While holding the rifle, I had a strange sensation move through me, or rather take hold of me; a powerful one. In my hands, I held a powerful tool that could end a human life in an instant, regardless of the reason to do such a thing. It felt as though whatever darkness that existed in my soul was calling to me in that moment, growing out and moving through me like the roots of a tree, embedding into my nervous system to manipulate my movements while whispering in my ear of malicious things. Not wanting to be pulled in that direction, I did my best to shrug it off and continue to listen to my uncle’s instructions, though I felt heavily distracted by an invisible internal conflict.

After finishing our shooting lesson, I thanked my uncle for the experience of shooting a rifle, but then I immediately told myself that I never wanted to shoot a gun again. That feeling, whatever it was, was too overwhelming for me to handle properly, and I quickly understood what happens to some people who go all the way with that line of thinking. I decided that I didn’t even want to risk becoming one of them. I didn’t yet have the emotional maturity or the discipline to handle such a tool.

Nothing much else happened during my brief stay with my relatives, and after an even briefer stay at a hotel in Billings, I finally finished the journey I had begun seven months earlier, though at no time until the end was it a certainty that I would ever be returning home.

I find it impossible to live in a place far from home even for a period of a few months without being totally transformed. I had come back a much stronger version of myself, having significantly upgraded my workout regimen due to The Wolf’s influence, while surviving the elements in Albuquerque, both work-related and the ones that Mother Nature slapped me with. Having lived in more or less isolation for so long also caused me to sink deeper into myself, and I was already too deep for some. Being surrounded by harsh circumstances probably added to my character and personality in ways that were not so obvious to me as well.

I came back to Madison because I had plans to join a volunteer group that was going to Africa to do voluntary work on infrastructure, as I previously mentioned. Not long after returning home, some associates of mine who were concerned about what I might be getting into did some research on the group and determined that it looked like a scam. I decided to listen to their judgment about the group without looking into it myself because I trusted them, but it’s possible that I would have come to a different conclusion than they did if I had done the research myself, though at the time, I didn’t give that much consideration about the possibility. I was more concerned about what I was going to do instead of traveling to Africa. It seemed as though I had come back for nothing, and I would’ve been better off staying in Albuquerque if I wanted to experience change rather than life in the city I had grown up in.

While regrouping my strategy, I decided to do some part time work at my old restaurant, Pasqual’s, and I also got hired as a cook at New Orleans Take-Out, which was a short story of its own. There was no doubt in my mind that whatever my next move was would require money, so I wasted no time in getting more of it.

My chance to go abroad and experience life much different than I had ever known appeared to be slipping away from me, until one day, my father had another suggestion. He had just interviewed a woman named Yan Lee who was recruiting native English speakers to travel to China for a couple of months and teach English at summer camps there. China wasn’t my first option, but it seemed to be what my situation defaulted to.

After expressing interest to my father about teaching in China, my father arranged a meeting between Yan Li and I at the office at The Madison Times Newspaper so she could confirm that I was interested in volunteering and give me a brief outline of what would happen during my stay. When I arrived, my father was speaking to Yan Li and I slipped in almost unnoticed. I sat down on a chair with a table in front of me where Yan Li had appeared to have laid down a packet of information that was likely something she wanted to share with me. When I looked at the cover page, off to the side of the title, I saw the words “Chance of a Lifetime!” I had heard that expression so many times by now it had become cliche, but this time, the words hit differently.

There was a feeling inside of me that told me that this truly was a chance of a lifetime, and a feeling of anticipation grew inside of me about what a stay in China would actually be like. I hadn’t seen or heard too much about the country in the past. All I knew about was from what I saw in old Hong Kong-made kung fu movies made in the 70’s and 80’s that I used to watch at my grandmother’s house in Jackson when we visited each summer, and a few significant news stories that made their way over to the U.S., like the Tienanmen Square massacre. There was nothing specific in memory that caused this, but I imagined a lot of people riding bicycles on dirt roads over in China, and I pictured the architecture still being very much traditional in style. All of the wonder I had began to generate a feeling of excitement inside of me that only continued to grow.

Yan Li concluded her talk with my father and then shifted her attention toward me. She began to fill me in on the details: the length of the trip, what exactly I would be doing, and what I needed to do to prepare for the trip, such as getting a passport issued to me and traveling to the Chinese embassy in Chicago to obtain a visa. I was already sold on the idea, so Yan Li didn’t have to say anything to convince me about it. I was naturally a traveler and adventurer, so this was going to fit my agenda. The fact that China were seeking outside assistance also told me that it was a country that was in need of service, which was one of my deepest desires in finding a place to travel to.

Over the next several weeks, Yan Li helped me prepare for the trip by staying in contact, informing me about group meetings, and even traveling to Chicago with me to obtain my visa.

At the last meeting, which took place at a cafeteria inside of the Memorial Union just a week before we would all head out, Yan Li informed us all exactly where we would all be going and who we would be traveling with. I was supposed to join up at the O’Hare International Airport with an unnamed person from Minnesota. He and I would work at two summer camps together, one in a city named Anqing, and another in a city not far away from the first called Xuan Cheng.

Our contact was a Chinese woman named Sally who lived in another city called Hefei within the same province as the other two cities, and was actually the capital of the province of Anhui. The final meeting solidified everyone’s commitment. There was no turning back at this point. Once again I was going to jump into the unknown, but this time, the stakes would be much higher. My destination was on the opposite side of the world when I had never been anywhere near that far away from home and with no lifeline, and my knowledge of what was waiting for me on the other side was very limited, as I stated earlier.

This would be the biggest trip of my life so far, and it made my trip around the U.S. the previous year that lasted roughly a month seem like nothing but a warm up, even though it was a major experience to me at the time. It was almost as if I had to do one last round around the states before my life was permanently altered in unimaginable ways. There is no way to unlearn what is known, and what was unknown would soon become known to me.

From the Dane County Airport, my plane departed, and in less than an hour, landed at O’Hare International Airport. There I met my traveling partner from Minnesota, a 19 year-old young man named Nathan, who seemed introverted and wasn’t very conversational with me, but who told me he had studied Mandarin for a year, and that would help give us an advantage since that would always give us an ear into what was happening around us.

After an hour layover and not much conversation between Nathan and I, our plane that was destined for Shanghai, the largest city in China with a population of over 17 million at the time, prepared for boarding. From Shanghai, we would be transported to our first true destination, Hefei, to meet our contact and begin our service as volunteers of English language training.

As the plane’s wheels left the runway, I realized the next time I set foot on the earth would be on Chinese soil. My mind was flooded with Chinese imagery as both Nathan and I headed blindly into the unknown, completely unaware of exactly who and what was waiting for us on the other side.

 

Three Weeks Later, at Tian Mountain

With the conclusion of our first summer camp, Mr. Daler, the one who Sally from Hefei introduced Nathan and I to, and principal of the summer camps, promised us a trip to a nearby mountain called Tian Mountain, or Tian Zhu Shan. We were not only accompanied by Mr. Daler, but also his girlfriend Betty, his close friend Willimas, both of whom helped out at the first summer camp, a Chinese classroom teacher named Jane, another Chinese teacher named Summer, Nathan, and myself. We all got to know each other fairly well at the summer camp and decided to all travel together. We had more associates from the first summer camp that we worked with, but there was a reason why our group was the size that it was.

During our 12-day training at the first summer camp, I realized there was something significant about Summer, and actually, I realized it right at the first moment I met her. She had a unique presence, one that I could not deny, yet one that I sensed that I could not depend on. I started developing feelings for her in a short time, more rapidly than I ever had in the past, but that feeling of unreliability caused me to keep my feelings guarded and buried to the point where she had no idea I had any.

On the last day of the summer camp, I thought I would never see her again when Mr. Daler, Betty, Williams, Nathan, and I waved goodbye to her from the inside of Mr. Daler’s van just before we were about to leave. After she walked away, all of the emotions I had hidden from her gushed forth like a volcano. I couldn’t understand it, because I had never developed such a strong attachment to someone in such a short time before, and I never had such a strong response to believing I would never see a person again.

Later that evening I found out that it wouldn’t be our last meeting, and used that opportunity to give her a present to express my feelings for her. I was smart to keep my feelings buried at first, because that instability I had sensed in her personality played itself out just as I had foreseen. Being someone myself who has been described as very stable and constant, it became clear that we were a match of complete opposites, and that was both the challenge and the lesson between us.

Jane expressed to me an interest in Nathan, though I did not recall seeing her openly express any interest in Nathan, and I believe she joined us as an attempt to court Nathan, while Nathan himself didn’t seem to show any romantic interest in Jane.

The seven of us hiked up Tian Mountain after buying water, ponchos, and other supplies at a shop located near the base of the mountain. As we climbed higher, I noticed a number of other small shops along the way. Like taxes, the higher you climbed, the more you had to pay. About halfway up, Mr. Daler started coughing uncontrollably as his eyes became bloodshot, and it appeared he was not fit enough for this journey, so he, Betty, and Willimas turned back and headed back down to the van, leaving Summer, Jane, Nathan, and I to hike the rest of the way up. About three-fourths of the way up, we found a ski lift heading up that took us nearly to the summit, which saved us time and energy. At the top of the mountain, there were many bonsai trees and rock formations, much of which was not visible because of some cloud cover that previously unloaded buckets of rain on us, which also gave the mountain somewhat of a mysterious and dreamy quality to it.

As we continued on the trail, something suddenly occurred to me, like a lightning bolt entering the top of my head and traveling all the way down to my feet. This mountain bore a striking similarity to the mountain I saw in my dream of a faraway place that I was almost certain was real back when I was still living in Albuquerque: the buildings on top of the mountain, the rock formations, and the fact that it was on the other side of the earth, like I had sensed from the dream. There was one last detail I needed in order to further increase my feeling of certainty.

Jane was walking beside me as I had this intense realization. Since she was a local, her hometown of Anqing being less than an hour away, I thought I would ask her for the confirmation I sought.

“Jane, does this mountain have a cave?” I asked, remembering the cave from my dream being located within the mountain and harboring a mysterious glowing orb that also seemed to be dangerous by our desire to avoid it at all costs.

“Yes!” she said. “It is said to be very mysterious,” she continued.

Satisfied with what Jane told me, I didn’t ask any further questions. I also remembered there was a young woman in the dream who was familiar to me yet I couldn’t see her face clearly. I started to wonder if that young woman was somehow Summer, but there was no way for me to verify that detail. It was something I could only continue to wonder about, and I would probably need a hypnotherapist if I was ever going to retrieve that memory. That dream was what inspired me to seek out experiences abroad in the first place, and it seemed as though there was once again a greater purpose in me coming to China.

One and a Half Years Later

After deciding to stay in China for a full year, I hit a legal wall and was forced to return to the United States. I was forced to regroup and see if I could find a way back to China, because in my mind, I wasn’t finished with that place yet. Too much was set in motion for me to walk away from.

While I studied to get my teaching certificate to be able to return, sometimes I accompanied my father to his girlfriend’s condominium in Whispering Pines, Fitchburg because she had a son nearly my age who I enjoyed hanging out with. On one visit, the two of us were watching T.V. The channel switched to an episode of “Cops,” and I was completely blown away by what I saw. When I worked at Sara Lee in Albuquerque, I had a coworker named Mark who shot someone in the back when they invaded his home one night, as I described previously. At this moment, I was watching an episode of Cops where there was a police officer questioning a suspect in the back of a police car who was none other than…Mark! His face hadn’t been blotted out, so I could see him clearly. He told a story to the police officer, who responded to him that he believed he was lying, and told the officer who was driving the car to take him down to the station.

I almost had a sense of disbelief about what I had just seen. It’s not every day you see someone on Cops you know getting arrested in a state you lived in for only five months which was far away from home. I wasn’t sure what the final result was in his case, or even what his case was about, but it didn’t look like he was going home anytime soon. This situation served as another reminder that anything in this world can happen, and that the story of life is even more interwoven and complex than I will ever know.

That is the end of Tales Across Time. Thank you for reading. If you are interested in learning more about life in China, my first published book about China is due in 2026. More details will follow.