Black Cat Padding Through the Grass

The link between Jungian archetypes and outdoors recreation

I returned from a barefoot hike in Harriman State Park with the distinct impression that a black leopard was following me.

I shared this thought with Arif and Sabeen at a recent birthday party. Swirling the ice cubes in her limeade drink, Sabeen reminded me that her spirit animal is the chipmunk, while Arif’s is the sea otter, although she added he is very partial to their house cat.

So I shared a little more – about the time I’d seen a dragon in Grapevine Texas, peering down at me from a parallel universe beyond the sky. What caught my attention, I explained, were the flecks of color in the iris of its eye – or maybe these were merely the autumnal tints of cedar, post oak, and mesquite whipping by as I barreled down the highway in a black rental Dodge charger whose exhaust was loud and guttural even if the car wasn’t particularly fast.

Maybe we should call the dragon a Jungian archetype – an image that bubbled up into my thoughts from our collective ancestral unconscious. Maybe the dragon signaled a defensive reaction to my wife’s announcement that she was seeking a divorce. After all, what dragons are known for is fighting to protect their treasure. If so, the reaction was appropriate, as later I would learn she’d been working with attorneys to plan this move for longer than she’d disclosed.

It might have been a few years earlier when I first saw the dragon. My flight from New York to Dallas had lifted off and was banking low across New Jersey, when the dreary depressing cloudbanks separated for a moment, let in a band of light, and suddenly a fan of crepuscular rays was shooting across the sky, as if a cosmic eyeball were batting its lashes. Was this the same dragon trying to warn me — or a different one — or was it merely curious?

Life goes on. With some trepidation in my heart, I decided recently to start dating again. It was now two years since the shock – and more than thirty years since I’d last approached a stranger for a date. Times have changed, Arif reminded me at the party, pointing out that today 85% of new relationships start with online dating, and I confided that I’d just signed up. The surprise for me was the personality test the website administered, in order for its algorithm to better match me to people I would like. According to the results, I’m balanced between introversion and extroversion and similar to others in terms of empathy. However, in certain areas, I am wildly different – I score through the roof in terms of thinking critically and pragmatically, and evidently I am all action, with no interest in relaxation.

What a shock to look in the mirror, so to speak, and find I am still the person I thought I was! It felt like a bolt of lightning had flashed in my mind and drenched my thoughts with light.

And so it was with positive feelings and full of energy that I’d headed out on that barefoot hike in Harriman and seen the cat. Or thought I did. In any case I returned with an image in my mind of black shadow and yellow eyes. Although I wasn’t sure where it had picked up my tracks. Was it the grassy summit of Black Mountain, where I perched upon a block of gneiss and surveyed the sunlit tawny mountains rolling to the south? Or was it in a graceful glacial valley dotted with oak, where the trails tunnel through rhododendron and laurel? Or on that modest ridge where the slope was covered in blueberry brush, whose leafless twigs scratched the tops of my feet as I high-stepped through.

Back home, an AI-generated search revealed that leopards symbolize archetypal themes of self-empowerment and the reclaiming of spiritual strength, which seemed appropriate for my situation.

I pulled up William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger,” and what struck me was not the conventional interpretation, namely the tiresome moral question how God could create both this predator and the lamb it would kill and eat. What struck me was the animal’s eyes. “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright/in the forests of the night” — “In what distant keeps and skies/burns the fire of thine eyes?” For it is the baleful glowing eyes which differentiate the predators — the steely gaze as they scan the veldt for movement – the deadly concentration which speaks to self-control and admits no fear and contrasts with the distracted frightened glances of the prey.

On YouTube I watched a video of two cats wrestling together affectionally. It is only in direct sun that you can see their spots, black on black – otherwise they are lithe and agile spirits, loping through the tawny grass — then pausing — for a moment becoming totally still but for a twitching of the tail.

When we first met, I was so fond of her. For many years I tried to make things work, and I never gave up hope. Yet this was to no avail. Now I am an aging hunter returning to the chase — not looking for a lamb, mind you, but for the partner and companion I’d always wanted. Searching for another cat.

I returned to Harriman on a cold, clear day. Felt the mud, gravel, and grass stubble rolling by underfoot, while a chill breeze brushed my cheek, and in the trees I heard a whisper – “you can still run.”