Volume 9, Issue 3, page 5

Z,ë
By LOWANA JULAINE
Y FIRST actual experience with
psychic abilities came when I was
just past six -- that oh-so-wonderful age where fact and fancy
merge to completeness and fulfillment. The time of life that finds
everything wonderful and nothing
more exciting than the strange
and unknown.

I learned then that there is
nothing more strange or more exciting
than "true telepathy", which is the sending and receiving of "words by thought".
There are many branches of telepathic
control. These go into other categories
of what we call mental phenomena, or mental achievements.

One of my earliest recollections concerns
an event that occurred on the farm of my
grandfather, Big Thunder, on which we lived
after he and my grandmother, Nonanenatcheta,
were married, and were awarded custody of me
by the State of North Carolina. I thought Big
Thunder's farm was my own private wonderland
to explore, and exploration was one of the
things I could do best. The many acres of wooded land, dotted with swamps and ribboned with
streams, was all that a child of my inquisitive
nature could ask for.

It wasn't many days before I discovered a
small stream, known as Jump-and-run. I asked
Big Thunder all about it. He told how the water
came down from the Blue Ridge Mountains, thru
the Cape Fear River, and on into the lakes
which were filled with cypress trees and bordered with swamps.

He took me downstream to what he called the
"safe crossing ". Even there the water became
turbulent after a heavy rain in the mountains.
Where t h e water bubbled and gurgled over
stones of various sizes was where the speckled
trout hid and teased.

I would go there and listen to the water
"sing". The song was wonderful and it was
wild -- as wild as I was, and it called to me,
'way down deep inside where words couldn't
reach.

Wedging myself between the rocks, I would
let the water rush over me. Only my head was
up, and that only part of the time, because
when I put my head under, the stream sang a
different song.

Naturally, it wasn't long before I wondered
why I had to go down stream to the safe crossing before I could get over on the other side
of Jump-and-run. What was up the line? Why
wasn 't it safe? I was going to find out -- and
find out I did.

There was a small quickmire bog -- the type
so prevalent in the swamps of North Carolina.

It was not abig bog -- just my size -- and I loved
it as much as I did the rest of the forest.

When I asked Big Thunder, he explained, a n d
threatened to ''whup "me if I went there again.

But whippings -- actual or promised -- couldn't
stop me when I wanted to know something, and I
went there again and again. I would sit and
watch the bubbles swallow the sticks and stones
I threw out. Little by little, I learned that
some places swallowed slower than others. Oh,
it wasn 't a conscious discovery. It was an unconscious something to store in the back of my
mind -- a secret thing to think about at nights
when the lights were out.

Of course, it happened that I should decide
to cross the quickmire. Why should I go about
a half mile downstream when I wanted to come
back upstream on the other side? I went all
the way across -- and that became my exclusive
secret, or so I thought.

One day, Big Thunder found out what I was
doing. He was a telepath, and that was how he
kept track of me when I was out of sight. With
him it wasn't "out of sight, out of mind" ,
but "out of sight, check with mind ".

Of course my explorations took me farther
each day, until the day came that I wished I 'd
stayed home. I had crossed the bog, and the
low-bush area, and was bounding along the edge
of the pine section where trees grew close to
the river. Everything was fine, with me chasing
squirrels and dodging alligators, when all of
a sudden I was hanging by one foot -- head down
from a sapling. I was in a bear trap !
I started yelling bloody murder for Big
Thunder. "Gramps! Gramps! Gramps!"
Big Thunder was all of three miles away at
the time, yet suddenly I heard his voice saying, "Easy, Honey, easy!" So soft and soothing.

I relaxed and started looking for him, while
spinning around and around in mid-air. When I
didn 't see him, I started getting scared again.
"Easy, Honey," said the voice. "Now do as I
tell you." He reminded me of how I hung by one
foot on the bar in the back yard, telling me
to pull myself up by the belly muscles until I
could grab the rope.

After many trials I succeeded, and listened
as he said, "Now hang on, Honey. I'm at the
bog. Think to me and tell me how you got
across."
I started talking a blue streak. "Don't
talk out loud!" he snapped. "Just think."
I thought and thought, and in what seemed
no time, Big Thunder was right under me, walking the sapling by hand. Hand over hand, he
bent the tree until he could cut the rone that
imprisoned me.

Big Thunder sat down and held me while I
cried my heart out. He had to carry me downstream on one side while coaxing Dodger, his
pony, down on the other side. When we got home,
Nonanenatcheta helped Big Thunder put my hip
back in place. Then she bathed my foot and
wrapped it in flannel.

I had hoped my misfortune would keep me
from the promised whipping. But a few days
later, when it was over, Big Thunder said.
"And I '11 whup you next time, too."
"You just as well whip me now," I yelled,
" 'cause I' m going back."
Many ask me why, if Grandfather was so
good, he had to use my mind to cross the bog.
Big Thunder was not a seer. But he could look
into my mind and read my memory.