chatting with David Huggins

I work for an outdoor school as an instructor, and I spend weeks (and sometime months) away from my desk.

I enjoy the time teaching in the mountains, and I’ve found that the weirdness factor in my life sort of evaporates when I’m out in the Wilderness.

When I returned from a winter ski expedition at the end of January (of this year, 2009) just a few minutes after arriving in my cabin, the phone rang and it was David Huggins.

David is a fellow I’ve never met, but we’ve had a bunch of delightful phone chats. He’s a lifelong experiencer, and he is also a passionate artist and many of his paintings are visual recreations of his strange encounters.

Oil painting by David Huggins attempting to describe his memories of strange encounters

I’ll add that he has been enormously supportive of my attempts to make sense of my experiences, and he has encouraged me to draw (or paint) my memories.

That phone call in late January was curious, coming just minutes after walking in my door. I'll add that the next two months were awash in ongoing weirdness and synchronicities. Actually, it was TOO much, and I was overwhelmed and sort of freaked-out.

Okay, lets fast forward to last night. I have been in Alaska for almost a month teaching for the same outdoor skills school. I had a wonderful time on a ski-mountaineering expedition in the Chugatch mountains with a great team. I arrived home, tired after almost 24 hours of traveling, and I lay down on the couch.

The thought occurred to me that the last time I came home from a big trip, David called, and maybe it would happen again. I drifted off to sleep, and after about an hour I woke from my nap and lay there feeling refreshed. Then the phone rang - and it was - as usual - David Huggins. It felt like he new I needed a nap before calling me.

And - as usual - we had a delightful chat, and he was supportive and encouraging.

[audio interview with David]

cloud circles

I've be doing these curious dueling posts with my sister blogger, Stace. This morning I saw that she had written a very strange personal experience. A story of asking the universe a question, and getting a reply.

Cloud Circles: Telegrams from a Conscious Cosmos

[excerpt]

Then our attention was drawn up to a scene that astonished us, despite our sensibility. There in the sky was, beyond any doubt, an intelligent manifestation of the extramundane reality we’d just been discussing. A definitive “cloud circle” stretched across the entire visible sky above us, painted in cotton ball clouds the warm hue of reflected city lights against the pitch black canvas of deep space ... Plainly depicted was an Elder of one of the Americas’ native tribes ... somehow also the embodiment of the Grandfather Sky archetype.

________________________________________________________

the shiny red balloon

The shiny red balloon, 14 months later. It lives safely in my sock drawer.

I met a woman at a Starbucks in the lobby of a tacky casino in Laughlin Nevada. We sat together and drank coffee on one of the first mornings of an eight day UFO conference. She is from Germany and her name is Natascha. We got along wonderfully and talked about the strange scene here at the conference. This happened a few mornings in a row, and soon we were sitting together during the presentations, and by the end of the conference, we were spending almost all of our time together.

Up until this conference, Natascha had almost no interest in the UFO phenomenon. How she ended up in Nevada is a curious story, she was told by an astrologer to travel from Germany all the way to Las Vegas to attend this eight day event, so she did. It proved to be the start of new chapter of her life. She realized that, somehow, this subject was important.

On the final day, after the conference had officially ended, she was planning to take a shuttle van to the Las Vegas airport for her flight home. I said I would drive her, it was no problem. We spent our final time in the casino at the same Starbucks, saying goodbye to friends we had met. It was late in the morning when morning we got in my little Subaru and started the drive North.

The highway out of Laughlin is though the desert, and it’s bleak and empty. This created a surreal mood after being cooped up in the casino for over a week. Natascha had her iPod, and she played me some music from two of her friends in Germany. It was a haunting series of tones created by a man rubbing crystal bowls and a woman singing. Less than a year later I had dinner with this same couple - but that’s another story.

We talked and tried to make sense of the of our time together at the conference. It was about an hour drive before we arrived in Las Vegas. It was actually a sad time in the car, because we had become quite close.

We were both hungry, and there was plenty of time before the flight and we were eager to find someplace to eat. We are both rather health conscious vegetarians, and the food at the casino was dreadful, and now we were heading into the outskirts of Las Vegas, and I was doubtful we would find anything that would fit our needs.

But, we passed a WHOLE FOODS grocery store, I made a U-turn and we doubled back, and within a few minutes we were pulling into the parking lot of the strip mall. I found a space for my car, and eased in. Natascha was on the passenger side, and she got out and stood up. I was on the drivers side, and I got out.

I looked across the roof of the car and saw that Natascha was standing there, with a curious expression on her face, and she was holding a shiny red balloon. I walked around to her side of the car and she seemed a little perplexed. She handed me the balloon, it was heart shaped with the words I LOVE YOU on it. I was confused, she definitely did not have the balloon in the car during the drive, so I didn't understand where it came from.

I gently set it in the car, closed the door, and we went into the grocery store together.

We never mentioned the balloon.

Our lunch together was very nice, we ate salad and fruit in the deli. She also got some food for the flight home (mostly chocolate) and I got some food for my long drive back to Idaho (mostly chocolate).

We went to the airport, and I walked her up to the security gate and we said good-bye. It was an emotional farewell and there were some tears. I walked out of the airport feeling sad and confused.

And then I spent the next 16 hours driving, with a shiny red balloon on the passenger seat, with the words I LOVE YOU staring up at me.

I got home and with in the first day or so I called her on Skype. Early in the conversation I asked: “Natascha, where did that balloon come from?”

She paused and then said, “I don’t know.”

We were both perplexed, and I pressed her on it.

She finally said, “I’m not sure, but I think it was just there when I opened the door of the car and I picked it up.”

I met Natascha over a year ago, in February of 2008. Since she has been back in Germany, we have talked almost weekly (and sometimes daily) either on the phone or thru Skype. These conversations have a way of getting very deep, in a way that seems to help me - a lot. I don’t quite know what to make of our intense relationship.

I feel like I’ve met a true soul mate.