Psychic Alarm Clock

First, I should apologize for what I admit is a somewhat sensational title for this post. I do not know how the phenomenon I'm about to describe occurs, but it is among a handful of things I have experienced that defy rational explanation and about which I suspect - but am not 100% convinced there is - some sort of "paranormal" cause.

I tend to be quite skeptical when others claim to have had experiences of this nature. There are so many out there who are willing, for various reasons, to portray fiction as truth and, in some cases, to  believe their own fictions. Still, my personal experiences lead me to believe that there is much that our small, insistently rational brains do not know about the human psyche and how it interacts with what is generally considered the objective world. I suspect that all but a very small percentage of paranormal claims could, with enough details about the events that inpire them, be adequately explained in logical, commonplace terms.

Unfortunately, I have no way of proving to any skeptics like myself that I am not knowingly making up what I'm about to describe and that there is no good reason to suspect that my experience is a form of self-delusion, save for its defying rational explanation. I can only assure anyone reading this that my head is well-anchored to my shoulders and that those who know me well would say the same of me.

Enough forerunner.

I stayed up quite a bit later than my wife, last night, and wound up falling asleep on our downstairs couch. Earlier in the evening I had made sure that my cell phone alarm was set so that I could get up an hour or so before the kids and write. My cell phone was on the floor next to me when I fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up briefly on my own before my alarm rang. I would estimate that it was about 5:00 AM. My alarm was set for 5:52. I dozed back into a light, almost hypnagogic, sleep. I think my mind was somewhat active once I was back to sleep, but I cannot recall any of what I was dreaming, thinking, or otherwise experiencing - at least not until sometime later when I became aware of a pressure building inside me. I experienced this pressure as if I, or a part of me, was the trigger of a gun being slowly drawn back, the tension against the spring mechanism increasing the farther back it was pulled. Physically, the base of my spine experienced this tension more than any other part of me.* It built  until I felt as if I would somehow snap. Then, all at once, at what seemed about five to ten seconds after its onset, the pressure broke. In my mind's eye, the gun hammer sprung toward a thin metal disk about three inches wide. Then, at the very instant it made contact with the disk, my phone began to chime. It was 5:52. My body and mind somehow knew, down to a fraction of a second, when the alarm would blare.

Over the last several years, I have had this experience many times, though generally with different imagery leading up to the alarm going off each time. I do not track when or how often this occurs. My guess is that it's happened at least 30 times. I've considered logical explanations (i.e., those that do not rely on a paranormal explanation), but I feel they fall short. I may present these at some point, especially if readers show interest. In the meantime, I would love to hear from any readers who have experienced something similar to this phenomenon. I would also be interested in any rational explanations you have found.

*Interestingly, in some schools of yoga, the base of the spine is said to be the seat of kundalini, our corporeal energy, which is coiled within us.

Melmont, Washington - Visit to a Ghost Town

In the basement of the Melmont Schoolhouse

Last weekend, my daughter and I visited Melmont, Washington, an abandoned coal-mining town midway through the Carbon River's descent off Mt. Rainier. Melmont disappeared from maps in the early 1920s. During its 20 active years, it produced coal for the Northern Pacific Railway. After the railway switched from steam to electric and diesel, the town whithered and died.

To reach the Melmont townsite, Kay and I parked at a turnout close to the Fairfax bridge on SR-165. From there, we descended the embankment, using the bridge piers for support. 30 feet down we met the now-untracked Northern Pacific Railway grade and began walking.

Fairfax Bridge

The grade was muddy, and I had to carry Kay through spots where my boots sunk well above the ankles.

A few minutes in, we passed the unroofed walls of the dynamite shed, which, as the name suggests, stored explosives. Nearby, we saw what I first thought was a retaining wall for the railway grade. It was three feet high on one side and twelve on the other, thick, and made of stone. Later, I read that the wall may have been part of the tipple, a structure used for filling train cars with coal.

Here and there, we paused to pluck the bland yellow salmonberries that drooped from the vines. At least once, stinging nettles seared my offending hand.

A mile on, the townsite appeared below the grade. Now a grassy meadow, small else suggests its peopled past but the collapsed remains of an old truck.

The dynamite shed, located a safe half-mile
or so from the townsite

Kay and I poked around for a while in the meadow's knee-high grasses. I tried to piece together the former building locations from rough maps I'd found online. The air was silent. We hadn't seen anyone on the way in. Kay pointed out that there weren't even any birds. I found it hard to imagine that this quiet clearing was once a site of collective human endeavour. Hard-scrabble miners and their families lived, worked, and died here. Better parts of lives passed on this now-barren wet patch in the foothills of the Cascades. Coal mining was extremely dangerous and hardly lucrative. We can assume that many left Melmont for the worse, if they left at all.

On Christmas Eve of 1905, Melmont Mine foreman, Jack Wilson, and his daughter were asleep at home when a load of dynamite exploded beneath their floorboards. All the windows of the house blew out, but Wilson and his daughter emerged unharmed. A miner named David Steele was charged with the bombing. He was later acquitted for lack of evidence. I haven't found anything suggesting Steele's motive, though given Wilson's position as foreman, it seems likely that the conflict was work-related and his daughter (age unknown) incidental.

An old truck

Kay and I ate lunch at a campsite tucked into the trees near the townsite clearing. Three-week-old newspaper leaves were strewn among freshly cut campfire logs. Here and there, we found ancient automobile parts and anonymous hunks of metal. Kay discovered two shards of aged ceramic dishware with imprecise and probably inexpensive designs.

After lunch, we left the main townsite, went back to the railroad grade, and ascended a small path ending in a second clearing.

Only the stone foundation of Melmont School remains. We stepped inside, amid full-grown trees and bramble. I showed Kay a photo of the school as it once was. She tried to decide  which part of its footprint the students sat above. I studied the knee-high remnants of internal walls. The basement had been divided into separate rooms.

Melmont's last resident, a man named Andrew Montleon, lived in this very basement after fire ate most of the town's deserted buildings. I have not found anything suggesting why Montleon stayed in Melmont or how he supported himself once the town was gone. Did he have an income stream, or did he simply live off the land? Perhaps he was a trapper, a forager, or did something with wood. Maybe he had found some way to scavenge occasional pennies from the town remains and  dead mine.

I wondered what had compelled Montleon to stay in Melmont after everyone else had left town. Was he committed to the land (or simply stubborn) like old Harry Truman whose body now lies yards beneath the ash of Mt. St. Helens? Did he think the world beyond simply had nothing to offer and he'd rather while life away in the only place he knew? Or maybe he was paralyzed in some unseen and visceral way, depleted, unable to summon the sense of purpose to do more than resist the tides of time.

Of course, it's easy to project eccentricities on someone we know only through stories of a single action or choice. After all, Montleon may have had good reason to stay in Melmont, and, given circumstances we will probably never know, doing so may have been his only option.

Melmont School in better days
(from ghosttownsofwashington.com)

Introduction

Welcome to Shardspot!

This blog is a testing ground for nascent ideas and expressions. It's akin to a personal journal but written, I hope, with enough clarity, creativity, and sincerity to attract the occasional passerby and develop a small cadre of tolerant readers along the way.

I intend to keep Shardspot's content broad and free. Literature, photography, writing, gardening, foraging, the nature of consciousness, yoga, meditation, dreams, astronomy, philosophy, India, Indian languages, Indian cooking, ghost towns, and the history of the Pacific Northwest are a few but not all of the topics I will discuss.

I'd be delighted if what I say attracts interest, and I'd be even more delighted if ever some shard I post informs my readers' lives in a small but beneficial way. Still, I ultimately see this blog as my own lodestar, a loose assemblage of words bright enough, I hope, to guide me toward greater creativity and understanding. With luck, maybe I'll find a readership to keep me honest along the way.

Again, welcome. I hope you find something of interest in what I say.