This is only a test.

Mavis was Sarah’s cat. Mavis lived to be 20, and had a lot of inner strength. She could sit in the road outside Sarah’s house and make cars stop by staring them down. (I have to trust that the words will come even when I can’t see them.) She once beat up Sarah’s horse. At the end, Sarah held Mavis, though she was not a cat that generally liked being held (I have to trust that the bats up there will not swoop down and attack me) and she told her, "Mavis, I wish I could come with you on this journey. I want to send my heart with you, so I’m sending a little piece of my heart with you. And if you want to leave a little piece of your heart with me, that would be great." And so Mavis died.

And later, when Sarah talked to this animal psychic, the psychic said, "Mavis wants you to be happy but she can’t communicate with you because you’re so sad. She wants you to be happy and to know your two hearts are one." That was a deciding moment for Sarah. That, combined with or prepped by the book she’d come across (and seagulls don’t attack, right?) in her boyfriend’s house in the Hague (he’s Swiss but speaks five languages including English), this book called Excuse Me Your Life is Waiting, which pretty much summed up Sarah’s life to that point, and also the What the Bleep movie, and the associated book about water and the stuff you write on the bottles.

Which reminded me, when I think about communing with spirits, and dipping into the energy of Mookie and JJ, and Dad, and yeah I guess I can stop there and not feel impolite for leaving someone out, but it’s not about speaking English or being polite – though it’s not the latter because at least that’s sort of an emotion. And it’s about emotion. It’s possible, I can commune with them, and I can talk to them, and listen to them, and yeah I think in English, duh, but that’s nothing to get caught up in the details of. Even out here, on the shore of Lake Superior which is milky silver in the moonlight and the moon a copper wafer and the smell of woodsmoke from Stephan’s party in the air, and a little music floating down here to the beach from his yard across the road.

Even here in a sweet little town miles from anywhere and filled with placid tourists and accommodating locals and twinkling lighthouse lights in the distance, even here I feel alarm when a car pulls up and parks. Oh no, are they gonna seize on me, a woman along, and do unspeakable things? And why did I wear a white shirt? And oh no, they crunch so purposefully across the sand, should I run? And of course it’s two girls in sundresses, heading to the water’s edge or Stephan’s party or wherever. And I am so filled with fear, aren’t I, always ready to bubble over and tell me I can’t.

Like the third waterfall today, when it really was too high off the ground at the point where you have to climb across it and feel it trying to push you down the face of rock like it had something against you and couldn’t stop screaming at you about it. And I was shaking so bad, with cold a little because we’d been in the water a long time by then, and a lot with fear, because I didn’t trust my limbs, and I tried once and just couldn’t do it. And I thought I’d do anything, anything in the world rather than step into those footholds and slide across somehow and then have to climb up a slippery wall to get above it. After which, I was promised, the rest was easy, was nothing.

“I really don’t feel like I can do this,” I said to Sarah through chattering yes literally chattering teeth.

"Uh-huh,” she nodded thoughtfully. I think maybe she added, “I know it feels like you can’t” or “I feel like that sometimes.” I don’t really know because I couldn’t really hear her. My whole body was shaking, and the water pounding above and beside us, and the impossibility of the situation making me feel like time had stopped.

Emily was already above the fall, John Kalb had gone first and then come halfway back to help her and had started to help me, patiently in that incredibly patient way of his, showing me with his foot where the ledge was and how I could just slide my feet along because really the downward force of the screaming water helped to push one’s feet into the ledge so really it’s quite easy. But I couldn’t hear him either because I couldn’t even feel my feet or trust them to do anything but fold under my collapsing ankles as I toppled off the ledge and crashed into the rocks below, as I deserved.

As I deserved. The underlying assumption, not just because I feel I’m a bad person but because that’s just what’s bound to happen. Waiting to happen. And so somehow I had backed off the ledge past Sarah and was now sitting on a wide ledge determined that no matter what, I was not going across that waterfall.

I told them I was going down, which I knew was impossible, and was told that it was impossible. That it was much more dangerous to climb down the two waterfalls we’d climbed so far than up this one. Which really wasn’t so bad. “I’m just gonna be behind you with a hand on you,” said Sarah. “And John’s going to hold you from the other side so you can’t possibly fall.” And somehow I was standing, climbing back to that hateful spot, nodding okay, though I knew I was going to fall, or cause someone else to, in my great panic and ill coordination. But there was no other way. I was cold and angry and there was no other way.

So somehow my feet found the ledge and from above Emily shouted for me to find handholds, of which there seemed to be none, and calm, beautiful John Kalb repeated the nonsense about the ledge. But this time I tried to do what he said because what the hell I’m gonna die anyway, and my feet inched across and then somehow I was on the other side, and sort of turned my feet in on the ledge and hauled myself onto the plateau above and landed like a beached wale. It was not pretty, but I wanted as much contact with solid rock as I could get. Belly on rocks, hip and legs all scratched up and that felt great.

And after that it was cake, so I was really shaking. I told Em, “I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Which wasn’t exactly true. I’ve never been so scared and had to use my body to do what needed to done.

And that’s a good thing to be happy about. Just because you think you’re doomed and you can’t trust your body not to hurl you off a cliff, you can still end up just fine, skinny-dipping in an unswimmable lake, and drying off in your underwear in the warm sun, near a family who is pretending they didn’t just see you naked or getting dressed, and posing for the last picture in Em’s disposable waterproof camera, with the people who just saved your life.