She rolled her eyes and shoved the tote bag at me while she shrugged on her coat. “Did you eat?” she asked, and then looked more closely at me. “Wow, you look like hell. Didn’t you sleep last night?”
“No, and not really,” I answered, holding open the door for her.
She paused. “Should I drive, then?”
“Again, no,” I said. “You hate driving in the mountains. I got a few hours of sleep – enough to get us there and back in one piece.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the first syllable as she locked the door behind us. “But if you start hugging the shoulder, I’m taking the wheel.”
“What’s in the tote?” I asked as I fired up the car.
“Clothes,” she said. “I forgot to tell you, we’re supposed to wear loose but modest clothing. I brought a long cotton skirt and a t-shirt for each of us.”
“Fashionable,” I said. “Is there anything else I need to know about the upcoming end of the world?”
“Sneer if you feel you must,” she said with a little tilt of her head, “but when we’ve all achieved a higher level of consciousness, you’ll be singing a different tune.”
“Which one?”
She laughed. “I don’t really believe it, either. But wouldn’t it be great if we really did join together into a single global mind?”
I’m a natural skeptic, but I’m not a jerk. I hated to douse the light of hope in her eyes. So I said, “Only if you’re in charge of deciding what happens next. There aren’t many people I would trust not to screw things up. But you? You, I would trust.”
“Well, thank you. I would trust you, too.”
“Oh no,” I said. “You wouldn’t want me in charge. After the shambles I’ve made of my life this week?”
“Tell me about your dreams,” Shannon said, just like that. I hadn’t mentioned my dreams to her at all, and yet here she was, asking for details. That’s why I want her running the new global hive mind.
Anyway, I told her – about the dreams, about Brock’s no-show since his proposal, and about my weird walk home the night before. And about my resurfacing memory.
“You had forgotten all of that?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I just quit thinking about it after we moved to Lafayette. God knows I didn’t want anybody there to realize that I was the buffalo calf girl. I’d had my bellyful of teasing at my old school.”
“Maybe that’s how that guy knows you,” she said.
My sleep-deprived brain took a minute to catch up. “The guy who gave you the handbill, you mean?” I thought it over and shook my head. “I’m sure he wasn’t in my class.”
“Maybe he was connected to the farm somehow.”
“Dunno. Maybe. I’ll have to do some digging.”
“Or you could just ask him,” she said. “If he’s there today.”
“If he’s there, I will definitely do that,” I told her. “Now tell me about all of the wonderful, terrible things that are supposed to happen today.”
“Well,” she began, “actually, it should have happened already. The point of exact balance was at 4:12 this morning.”
At 4:12 that morning, or thereabouts, an owl had hooted in my dreams. I mulled that over while she explained briefly about magnetic pole shifts and tsunamis, plasma orbs and crop circles, galactic superwave theory, and the return of Quetzalcoatl.
“You know, of course,” I said when she stopped for breath, “that nearly every culture has a hero who’s supposed to return to save his people when they need him most.”
“Of course,” she said. “And if Quetzalcoatl really does come back to help the Mayans, he’s not going to have much use for us usurpers.”
“A fair point.”
We were nearly to Boulder by this time. Shannon punched up the GPS on her phone and pointed to an intersection up ahead. “Turn left there.”
The county road I turned onto began to rise in elevation. We entered a canyon, the road hugging the wall on Shannon’s side of the car. I could see a creek bed to my right, through the naked branches of the aspens. Creek side cottages appeared every so often.
“Sure would be nice to have one of those,” I said.
“I’ve thought about it,” she said, “but I’m afraid of getting trapped back here when it snows and not being able to get to work ‘til spring.”
“I imagine the county plows the road,” I said, and then added, “sometimes.”
“That’s what worries me,” she said, and then pointed to the right. “Here.”
“Here?” I looked in disbelief at the two wheel ruts that appeared to go straight up the canyon face.
“That’s what it says,” she affirmed. “And there’s the sign, so this must be the place.” Next to the road, tied to a tree, was a wooden sign. Burned into it was the logo from the handbill – a buffalo, flanked by bear fetishes on either side. “Can you get up there?”
I downshifted and said, “Let’s find out.”
The road was rough, but navigable, and the grade got easier after a few hundred feet. Another few hundred feet ahead, we drove out of evergreen forest into a clearing that seemed to cling to the mountainside: the eastern side of the clearing looked out across the plains, with no comforting guardrail along the edge of the cliff.
Ahead of us were nestled a couple of buildings, including a tarp-covered igloo shape that I took to be the sweat lodge. In front of the lodge was a fire pit; the blaze was already going and a man sat there, placing large rocks around the perimeter. Farther back was a public restroom or bathhouse. A wickiup stood to one side, so close to the cliff edge that it made me nervous to look at it.
Two men emerged from the wickiup. Both were tall and broad-shouldered. The older man went hatless, his white hair gleaming in the gathering dusk. He wore fringed buckskin, tunic and pants; a small headpiece decorated with feathers was clipped to his hair at the back of his head. His feet were bare.
The younger man was in modern dress – jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. A cowboy hat shaded his eyes. He, too, was barefoot.
“Hello!” Shannon called, getting out of the car. I trailed after her. “I’m Shannon McDonough, and this is my friend, Naomi Witherspoon. You invited us to a sweat for the solstice.” She addressed the last sentence to the younger man, who tipped his hat silently in reply. Something about the guy seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t get a good look at his face – it was all in shadow under the hat.
“Welcome,” the old man rumbled. “Thank you for coming. I am Looks Far Guzmán, a medicine man of the White River Ute tribe. This,” he gestured with one hand, “is my grandson, Joseph Curtis.” The grandson replied with another slight tip of the cowboy hat.
“Oh, you’re Ute,” Shannon said with a polite smile. “That explains the bears on the invitation. Isn’t the bear sacred to your tribe?”
I had to give the old man credit; he was more patient with us white girls than I would have been in his place. “That’s right,” he replied. “Many things are sacred to us. Bear is sacred. Buffalo is sacred. This place where we are standing is very sacred. In the old days, before the white man, the Ute roamed throughout Colorado, and in Utah and parts of northern New Mexico. In the winter, we set up camp on the Western Slope, on the other side of the Rockies. But in summer, we ranged far, hunting and gathering and trading with other tribes. These mountains were our home.” Slowly, he looked around us. “We used this cliff top to greet the sun every morning – and,” he said, almost confidentially, “to track the buffalo.” We all turned to gaze out across the plains to the east, dotted now with farms and ranches. Far in the distance, the lights of metropolitan Denver were coming on.
Then, suddenly, my view shifted. The sun was high overhead, and the vast plain was vacant except for thousands of buffalo, and a handful of men on ponies, chasing them.
I blinked, hard, several times, and the buffalo – and the sunlight – were gone. I glanced back at the old man, who was staring at me. I couldn’t read his express
ion. “Thank you for coming,” he said again.
I nodded, then found my voice. “Thank you for inviting us,” I said. “Some weird things have been happening to me lately. I’m hoping to get some answers today.”
“I will do my best,” Looks Far said. He glanced then at Shannon. “We are nearly ready to begin. You should change clothes – you will be more comfortable in lighter, looser clothing. Did you bring…?”
Shannon held up her tote bag and grinned. “We’re all set, Mr. Guzmán. We’ll meet you at the lodge in a few minutes.” I followed her to the short dirt path to the restrooms at the back of the property.
Before I could tell her about the vision, or whatever it was, that I’d just experienced, she spoke. “It was Joseph,” she said under her breath.
Befuddled as I was, I drew a blank. “It was Joseph who…?”
“Gave me the invitation. I didn’t recognize him at first, with his hat pulled down over his face, but it’s him. I wonder why he’s trying to hide from us?”
We entered the structure. In the back was a wooden enclosure surrounding a pit toilet; I was suddenly grateful for the cold, as it was keeping down the inevitable smell. Attached to the front of the privy enclosure was a sort of tent over a timber frame. Wooden cubbies lined the far wall. “Do you think we’re the only people here?” I asked as we undressed and put our clothing in the cubbies. I’d locked our purses in the car and hoped Shannon had brought me a skirt with pockets, so I could keep the car keys on me.
“Apparently.” She handed me a white tiered skirt (with pockets, I noted gratefully) and a pale blue t-shirt.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” I asked. “Should I leave my underwear on?”
“Up to you,” she replied, donning a similar ensemble, although her skirt was beige and her t-shirt was green. “I’m gonna ditch my bra, though.”
“Good idea. But why are we the only ones here?” I persisted.
She popped her head through the neck opening of the shirt and shrugged. “Maybe no one else is coming. Maybe they couldn’t get off work. Ready?”
Telling Shannon about the incident just now suddenly seemed less important than getting into that sweat lodge. I finished stuffing my clothes into the cubby. “Sure. Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 3
Dusk had deepened while we changed clothes, and the temperature had dropped at least another ten degrees with the setting of the sun behind the mountains. I crossed my arms tightly and hurried ahead of Shannon, willing myself not to feel the cold seeping up from the bare earth through my bare feet.
Looks Far Guzmán stopped us at the fire pit. The flames had burned down, but the remaining coals gave off waves of fierce heat. Shannon and I stretched our hands toward them gratefully.
The old man had stripped to the waist; I tried not to stare at firelight playing on the ropy muscle under his slack flesh. He still wore the feathered headpiece, but he had braided his hair in a single queue down the back. “Has either of you experienced a sweat before?” he asked us. I shook my head; Shannon nodded hers.
I looked at her, surprised. “When was this?”
“Remember when I went to Sedona last summer? That’s how I knew about the fasting, and the clothing we’re supposed to wear.”
“I know the man in Sedona who conducts those sweats. He is not Indian, and his sweats are a little different than what we do here,” Mr. Guzmán told Shannon. “Not very different. He is more careful to follow the traditional ways than most white men. But our sweat today will be a little different.
“The sweat is a sacred rite to the Indian,” he continued. “Discomfort is part of the rite, but extreme discomfort is not necessary for it to be beneficial. If you begin to feel overcome by the heat, lift the bottom of the tent and bend over, so that your face is in the draft. I will pass around a cup of water from time to time; please drink some, to avoid dehydration.
“One more thing,” he said. “A sweat occurs in sacred time, but it is not conducted in silence. I will tell some stories and ask some questions, and I will sing from time to time. I encourage you to respond to the questions and to sing with me. Part of being a medicine man is to keep each of you safe while the sweat is underway. Your responses will help me.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “If we’re delirious, our responses won’t make any sense, and if we’re unconscious, we won’t be able to respond at all.”
“Yes,” Mr. Guzmán said. “Now we are ready to begin.”
I had noticed Joseph emerge from the sweat lodge while the old man was speaking. Now he stood beside his grandfather. He too had changed clothes; he had traded his jeans for a pair of gym shorts, and like his grandfather, he was shirtless. The men were similar in build, with muscled arms and shoulders, but Joseph was a little taller and a little more slender. His skin tone was bronze and his features were strongly Native American – the classic high cheekbones and sharply defined nose. But in the firelight, his hair appeared to be a shade lighter than the usual raven-wing black. He had pulled it back in a ponytail but not braided it, and it curled under on the end.
Joseph gestured to the fire tender. The man rose and joined the circle between Shannon and me. He stuck out his hand. “George Lofton,” he introduced himself.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking hands. “Naomi Witherspoon. This is Shannon McDonough.” He shook hands with Shannon as well. He was about the same age as Joseph and about the same height as the old man, but built meatier than either of them, with a slight paunch.
Our small group fell silent for a few moments. Then Looks Far Guzmán spoke. Raising his hands toward the vast plain behind me, he sang a few words in what I assumed was Ute. “He’s calling the Spirits of the Four Directions, asking them to protect us during the sweat,” George informed us in a whisper. Still singing, the medicine man turned toward the road we had come in on, which lay south of where we stood. And so on – facing the escarpment to the west; then facing past the wickiup to the north; then to the sky; and, crouching, to the earth, both hands flat in the dirt.
After another moment of silence, he lit a bundle of sage that had been placed next to the fire. “I will smudge you, one by one, to purify you,” he said to us, making sure the bundle had caught sufficiently before blowing it out. “You will walk three times around the inside of the lodge before you sit. Then George will begin handing in the stones with this.” He indicated a shovel next to the fire pit. “We will do three sessions, each longer than the last. Following the third session, we will break our fast.” He motioned to his grandson. “Joseph is first. Follow him and do as he does.” The old man then began to sing as he used a feather to waft the sage smoke around his grandson. As Joseph entered the lodge, Shannon stepped up. Then it was my turn. I breathed in the smoke with pleasure as I was smudged – sage is one of my favorite scents. Still singing, the medicine man motioned me toward the lodge flap.
It was pitch dark inside the lodge, and the roof was so low that we were all forced to bend over. I heard Mr. Guzmán come in behind me, and then we began a slow shuffle, three times around the inside perimeter of the lodge. By now, my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the gloom, so I could see when Joseph took a seat on one side of the entrance and picked up a drum. He began to pound it in rhythm as the old man’s song changed. The new song must have been George’s cue; he began to ferry in the glowing rocks on the shovel. When several had been carefully placed in a pit in the middle of the lodge floor, George dropped the flap from the outside. The medicine man sprinkled some herbs on the hot rocks and doused them with several cupfuls of water from a bucket next to the entrance.
What with our body heat, our exertion in the curious parade before we sat, and the glowing rocks in the pit, the temperature in the lodge had begun to rise. The water hissed as it hit the rocks, turning the place into a steam bath. I had progressed from the “glistening” stage to full-bore sweating even before the rocks had been doused with water. Now rivulets ran down the sides of my face and be
tween my breasts. I considered pulling up my skirt a little, just so my shins could get a breath of air, but decided to save that tactic for later, in case I got really hot.
Mr. Guzmán broke off singing and told us the story of Blood Clot Boy, a Ute creation myth. It’s about an old couple who are blessed with a son who is born to them from a clot of buffalo blood. The boy grows fast, and is soon big enough to hunt for his family. He kills a different kind of beast each day and always sends his father out to fetch his kill. After just a few weeks, the boy becomes a man. He leaves his parents, but not before providing them with several dead buffalo and instructing them in how to preserve the meat and hides. He then travels to a nearby village, where an elder identifies the boy as being of the buffalo tribe. The members of the village persuade Blood Clot Boy to stay with them and marry the chief’s daughter, which he does. He also provides the starving tribe with a herd of dead buffalo, just as he had provided for his parents. But then someone says the wrong thing, and Blood Clot Boy runs off to join the buffalo, turning into one as he goes.
“And so the buffalo are sacred to us,” the old man said. “They provided us with nearly everything we needed to survive. We had a good life here, in these mountains, before the white men came.” He paused for a respectful interval. I bit back an urge to apologize. The message had been delivered as a simple fact, devoid of judgment or condemnation. If Looks Far Guzmán were the type to hold a grudge against the white man, I reasoned, Shannon and I would never have been allowed into the lodge.
“Now that you have heard how we got here,” he continued, “tell us how you happen to be here, in Colorado, on this day.”
Shannon went first. “I grew up in Denver, so Colorado is home to me. The mountains are part of me. I don’t think I would be happy living anywhere else. And we’re here at the sweat because Joseph gave me an invitation.” Without speaking, Joseph nodded in acknowledgement.
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