Wind Tunnel Valley and Other Mythic Origin Stories

Click here for Audio Recording

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In fact, the Valley wasn’t always a valley.

Before the two Morganite moons joined as one, what is now known as Wind Tunnel Valley was a tepid, underwater lake, tucked in neatly under a thin layer of molten rock that stretched itself out to keep its secrets safe. Black veins of solid lava crumbled slightly and mixed with windfall to produce soil rich in minerals. Mermaids hid their burrow holes under clumps of duck grass, so they could pass undetected between land and water.

They would emerge leafless from the bubbling bracken, sun their scales, and stretch before weaving green play dresses and scampering around on the hot, blacktop. They had no idea they were atop a fire-bellied mountain. To them, kissing the sky and dipping into warm water was quite natural. The thick air and the smell of sulfur in their tangled tresses felt solid - a day-to-day reality that had stood the test of time and tradition. Arms out-reached, skin flecked with black and silver, they made sparkly silhouettes, as they spun in the wind, painting arches in the sky in much the same way they made whirls of bubbles under the depths.

But standing above the molten crust of their lake allowed them to lavish in the feel of gravity on their heads, shoulders, and buttocks, challenging them to push their muscles harder in resistance. It was training. And when they snuffed themselves away through the grassy trap doors on the surface and returned to buoyancy, they were that much more lightning-fast - like danios - flashes of tungsten, silver, and green, parting the water molecules and sending them upward to ionize the mountain air.

Exuberance always finds a way out into the open. Even that of bashful mermaids.

So, in the beginning, there was no valley. And no dragons. Just heat bubbling underwater in a crater in the sky . . . and gentle merfolk. There was not even the suggestion of dragons.

Unless . . .

. . . unless everything already is what it could dream of being at any given moment, waiting for the right urge to surface . . .

Would it disturb your sense of the world too terribly much if I made the audacious suggestion that these spirited merwomen were the predecessors of dragons?

Imagine the scales - simply displaced in a casual moment of liminal identity and reconfigured to serve a different purpose. Thousands of iridescent gems, just as easily spun into fins and tails wrapped tightly around muscular legs as they could be draped from sinewy arms to rebel against the wind. See this in your mind's eye, and it will be true.

Perhaps one moonlit night of folly carried over into a particularly colorful and provocative morn. Perhaps, the pinks and oranges and indigoes rising from the mountain gave the suggestion of vastness. . . .and a very ordinary mermaid, drunken on sunrise, got to wondering.

And quickly, . . . wondering became dreaming.

Then, dreaming begat urgency . . .

. . . and urgency became rebellion against what’s known - as it often does, among the spirited.

Perhaps one particularly unremarkable mermaid shed her scales, stretched her arms, and suddenly felt her own enormity.

Perhaps she saw the towering shadow and flicker of her arms pulsing against the wind in a pool of bubbling water.

Maybe the glistening and a chance gust of wind set her heart afire and the iridescent scales reconfigured themselves as wings and rose to challenge the force of gravity within her.

And would it disturb your sense of the world too terribly much if I told you with every iota of certainty contained within my small being that this urgent rebellion against the bounds of ‘what is” is the force behind all shape-shifting - land formations, evolution of species, and the very splitting of universes that give birth to life upon life and age upon age, permutation upon permutation, each with its own alchemy of urges?

My fellow dreamer, I assure you it’s not just mermaids that think themselves into becoming dragons and crater lakes who accommodate by transforming themselves into wind tunnel valleys.

It’s everyone and everything all at once, becoming the stuff legends and changing the face of reality.

I know you don’t want to believe it.

The responsibility of being so capable is a tremendous weight to bear.

And that is why we have storytellers. Someone has to demystify the enormous potential of all living things for the fearful.

Do you ever see another way of being flicker before your eyes and long to bring it into focus? Do you ever feel the urge to challenge your design? Does that scare you?

Well, then, young dreamer, settle in and read on. The stories in this book contain the implements of your liberation.