"It's the last one," Marilyn said. I agreed. I truly believed, and still do believe, that what we encountered the night before was so far beyond our understanding that our unconscious created something to "make us feel better" rather than facing all of the options that loomed before us. Yet, this journey was not over. In fact, it had only begun.
     The next day we began the drive back to Albuquerque to fly home to the Pacific Northwest. Before we left Taos, we stopped at a snack shop to get coffee. This place had a television news program on about an oil truck that had been involved in a collision on I-25 spilling oil all over the road. The authorities were sending people through a detour route. Since we had little choice but to take that highway, we figured we would cross that bridge when we came to it, literally. Off we went toward I-25 and our eventual arrival in Albuquerque.
     When we reached the scene of the collision, a policeman told us to follow the traffic detouring around the highway. I told him that we did not know the area and were not sure of the route. He told us that we had no need to be concerned because the traffic would simply go down the detour road, make a turn and end up on the highway on the other side of the oil spill. All we needed to do was follow the moving traffic line.
     We did as he told us, following the cars down the detour on road and when we made "the turn" we were right back at the beginning of the detour on Highway I-25 at the collision site where we had started. I looked at Marilyn and said, "Let's try this, again." We did. The same thing happened. We were on I-25 at the site of the oil spill.
     "Take the detour again." I wanted to feel in control of this chaotic event. "This time, stop at the gas station on the corner and I am going to ask directions from the station attendant." Marilyn took the detour and I got out at the gas station with our map. The young man behind the counter said, "Lady, put your map away. I was born and raised here. I can tell you anything you need to know without a map."

     I asked him how to get back on I-25 from where we were due to the oil spill. He gave me simple directions telling me what signs to look for and made it sound like it would be impossible to miss the exit again. We followed his directions and, you guessed it, we ended up at our originating point once again.
     "Marilyn, we are caught in a vortex. This has happened to me before. My ex-husband and I were caught in a canyon vortex when we were hunting years ago. The road did not take us out of the canyon. I literally had to get out of the car and promise the spirit of the canyon that we would not hunt there if we could find the entrance/exit once again. It worked. The next time we took the road to leave the canyon, we did, indeed, leave," I said.
     "Well, I am &*####**%% tired of this!!! I am going to take that road right there and it WILL take us to the other side of this accident!" Marilyn exploded. And she did take that next road and it did take us to the other side of the oil spill. We were free from the vortex and on our way to Albuquerque.
     Once inside the airport, we sat reading our books waiting for our flight. We were very tired, confused and wanting so much to simply fly home. Marilyn was reading a book about Christ Consciousness. The author was explaining at that point in the book that Christ Consciousness is pink. I don't necessarily believe that premise yet it seemed to fit the idea for the author and Marilyn seemed pretty taken with the thought at the time. She even told me and others around us about it. I knew it was meaning something for her.
     The flight home was uneventful. We were very quiet. We were sleepless yet dozing, awaiting the landing that would (we thought) put us back in a land that would feel more normal. Finally, the plane landed at Seattle's SeaTac airport and we were home except for a two hour drive back to Anacortes. I had parked my Jeep Wrangler at the airport so we loaded our baggage and then loaded ourselves into the Jeep. Very quietly, we headed north on I-5 toward the San Juan Islands.

      I-5 has a left hand lane commonly called HOV lane (Highly Occupied Vehicle). Any car with two or more passengers may use this lane to travel more quickly around the typically slow traffic. If you do use this lane, you usually have a concrete wall to your left dividing the highway in its north or south direction.
     This was where we were, having been on the highway about 20 minutes, when my peripheral vision alerted me to a car crossing the other three lanes of the highway to our right and headed right into my right front fender. There was no place to go; no place to turn since I had the concrete wall to my left. I braced for the "hit" as the light grew brighter and brighter. A nanosecond before the other car would have struck our Jeep, it turned parallel to us and I looked past Marilyn (who had not taken notice of this incident yet) at the lane to our right. Traveling along side of us was a parking lot sweeper truck with its brushes raised up exactly the same as the sweeper truck that we had seen in Taos - with one exception. This truck's brushes were a bright pink!
     "Look to your right, Marilyn. The brushes are pink now," I said. As Marilyn turned her head and saw the truck's brushes, we drove past it. "Don't pass them," she said.
     "I didn't pass them, Marilyn," I explained, glancing in my rearview mirror. "They are no longer there."

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