Making Love with the Wild

In the Fall of 2009, I participated in a Council and Mirroring Training through Animas Valley Institute on the other-worldly Antelope Island in the middle of Utah's Great Salt Lake. We were camping on the west side of the island, where the original American blood-line of buffalo and antelope play, cavorting and snorting all around us, sometimes within yards of us. As I typically do, I chose a tent site that was as far away from the rest of the group as I could get. One pre-dawn morning, as the sun was just beginning to send its light over the Wasatch Range, I awoke to the familiar deep belly gripping of the first moments of my monthly blood. As a young women, I suffered pretty fiercely with cramps. It has been within the last decade or so, that I discovered if I brought myself to orgasm at the very first pangs of each cycle, inviting my muscles to engage in a different, pleasurable, sort of contraction, accompanied by the wild altered-consciousness elixir of hormones released during orgasm, I could forgo all pain for the duration of my cycle. Better than motrin and far better than debilitating pain.

I rolled over on my belly and began to do what I've been doing since I was eight or so, that has only become more sophisticated and reverent as I've gotten older and wiser; as I've left the shame associated with this most primary and healthy activity far behind me. I was swirling in my own familiar pleasure, feeling the pain eagerly surrendering to easy ecstasy, when I became aware of a sound close behind me; a deep, rhythmic, grunting sound. Immediately a primal fear ripped through me. What if, in this early morning hour, a male hiker had stumbled across my tent and was making himself at home or worse yet.....?! What if......I couldn't come up with another possible explanation for what I was hearing and the possibilities of a hiker being behind my tent were next to none so I pulled myself together and slowly peered over my left shoulder, barely shifting my position.

Directly behind me, less than ten feet from my tent, stood a magnificent mature pronghorn antelope buck. Boxy and powerful, his wide barbed horns curling gracefully up to the sky. He had lowered his head so that we were nearly eye level with each other and he was slowly grunting, his breath matching my breath. He did not move, other than the in-and-out of his ribcage as he filled and emptied his lungs. Nostrils flared. Eyes staring intently at me.

I have had so many wonderfully wild encounters over the years that I have wondered whether I am more suitably mated to a four-legged creature of the forest than a two-legged from the human race. But this was the first time I had been discovered in the midst of my own sexual pleasure. Yet I felt no threat from this curious beauty. Quite to the contrary, I found myself feeling more safe, as if I had been offered a guardian, a sentinel, a partner. I smiled at my bodyguard and continued on my mission of weaving pain into pleasure. As I moved myself through the familiar ocean waves of orgasm I was aware that this four-legged masculine presence behind me, rhythmically grunting, eyes still locked onto me yet not moving an inch closer, was becoming an integral part of my own story, mixing with the sensuousness of the dawn's warm wash of color, the waking birds' declaratory morning song, the smell of the brine-filled lake just beyond the salt encrusted playa. It was clear we were in this together, whatever 'this' was. And I was aware of him, so close to me, listening to him breathe and grunt, as my own breath got faster and harder. I matched my sounds with his; his low and gruff, mine higher and lilting. Soon we were creating some sort of primal staccato opera there in the tall grass on the far side of the island. We continued for about thirty more minutes, getting deeper and deeper into our story and song until, sad as I was to end, I couldn't possibly find one more orgasm. Not to mention the fact that I was due at breakfast minutes before. I rolled over onto my back laughing, letting the waves continue to wash over and through me, feeling such gratitude for this masculine offering in the form of one perfect pronghorn buck. I was aware of my desire to be fully seen by him. Sweaty and naked I sat up and looked into his eyes. He raised his head, still looking directly at me, flared his nostrils, shook his head, heavy with horns and walked slowly off to the foot of the hills where, in the distance, I could see his herd grazing peacefully.

It is rare, but it happens, that the wild world notices us with such insistence that we forget the story of our separateness. In these moments, even without orgasm, it is ecstasy. And while, had I been given the chance, I would never have said 'no' to the moment, the longing I now feel to connect at this level once again, again and again, has produced a deep grief within me and an incessant voice that says, "maybe today, on this trail...just ahead, around that bend...Don't go home yet....Don't go home...."