At the Farm
1950 – 1954
In the early '50s, visiting in summers at my grandparents' farm in North Newport, Maine, from about ages seven to eleven, the woods that bordered the back field of the farm were part of my childhood.
Those summers . . . I felt quiet and alone, but boredom didn’t quite happen because there were sheds and an attic and doors to the fields. Then woods.*
In the back field, to the south of the farmhouse, I followed Grampa's line fence dividing his mown hay from the neighbor's cows, passing wild strawberries, tiny and green. It was Grammie's stern words, "Don't go into the woods," that I heard again as I drew closer. The first trees were sparse but behind them they were close together, and I knew it was where I could get lost. I'd turn around. Off in the distance, the farmhouse looked far away.
Visiting Anna
1980
Anna and I had met at a small group of writers in Western Massachusetts. As I was new to the area, I was surprised when she offered not only friendship but an invitation to her home in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Driving up the steep road, as woods appeared on the passenger side of the car, I had felt my excitement rising. Following our visit and now driving down the incline with the woods on the driver's side, spontaneously I pulled to the side of the road and parked. Getting out of the car, I crossed the road and entered the woods. I took a few steps, aware of the dim light, the quiet, and of how far away a late afternoon sky seemed when seen only between the tree tops. With a few more steps I discovered a brook and sat on the bank, with my knees drawn to the side to be as close as possible. I watched as the water covered only some of the stones, finding its way around the banks—its burbling and murmuring part of my contemplation.
Now in the last year of my seventies, knowing the insight of foreshadowing, I can write of how I was in the fourth decade of my life before I accomplished what the little stream had accomplished—finding my own path.
Visions
1990
During the fall of 1990, I began to see faint images of scenes between wakefulness and sleep. I would later call them psychic experiences, but at first they were unexplained, unusual, and unshared additions to my bedtime routine.
An inner child workshop drawing, by Prema’s inner child
In a vision that grew longer and fuller each night, I walked at the edge of a field and then into a forest, accompanied by a growing number of animals. Where I turned, a fat, dusty-golden mare stood with her head up, or sometimes grazing. . . .
In the forest, I stood with the animals in a glade bright with sun. It had a rectangle of earth for a garden, where Jesus first appeared wearing a white turtleneck jersey, planting seeds. Later, he hovered once above me, in a white robe ablaze in light.
Emerging from the forest, I rode my dusty-golden mare bareback, galloping along a country lane through an apple orchard, then up into the blue sky.*
Photo by Scott Cramer
While as a child, I had not felt safe entering the woods, I did now because I had seen Jesus in them as my friend and then as the Son of God.
My realization is, "There may be a comfortable feeling of deep connection when what has been remembered over a lifetime reemerges with new awareness."
* Prema Jasmine Camp, A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021). 32.
* Ibid. 133.