never come back.Once a white owl would made a wild dash past me like a lost bolt of lightning. And I knew the white owl was going to show me the way home. White owls aren't supposed to exist out there, you see. The Indian children write about them, but only as a myth. When I left for college, this one bird was implanted in my mind, making me late for class, making me remember time.I came home, more for myself than for the mountains. I came home to learn the names of things, to remember places I had forgot, to look for the clouds, to wait for the rain. I knew that if I waited, it would come, trickling over my head at night, dripping from my brow, and begging me to follow. The fingers of time and owls of night would wrap themselves around me. Time is the religion of the mountains. It insinuates itself into the cracks of consciousness and allows the mind to move. I wanted to search for the water again. My dad and I returned to the stream, and walked along its banks to the place I remember most, to the rock I caught my first fish, to a place without time. To us it was an alter of timelessness. I took my father's hand, and led him in. The water was cool as ice in the night and the shock of life was waiting for us there. Watching the clouds over the horizon, we knew the rain was coming. I led him down to the source, like his first baptism. He smiled, white as an owl, and drank....
