The river was no more than a mile into the valley. It would be more of an effort to return than to get to it. Among the other debris, I had spotted several useable water bottles that must have come from various desks and workstations. I put several into a bag I found and brought them. Once we were near the lower tree line, I had a full view of the valley and mountains across the way. With that unobstructed view, it was clear why the view yesterday had bother me and it wasn’t because of the perspective from the ground level compared to the perspective from the elevated cafeteria windows. The view from the elevated position of the building was of a valley with a rapidly flowing river and mountain slopes on the opposite side rising through trees, to the tree line, before sloping steeply to the peaks. This view was different, but at the lower base level, it was similar. The problem with this view was that the mountains in front of me were nearly shear walls of rock and where the trees should have been was replaced by scars of rocky rubble, some of which blocked off the river just to the north. The wall of rock blocking the river to form a lake had to be 20 feet tall. Water was seeping from between the rocks and boulders like a sieve and created an image of a stairway waterfall.
I continued down to the river, alternating my eyes from the route in front of me, to the mountains across the valley, to the massive wall of rock to my right, and cycling back. The river was flowing strong and the water seemed to be free of discoloration and floating ‘things’. Bo and I drank our fill and I filled the water bottles. I sat down on the edge of the river and stared at the mountain scar and the wall of rocks. My mind was racing with options to consider, I still didn’t know ‘when’ or ‘where’ we were. The conclusion seemed inescapable, however. I had already eliminated the future since there was no evidence of the concrete structure on the mountainside behind me. Now, it seemed impossible for this to be the past because the mountain in front of me and the condition of the river did not exist in ‘our time’. Geological damage this significant would not have disappeared and the mountain reformed.
I dropped my head against Bo’s shoulder and sighed, “Sorry, Bo, it looks like it was door number 3, after all. This is very similar to our reality, but it isn’t.” I chuckled at a thought and stood, scratching his ears and stroking his head as I did. “It would appear that we have fallen down the rabbit hole just like Alice did. It would appear we have found my ‘Otherland’. If we come across a white rabbit wearing a vest and jacket, obsessed with a pocket watch, we may be able to write this off as a very real-seeming dream. Otherwise …. this to our new reality.”
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Continued in Chapter 3