Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

with sharp feet

  they cut the water

  out of the ground,

  with thin legs

  they shoot the water

  up from the ground,

  jumping and dancing,

  springing and dancing,

  they trample the water

  into rising,

  into oozing and welling,

  making mud under the grass,

  making noises of water

  beginning to flow, under the grass,

  making flashing of water, shining of water

  beginning to run, running down,

  with the sound and flash of water running

  to the creek from the trampled spring

  where they dance, trampling

  where they dance, springing,

  where they dance, stamping,

  in secret, in sacred, in danger,

  in the house of the puma,

  just over the hill

  from the heyimas

  on the hunting side

  just over the hill from Sinshan.

  COMING HOME TO UP THE HILL HOUSE

  By Little Bear Woman.

  My heart dances, dances,

  along these paths it dances,

  through these doors it dances,

  in these rooms it dances

  with the dust motes in the morning sun.

  In words is the dancing,

  in singing is the dancing,

  in sleeping is the dancing,

  in sweeping is the dancing,

  cleaning up this old sunlit house.

  This is a long dancing:

  The silence in these rooms,

  the quail calling outside,

  the sunlight coming in the windows,

  all the years it has been this way.

  Grandmother’s sister sweeping this floor,

  father gazing out this window,

  mother writing at this table,

  I a child and my children

  waking mornings in this old sunlit house.

  THE WRITER TO THE MORNING IN UP THE HILL HOUSE IN SINSHAN

  By Little Bear Woman.

  Those who want fighting, let them smoke tobacco.

  Those who want excitement, let them drink brandy.

  Those who want withdrawal, let them smoke cannabis.

  Those who want good talking, let them drink wine.

  I don’t want any of those things at this moment.

  Early in the morning I breathe air and drink water,

  because what I want is clarity and silence

  and one thin line of words on the white paper

  drawn around my thought in clarity and silence.

  A SONG TO UP THE HILL HOUSE IN SINSHAN

  By Little Bear Woman.

  House, this place,

  house, this place,

  I am getting old living in you.

  House, these rooms,

  house, these rooms,

  my mother was young living in this place.

  Northwest door,

  southwest door,

  maybe my daughter’s granddaughter will get old here,

  inside these rooms,

  in this house.

  Maybe I will come in sometimes after dying

  by the southwest door,

  by the northwest door,

  of this house, this place,

  into this house, this place.

  Buckeye

  THE BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE

  By Turning of the Blue Clay of Sinshan.

  He is wise and very brave.

  He sits on the branch,

  preens and cleans his feathers,

  picks his lice,

  sharpens his beak,

  will not let me pass.

  What can I say?

  He sings

  a long soft trilling

  thrice and turns his back.

  He guards the silence.

  I have come in.

  I sit by the spring

  with a dry heart.

  The white azalea

  flowers for the hummingbird.

  I cannot read the writing

  on the sparrow’s breast,

  though she comes close

  for me to read it.

  The water is silent,

  drunk by tree roots.

  It wells out in three places

  from the rocks and sinks into its channel.

  Beautiful the small speckled grasses

  across the blue-green rock

  glazed like porcelain.

  The guardian chiks above the gate of moss,

  the doorway of this house of silent water.

  My heart is dry because I’m old,

  but how many years

  has the wild azalea flowered here?

  How long has the water run?

  It will rain tomorrow

  and I will not come up here.

  I will listen to the rain

  and think of the birds

  careful and fearless

  in the bay and sweetshrub,

  in the branches of the great azalea,

  in the branches of the trees

  that drink the water of this silence.

  SINSHAN CREEK

  By Peak of the Yellow Adobe and the Finders Lodge of Sinshan.

  Thinking of the small water flowing

  over stones under streambanks

  under oak, alder, willow, madrone,

  and the long-leaved laurel, the bay laurel,

  thinking of the shallow water

  softly going onward over gravel

  where the creek curves outward

  from the knoll’s slope under the bay laurels,

  and recurves back inward

  to the little enfolded valley,

  thinking of that water

  in a dry autumn, in a foreign country,

  I would cry out loud and cower

  for longing, for the smell of the bay laurels.

  My sleep would be that water and my soul

  a stone in the running of that water.

  GANAIV WAKWANA SINSHANSHUN

  By the Ire of Sinshan.

  I am at this place.

  I am at this place now

  where the water comes out of the rocks.

  This is the water,

  this is the spring of water

  between the dark rocks,

  between the blue rocks.

  1 am at this place now.

  I am at the beginning of water.

  With me at this place

  the hummingbird with grey breast, green tail, red throat,

  the hummingbird at this place

  hunting, drumming.

  1 am at this place

  where the water comes from darkness

  with the winter hummingbird

  that hangs bright-eyed over the water

  not moving, drumming.

  EIGHT LIFE STORIES

  THE LIFE STORY was a story told by many people in the Valley Biography and autobiography were written down and given to the heyimas or the lodge as an offering, a gift of life. Commonplace as most of them were, they were a “hinge” or intersection of private, individual, historical lived-time with communal, impersonal, cyclical being-time, and so were a joining of temporal and eternal, a sacred act.

  The longest section of this book, Stone Telling’s story, is an autobiography. In this section, a group of shorter life stories make a choir of Valley voices, men and women, old and young.

  The Train, by seven-year-old Enough of Sinshan, is typical of the short autobiographical offering: it relates an event very important in the life of the author, in full confidence that this importance will be felt by the reader—that it will be, in our terms, meaningful.

  She Listens (or Listening Woman) was offered to the Serpentine heyimas in Sinshan when the author took her middle name, the name by which she would be known all her adult life, until or unless she took or was given a last name.

  Like many na�
�ve autobiographies without literary pretensions, it is written in the third person.

  In Junco, the author uses the third person to refer to himself when he is writing in the past tense, and uses the first person in the present tense. This record of a vision quest by a spiritual athlete presents a failure as the central event of a life.

  The Bright Void of the Wind, given by Kulkunna of Telina-na to his heyimas, is a record of what we would call an out-of-body or afterlife experience; it presents a dying as the central event of a life.

  Having had his life saved by the doctors (living and dead) of the Doctors Lodge, Kulkunna went directly on to join them; he felt he had a debt to pay. Towards the end of Stone Telling’s story we see the other side of the weaving: a doctor who saved a life was thereafter, literally and in all respects, responsible for that life—as responsible as the parents who had conceived it. Debt and credit in the Doctors Lodge was a mortally serious business.

  White Tree is the only straight biography in this group. When a friend or relative thought an untold life worth telling, they might do so, as here, after the death of the subject of the piece.

  The Third Child’s Story, signed by Spotted Goat of Madidinou, though told in the first person, may be a vengeful biography pretending to be autobiography; or may be pure fiction; or something between the two. The loose free-verse triplet structure was used for lamentations, satires, and scurrilities.

  The Dog at the Door records a vision which began as a dream and then was consciously followed, using the technology of meditation provided by the heyimas. In our terms it is a mere mental excursion, a fantasy, not even rationalised. To its author and readers in the Valley it was the sufficient record of a life. The author, who gave it to the Red Adobe heyimas in Wakwaha, did not sign it.

  Finally, in the longest of these pieces, The Visionary, Flicker of Telina-na recounts her life with considerable candor and realism. Copies of this work were kept both in her heyimas in Telina and in the Archives in Wakwaha. She may have been asked to write it by her fellow scholars on the Mountain, as a kind of guide for other people burdened with her gift; for she tries to describe what was more often left unstated, the emotions and relationships of a person pursuing (willingly or unwillingly) the career of visionary, and the place of a “great vision” in an ordinary life.

  The Train

  By Enough of the Serpentine of Sinshan.

  This is the first offering I have made by writing. Heya hey heya heya heya. This is the first name my mothers gave me: Enough. I have been living in the Third House of Earth since the time of the Moon Dancing seven years ago. This is the name of the house where my mothers’ hearth is: Blue Walls of Sinshan. After the Wine I went away from Sinshan with my cousin Poppy and my maternal aunt Gift. That was the first time I went away from Sinshan. We went to the other side of the Valley to those other mountains. We walked down onto the flat of the Valley and walked and came to the River. We crossed across the River on the ferry and the ferryman brings it across pulling on a rope and then he goes back across without you. He keeps chickens with green tails. Then we went on a little way and we came to the Line. It smells like some kinds of soap and also like something burnt. It is like a very wide ladder lying on the ground that comes from so far away in the northwest and so far away in the southeast you can’t see either end. On both sides of it the grass is all cut down and there are beautiful smooth rocks inside it. We went across it by stepping on one of the rungs. We went up on a hill with thistles and under some oaks we sat down and ate some pickles and eggs. While we were there there was a noise far away like a drum. Gift said look and we looked and while the noise got very loud the Train came! I was afraid. At home when I heard that noise people said was the Train I always thought it was stone people walking heavily. The noise is much louder when you are close to it. It made rolls of smoke and it was like houses moving. On one of the parts that was more like a cart there was a person with a red hat sitting that waved their hand at us. I did not wave my hand because I was holding Gift’s and Poppy’s hands. I was excited. Gift said it was the Train with wine for the Amaranth people. The bluejays all started yelling on that hill when the Train came and the ducks flew up from down by the River and made the air get dark and I could smell them. The Train’s direction of going was southeast. It went on. We went on that thistle path. We went to the Old Lake and stayed with our mothers’ brother there fishing. Then we came home after four days with the fish. Heya Serpentine!

  She Listens

  Given to the Serpentine heyimas of Sinshan by She Listens of Chimbam House.

  Phoebe had seen nothing but what other people see and she did not go to the heyimas very often or sing Blood Lodge songs or talk with old people. She went on a day to her household’s gathering place on Black Ridge by Herou to gather chia seed. She got tired working in the sun and went up into the chaparral to lie down and sleep awhile. She lay down where the ground was clear and there was no poison oak under a big madrone tree with five trunks. The crickets stopped after a while. There was no noise of anything anywhere. She thought an earthquake. She sat up. In front of her a woman was standing who was golden red down the left side of her face and hair and body and arm and leg, and twisted black down the right side, and her right leg was black and dry and had no foot on it. She stood there. She looked at Phoebe with the bright eye and the burnt eye. She said, “Take off your clothes!” The girl began to cry. “Look at yourself whole and soft and all alive!” Madrone Woman said. The girl tried to hide on the ground covered with madrone leaves. “You are a fool and must marry to grow wise,” Madrone Woman said, and she took a branch of live madrone with her red hand and struck the girl across the breasts with it, making scratches, and took a dead branch with her black hand and struck the girl across the belly with it, drawing blood. Then she turned away and became branches and sky. Phoebe crawled away crying and went down the hill road with her basket of chia seeds and came to her house in Sinshan. Her mother was sitting on the balcony. She said, “What has happened to you, daughter?” Phoebe stood there and cried. Her mother said, “I see you have been where I have to go. I have to go there. My heart is no good any more and I have to begin dying. I could not tell you that, but now I see you can hear me. Perhaps you met a Four-House person. Perhaps they spoke to you.”

  Manzanita

  The girl said, “It was the Madrone. She did not say anything about you. She told me to get married.”

  The mother said, “That is what I tell you too.”

  The girl kept crying. The mother comforted her.

  Soon after that the young man named Vine of the Yellow Adobe came from his household to live in the girl’s household. They were married at the World Dance. The mother was well for that, but then began to get weak, and died nine days before the Moon. Her name came then to the girl. Her name now is She Listens.

  Heya madrone

  Heya madrone

  Heya madrone

  Heya madrone.

  Junco

  Given to the Yellow Adobe heyimas of Chukulmas by Junco of Tile House.

  He did not want to talk with stones or walk with the puma when he went up on Ama Kulkun in his twentieth year, that young man called Sungazer, who has become this old man writing.

  He made no offerings as he left Wakwaha on the high road, and did not stop to sing or to be silent at the Springs of the River. He did not ask the deer or the bear, the oak or the poison oak, the hawk or the snake to help him or advise him. He did not ask help of the Mountain. He climbed straight to the summits and went to the northwest height. The wind was blowing.

  He made a house there of lines on the ground drawn with a rock in the dirt, and standing up inside that house he said aloud: “I do not want the beings, the souls, the forms, the words. I want the eternal truth. I will do what I must do, I will fast, I will sacrifice, I will give my life, if I may see before death what lies behind life and death, behind word and form, behind all being, the eternal truth.”

  The wind was blow
ing, the sun was shining. The young man began his fast. Four days, four nights he stood there in the house of lines. That was the beginning.

  The gyre of the buzzard, the history of the rocks, the silence of the grass, they were all there, but he would not have them, desiring the eternal truth.

  He went down on the fifth day to get water at the Breathfeather Spring. He drank, and filled a clay jar that had been left as an offering at the spring, and went back up to the summit to stand in the house of lines. Each day for three days he drank some water from the jar. On the fourth day the water was gone, and he could not stand up at all any longer. He stayed crouching in the house of lines, saying in his mind, “I give my life, let me know the truth.”

  People from Wakwaha brought him water. People from his House came and told him that what he was doing was a mistake. A woman came from the Yellow Adobe of Wakwaha and said, “Because you stand on top of the mountain do you think you are greater than the mountain?” She left food in a bowl, but he did not touch it. He drank the water when the people had left him alone. It made him weak, and he could not crouch any longer. He lay down, and as soon as he lay down dreams came into his mind. He would not have them. He struggled to stay awake and kept saying in his mind, “Give me the truth, I give my life.”

  He began to hear his name: “Sungazer! Sungazer!”

  It was a name that others had given him; he had not chosen it. Now he thought that he must do what his name said. He looked up and gazed at the sun.

  It was a day of still air without cloud or wind. As he gazed at the shining of the sun, wheels began to come into his seeing, black wheels and very bright wheels, turning one within the other. The wheels rolled around and across the sun, and rolled across the world when he looked away from the sun.

  A bluejay came inside the house of lines, walking, and said, “You will burn out your eyes.”

  Sungazer said, “I will do what I must do.”

  He went on looking at the sun. He felt very sick, and when the sun set and the dark was there, in the dark he saw the bright wheels and the black wheels still turning everywhere around him.

  An owl came nearby and said many times, “You will be blind.”

  The young man tried to weep but the tears had been burned out of his eyes. He crawled on the ground among the turning wheels, crying out. Everything began talking to him, saying, “Go down, go down now!” He could feel the Mountain twitch the way a horse shudders its skin to twitch off a fly. He could feel the earth rolling like a wheel. When daylight began he could see a little, and he went down the mountain, crawling on all fours. He drank at Breathfeather Spring. After he had rested and drunk there for a while he gained strength and could walk. He heard everything still saying, “Go down!” and so he went down to Wakwaha-na, and still everything said, “Go down!” He went on down along the River to Kastoha-na, and there still everything said, “Go down!” He did not know how to go down below the Valley, until he thought of the caves at Kestets. He knew them as a vintner. He went there along the old road and went into the caves, past where the wine is stored, back to where the springs seep out of the rock in the dark. There was no light there, but he saw the bright wheels turning under the ground. He began dancing there, stamping and rocking. The blood ran out of his nose and eyes. He danced and cried out, “Let me know the truth!”