A Brush With Disaster

In my cupboard upstairs sits a poster tube with a rolled-up print of Death on the Ridge Road by the famous American painter Grant Wood (You may be more familiar with his iconic work American Gothic), which I picked up at the Williams College Museum of Art in eastern Massachusetts on a visit with family back in 2009.  In the painting, a red truck hurtles over a hump in a windy two lane country road, on collision course with a black limousine that has chosen to pass a slower car at what is obviously a blind curve.  We are left to guess what happens next.

Rewind a few years further back to about 2002. We then lived in Sahalee, a suburb located on an elevated plateau near Redmond, Washington.  I had finished an early morning meditation session and was driving down Sahalee Way about 300 feet from the traffic signal where I would turn left on to Redmond-Fall City Way, when the thought flashed clearly and insistently in my head "Watch out, someone is going to jump the red light at the intersection!"

Now, the left turn light had turned green when I was still a fair distance from it, there was no one in front of me, and I would have usually taken the turn at about 20-25 mph, but something made me pay attention to the warning, and I slowed to a near standstill as the nose of my car entered the intersection and looked to the right.  As I watched, a large 18 wheeler truck bore down on the intersection and barreled right through the red light, narrowly missing me.  The truck driver had obviously realized his mistake and had hit the brakes, but was able to bring his vehicle to a stop only after crossing the intersection.  Had I ignored the voice in my head, the truck would have ploughed into the side of my car, albeit at a slow speed. 

He looked down sheepishly and apologetically at me as I drove past him, shaking my head.  Of course, he had no idea why I had abruptly slowed down, and was probably thanking his stars, as I was mine.  There was something surreal about it all - it felt as if the whole situation was somehow orchestrated, with the situation never seeming dangerous or out of control.

While we will never know how events unfolded on Ridge Road in Grant Wood's masterpiece, an unknown artist seems to have applied a few whimsical strokes of the brush that morning on the canvas of an otherwise ordinary morning commute.  The purpose of art, after all, is to shake us out of the mundane and to evoke the mysterious or transcendent.  

When Doves Cry

I remember the day well: August 13, 2012.  It had not been a great year for me.  I'd been dealing with a mysterious aggravation of my acid reflux symptoms since March of that year.  It wouldn't respond to medication.  I'd had trouble swallowing food, had lost 20 lbs in weight, and was going through a battery of tests.  At work, and my new manager had replaced most of our team with his henchmen, and I was in the unexpected situation of looking for a new job. I was in a pretty despondent mood that afternoon as I cycled along the Sammamish River Trail towards Marymoor Park, just a half mile from our home in Redmond.

As I neared the turn off to the park, I noticed a white dove sitting on the fence beside the trail.  Now, pigeons and doves are unusual along this trail - I've never seen one on this trail on any other occasion despite having lived here for over 10 years now.  Something struck me about this bird other than its striking appearance, and I hopped off my bike to observe it more closely.  I expected it to fly away at my approach, but interestingly, it just sat there, allowing me to get within a couple of feet of it.  (I didn't attempt to venture any closer.)

As it turned out, I spent a whole 20 minutes admiring it from up close, pausing to take a number of pics and video clips with my phone.  For much of this time, aside from a brief period where it briefly hopped off the fence and walked around near my feet, the dove just sat on the fence, completely unperturbed by my attentions. During this time, a number of people walked past us on the trail, oblivious to our communion. Finally, reluctantly, I bid farewell to my feathered friend and departed on my bike.

On that very downcast day, the silent presence of this gentle creature uplifted me in a way that words and men of wisdom just could not.  The clouds parted, and I felt my optimism return, though exactly why I could not say.

A search on Bing yields this nice tidbit from a site called BeliefNet "In a situation that is frustrating or upsetting to you, a dove may be encouraging you to wipe the slate clean and start again.... Let your sighting of a dove remind you to reconnect with the spiritual aspect of your life; accept it as a blessing.".  

And from this other site:  "The Dove represents peace of the deepest kind. It soothes and quiets our worried and troubled thoughts, and enables us to find renewal in the silence of mind. In these moments of stillness we are able to appreciate the simple things in life."

Believe what you will, and this where it would end but for an interesting postscript.

Fast-forward about a year.  My friend Srivats and I were sitting on my deck at home on a summer afternoon, enjoying a beer.  I was relating to him my encounter with the white dove, and Srivats was understandably reluctant to attribute any meaning to it - after all, if you rule out mere chance as an explanation, you are deep in Carlos Castaneda territory, almost.  There we were, the impassioned pleader on one side, and the disbelieving skeptic on the other, when a pale coral pink dove of a shade I've never seen before alighted on the rain gutter right above our heads.  There it sat for a full minute or so while Srivats and I both stared at it, before flying away.

I've never seen a dove, white, pale pink or otherwise, around my house other than on that summer afternoon.