In the Shadows
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One dusky evening, I saw a Florida panther. The rare elusive cat crossed my path. Its
long, curled tail gave it away. When it sat down in one graceful motion on its huge hind
legs, I knew it was one of those cats that lives in the shadows. Yet, we were in-between my
condo and the swimming pool! I told nobody. Since then, the once-in-a-lifetime moment has been hiding in a secret place, along with other mystical in-between moments, waiting for just the right time to saunter into a story.
That panther, one of only a hundred remaining in the world, appeared like a mirage,
though I know with certainty that I stood there watching it. In memory, it appears as a muted
watercolour that could wash away at any moment. But it won’t. Writing the story makes it so.
That is how stories come to be – something happens, we know it – then it disappears
into that other mystical world from where it came. It is up to the writer to bring it forth from
the shadows at the auspicious time before it dissipates forever.
I wish I could tell you how that happens. How when sitting at my writing desk, looking
out the large window framing summer like a photo, words come like a silent cat crossing my
path. I wish I knew from where words come because then I would have the key to a secret
place. All I know is whenever inspiration finds a crack, it slips in one way or another. Then,
something happens.
The first book I ever read to myself when I was barely six-years-old was The Little Fir
Tree, by Margaret Wise Brown. She told me about the little fir tree being lost and forlorn in a
forest waiting for someone to return. It foretold my life. Although I would never forget the
story, for decades I could not recall its title or author. I looked often in libraries hoping to find
it again, to no avail. Then, one day, while searching for a book for my young daughter, it
appeared like a cat curled up in a quiet corner on the bottom shelf in a children’s bookstore.
When I turned the pages, time hung like a suspension bridge between my fifth and fiftieth
years. How could someone have known my life before I had begun to live it? The littlest fir
tree survived and thrived, as had I. Placing the book back on its shelf, rather than buying it
for my own daughter, preserved the secret in my heart: This story was meant for only me . . .
I was the little fir tree. I knew it then as I know it now.
The author, of course, did not know me or my life, or any other reader, but she knew
something about opening up a mystical escape into a forest of snow-covered trees.
Her words were an invitation to a world like no other for readers of a tender age trying
to make sense of the shape of words on a page. Although they were few, their meaning
outlived the last page when I felt a tear trickle down my cheek and I was suddenly back in my
own bedroom. Thus began a life-long relationship with words as companions.
Today, as an author myself, I search for words from where I do not know. Sometimes
they come like musical notes drifting through the window, heard but not yet seen. Sometimes in the wee hours, pen in hand, the sacred ink flows from some shadowy netherworld. Sometimes, those very words strike me as if someone else had written them.
Such a mystery,like all the bigger mysteries of the universe, cannot be explained with mere words.
Proverbial wisdom words to ‘watch and wait’, say something about allowing the
graceful appearance of a never-before-seen word or phrase coming as sleekly as a panther.
When that moment comes, everything is effortless. Words appear that may change
somebody's experience; the reader herself might be changed. Without a doubt, the words that arrive as a silent, sacred messenger from another world change the writer.
Connections between worlds, like words shared between writer and reader, create a
lasting bond, an unbreakable trust in the unseen. Nothing will ever be quite the same once the story is shared and the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.
Sacred stories live in the shadows like a big beige cat, hidden, but breathing; out of sight, but seeing; silent, but never silenced.
This true story was written for
Amethyst Review: Writing and the Sacred
An anthology soon to be published and available as a Kindle ebook and in print.
If you live in Florida, you can vote for conservation measures in the upcoming November 3 election: https://floridawildlifefederation.org/2026-local-conservation-ballots/
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