This Wild Heaven By Laura J. Oliver

Laura Oliver will be reading her work at the Stoltz Listening Room at the Avalon Foundation in Easton on April 24th at 6 pm as part of our Spy Nights series. Tickets can be purchased here.

Last night, I was walking my dog Leah when I ran into my neighbor Tom also on dog duty. He’s the exemplary owner of a sweet golden retriever. He carries healthy dog treats and two bags. I own an untrained maniac who wants to dismantle squirrels and is willing to dislocate my shoulder to do so. And I’m a one-bag risktaker. We merged duties, walking into a burgeoning spring together. White dogwood laced our route, pink tulips, and Spanish bluebells graced neighbors’ yards as we passed.

Tom is my hero, although he doesn’t know it. He’s a pediatric surgeon—he heals the most vulnerable among us—and because I’ve been there with a hospitalized 4-year-old, I mean his patients’ parents. But we also have the same questions about life, and I’ve found the greatest connectors of souls are laughter and curiosity. And, okay, dogs.

I’d just given a talk at Washington College on some things I’ve learned over the years about the acquisition of happiness (which can pretty much be summed up as your brain is driving that bus), but which Tom points out is included in the Declaration of Independence. We have the right to pursue happiness anyway. We were not promised the right to possess it because no one can guarantee joy. Or can they? I want to tell Tom that Martha Washington said, “I’ve learned I am as happy as I decide to be.”

But I forget to tell him that because down at Old Woman Cove, my unruly terrier has spotted a squirrel she can’t live without. 

A man in worn blue jeans and a gray hoodie passing by offers helpfully, “My dog caught one, you know.” 

I look at him in horror. “I thought that couldn’t happen.” 

“Caught him by the tail,” he says, “and did this.” He mimics shaking his head back and forth vigorously. 

Geez, I think. A squirrel can leap 20 feet and run 20 mph. They’re so smart they fake-hide nuts to fool other animals who would steal them. (My pup is aquiver now zeroed in on a fluffy gray tail.) 

“So,” Tom asks as we walk on, “where do we find happiness?” 

At the moment, I don’t know. I’m struggling with the question myself–rarely fully present, on a perpetual quest to understand what lies behind the illusion of loss, the stage we call life on which we act in relationship. But I do know happiness comes from a life of meaning, a life with purpose. “You have that,” I tell Tom. “You save children.” 

“A lot of professions have mandatory retirement dates,” he presses. “Where is happiness going to come from then?”

From family? We both bemoan not having enough time with our grown kids. 

Learning makes me happy. I study quantum physics, neuroscience, and paleontology. I go on archeological digs. I took a class in Near Death Experiences and the Nature of Consciousness– another way in which I pursue happiness—looking for evidence of life after life. 

I take an ongoing special interest class in astronomy as well—and it occurs to me that maybe I’m searching the heavens for heaven.

Case in point, we stop in front of my house because I’m about to attend a lecture on zoom. In March of 1980, college senior Peter Panagore went ice climbing on the world-famous Lower Weeping Wall in Alberta, Canada. A 1000-foot rockface that weeps waterfalls in the summer but becomes frozen rivers of tears at 50 degrees below zero. The appeal of ice climbing is that it requires you to be totally present, but without the right equipment, Peter and his climbing partner became trapped on the wall overnight. Overcome by exhaustion and hypothermia, Peter died on the side of that mountain.  

Those long minutes on the other side of existence as we know it, before Peter was resuscitated, changed the trajectory of his life and his ability to feel joy. He went on to Yale Divinity School. He’s written a book; there’s a movie coming out. 

I’m intrigued, I tell Tom, by the commonalities revealed in the research on near-death experiences—commonalities which include encountering an unconditional love of inexpressible depth and being enfolded in an intimate knowledge of everything we have ever done devoid of judgment.  

We aren’t so much forgiven as understood. 

I realize as I speak that I’m looking for that here. Unconditional love, intimate knowledge without judgment. I get glimpses for which I’m profoundly grateful. 

You know who you are.

I’m watching a squirrel digging up one of the 10,000 nuts she buried this fall. Her memory is astonishing. She’ll find 90 percent of those not stolen. Pursuit of her right now would make my dog very happy. 

We part, and I go inside to log onto my class. Peter recounts the story of dying on the side of a glacier years ago. He describes the love that enfolded him, the difficult choice he made to come back to this life.

I wouldn’t want to leave if I could find that kind of love here. It would make dying so much harder. 

But Peter found it there, which has made living so much harder. After all, nine out of 10 people who have been clinically dead utter the exact same six words upon regaining consciousness. The exact same six words.

“Why did you bring me back?” 

I listen as he shares his experience of the love that awaits and the search for happiness in the here and now. He meditates to stay present, has a yoga practice. I mull that over—the mandate to remain present when the future is such a beguiling mystery. Yours, mine. Ours.

More than once, both in high school and college, I was told by boys I was dating that I think too much. Which I interpreted as, “Shut up and kiss me.” 

But maybe it just meant, “Come back from wherever it is that you go. Be here now.”

Be there, then. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.