I have been ruminating on the significance of the heart rocks that permeated my vision quest in Death Valley this March.

The heart rocks........

I have been turning over the rocks that I saved from my desert perch in my hands.  Was it to see with my heart?   To be heart centered? To get out of my head?  Was I to heal my broken heart? from love lost? extinguished? lying dormant?  And just now, in the knick of time, in the continuum of my path, so utterly and inexplicably unraveling in the precise moment that it feels most correct, I am handed a book to read that gives clarity and inspiration to the spiritual path that I travel.

The Shaman’s Body is authored by one Arnold Mindell.  I began reading the book last Wednesday for a class I am taking .    On Thursday, I sat down to a meal with my mentor, an elder shaman, I call the “catalyst”.  I shared with him my excitement over the book, and he smiled.   Mindell had been his professor at the Jung Institute many moons ago.   “The catalyst” has been working to help me experience the flow of energy in my hands and feet, allowing vertical energy to run and for me to evolve into all that that he senses I am destined to evolve into.   His words are few, his gaze gentle his appearance in my life quite timely and his sense of humor sublime.

He said he knew we were meant to do some work, some spiritual word, when we kept running into one another quite out of the blue as  it had been four years since we had spent time together.

And there is Mindell’s book, which answers oh so very many questions!    Mindell writes of the red road, the repeated symbol of my last six months.  It appeared as the path on my medicine walk way back in September.   I took note of the color as it echoed the words of my Lakota  teacher, Selo Blackcrow,  who had taught me about the righteous road, the red road, the correct way of conduct.    I was assigned to take a medicine walk, to set my intent for my fall vision quest.  I was to find a place in nature from which to gather direction and inspiration.  I couldn’t think of where to walk.  My friend Jan knew just where I should go.  Jan is gentle, not forceful, nor directive and so when she spoke with such a sense of authority I took note.  I drove my car behind hers, along Arroyo Hondo Trail to a bend in the road across from a sign, which reads Brass Horse Road.  There she parked. We disembarked from our cars, and she pointed to a path of bright red rocks.  There she left me roadside.   I walked this red road to the top of the hill.  The view was awesome, bringing to light the

Red road of my medicine walk

Cerrillos hills upon which I had spent countess hours riding my horse, and the mountain ranges of the Ortiz and mesas beyond.   Ancient Anasazi pit houses surrounded me.   I drew a line in the red rocks between the pinions and the juniper, and crossed the threshold, into the dreamtime, where my intensions were fostered.  After my vision quest, I went to Hawaii, where I lived on the “red road” in the remote lava laden end of the big island of Hawaii.

  The road so named for the red rocks that made up the road before paved.  The red rocks still line the paved path. This Mindell writes that the red road is one and the same as   the path of the shaman, the path of the heart!  Such a person, Mindell writes, leads not a conventional life style.  Rather shamans lead unconventional lives that threaten the status quo, push people’s buttons, and energize the masses.   Is this my path?  Mindell writes that synchronicities are indicators of the path, and the secondary process, the dream body, the double that is our real essence.

Ironically, Mindell devotes an entire chapter to the Path of Heart.  I eagerly devoured each word of the chapter, each page I looked to as a page from a life manual, as it were, to walk the path that has been laid out before me.  And the signs and symbols surround me.  I now live (this week) on property that was a horse farm devoted to  “horse trials” or “eventing.”  Countless cross-country jumps lie dissolving into the ground.  I used to build and design and organize such horse trial courses and manage the barns.     The property adjacent has seven horses that come and knicker at me to come visit them, and stretch their long necks and muzzles in search of the perfect treat.

my new horse neighbors

The pasture is surrounded by enormous anthills reminiscent of those I sat near during my vision quest in Canyon de Chelly.

large ant hill like the ones that surrounded me in canyon de chelly on vision quest

On the garden shed stand protrude two enormous elk antlers, the signature of my power animal guide

Elk antlers on the garden shed nearby

and all this deeply felt physical symbology as I read Mindell’s words, “To find the path of heart –to follow the stream of nature –you need more disciplined awareness that self knowledge.  For the path of heart is simply the path that is easy… In those moments in which you use your second attention (sychronicty in my case), feel your dreaming body and find the Tao, you know that you are on track because where you are working hard or not, you feel you are not using any energy.  Everything happens of its own accord and you seem to be riding a wave on the path of lease resistance.  Though you may be in the midst of a whirlwind, still it is the path of least action…” (P 141) I have given up my personal history (moved, occupation, marital status, how much more radical can it get?), boarded the spiritual cruise liner, and embarked on a journey that my double and dreaming body have coordinated well beyond my conscious mind.

Ten years ago, a Lakota Medicine Man, Selo Blackcrow and his wife Marina literally walked into my kitchen and invited me to his Sundance.

Selo Blackcrow and his wife Marina Estrada Blackcrow

I was hosting a fundraiser for a local green party candidate whose campaign manager,Tom Knoblauch,  had approached me to host the party.  I had nothing to do with the guest list, my home was simply selected as the backdrop to their fundraising dinner.

One of Tom Knoblauch's mandalas

(I was reminded of this, this week as I ran into the former campaign manager who was responsible for the party.   We sat and talked at a local coffee shop.   Tom asked me what I was up to, and I told him I was pursuing my masters in counseling.  He asked about my classes and I told him that I was having to create Mandals for a class in archetypes.  Unknown to me, he was an artist who specialized in Mandalas and that night he emailed me some of his mandalas.

Two days later (yesterday), I ran into him again.   He gave me a mandala calendar (2012) which he hoped would inspire me to make my final mandalas for class.)

Tom Knoblauch's mandala entitled "Skull Candy"

I went to Selo Blackcrows Sundance on the Pine Ridge Reservation in July of 2002.  Selo asked me to drive one of his intiates in my car to the back of his land where, as he put it, he would put him “up on the hill”  for a vision quest.   I saw firsthand the intricate set up and prayers of the Lakota vision quest.  Days later, it was I who drove Selo back to the intiate standing out in the July sun, withered, wide eyed, and full of spirit, to retrieve this intitiate.  We drove back down the hill past a fleeing buck to the inipi (sweat lodge) where we smoked the pipestone chanupa, and I was invited to return to do a vision quest of my own.  Selo, came up ill with prostate cancer the following year and died in March of 2004, and so his invitation was forestalled.  That is until this year…..when I was ready.

(Selo’s apparent involvement in my spiritual path continues.  when I finished my March 2012 vision quest I had prayer ties that needed to be burned and Death Valley prohibits camp fires and sweat lodges in Lakota protocol, the prayer ties must be burned.  A former Sundancer at Selo Blackcrows quite out of the blue invited me to a sweat lodge just four days after I came from ceremony in Death Valley, just making the four day Lakota time restriction  to have the ties burned at a sweat lodge ceremony.  His widow, Marina drove to Canyon de Chelly in September to listen to my recounting of my experience in the canyon as Selo would have, had he still been alive.  She gave me great counsel, and having slept near a dead horse and countless live horses throughout the vision quest, she offered me the name, “she sleeps with (dead) horses”)

Back in 2002 I  found the sundance, sweat lodge, and vision quest interesting much as a bug pierced through its heart and thrust onto a bit of foam board that some entomologist would find interesting.  I was a doubting Thomas infused with a bit of Margaret Mead.

But today in 2012, a decade later, my soul is winning out, experiencing, stretching, and deepening into this full-bodied awakening.   I bought the ticket to this Ferris wheel somewhere in my dreams, and I’m just starting to awaken as the wheel rises to its apex where the view is as expansive and awe inspiring as one could ever hope.  Its not without a certain amount of trepidation, but from where I sit, the view is well worth the climb.

The view from atop the "red road" of arroyo hondo, new mexico

moon shield

Michaabikizi: Objiway word for full moon

We sat in the Sweat Lodge.   Thirteen hoops of copper intersecting comprised the frame of the flower of life, a sacred geometry structure, the underpinnings of our lodges roof.  On top of the frame  lay  two blankets.  One flap served as a doorway, which when opened between rounds breathed in fresh, cool, new air.

There were seven women in this sweat lodge lying under the rising full moon under a cloudless Michigan sky.   Countless rocks well tended by our fire keeper, the grandfathers, breathed in and out, sighing and with it their red embers as they were slid  in the center of our lodge by a metal pronged rake.   Our leader placed the Grandfather stone in the center of the lodge with a set of Elk antlers.   Her assistant then sprinkled dried cedar which emitted a fragrant smoke.  In turn we each named the Grandfather rocks.  We each waved in the smoke and the aroma, and the vibration and the message implicit with each utterance.  Water cascaded over the hot rocks.   Water hissed.  The lodge’s air grew hotter, moist, and oppressive.

“Opeongo” came from my mouth.  I had named grandfather rock after a lake, Lake Opeongo, a lake of my youth.   I had spent seven summers at a girls canoeing camp in Northern Ontario. Opeongo comes from the Algonquian word opeauwingawuk meaning “sandy narrow”.  But it was not the sandy narrows that I recalled. Opeongo is  the largest of the Algonquin Provincial Park Lakes.     I recalled canoeing on her waters.  Wind had grown and ushered in massive waves.  Our canoeing party traveled in two canoes with three in each canoe.  We paddled ferociously and in unison to stave away the headwinds.     It was fortitude and coordination and ultimately endurance that took us from one end of the  lake to the other.

I came back to the present, looking at the circle of women barely perceivable in the dim light of the grandfather rocks glow emanating from the center of the sweat lodge.   I had traveled to Michigan at the invitation of my Objiway spiritual teacher, one who had helped to guide me some five years now.     The sweat lodge was reserved for a select few of her students.  We would gather with a larger group  the next day to learn about the Ojibway’s moon cosmology.

The next morning some fifty of us gathered at a ceremonial grounds for an Objiway Moon teachings and ceremony.  The morning was devoted to learning about the importance of the moon to the Objiway people and more particularly to each of us.   We learned that each of us had been born under a specific phase of the moon based on the year, month, time and day we are born.    I ,for example, was born as the moon waxed, coming close to a full moon.  I was born under what the Ojibway call this the Great Spirit moon or warrior moon.  People born under this moon are prone to being truth seekers.  That is their gift.  Their challenge is that they might be misled.  Born under this moon, I have a proclivity to extroversion, sharing, and creativity, and healing.    My teacher, Megisikwe, offered me the name the moon had given me at birth:  She who yearns to touch truth.

After a morning of shared oral tradition, we were asked to think of something we wished to release into the ceremonial fire in the evening and to fashion a tobacco tie retaining our prayers and intentions which would later be cast into the ceremonial fire.  We were also given time to fashion our own   moon shields.  The moon shields would be incorporated into the song and dance of the moon ceremony to be held under the rising full moon.

Our  Moon shields or Mandalas would be bound by a red dogwood ring, which had been fashioned for us.   We were to take white and black leather and create an orb based upon the phase of the moon we were born under.

The moons phases are a type of sacred geometry, a shape that dictates our spiritual and physical reality, a linking of the two.     I took the leather and cut out a small black crescent to affix to the white orb.   I attached a piece of birch bark a dear friend had given me as an amulet before my fall vision quest in canyon de Chelly, the sacred home of the Navajo people.   On the birch bark she had written:  Follow the morning star….reach between the two worlds.   When Jan had gifted me the birch bark message I had been struck by the birch bark as it captured by seven summers in the Canadian wilds where the birch tree abounds.   In my summers in Canada we had fashioned birch bark medallions into necklaces, it was the one surface or media we could draw upon.   Out in this wilderness we had no art paper, let alone electricity or vehicle.   It had been years since I had laid eyes upon birchbark particularly not in New Mexico where nary one stands.

I also affixed two guinea hen feathers recalling the incessant chatter of the guinea hens on the farm in Kentucky where I had lived many years.  They had acted as sentinels on the farm announcing the arrival of every squirrel, person, or critter that approached.     I  also affixed  a small heart rock to my moon shield.   I had gathered  the heart rock in Death Valley during my March Vision Quest, on of many I had found there.  I added  a small bear token gifted to me on vision quest as well.  I gazed down at the moon shield.  There was ample empty space.   And then it struck me; here in the woodlands of Michigan, I might well find the dogwood blossoms that had been calling to me during the week.  I had two hours free to walk about and gather in the water and the woodlands that so eluded me in my Northern New Mexican home.

I drove down the dirt road, passing Old Dutch colonial barns, tall pine trees, and countless maples.   There were lakes and ponds, mallards overhead and on the lakes.  Acres of Hereford bulls, horses, white four-board fencing, and stationary tractors.   It was an echo of Kentucky, this First Saturday of May, Kentucky Derby Day.  I continued another ¼ mile or so, and saw the dogwood.  It was tall, some forty feet.   Countless four blossomed buds remained.   The blossoms had peaked earlier, on all the edges held a brown ridge, the sign of maturation.

I gathered four dogwood blossoms, and continued up the lane to a long white four-board fence with a Morton Barn standing in the midst.  A tall  black and white Tobiano gelding was munching the sweet green stalks of grass.  I called to him, and he raced to my side, searching for treats, clearly used to sugar or carrots, or bits of apples.   His muzzle searched my hands and arms for hidden treasures but found none.  I giggled and reveled in this gift of a horse in this makeshift Kentucky Derby day.

In the end, I fashioned my Moon Mandala by using sinew to weave the circumference of the moon to the dogwood frame.   I attached, the sacred Megis shell I had brought with me from New Mexico to dangle from the base.  The Megis’s many teeth are said to represent the many (29) senses we each possess.  By running ones fingers against the ridges it is said that the senses come into maturation.  I guided a piece of leather round the hoop, and walked out into the prayer circle.  Flint and steel were struck until a blaze erupted from the firepot.  We dropped our tobacco ties and prayers into the fire, and as the large full moon rose over the pastureland, we sang, and danced and raised our moon shields, calling forth Grandmother Moon’s wisdom of Peace and harmony with all people and all beings.

I reflected on my life, what worked, what didn’t, what I had let go of and what retained.  I thought of my path with the Algonquin Speaking people.  The seeds had been laid many moons ago, under the northern Ontario night skies, I had looked up and sang songs, songs of the Objiway, while seated around a roaring fire, much like I did now.  The moon, the fire, the circle round the fire, all spheres, all phases, all part of the magical mandala of my life.

I thought of how my Mandala began with the phase of the moon I was born under.  The point of origin.   Searching for Truth.  That was my moon.   I giggled to myself.  My sister had always called me Nancy Drew.   Perhaps, now with the newfound  knowledge of the moon I might take time, each day and night to reflect upon Grandmother moon and to consider  where I am in this moment before racing into a phase not yet here.

The next morning I arose, loaded my baggage into my rental car and set out for the Detroit airport, some one hour away.  As I approached on the onramp to the interstate, I slowed to the procession of a truck hauling an enormous antique tractor.   A collector item I wondered.  And then my eyes set on the trailers liscence plate— Ontario Candada, and I laughed at the perfection of it all.

Lake Opeongo

Tractor bound for Ontario Canada home to the Ojibway people

I’m getting closer to an appreciation for this thing called Mandala.   It began to click in with me during my reading in Cunningham’s “The Mandala Book” discussion of Radial “exploding from the center” and a photo of a light house on the following page (100)– the light house beams searching, reaching out to illuminate the distant shores and sea-faring vessels.  The photo was remnicient of the image spawned by a recent guided  meditation in which I was guided to visualize a horizon.

The horizon that emerged  was the  summit of Telescope Peak, a snow clad mountain peak rising  some 11,000 feet.above my hill-top  Vision Quest spot in Death Valley,   My vision quest spot became my new found home, my beginning, my cliff top retreat, surrounded by tobacco ties, market by a woven blue and gray and black rug, the  bundles  fashioned of sacred tobacco, each bundle bound together and holding a sacred prayer and/or intention, marking the perimeter of my vision quest spot, where I was to sleep and sit and pray and meditate for four days and four nights.  No food, no bed, no company save the azure sky during the day and star studded night filled skies, rocks, and wind…..

The prayer ties created a boundary of yellow and red, and black, and white, an enclosure a tobacco bound mandala from which I had a vantage point, a new beginning, a starting point!

Telescope Peak loomed large in my meditation and upon its summit rose a small raised top, much like a spray paint can,  —-but what came forth was not paint from the nozzle, but light, like a mountain top light house, spraying light and energy in a 360 degree circle from which I could see.  This new sight I still had access to and was given me heightened third eye vision, improved balance during my yoga practice so much so that My Yoga teacher had commented on my improved practice.

This place, this viewpoint or vantage point I now name my desert mandala.

After my meditation, I sketched the rays of light emanating from Telescope Peak.   Funny that I was seeing from a summit called Telescope on a Vision Quest I thought.

Yesterday, I was heuristically leaning into my Vision quest as I heard the lyrics pour from my car’s radio…………..

“And everything around her is a silver pool of light.  The people who surround her feel the benefit of it….

Suddenly I see, suddenly I see, This is what I wanna be, Suddenly I see, Suddenly I see, why the hell it means so much to me.  I feel like walking the world.”

The tune was familiar from the soundtrack of The Devil Wears Prada, a film I particularly liked but had never listened to the actual lyrics.  Thankfully,  the disc jockey came on to name the song, ‘SUDDENLY I SEE”.  I grabbed a pen and jotted down the name.   How perfect the lyrics for a vision quest, how perfect for my research project of a Heuristic approach to my vision quest.

I returned home later after class.  I searched itunes for SUDDENLY I SEE, the artist was listed as..KT Tunstall and Suddenly I see is track 9 from the album entitled EYE TO THE TELESCOPE.

Wow I thought. TELESCOPE AS IN TELESCOPE PEAK! This Mandala thing is an expression, a visual expression of the energy that comes from a starting point, a point of origin.  My new found vantage point was powerfully charged with my passion, my vision, my energy, my connection to all that is and all that I could see.  The synchronicity is yet another expression, a type of energetic mandala, a repeated pattern spawned from the point of origin.

And then my eyes glanced at my Mandala text on my desk.  THE MANDALA BOOK, Lori Bailey, Cunningham.   And in much smaller letters running perpendicular to the Title were the four words.  PATTERNS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Patterns of the Universe, hmmmmm, I thought, that’s what I see as synchronicity—visual patterns of the universe.

Shamanic Journeying is a form of  spiritual transportation or a kind of  an inward journey to the lower, middle, and upper worlds where archetypes live.  For  forty- thousand years, shamans have lead others in this process of traveling to the inner worlds of the psyche, traveling through lower, middle, and upper worlds, gaining insight into knowledge.   To begin, the shaman asks the journeyer to travel to the lower world through a literal hole in the ground or through the roots of the tree, or through a portal that calls to them.  This  point or transport point is called the  departure point.     The journey is begun with the setting of an intention, and then the constant drumming or use of a rattle to conjure up the theta brain wave patterns so necessary to traverse in this internal space.

During an initiate’s first journey the shaman often calls for the intention of finding the initiate’s power animal, a guide that throughout a person’s life acts as a guide, teacher and protector as one travels through the lower and upper worlds of the journey. During my first journey I sat cross legged on a cushion on the floor, smelling the sweet smell of sage and juniper smoke emanating from an abalone shell.  The drum sounded a strong and solid sound, and then an indigenous whistle bristled into the circle–  I  closed my eyes and placed both hands on the handwritten intention I had established on my journal’s pages:  Dear ones, sacred one’s I request a journey to the lower world to meet my power animal and to learn of his/her gifts for me, and to have my boundaries strenghtened, blessed be……..

I found my point of departure, a real place in my childhood a 8 x 6 open well lined with old worn rocks, and a moss carpet that made the old tree and forrest that surrounded me a place of magic.  But I could travel down, down, down, just as Alice did in the woods of her British adventure into Wonderland.   And I found a wonderland too.

My translucent spirit body traversed the road i grew up on floating above the macadam road and  into the woods by my childhood home, before settling down on the moss covered banks of the ancient well .   It was a place that had worried my father, afraid that I would fall down into the dark distance below.   But  this well in the glade on the greenest of moss carpets  was a place that had always compelled me to draw near.   I relished in the   touch of the  moss and relished the mystery of the bottom of the well in this well hidden bit of woodland.

My spirit body floated over decades worth of leaves  of the forest floor.  I passed woodland trees  of oak, maple, and poplar, flew by vines, and hovered over rock outcroppings as ancient as the glacier that formed this seemingly miniature mountain range.  These were the Alps of my childhood that I had climbed upon innumerable times . My spirit body doubled back and floated over the well opening, and descended down, down down into the dark tunnel.

The downward descent was smooth and mysterious.  I was mysteriously carried through a dark tunnel devoid of even the tiniest hint of light.   Surprisingly I had no fear here in this  world, it was a warm and dark place in mother earths  under belly.  I smelled the must of the tunnel’s earthen walls throughout the descent.   At the bottom of the tunnel light rose and I was landed softly on the bright green fields of what appeared to be an English countryside of the lower world.  Verdant fields surrounded me for acres.

I traveled out across the pastures and passed over a deeply cut but narrow stream and followed its undulating path to its source a spring fed pond which i dove into.   Surprisingly a dolphin appeared, swimming up to face me eye to eye, the eyes soft and inviting, but but surprise i felt hooves pressing softly on my back along with a velvetly set of antlers, I turned to find the soft muzzle of an elk now drinking at the waters edge.   I turned back toward the dolphin hoping to hitch a ride on its powerful flippers, but  the elk entered the water and nudged me again quite gently underwater.  The elk circled back and offered offered me a seat astride its back.   The gentle stregth and grace and persistence hinted at what this beautiful creatrue would teach me:  Grace under fire, stamina for the long haul, gentlessness, and stregth in the face of adversity, and courage.

The fields of the english country side with its perfect pond morphed into the Kentucky Fescue of my former Kentucky farmland and pond where elk had swam in my years there.  My power elk propped me up on a round boulder by the pond’s edge grown warm by the mid afternoon sun.   In time we traveled through a wooded path to reach my now vacant home in a state of misuse and disrepair.  And from its crown grew a wreath of golden leaves, spiraling and rising and enveloping the entire house, growing like a wild set of vines upward turning, turning like a tornado and we rose higher to the upper world.

And it was quiet, and dark,  and a large bear appeared on a lake shore.  The bear approached us and stood grisly like ferrocious with its claws outstretched and teeth barred.   My Elk struck the bear back with his hard hoobes and the bear disappered. A boundary breached, my elk had protected me from injury.  The tension dissolved  and  we entered the cool water, swimming in an enormous lake in what looked to be a Canadian wilderness.  In the distance to the north stood majestic dark blue mountains illuminated obliquely from northern lights in the far distance.   I held on to the withers of my swimming elk as we swam toward the flames of a campfire.  The lake waters were calm, cool, numinous.     We swam to a beach head coming closer and closer to the sound of a drum emmanatint from a camfire burning on the shore.     As we grew closer I saw the outline of an older native man.  His long gray hair flowed over his red blanket that covered his shoulders.  In his left hand he held a round shallow drum that he struck in a constant rhtym.   As we approached the bank  a  several tribal members gathered with the medicine man and his elderly wife around the fire.   No words were spoken.   My elk sat behind the  by the fire  drying his wet coat.

I sat and closed my eyes as my elk had telepathically called me to do.  His thoughts told me to grow quiet and listen to the sounds of the waves upon the lakes shores.   These were the ways of boundaries he said.   The waves could be gentle to establish boundaries gently by pushing against the shore and releasing.  Tidal waves and larger waves were only necessary in extreme cases as it had been with the Grizzly bear on attack.

He said, the movement of the waves were the way that I should define my earthly boundaries with people.   He said, a tidal wave was not necessary, he pointed to the gentle sound of the wave pressing upon the shore and then moving off.  This was the strength and grace I could mimic when life handed me challenging people and or circumstances.

And the drum beats slowed down, and I traveled with my elk through worlds and space back to the mossy banks of my stone well.  I opened my eyes to a cirlce of a shaman and a drum bringing with me the wisdom of my elk and the wonder of having traveled so very far in such a short time.

Three days after meeting my elk, I traveled to Santa Fe’s Traveler’s market to bring back a necklace I had bought there a year previously for repairs.  In the glass case sat a beautiful pair of earrings with what appeared to be teeth, Elk’s teeth.  I asked the artist, and she replied that yes they were Elk’s teeth, the last pair derived from a shamanic medicine necklace she had taken apart.

I now wear the elk’s teeth earrings as a reminder to pace myself, to push against the shore with the skill and grace of a calm northern lake, to stay in the moment  and to stay poised to push off with alacrity when the bull elk bugles…..

 

Kava in a coconut cup

Okay universe, I give up, I get that life is magical and that my  notion of a Newtonian sense of reality is simply, well, wrong.

Let’s re-wind to December and January.   Each Wednesday as the Hawaiian Sun was sinking over the sea, my friend Jenn would pick me up on her amazing scooter and we would breezily slide down the Red Road to Kalapana, the Kava Bar where Hawaiian men’s voices were raised to the Ukulele, where coconut shell cups of Kava were raised by our sun soaked hands, and where Jenn and I saw the  last rays of sun as it set over lava fields.   As  the sun sank into the waves and kava sank in our stomach’s Pele’s lava’s glow intensified and traversed the volcano toward the sea we sat by,  the very same volcano that had shut down the red road at the spot we now gathered at, some forty years prior.  We were literally sipping and sitting at the end of the red road running from two towns that had been covered by lava in the last fifty years, a twelve mile reprieve of lava flow, well at least for now…..

Those Wednesday nights at the Kava Bar were full of song, and talk, and beauty and soul. The Kava is the drink of the Shaman, the Kahuna of Hawaii even to this day.  It is not merely a beverage, it is a sacred rite and is credited for bringing one’s mental clarity and soulful presence into view.  It is the drink of reconciliation, communication, treaty making, and communing with community.   It is grown on three places on earth, one being the rainy side of Hawaii.

To commemorate these weekly kava adventures, my friend Jenn and I have committed to continue our Wednesday night  at the Kalapana Kava bar despite the fact we have flown back to our not so sun soaked spots back home.  We have committed to continuing our Wednesday nights at the Kava bar by talking over skype from our north American mainland perches from Vancouver, Canada to New Mexico communing: minus the kava, minus the lava, minus the tropical breeze….

Kava Bar Kalapana

Finca Vigia

Hemingway's writing tower

Hemingway with Fidel

My Heart Will Go On lyrics
Songwriters: Horner, James; Jennings, Will;

Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

Love can touch us one time
And last for a lifetime
And never let go till we’re gone

I awoke with the recognition that I had been back on the farm.   The horses, the donkeys, zebras, camels, goats, the peacocks, the endless people and buildings and barns.  The dream had been lengthy and epic and I awoke with the sense that I had just been walking  on wet kentucky farmland.

But my outstretched arms were grabbing at high altitude air.   My husband Henrique had been very much alive in the dream had been gone for several years now.   Had it been a visitation dream?  I wasn’t sure.  I walked downstairs and headed for the teapot, filling it with water and waiting for the sound of boiling water.

I read and wrote for a couple of hours and returned to the teapot for reinforcement and noticed two calls had come in the last hour unnoticed as the ringer was in the off position.   I listened to the message.   It was the sound of a kind woman, somehow in need of new dog training and exercise.   I rarely walked dogs, it had been the bedrock of my early days as a trainer, but agility, scent, and basic obedience work had superseded my repertoire.

I called the woman.  She had a large dog, a young jubilant dog in need of exercise and training.  She was flexible and easy to talk to.   I liked her and the sound of the dog.   We made arrangements for a training plan.  ”what is his name” I queried…..”Hemingway”, came the answer.

Pregnant pause.

It was yet another tilt your head back and laugh kind of days.   “Really, I love that name.” I finally responded.  My former husband knew Hemingway, in fact we had visited his former home in Cuba.  Finca Vigia was a beautiful building, a home constructed in 1886 just ten miles from Havanna proper.   Henrique had interviewed Hemingway here amidst his high tower where he stood and wrote due to an injury he has sustained on one of his elaborate hunting trips.

Monday will be the beginning of a five day journey with  another Hemingway.   My Hemingway is four legged but is up for an adventure and I am sure it will be an epic adventure minus the bullfights, the big guns, and Spanish American War scenery, but that will be fine.

I salute Hemingway and dear, dear Henrique who seems to hover nearby and smile over me in my dreams and in my days.

Hemingway reclining with a cohiba cigar a la Henrique

Hemingway

February 2, 2011 was ground hog’s day as well as a couple of other notable holidays I was soon to learn about.   I awoke, placed my Chanupah (native american ceremonial pipe)  in my car along with my dry-cleaning, athletic  bag, and books to study later in the day.  My Chanupah would be traveling with me to Death Valley for my upcoming Vision Quest in March.   It had become clogged and needed repair.    My all- wheel -drive car safely transported along the dirt roads that I live off, undulating, curving, and passing by juniper, pinion, mesas, adobe houses, and coyote fencing and blue mountain ridges in the distance.   Just as I pulled onto the macadam, my cell phone rang.   It was a  medicine woman I knew offering me sacred Kinnick-Kinnick (a mixture of Bear Berry, Mullen, Red willow bark, osha root, and yerba Santa) which is  used as a traditional ceremonial smoking mix.   I told her that I would love to have some sacred Kinnick-kinnick, and that it was funny that she had called as my Chanupah (sacred pipe) was in the car for me for a ride to a local Lakota Sundancer who I was hoping would help me to fix it.  The stem had become clogged.

The medicine woman urged me to come to her home so that she could fix it, and so I did noting that her timing was impeccable as I had not yet turned in the opposite direction.   I reached her home where she and another medicine woman was by chance as her schedule had changed last minute.    They both looked over my chanupah.  ”Ernest” as was the pipes name,  was dissected, cleaned, and clogged and prepared for smoking.

We held a sacred circle, sharing each others thoughts and observations.   I spoke of some challenges I was dealing with and these wise women gave me their love and instruction, and then we shared the chanupah, left hand outstretched, smoke billowing from the sacred chamber.  They suggested I relinquish all that does not serve me, to retain the lessons of life’s challenges, and to understand that I am a woman of authority.

We discussed the significance our spontaneous gathering on this the second of February, the mid point between the winter and spring soltices, a day of great significance and power.   The ancient celtic people celebrated this day with fire and festival and called this day  Brigid; the wicca held this day a day of initiation calling the day Imbolc. *

For their generosity I offered to take one of their dogs for a jog.  I went out into the cold with female dog jogging at my side. She was young and inexperienced, often running behind me, or switching sides with the leash pulling me in awkward motion.  Over time our dance improved and  a large red tailed hawk came and circled overhead staying with us for several minutes.    We continued down the dirt roads meandering by cholla,  desert grasses, desert jays, and heard the  high cawing ravens  under the blue and graying sky.   Within forty minutes we had finished our jog.   I had my iPhone and earphones plugged in, grateful for the distracting music for the remainder of our one mile walk.

I checked my emails.  There was one email from a lovely woman who had performed my marriage ceremony asking when I was available and if I was ever in her neighborhood.    I had been jogging and was now walking in her neighborhood.  I leaned my head back and laughed at the sky.

I continued on my walk with the dog  to the house.  Just before I reached the door, my iPhone chimed a new email.   It was from my ex.  He was  far, far away in the city of our honeymoon and had just been to a museum that we had visited some 9 years previously suddenly realizing he had been there before.   He said he was staying directly across the street.   I smiled at the synchronicity.

I thought of the intentions I had just sent to my vision quest leader:

*(Wickpedia states: Imbolc as one of four “fire festivals”, which make up half of the eight holidays (or “sabbats”), of the wheel of the year. Imbolc is defined as a cross-quarter day, midway between the winter solstice (Yule) and the spring equinox (Ostara). The precise astrological midpoint in the Northern hemisphere is when the sun reaches fifteen degrees of Aquarius. In the Southern hemisphere, if celebrated as the beginning of local Spring, the date is the midpoint of Leo. Sometimes the festival is referred to as “Brigid”.)

Waimea looking toward Sea

Facing Backwards, I see the past, our nation, lost our– sovereignty gone, our lands gone– all traded for the promise of progress what would they say….what can we say?  Facing the future I see hope, hope that we will survive hope that we will prosper hope that once again we will reap the blessings of they magical land for without hope i cannot live  Remember the past but do not dwell there: face the future where all our hopes stand.  Cry for the gods, cry for the people, cry for the land that was taken away and in yet you will find Hawaii    (from Israel “iz Kamakawiwio ‘ole—album Facing Future)

I awoke uncharacteristically early,at 5am, and couldn’t get back into sweep slumber.   I  turned on the television and watched a film entitled Princess Ka’iulani.

Princess Ka'iulani

The princess  was Hawaii’s last princess  who died in the aftermath of Hawaii’s  fall from Independence.   The film concludes that she died from a broken heart due to her country’s loss of sovereignty.    Others attribute her death to a cold she got while swimming on the big island of Hawaii followed  by taking a horse back ride in the mountains of Hawai’i Island during a rain storm.  She came down with pneumonia and died at the age of 23.

Her journey from Hawaii’s black shores to mountain ridges took me back to my last journey on the big Island of Hawaii– to Waimea –a ranching community in the  Kohala  Mountains of the Big Island some 2,600 feet above sea level.    Waimea is where some 10,000 Hawaiians once lived and farmed the land.  By 1820 their numbers had dwindled to a mere 2,000.     Waimea is where  I supposed the princess had taken her fateful horse ride.   Waimea’s tall  pine trees stand, with the verdant pastures, overlooking the ocean some sixty kilometers away.

It was new years day.  I  had stopped at mile marker 51 which seemed poetic as I had just reached  51  just two days previous.   There, in the rain, three noble horses trotted toward me, one, then another, the most timid coming up last accepting my outstretched hands.   I faced my past as I stroked their soft muzzles, thinking back to the green fescue fields of my horse farm in Kentucky.

New year’s day morning I had walked along the sacred shores of the Waipi’o Valley just an hours drive away.  Waipi’o Valley is  nestled at the end of route 240, cliffs look down upon the  Lo’i and Taro fields of the few family farms that remain there.   The history is obscured by the harrowing descent of the road best traversed on foot and by the tidal waves that washed away much of the evidence of its profound spiritual history.

My sneakers slid on the steep road from the early morning showers.  It was a long and precipitous walk, each step bringing me closer to the verdant valley floor bringing the horses, stream, black shores closer to me still.    Waipi’o has been called the Valley of the Kings. Waipi’o  was the home to the ancient royal Hawaiian chiefs as well as several heiau (temples) and pu’uhonua or place of refuge.  The tsunami of 1946 washed away most of the homes that stood there,  but surprisingly  the violent waves did not destroy the now well hidden temples.  The large expanse of black sand beach is where I imagined the princess had taken her last swim.

I walked for an hour passing grazing horses, poi and taro patches, trees, vines and flowers bursting forth in all directions.   As I reached the valley floor, I walked under the huge canopy of trees along the volcanic soil to the black beach.  A few local surfers had made the descent before me in their four wheel drive vehicles and were bringing in the new years day with grace, harmony, and waves.   A fire was burning surrounded by large lava rocks.     I sat and took in the surfers and the surf and gazed at the enormous waterfall in the distance, water cascading in torrents, down, down the cliffs of Hawi toward the green ground below.   Black and Green and Blue.

I continued to walk under the trees, on their dead balsam paths below the pines.   Signs and large volcanic rock marked sacred burial grounds that  hold  ancient  bones.

This hallowed area of Hawaii is the Hawaii  that Princess Ka’iulani sought to protect from the greedy and disruptive grasps of capitalism–a Hawaii where native peole farmed and still farm  their ancient Tarot while guarding  the pine groves, and sacred graves, waterfalls, and black pristine beaches.     In Waipi’o I saw  the past while I faced forward into the future of 2012……

The heart of the Waipi'o Valley

Jen on her scooter going down the Red Road sporting Pele t-shirt

A month ago I was milling about the Farmer’s Market in Kalapana.  It was a Wednesday night and the sun had set over the lava fields and the ocean that still roared in the not so far distance.  The lull of the ukelele and the Uncle’s band’s rising chorus did nothing to dispel the magic of the sultry breeze.   The kava juice I was sipping from a coconut shell was having its way with me and added to the allure of this most   festive if not magical night.   My friend Jen and I took to talking to an artist from Hollywood, a former scenic painter who had taken this bohemian end of the island and claimed it as his home.  He had some painted t-shirts for sale.  They proclaimed  Pele on their backside, with Nike on the front.  I liked his  t-shirts,  typically sported Nike official sports ware, but somewhere within resisted purchasing a custom made t-shirt emblazoned with Nike across its front.

And so I told the artist what my father had always said.  ”i’m not paying izod to advertise their shirts.  They should pay me!”  And so he avoided the alligator t-shirts.

“Nike is a Greek Goddess, just as Pele is the Hawaiian Goddess of the Volcano” the artist defended.   How had this bit of information eluded me all these years?  Nike is the Greek goddess of Victory.  Hmmmmmm.  I am half Greek, maybe that was why I leaned toward Nike ware………  And so my friend Jen and I now have matching Nike/Pele T-shirts, one which you can see on her scooter shot  (as seen above with the small letters PELE) as she speeds down the Kalapana highway (aka red road) keeping the Greek/Hawaain Goddess alive in my absence.

But even as my feet have left the Great Green island, so my spirit has remained.  Pele sends me her motivational goddess energy even here among the desert crags of New Mexico as only a molton  lava can… finding the little fissures and cracks in which to slide…

And so on  Friday, when  I misplaced my running/biking glasses and so I drove down to the sporting goods store.   I spoke with a saleswoman about sunglasses, running, swimming/biking, all those aerobic activities I enjoy.   She handed me her card.  She is a triathlete who coaches women and puts together training program.  I had been feeling the allure of returning to my sprint triathlon past.   No longer are the 1/2 marathon’s pulling me forward, too long, too hard on the body….but sprint triathlon’s are great cross training with a mere 3.1 mile run/12-15 mile bike, and 16 lengths in the pool.  Why not.

I told her I was interested in working with her.  And then she let it drop that she had just qualified for the Kona Ironman slated for October.   Wow.   I remembered seeing some of the iron men athletes biking in the aftermath of the competition when I made it to Kona for the first time last October.    I left the store, and headed home.  Once home, I made my way into the kitchen and there lying in plain sight were my misplaced sunglasses on the kitchen table.  I had spend one full half hour frantically searching for them before giving up and heading to the store.   Hmmmmm.   Was this the handiwork of the dynamic duo Pele and Nike?

On Saturday, during a break for a weekend seminar,  i made my way to the fashion TJMAX in search of an insulated lunch box. I didn’t find a lunch box but I did find   two horrible bags of “KONA coffee” (I failed to recognize it was chocolate macadamia nut flavored, ughhhh) and the perfect colored Yoga Mat.   When I hit the registers the label came into view.  Wai Lana Yoga and Pilate Mat.   I laughed audibly.  Wai Lana was the name my Hawaiian studies instructor at the retreat center in Hawaii.  The photo on the yoga mat featured Wai Lana as an Hawaiian Goddess standing on one leg stretching outward toward the Hawaiian Ocean with leas on ankles, headband, and dangling down from her neck.   I had to laugh, here was a Pele stylized Nike.  The perfect mat for me!

The next day I met with my new Kona bound triathlete coach.    She filmed me on the treadmill, pointed out some key flaws and some areas of strength, had me do some planks on the yoga balls, jump rope for the first time since grade school (its much harder now), and set out a month long training plan.   Since then I’ve biked and run.

No doubt, the five weeks at sea level have set me and my mitochrondia back from our previous 7000 feet above sea level fitness level.  Truth is, I’m at the bottom of the hill.   But then again, I’ve walked up an ever higher hill.  14,000 foot Mauna Kea, little over a month ago, I made the summitt up the nations highest volcano, climbing up through the clouds and up the peak.  It was a steady uphill climb which I was reminded of last week when my friend Patty sent me a photo of my ascent from a distance (see below).

So, being the Greek gal that I am, I embrace the Nike styled climb toward victory. I aspire to take flight and grow wings.   One step in front of the other, with the help of my friends here on land, and the Goddesses of Greece and Hawaii.   You don’t have to be the FTD man to hold flowers and take flight……………………you just have to have an affinity for the Goddess Nike and sport the leas of Madame Pele.

climbing mauna kea that's me second to last

wai lana pulling a pose

Nike, Greek Goddess of Victory, she's lost her head but not her nerve