the presence

The driver and his Ghia had cruised through the hills at the eastern edge of the central Coast Range several times a week for the past seven years. Rolling and smooth under a carpet of grass, the hills wore a seasonal coat that changed twice each year. In Summer, they were a soft dusty camel brown, shimmering with heat and haze. In Winter the haze gave way to cool mist and torrential sobbing rain and a fresh green coat pushed up to soften and smooth the velvet of the hills. Scrub oaks and manzanitas and California buckeyes danced a slow dance in delicate lacy clusters and cliques over the sensuous curves of the hills. Boulders and outcroppings of rock erupted in perfect stillness. Their placement was remarkable for its balance, their poise unwavering. Cattle were there — never concerned, never confused, never flustered, never lost in thought; just cattle.

It was the cattle that first caught his attention. He had seen them a thousand times before; just cattle. There were several of them lying down on a green hillside close by the road. They were facing the Ghia as it passed. In an instant, as the little car brumbled by, he saw them and knew there was something different. Something unspeakable. Something imperceptible, and yet pervasive. It was not the vacant cows. But the cows were essential somehow. They were stately and solemn. They were in the Presence. Whether they knew they were in the Presence, he could not tell. It didn’t matter. It was the Presence itself that mattered. It seemed fitting for cattle to be there, but why, he did not know.

Again, as he drove the hills a few days later, the Presence was upon the hills, this time enormous. Pervasive. A massive thing that magnified the hills; that blessed and nurtured them; that bathed them with the intensity of its being. Yet it was not a thing at all. It was not the hills. It was not the cattle. It was not the early summer haze that immersed the hills. It was not ancient, but time was its child. It was not large or small, although it was all-present throughout the hills as far as he could see.

He knew that the Presence had always been upon the hills. He knew that the change had come in his seeing. And now the hills were profoundly disturbing to him. Disturbing and at once comforting. He had an uncanny sense that his awareness of the Presence marked a change of great significance; that somehow there was a reason that he was aware of it now. And now he saw it whenever he looked out across the hills. Awe and foreboding and comfort and turmoil and peace all tumbled and flurried up together and whispered and swirled around the corners and crannies of his heart and his thoughts whenever he caught an unguarded glimpse of the hills with their petticoats of oak. The cattle were there; just cattle. And the Unspeakable Presence was there; waiting.