Kabir Bill Johnson
I was a very unwilling and reluctant participant just before I arrived at the Southwest Sufi Community.
My friend Peter and I were on an adventure in the Gila National Forest. Peter was at the wheel of my four-cylinder Suzuki Swift when he decided to take us on a tour over Bear Mountain. It was late in April, 2011, as the tires kicked up swaths of dust over the curvy and steep dirt road. Gusts of wind blew flurries of dirt and sand across the pathway, driving my sinuses crazy.
I begged Peter for an answer to just where we were trekking, but he continued to ignore my bantering. After we finally winded our way down the mountain onto the flat mesa, he stopped the car, stepped out and made a phone call. I had no idea who he was calling but I did notice the beauty of the terrain, the mesa beyond melting into the distant mountains.
We continued our journey and I became more anxious by the second to know just where Peter was taking us as we passed several heads of cattle, stretches of barbed wire fence and cattle guards. Some cows and bulls and their juveniles stood in the roadway, making passing difficult.
After about 45 minutes of the drive that started in Silver City, Peter veered off the forest service road onto a smaller dirt road with a street sign that read “Avery Ranch Road.” I asked Peter whether we were going to a ranch but he still blew me off like I did not exist – in my car that he was driving. I think I told him to stop and turn around about a dozen times until he finally did stop and park the car, walk away down a steep canyon road and then return to say, “It’s okay, I think we’ll make it.”
“Where? Where?” I asked and begged. “You’ll see eventually,” he replied. Then we started down this narrow dirt road that hugged the sides of the descending mountain. Off the side of the road, I could see straight down several hundred feet to the bottom of a canyon. “We’re going to die. And if we do live, we’ll never make it back up this hill,” I cried as we slowly made our way down the windy, somewhat bumpy road in first gear. In the distance I could see a few structures at the bottom of the hill.
We landed at the green gate at the end of the road and Peter told me to wait while he went inside “the ranch” to find and talk with someone. “You can get out of the car, look at the surrounding hills and canyon, but don’t come inside the gate until I return,” he told me. I watched him walk a couple hundred feet and then disappear behind a green house.
I sat inside my car several minutes hoping Peter would return soon. I became anxious again and decided to step out, get some fresh air and take in the scenic views. I then walked to the edge of a fence and looked down into a canyon. The trees at the bottom were tall and green and I wanted to know what else might be behind the forbidding gate.
I waited and waited until it seemed an hour had passed. I got into my car and honked the horn. No one came out, so I honked and honked again. Still, no one was coming out so I took the spare key out of my wallet, started the engine and slowly made my way up on what I believed was a very treacherous road. About a quarter mile away from the gate, I looked back. “It worked, someone is finally coming toward the gate,” I thought. So, I turned my car around and drove back to the gate to be greeted by Peter and a lady who introduced herself as Sasha. “Would you like to come inside?” Sasha asked me. “Hell yea,” I said with resounding relief.
It became history from there. I would no longer be the reluctant participant as I found myself inside a community with friendly people and beautiful surroundings. I had come to the Gila to find my sanctuary and this very place must have been it.
I had read about Sufis and Sufism in Ram Dass’s book “Be Here Now” more than three decades prior. It had confirmed for me some of my beliefs about unity, universalism, peace and love that I held since I was a teenager, maybe even as an infant or a fetus inside the womb. And since I had never met a Sufi, it became my belief I would find them only in the wilderness. It became a hidden yearning that maybe one day I would finally meet some Sufis.
At the end of the long and dusty trail, after facing a long wave of trials and tribulations, I did stumble onto some Sufis in the wilderness in a place called the Southwest Sufi Community. And it has become my home for nearly three years now.
I have learned since my arrival that Avery Ranch Road is a godsend indeed because it allows access to SSC and the wonderful nature preserve that is part of its 1,500-acre holding. I have traveled the road at least a hundred times without incident. In fact, there has not been one single accident on the road since I’ve been here – maybe just a few flat tires from sharp rocks that are the result of fresh grading maintenance (bring a spare if you come).