seeing a white Lion in rural Idaho

During the spring of 2005 myself and my friend Ned were spending part of the afternoon at an outcropping of small boulders near my home in rural Idaho. We were practicing and traversing on theses rocks as a way to get in shape for the upcoming summer climbing season. The spot is quite lovely. The long row of boulders were on a small hill above a dirt road, with sweeping views of the snow covered peaks of Wyoming in the distance. The long winter had ended, the sunshine was warm and everything smelled of sage.

The act of traversing on these steep rock formations proved to be quite a wake up call, both of us were surprised at how weak and sore we were after only about a half hour of bouldering.

We sat on a big flat rock above the road and lamented our exhausted forearms.

I remember quite clearly saying, “I need to get strong. This is the summer for it.” And Ned agreed.

Then - I saw what I thought was a dog on the dirt road below us. It was a ways off, and there was something odd about it.

I said, “There’s somebody’s dog.”

It took only a moment to realize that it’s slow lanky stride looked more like the way my cat walked. Within seconds, both of us knew this was no dog, this was a Mountain Lion.

We watched silently as the Lion walked along the road below us. It never saw us. We were transfixed as the cat calmly plodded past us. We watched it for about 10 minutes. It was rather small, no bigger than an adult golden retriever. It was almost completely white, except for a black spot on the tip of it’s long tail, and the distinctive dark “tear stains” under it’s eyes.

We sat in silent amazement, as it past us maybe less than 30 feet away.

It continued unhurried along the road for a few more minutes, and eventually it calmly stepped off the road, and walked leisurely into the tall grass and trees, and we lost sight of it.

This was quite a sighting.

People live out west their whole lives and never catch a glimpse of a Lion, and we were fortunate to have an astounding sighting, close up on a beautiful day.

The feeling was sort of magical, and I felt enormously fortunate. When I got home I wrote up a short email about the experience and sent it off to hand full of friends.

I got a reply from an email pal in New Zealand named Ivan. He scanned a page from a book on spirit animals and sent it to me. I’ll add that Ivan is an amazing fellow, he’s written two books that he claims are channeled directly from God. The text of the scanned page explained that, “seeing a Lion is an important sign that it is time to get strong.”

My first impression was that this meant some kind of spiritual strength, and it was a few days later that I realized that both myself and Ned were telling each other that: “We need to get strong” at the EXACT moment we saw the Lion.

[added text, april 21/09]

I was recently asked a question in a comment :

"Looking in retrospect, did something happen during that year or these last 4 years that proved this announce to 'get strong' to be a sage warning?"

That was a good question.

I hadn't ever thought about it, but the events of my life seemed to change direction sometime around 2005. This would have been exactly four years ago, and it was about that time that I began to focus more on paranormal stuff, as far as reading and studying for myself. These years have been an evolution of sorts, with some bold jumps forward. The last two years have been really hard for me, with a lot of personal challenges.

Perhaps this was a "sage warning" for me.