The Call Of Vanaheim

I worked in -20 degree F. freezer for about 2 years. I worked the sleepy graveyard hours of about 2 in the morning till about 9 in the morning. At the middle and end of each workday, I would take empty cardboard boxes, flatten them, and take them out of the freezer. I'd walk them around back and throw them into the dumpster and take a breather. One day I threw my boxes away and took a short 2 minute break. I turned around and faced the cornfield behind the truck-lot. The sun would not rise for another hour, a thick blanket of darkness covered all but one faint red area on the horizon.

A warm summer wind swept quietly through the fields of corn and I felt it warm against my cold face. All of time seemed to slow down and as I looked out over that field I heard the faint, distant noise of wind-chimes. A soft high-toned series of rings, beautiful, and random. I suddenly felt the wind pick up amidst my fixation and I felt a feeling like nothing i'd ever known in my life. 22 is young, but I felt a feeling more intense than any experience i'd had in my christian mystic days. It was more emotional, it was a strong pull.

Something demanded my whole body run through the field, free like a child with no obligations. I could not leave my post at work, but the feeling was so strong. If I had followed the sound it most likely would have lead me to nothing more than the front porch of some little farm house overseeing the corn. I didn't follow the sound that morning, but the sound of the wind-chimes went on to haunt my dreams for the next year and a half and nearly for two years.

I dreamt of myself as a wolf or a coyote running through the corn looking for the noise... maybe i'd had this strange feeling before, but not like this, not soaking through every fiber of my being. "What was that" I thought ... I had no idea then what it was much less some kind of "who" ... this was the first time the call came, and I heard... It was not the last