when she let out a scream: “STOP! Come back down!”
They scrambled down as everyone looked up to the top of the ravine. There stood a mountain lion looking down at them. The light surrounding the lion at the top of the ravine made the animal look huge and threatening. Everyone, including Reggie, felt vulnerable in the shade at the bottom.
“Oh my God!” one girl screamed.
Staring down at the group, the lion twisted his head and made a low snarl.
Reggie jumped out in front of the group and held up his hands.
“Just stay together.” Knowing what he knew about the local cougars and its size, it was likely P12. But that didn’t matter; the lion was probably surprised to see a group of humans, and probably not happy to see them hanging around his evening meal.
Reggie knew they had to leave the area before dark, and up was the only way out.
“I’ll call 911,” Mrs. Thornton said.
“No, don’t,” Reggie said. “They’ll just bring a noisy crowd of nervous, shotgun-wielding police. Let me call Joe Sartor, he’ll know how to handle this. He lives and works near here and knows the trails and the animals.” But Reggie knew it would take more than an hour for even Joe to get there. And darkness was approaching soon. He called Joe, but only got his voice mail and left an urgent message telling him where they were on the trail and that a lion was on top of the ravine and to hurry.
The lion didn’t move. Reggie could see his nostrils flaring and his whiskers twitching. Reggie tried to remember all that he had read about lion attacks and what Joe told him about the best ways to fend them off in an encounter.
Reggie was scared, but he felt he needed to prove himself. He needed to push past his fear. He knew that mountain lions are afraid of humans and that a large group of them advancing toward him would eventually scare him off. Besides, he thought, it would be a lot scarier staying put after nightfall.
He knew the lion did not consider humans prey and it was highly unlikely it would attack if it had an escape route, but he was a wild animal—a powerful animal. The group’s advantage was being a group. Reggie turned to everyone and said, “Follow me. Nice and steady.”
Mrs. Horton said, “No, Reggie, it’s too dangerous.”
“It’s too dangerous to stay,” he said. “The lion will not confront a herd of humans coming at him. He’ll run.”
“How can you be sure?” Mrs. Horton asked.
“I just know,” Reggie answered. I know these animals. Let me go ahead, leave some space behind me, and follow one at a time. And, make lots of noise.” Looking back, he saw Stephanie jump on to the trail behind him and that made him feel even stronger.
Reggie started slowly up the ravine. He held his arms high in the air and talked to the lion.
“Hey, lion, we’re coming up! Don’t worry; we’re leaving your kill. You can come back when we’re gone.”
Reggie knew to look the lion right in the eyes, so the lion knew he wasn’t going to run like a prey animal would.
The lion stared back.
Their eyes locked on each other, and each time Reggie spoke, the lion’s ears would twitch as if he was straining to understand.
The climb was slow. After a few minutes, Reggie looked back and everyone was in line on the trail with Mrs. Horton at the end. Stephanie was only five yards behind him holding that everpresent camera. He gestured to her to pull back and he continued climbing.
“Reggie, he’s not moving!” Mrs. Horton yelled. “You better stop!”
Reggie was within 20 yards or five seconds of the lion’s charge and contact. Fear returned to Reggie’s body, but his mind told him something else. This lion was put here for me, he thought, I have to do this.
“He’ll move, keep coming!” Reggie yelled back, without looking back. Reggie stood up and waved his arms at the lion and shouted. “Hey lion, time to leave!”
The lion looked back up the trail, then at Reggie and the approaching people. It dropped its ears, flicked its tail, and Reggie could see that it pushed down on its muscular hindquarters, ready to leap.
The lion’s eyes met Reggie’s. There was no fear in them.
But Reggie saw something else in the lion’s eyes. He saw himself flash by in a movie; a young boy with his mom and dad, Jennifer, Isaac, Kevin, Joe and Stephanie—they were all there. Then Reggie blinked.
When Reggie blinked, the lion blinked, and in an instant, it was gone like a ghost.
Reggie scrambled fast and pulled himself up to the top of the ravine to see where the lion went. About 100 yards up the trail, he saw the tip of the lion’s tail veer off into the bush.
“He’s gone!” Reggie shouted back to the group.
Cheers went up.
“Hurry!” Reggie yelled. “And make lots of noise! He’s on the run!” Looking quickly back and forth to between where the lion departed and the ravine, he reached his hand out to Stephanie. He pulled her to him and they hugged until a sweaty-faced boy in a Nike t-shirt reached the top and said, “Hey! Move your butts.”
The pair moved aside and let the laughing line of hikers reach the top. One at a time, they high-fived. CLICK, went Steph’s camera. Shook Reggie’s hand. CLICK. Hugged Reggie. CLICK. Reggie smiled. CLICK. He was both surprised and embarrassed when finally Mrs. Horton pulled herself up and said, “Reggie, you’re our hero.” CLICK. She gave him a big hug, holding onto him almost like his mother did. CLICK.
“Let’s just keep moving,” Reggie said, blushing. “Stay close together.” Even though the kids couldn’t stop talking, Reggie added, “And keep up the chatter.”
When Reggie got to the spot where the lion entered the brush at the side of the trail and gestured for everyone to gather around, he said, “This is where he went in. For good measure, I want everyone to yell and scream at the top of their lungs on the count of three. Okay? One, two, three!” The roar of the chorus careened through the canyon and the lion’s sensitive ears, no doubt, cued a fast retreat. After the echo, they all cheered.
“Great,” Reggie told the group, “but we have to still be cautious and stay together on the hike back. There’s a slim chance he might be stalking us.” Then Reggie went over to Mrs. Horton and asked her to be the tail on the trail and to frequently check behind her in the rare event the lion was following.
Reggie’s phone rang. It was Joe.
“Hey, Joe, we’re okay. The lion left.”
“Thank God. We’re on our way. Stay cautious.”
“See you soon, Joe.”
Reggie turned to the group and said, “Joe’s on his way. He’s that lion expert and he’s bringing his crew.”
A cheer went up and Reggie gestured to keep moving. On the hike back, Reggie and Stephanie held hands the whole way, even though the trail was mostly narrow and they had to go single file. Since the group was close by, they didn’t talk much. At one point, when they had to scramble over some rocks and there were a few feet between them and the group, Stephanie whispered behind Reggie’s back.
“You know something, Reg?”
“What?”
“I like you a lot. Not just for what you did back there, but for who you are.”
Reggie turned around, met her eyes and wanted to kiss her; then he caught the eyes of the approaching group, and said,
“Thanks, Steph.”
As the light of the day started to fade, the group marched on increasingly tired and quiet. In the lead, Reggie spotted a movement far among the tree shadows. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, thinking he was fading, too. It was only a passing blur as it disappeared below a hillock. Was I seeing things? He wondered. He knew the light could play tricks with your eyes when you’re moving in the woods.
He decided to be cautious in case it really was the lion stalking them. He turned around, held up his hand, and said, “Hey group! We gotta keep up the chatter!” Then he checked his watch, “We’ve got an hour to go!”
Mrs. Horton yelled from the back, “Come on troops, let’s hear some club spirit!”
For a laugh, one girl starting singing, “Over the hill and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go...”
Some kids joined in while others laughed. Just as the ‘boos’ drowned out the melody, Reggie froze and everyone else froze behind him.
There, beyond a rise, a bright light pierced the evening sky. It bounced back and forth as it got closer. Brighter.
“What’s that?” a girl whimpered.
Reggie knew instantly what it was: the powerful LED flashlight on top of Joe’s helmet.
“It’s Joe!” Reggie yelled, just as the full figure of a man appeared over the hill, followed by his Agency team of scientists and some rangers.
Reggie pulled on the hand he never let go of, and he and Stephanie ran to meet them. Cheers went up as Reggie hugged Joe.
One by one, the kids gave Joe and the rescuers hugs—telling them how happy they were to see them.
“It’s getting late, folks, we better head back.” Joe announced.
Soon, Reggie asked the question that was knocking on the back of his mind ever since he saw the lion. “Joe?”
Joe turned around and saw the look on Reggie’s face. “Yes, Reggie it was P12. The last blip on our tracking monitor had him right here.”
“I knew it,” Reggie said with a big smile.
Then Joe said, “I’m not sure if you got a visit from your power animal, or if it was the power of reality that guided you, I don’t know. But from what your teacher told me you did back there, it took a hell of a lot of courage.”
“And smarts,” Stephanie said.