That was Wednesday morning and I was already twelve hours into my four-day fast. My Red Blanket prayer was that I would come to see more clearly what I could best do to serve our Mother Earth for the sake of the future generations.
I prayed a lot. I always began by honoring the six directions. One at a time and moving clockwise, I engaged with the landscape in each direction through my five senses. Closing my eyes, I noticed whatever sounds were coming toward me. Opening my eyes, I took in the light, the textures, the colors, the movements. Closing my eyes, I paid attention to the touch of the breeze or the temperature on my skin. Opening my mouth, I tasted the air, which was especially beautiful in the cool of early morning or late at night. Eyes still closed and lifting my chin, I sniffed the air several times briskly, and inhaled the smells of the dried brush and the mountain sage. Next, I opened my eyes again, and holding my sacred pipe, bent my knees and touched the earth with my other hand. I stood, and looking upward, stretched my hand toward the sky. Then, pressing the bowl of the sacred pipe against my heart, I bent my head, closed my eyes, and remembered why I was there.
I spent a lot of time sitting on my rolled-up sleeping bag, looking around and noticing what was happening. I knew that the most respectful way I could be present in this place was to be open and receptive by paying attention and really listening. The animals came. Chipmunk. Rabbit. And the birds. There was a small brown bird who had the sweetest song I ever heard. She hung around in the scrub oaks for what seemed like a long time. A western tanager came. His startling yellows and reds somehow quenched my thirst for a little while. There were mountain grouse in the eastern meadow and this one particular little guy with a tassel on his head who jumped up in the air again and again, plucking at grass seeds. He would appear suddenly from behind the grasses as he leapt into the air, then disappear as he came back to earth, only to immediately reappear as if bouncing on a hidden trampoline. Watching and being watched. Noticing and being noticed. There was something beautifully matter-of-fact about it all. It was not a big deal. It was just how it was to be with my relations in the natural world.
It was Friday morning, forty-eight hours into the fast. I was sitting on my rolled-up sleeping bag holding my sacred pipe. I noticed some movement on the sleeping pad. I looked more closely and saw a cluster of ants milling around and attacking a ladybug that was on its back. I hesitated, not knowing if it was the right thing to intervene but decided to do so. As gently as I could I picked up the tiny, lifeless red and black spotted body between my thumb and index fingers and put it on a small stone on my sage altar. I left her there in the warm sun to see if she would recuperate a little bit and regain her strength. I sat with my sacred pipe watching her. After lying completely still for some time, she began to move. It was as though she had been under the anesthetic of the ant venom but was now recovering. Then she began moving her legs and flicked open her wings as if she was about to take off. A sudden movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. Another ladybug had flown in and landed on the altar. Then another one came, then another, then another. Some flew into the cooled ash from the burnt sage in the abalone shell on the altar, and crawled around in there. A few of them came and landed right on me. The first one landed on the back of my left hand. As I slowly lifted my hand toward my face, she flew off. But then another ladybug landed on my right forearm; then another on my right thigh. At one time, I counted ten ladybugs on the backs of my hands, my arms, my legs, and the front of my chest and belly. I looked back at the one I had rescued. She was still flexing her opened wings. Then she flew off and, one by one, the others followed.
Later that afternoon I felt a deep longing. I began to weep. I prayed, “Is there something I need to see, is there something I need to hear?” As I cried, I was holding the bowl of the sacred pipe to my heart, while resting my forehead on the stem, which I held in the way I had been taught. Then, as naturally as the birdsong in the nearby scrub oak, I was aware of words arising in the silence of my heart: “You are one of us now…”
I was surprised and yet not surprised. It was as though my body recognized this voice. I felt a loosening in my chest and sensed an effortless falling back into place.
The next morning was time to end my fast and I was ready and waiting from first light, holding my sacred pipe. I heard drumming and Lisa’s approaching singing. I began to weep. Lisa came to my altar and said, “Relative, it’s time to come home now.” She led me and the other five vision questers back to camp.
Sitting by the fire, one at a time we vision questers smoked our sacred pipes in silence. After a few puffs we each passed our sacred pipe to Wolf and Lisa who, in turn, passed it on clockwise to the circle of relatives and supporters, inviting them to share. We were then offered our first drink of water in four days. It hurt my throat as it went down. We next shared three bowls of sacred foods: sweet corn, minced meat, and berries. As we ate, Wolf told us that the meat we were eating was buffalo meat, with pine nuts, no seasoning, but slow cooked and really soft so that the elders, without teeth, could eat it. He said, “We learned this from the animals. We watched how the wolf chewed food for her pups and toothless elders and spat it out for them. We learned this from the wolf.” Then he added, “Animals civilize us….”
After this we crawled into the lodge for two rounds of a dust-off sweat. These two rounds were the closing to the opening rounds we had had at the start of the vision quest four days earlier. When we crawled out, Wolf turned to our families and friends around the fire and said, “They’re back. Now you can greet your loved ones.”
“You are one of us now.” I have asked myself many times since then what these words could mean. Whose words were they? Even now, several years later, I still don’t know. It does not seem to matter. What does matter is that in some way I felt I was being welcomed into a bigger family, and that this was the beginning of an answer to the question I had been holding in my Red Blanket prayer. I was, and continue to be, deeply honored to have been blessed in this way.
Two teachings of Wolf’s helped me to appreciate the significance of what had happened here. The first was when he talked about the nature of “visions.” He said, “A vision is anything that helps you to realize something more about yourself or the nature of reality. Of course, it might be an external vision but it could also be an insight, or a voice, or a visit, or a synchronicity, or a medicine dream…What matters is not so much the form it takes as that it deepens your understanding of reality.” The second was on an occasion when he was talking about hummingbirds. He had spoken about how hummingbirds were one of the smallest and sweetest expressions of the power of the Thunder Beings that live in the sky and bring thunder and lightning and rain. He had added, “When they come in this form [as these smallest of birds], we’re not afraid; they allow us to come close to them.”
The robin at Colman’s Well, the wolf on the road in Yellowstone, the many meetings on the land by our home, the nest in the stream, even if unusual, were, objectively, ordinary events that I had subjectively experienced as extraordinary. In contrast, what had happened with the ladybugs was, objectively, an event out of the ordinary. For them to come to me as they had was beyond the realm of “mere coincidence.” Even if this was a very small-scale event, it was a powerful synchronicity. Wolf says, “Indian way, we see two unconnected events coinciding in a meaningful manner as the work of the spirits. They are breadcrumbs the Creator is leaving for us to follow.” He added, “We Indians don’t believe in miracles; we rely on them.”
We cannot make synchronicities happen. What we can do, as the vision quest ceremony taught me, is to create the conditions that make it more likely that they will occur. Synchronicities arise from a participatory process between us and the natural environment. Here this meant lying on the Earth long enough, in solitude and silence, fasting and praying, while watching, and waiting, and listening, for my pulse to come into some deeper harmony. An attitude of respect, coupled with deep conn
ection with the living landscape, make it more likely that such events will occur, and that we will recognize them when they do.
There is a curious addendum to this story. Yesterday, as I lunched with a friend, I told her this story. Afterward, I returned to the meadow where I was writing. My plan was to spend the afternoon working on this story. As I approached my blue canvas seat I noticed a bright red dot; there was a ladybug on it.
SIXTH
THE TREE OF LIFE
In the spring of 2013 I talked to Wolf and Lisa about the possibility of going to that summer’s Sun Dance ceremony as a supporter, and they invited me to join them. I had been hearing about the Sun Dance for some time and felt a growing desire to go. It seemed like the right time.
The Sun Dance ceremony is one of the most sacred ceremonies of the Plains Indians and is now practiced by many Native American tribes. Some Sun Dance ceremonies also welcome non-Natives to pray in this way. At the heart of the ceremony is the sacrifice the dancers make. They fast from food and water for four days and four nights, as they dance in an enclosure called “the arbor” around a specially chosen cottonwood tree. They willingly take on suffering in this way for their loved ones but also, as Wolf says, “for the benefit of all life that relies on the Earth, and the Earth herself.”
On that first night at the Sun Dance grounds, I and some other first-timers met with an elder who talked to us about the ceremony. He said, “It’s hard to know what to say to you newcomers about the dance…What I can say is that it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever done in my life.” A little later he added, “Some people say we come here to suffer. We don’t come here to suffer. We come here to pray, and to heal.”
The following day, as we sat together in our community kitchen after breakfast, Wolf spoke to us about what would happen later that day, called “Tree Day,” the day preceding the four days of the dance.
“We call Sun Dance ‘suffering for the people,’” he began. “The warriors decided that this was a way they could help the people. Sun Dance is a give-away ceremony from the warriors to the people. During this time of offering, the dancers want to take upon themselves everything that hurts the people. Anything that causes the people misery is considered to be ‘the enemy.’ So the Chief will say to his helpers, ‘Go find the enemy and when you find him come back and tell me where he is.’ Then the helpers go out and look for a tree. It has to be a cottonwood tree and it must have certain characteristics. That tree represents the enemy, all that’s hurting the people, and that’s why we need to capture it and bring it back to camp.”
Later that morning everyone in camp made the journey to a nearby forest where the scouts had found “the enemy.” The cottonwood tree whose life was about to be taken was tall and slender; its thickest branches reached up like two great arms through the canopy into the sun. The little girls who made the first blows with the axe were so young and sweet. It began with their gentleness and innocence. After them it was the elders’ turn. I looked up at the highest branches and noticed a red-tailed hawk circling clockwise, right overhead, around and around. I saw that others noticed this too but no one seemed surprised. As we carried the tree down through the camp and into the arbor and laid it sideways on some wooden trestles to prevent it from touching the ground, the big drum singers started. Then, all the people came into the arbor with prayer-ties they had prepared beforehand and tied them to the branches of the tree, so that they would directly benefit from the sacrifice of the dancers.
Back in camp that night, Wolf spoke to us again.
“Now, the dance will begin tomorrow. The people are very grateful to the dancers because they’re the ones making the sacrifice. All we have to do is bring our prayers. We’re told that as soon as that tree goes up, and all the details have been arranged as we were instructed, it transforms. It’s no longer ‘the enemy;’ as soon as it goes up, it becomes ‘the Tree of Life.’
“We’re told that the Creator, the Great Mystery, comes and enters that tree and will stand there, right in front of us, for four days so that we can walk right up to him and tell him what we need. Someone once said to me, ‘Don’t you people understand that the Creator, God, is everywhere?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course the answer is yes, but when something is everywhere, it’s really hard to approach.’ So the Creator gave us a ceremony where we could just walk right up to him.”
Early the following morning I stood at the edge of the arbor with the hundred or so other supporters who were there. As I looked around the circular clearing at the center of the forest, I saw how everyone was standing in silent anticipation. In front of us were small, painted willow sticks with red tobacco prayer-ties at their tips marking out the inner circle of the arbor, where only the Sun Dancers, the Chief and his helpers could enter. At the very center of the arbor was the Tree of Life, standing tall, its branches filled with hundreds of bright prayer-ties, its leaves still fresh and olive green. At four points around the circle of red willow sticks were large willow poles with big prayer flags in each of the colors of the different directions. Behind us, at the back of the arbor, an awning roofed with leafed branches would offer some shade later in the day for the supporters. In the background, surrounding the Tree of Life, rose a circle of great trees, some hundreds of feet high—cottonwoods, cedars, big-leaf maples, bitter cherries, Douglas firs, red alder, and western hemlock.
An opening to the east, the East Gate, was flanked on both sides by two young girls, each holding the handles of canisters filled with burning sacred herbs. Smoke billowed upward in the morning air. Just as the sun rose above the tree line, the big drum singers started to play. With this, a procession began to enter through the East Gate. At the front came the head male helper carrying the buffalo skull, followed by the head female helper carrying the main sacred pipe of the Sun Dance ceremony. She was flanked on either side by helpers carrying eagle staffs, who were followed by more helpers. Then came twenty or so male and female dancers and, at the end of the procession, the Chief. The Sun Dance had begun.
It was the evening of the first day of the dance. As I sat outside my tent to write in my journal, I found that I had no words to describe adequately what I had witnessed that day. It was by then beginning to get dark and I could still hear the big drum and the singing voices and the eagle whistles in the wind and trees overhead. I recalled how, during the breaks between the rounds of the day’s dancing, the dancers had passed out their sacred pipes to the supporters at the edge of the arbor, who then sat to share the pipes in small circles on the ground. The dancers had sacrificed for the people; their dancing had made the prayers in their sacred pipes strong, and now these prayers were making the people strong.
As I lay down to sleep, I thought back on the day. That elder was right, what lingered was how beautiful it all was—the dancing, the drumming, the singing, the colors, the courage, the generosity, the gentleness, the fierceness; and all around, the great swaying trees that encircled the arbor. The first of the piercings came vividly to mind. I saw one of the Chief’s helpers leading a male dancer to a buffalo robe on the ground. All around the arbor the dancing continued and the air was full of drumming and singing. The dancer lay there immobile on his back as the Chief threaded two sharp bone pins through the skin on either side of his chest. When the dancer stood up, the Chief placed the looped ends of two ropes around each pin. The other ends of the ropes were tied to the Tree of Life. The dancer moved backwards until the ropes tightened and the skin was pulled taut. By now he too was dancing, arms pumping and lifting alternate knees high in the air to the beat of the big drum as the ropes tugged on the bone pins, stretching his skin to a peak, as he, and all the other dancers, some already pierced, some not, blew loudly on their eagle whistles.
I spent the second day with other supporters at the edge of the arbor. While some sat resting in the shade, others began to dance. I joined in, lifting my arms and feet in rhythm with the pulse of the big drum. As the day went by,
I noticed that my feet had worn two grooves into the ground. With each step, dust came up between my toes. It felt so good to have my feet in the earth in this way. As I danced, I watched the Tree of Life. Its leaves were already looking crinkled and paler than they had been and contrasted sharply with the deep, vibrant green of the trees behind and all around. It was as though, with the pulse of every drumbeat, the Tree of Life was becoming more transparent, more translucent, more porous. It had begun its fast at the same time as the dancers had theirs. The dancers and the tree were in this together.
In the breaks between the rounds, I lay on the ground and rested. During each of these breaks, an elder was invited to come into the arbor to share his or her story. I was deeply touched by how this community held its elders in such respect. When one of them spoke, everyone listened to what they had to say. One elder talked about humility as the basis of real power. “Think of the Earth,” he said, “Its medicine comes from receiving all that dies into it. And the ocean,” he continued, “its strength comes from receiving the rain and the rivers that flow into it.” His face was beaming as he came out of the arbor to rejoin the supporters, carrying one of the dancer’s sacred pipes. As I sat in a circle with him and some others to smoke the pipe, I marveled at how elders thrive when they are given their place in the sacred hoop and valued as the wisdom keepers that they are.
On the third day of the Sun Dance, I was standing with other supporters in the arbor, praying and dancing with the dancers. As I watched the ropes between the Tree of Life and the pierced eagle dancers, I realized that there were also invisible ropes going from the Tree of Life to everyone in the circle around the arbor, and in turn, other invisible ropes that went from each of us to those beyond us, and beyond, and beyond. I understood that just as these invisible ropes were connecting us to the Tree of Life, so too they were connecting the Tree of Life to us, and that energy was flowing in both directions, from each of us to the tree as prayer, and from the tree to each of us as blessing. Again I noticed, that as the vitality of the Tree of Life was ebbing day by day, hour by hour, as its leaves were becoming more anemic and shriveled, the great green brothers and sisters of the Tree Nation behind and all around were growing livelier and, it seemed to me, moving closer. In some mysterious way, the surrounding trees had also entered the great and sacred exchange that is the Sun Dance. I asked myself, “Is this what the heart of the world looks like?” That night my sleep was filled with song and eagle whistles and the beat of the big drum.
The Nest in the Stream Page 8
