I finished glancing through a Toscano catalog, enjoying all the beautiful sculptures suitable for putting in the garden. Most everything was too expensive for me to ever buy, but just looking always inspired me with garden ideas more suitable for my budget. So I then decide to wander through the garden, as the various possibilities were still fresh.
I wander through the flower and vegetable gardens, around the huge wild rose bush in bloom, past the honeysuckle overgrowing the old fence, and roam through the back gate onto the rest of the property, all wild and abandoned. Clumps of daisies and cluster of late-blooming daffodils poke through wild grasses and tumbled stone, evidence of caring habitation in the old homestead that had been here years ago. Part of the local stone chimney was evident, now a haven for snakes and other critters. Giving the chimney a wide berth, I move behind it toward a particularly beautiful setting of blackberry flowers cascading on prolific branches. They seem to form a circle with an opening in the center, but as I walk around the perimeter, I’m not able to penetrate within. Something smaller was needed to avoid all the thorns… Yes, a bee.
I throw my garden/woods-wandering satchel over the blackberries wall and shape-shift into a bee able to fly between branches to avoid the thorns. But the overpowering fragrance calls to me to stop and collect some pollen. And then I fly to the next flower, and the next. Wait a minute… I’m a bee in order to egress to the center, not to stop at every flower for pollen. It can be hard to become something and not get caught into all the aspects of that something, all the instincts and attachments. Focus… focus…
I shoot straight to the center and see a round wooden plank cover lying there, encrusted with moss in places. A metal handle pokes out of the center, so I shift back into my overweight self and pick up the satchel. As I glance around I think back to the catalogue I had just seen and remember one of the items for sale entitled “The Dweller Below.” This sculpture by artist Liam Manchester portrayed a legendary boogeyman rising from beneath the streets of London through a manhole cover.
The sculpture gave me second thoughts about pulling the cover off, but really, what do boogeymen roaming the city-streets of London have to do with a well in Ozarks country. Grunting, I pull off the cover and peer within, expecting to see water below. Instead, there are stairs leading down into blackness. What is this? Not a water-well which are common around the farms here, but a passageway. Where does it lead? Could this have been an escape route in case of attack from rustlers or Indians way back? How long ago was that homestead here? Maybe it’s more of an escape for during the Civil War when the North and South fought heavily in this area. Part of the underground railway? Where does this lead?
I pull out the flashlight from my satchel, glad the batteries were new, plus I had extra in the bag. I tie a Kleenex on the tip of a nearby branch as evidence I was here, just in case…
(see also http://pythiangames.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/into-the-well/#comments)
healing haven 
