By JILLIAN KRISTINA
There are mysteries in this world that aren’t meant to be solved. After all, what is life without mystery? Without the unknown? Without questions that have no answer? The unknowable keeps our minds agile, ever-curious, ever-seeking. Just like liminal spaces, neither here nor there and yet somehow, everywhere. We can’t trust our eyes – or our minds – in these spaces. These are the murky-watery-dreamy places where anything seems possible, where down is up, and a shoe from a missing girl shows up miles from her last known location, where thousands of people go missing in ways that defy logic and reason, where the sheer labyrinths within the forested landscape create the perfect portals for discovery and disappearance.
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP, Teresa Sutherland’s 2023 feature-length debut, plumbs the depths of one of the most perplexing modern mysteries: What is happening in the national parks of North America? The range of speculation is far-reaching, including theories of UFO abductions, serial killers and even cults. One certain thing is the number of cold cases vastly overshadows the number of drownings, falls, medical emergencies, vehicle accidents or wild animal attacks. Ranger Lennon (Georgina Campbell) has an intimate experience with the phenomenon that seems to plague the parks, and it’s this obsession that leads her to pursue a career in the National Parks Service. And she’s just received a promotion to backcountry ranger in the aftermath of the disappearance of her predecessor.
“I owe this land a body.”
As Lennon embarks on this next step in her journey, she steps off the precipice of civilization and into the shoes of The Fool, the first card in the major arcana of the tarot. Although this isn’t an entirely new journey for Lennon, it’s a new direction with an old, painful purpose – to continue the search for her sister, Jenny, who disappeared from her side during a trip to this very park when they were children. Jenny, whose single sneaker was found at an unfathomable distance from where Lennon last held her hand. Jenny, whose vanishing would create a ripple effect throughout her family, leading Ranger Lennon to this exact spot in the continued unfolding of this tragic story.
“I’ve given them so many. I regret her, most.”
After all of the backcountry rangers are briefed by Ranger Zang (Wain Ching Ho), she and Ranger Jackson (Nick Blood), who has ten backcountry seasons under his belt, are transported by helicopter to their respective stations. After arriving at the ranger hut, Lennon immediately takes off on a carefully plotted three-day hike. Her search begins. or rather, resumes. She seems at home in the wilderness, surrounded by the space where she once had – and then lost – everything. It’s as if this is where she needs to be to feel close to them. To feel them. To feel. She sits, sunning herself on a stunning peak, mountain ranges rolling out and onward into the distance. She’s alone, completely alone, and yet, surrounded by so much life, so much death…She’s at the center of this undulating vortex of the physical and non-physical. Here and not. Seen and unseen. In this way, Lennon begins to move through the major arcana, still as The Fool, but en route to someone who has been waiting for her for a very, very long time –The Hermit. But this ninth card of the major arcana isn’t a person, per se, but the forest itself. The woods have much to tell Lennon, to show her…
“They usually give us a chance to explain, I think because we protect their space.”
Still, Lennon won’t go quietly into this looming night, so its mysteries will not be revealed easily. Asleep in her hut, she’s awakened by a frantic, frenzied man knocking on the door, begging for help. His friend, Sara, has disappeared.
“She was right there. Then she wasn’t.”
The rangers are assembled and each is given territory to cover, except for Lennon, who is sternly instructed by Jackson to stay behind. Again, fueled by an electric, gnawing impulse to find the missing woman – the missing girl – Lennon gears up and takes off on her own rescue mission. She becomes the Knight of Swords reversed, racing full speed ahead, calling the woman’s name, and then her sister’s name, nearly collapsing in a frenzy as the past and present collide, a tear in the fabric of memory and reality – a liminal space. Lennon herself has become a liminal person, trapped in the terrain of her trauma, the terrain that holds us within the self-constructed prisons of our minds, doubling back to those places we’ve been stuck – the places we return to, over and over again, looking for something we’ve lost. Someone we’ve lost. Looking for ourselves. For the pieces washed away in the turbulent waters of time. For the fractures and splinters that stab our most tender wounds, scarring our hearts and minds. We revisit these again and again, not realizing there’s nothing there to retrieve. Nothing left to find. Because the past is gone, and if we’re not careful, if we spend too much time there, we’ll lose more than just time…
“Are you real?”
What’s real? What’s an illusion? Navigating the dreamy, shape-shifting waters of Pisces, where the New Moon on March 10 is taking place, is not unlike the disorientation experienced when lost in the woods. Lost in the forest of the psyche, trying to bushwack a way out through the encroaching specters of the past and all of the repercussions that echo through the present. Like the wind blowing through branches, shaking the last decrepit leaves to the hungry ground. Like our minds, enmeshed in the suffocating cobwebs of memory while trying our damndest to exist in the present.
“Where’s your sister?”
As she regains composure, Lennon captures a glimpse of her… of the missing woman. Of Sara, dazed, hands and legs covered in blood. Sara seems to look right through Lennon, shell-shocked, half-dressed and half-crazed as if she’d been delivered from somewhere else, somewhere not at all kind. Lennon quickly gets her back to base camp where her friends are waiting and where Zang and Jackson are waiting. Furious she’d disobeyed orders, Zang relieves her of her new position, giving her five days to pack up and most importantly, to stay put and wait for Zang. They had much to discuss. As Lennon tries apologizing to Jackson for disobeying a direct order, she’s astounded by his anger, by his almost frightened rage.
“But we found her!”
“No, you found her.”
And thus begins Lennon’s descent. Thus begins Lennon’s lessons with The Hanged Man, or as some like to call the twelfth card in the major arcana, The Tethered One. This is a card of initiation, of seeing things from a different perspective. Of hanging in stasis until understanding and clarity can be met with an open mind and an even more open heart. So, down the initiatory rabbit hole she must go, to melt her mind and save her soul.
“Replace what you took or they’ll keep you.”
Here, she greets the mouth of madness head-on. Here, she makes critical choices and life-altering decisions. Here, she is transported straight into the horrific halls of her past – remembering, confronting, releasing. Here, she professes. She unloads. She unburdens herself in the face of innocence lost, washed in the waters of life and death and rebirth.
It is here where she meets Zang and is told the horrible, horrific, gut-wrenching truth.
“They take. And we let them.”
“Who?”
“Who knows? Whatever they are, they live here, where it still gets dark. Where you can still see the stars.”
The two women stand, hands joined, wading in the liminal waters. Piscean waters. Two fishes connected at the mouth, swimming in a circle. Except this time, the circle is broken. A sacrifice is made, making space for an epiphany – an understanding. The grimmest of knowings are found only in the deepest, darkest of depths. That’s where freedom lies. That’s where liberation resides. From the bottom, up.
This New Moon and the coming weeks have much to teach us about navigating seemingly impossible and impassable terrain. The ground will feel like clouds beneath our feet. We’ll be asked to remain in stasis while life careens in ways we’ve never experienced or imagined. The upcoming eclipses are only adding to the intensity (more on that later), which means we need to lean into ourselves in a more intimate, more ethereal way than ever before so that we can know ourselves in a more intimate, more vulnerable way than we ever have before. The only way out is through, and as Lennon shows us, there is life on the other side. There is truth. And there is perseverance in the lessons learned while traversing the liminal quicksand that works its hardest to swallow us whole. Because Lennon emerges as the The World card, the twenty-first and final card of the major arcana. She finally listened to The Hermit, or rather, she’s learned to abide by the laws of nature, no matter how far these tenets have stretched and tested her heart. It’s our hearts that are being tested over the coming weeks, but what we’ll learn is to stand on our own two feet on whatever shape the ground takes. We’ll learn to see through the fog. We’ll learn that we’re more capable and able than we ever imagined. And we’ll learn exactly who and what can walk (or swim) with us through this impending threshold – and who and what absolutely cannot.
“This is just a nightmare, sweetheart. Go back to bed.”
