The wind howled, the lightning struck innumerable times. I walked down the steep staircase into my living room with pipe stone feldspar colored floors. The Rain had gathered enough momentum to hop across some three feet across my pipe stone colored floors to the Tibetan rug now soaked across a three-foot swath. I closed the window, picked up a small flashlight for my return trip up the stairs.
Gabrielle followed Penny Jane and I up the stairs to my garret styled bedroom. I read until the lights flickered them turned off. In the darkness I reflected upon the timing of this storm on the eve of Santa Fe’s world renowned Indian Market. I thought to the countless white booths that must be whistling in the wind protecting contemporary Native American Artisan’s handiwork and artwork within. The lights returned and then quit once more.
I sank into my down filled pillow with my dog’s breath joining mine for a summer night’s slumber.
Upon awaking I made my way down the stairs to let the dogs out, crept to the kitchen to make tea and checked my cell phone. Two messages during the previous night’s antics. One from the Subaru dealership returning my request for service prior to taking the trip out to the Navajo Reservation for my upcoming ceremony, and another from Selo Black Crow’s widow Marina. She was providing me much needed instruction as to how to take care of my Chanupa and urging me to return her call.
It was too early to call her in Arizona and I had to take the dogs out for their morning hike prior to making my way out to the barn for my therapeutic riding instruction. A six-year-old autistic boy with an astute eye rode astride a piebald gelding. He counted horses, he counted and announced cactus. He spied and announced birds and planes overhead. He made room for my human conversation and joined me for a moment and diverged into his world of patterns. He quieted as the horse’s path continued. 50 minutes later he dismounted with my help. He allowed me to touch his body, release his hard hat, and walked a repetitive pattern in the dirt next to the horse pen. It was undulating and repeating. He had completely rejoined his own private Idaho.
Another boy, this time much older came to ride a slow moving gray horse. I was astride a slow chestnut gelding who had in height was he lacked in alacrity. We rode together for a while until the Gray’s movement halted. The rider had lost focus and his head dipped down to the ground. A waking sleep with a restful expression as sure fire to stop the horse as pulling the reigns in.
The director of the therapeutic riding program came to join us on a walk along the long dirt road. He spoke of life, spiritual connection interspersed with a joke or two. He placed emphasis on meditation in these the most volatile of times. He encouraged me to stay on my path to stay grounded and connected to my soul and quite miraculously our youthful rider rode beautifully forward throughout the next twenty minutes, and our journey was complete.
I left the barn headed home for a quick shower, lunch and a trip to see my dear friend and soul sister Tash sing on the Santa Fe Plaza with her partner Elena; Maori and Navajo side by side. I sat next to her beautiful niece Nazhoni, her sister, and brother in law, Aunt, Mother, and traditional Navajo Grandmother , clad in a floor length skirt, hair bound and drawn back traditionally and wrapped in a gauzed white scarf. My friend Jill, a founder of an assistance Dog Training organization joined our party with a little chocolate Lab named Sante just as Tash and Elena poised to begin performing.
The Navajo and English lyrics came out clear across the speakers. Tash’s heart rang through her words, her song, and her essence. Her Grandmother had only come to this white man’s city of Santa Fe, only once twenty years prior for Tash’s birthday. Tash had come such a long way, allowing her spirit to gain ground over the last ten years. She radiated out from the center of Santa Fe honoring her spirit and her Dine people. The very people who would be welcoming me into their canyon in just two weeks.
I made my way back to my car with Jill and Santé by my side. We parted ways, and I headed up Paseo de Peralta realizing that Indian Market Traffic made what was typically an expedient route a slow one. The dark clouds were hovering once again. I thought of little Penny Jane home alone without me, and I felt compelled to cut my trip short.
I pulled an illegal u-turn and headed toward Guadalupe. At the light, I decided to call back Marina for instruction on preparing my Chanupa for ceremony. Surprisingly she answered. I was accustomed to an interminable series of phone tag messages followed by communication lulls. I told her I was going to gain some purification instructions and Chanupa ceremony with my mentor Megisikwe who had studied under an Ojibway medicine woman for twenty-five years. I heard the relief in Marina’s voice.
Marina asked if I had wrapped the two pieces of the Chanupa. I replied that I had. She said it should be red felt, which I could find at a fabric store. My car stopped behind the car in front of me pausing for the light. In that instant I turned my head toward the right toward the CVS pharmacy and spied a brand new fabric store! Here was the magic again. The divine synchronicity that was as intoxicating and as alluring as anything I had experienced in my life was alive in the process of readying me for the sacred Vision Quest.
I excitedly shared this discovery with Marina in this incredible moment and while still on the phone with Marina, I walked into the Fabric store nestled next to Dulce a popular gelato/sweets café. With fifteen minutes left until closing, the two white women pulled the swatch of cherry red felt on sale and measured out the specifications communicated to me via Marina ½ yard by a yard should be more than enough.
I left the store still talking to Marina excitedly about the magical process that this Vision Quest seemed to spawn and headed home toward my pipe stone colored floors and Chanupa perched on my mantle.
Marina shared her knowledge of the Lakota preparation of the Vision Quest. My memory of Mark’s sacred spot on the pine covered bluff on Wamblee South Dakota on Selo’s sacred land. In the Lakota way a square is fashioned and outlined by a long strand of prayer ties, little red, white, and other colored bundles of tobacco. A “gate” or 3 foot stretch of prayer tie could be moved to open and close should the initiate need to leave the sacred space to relieve themselves. On each of the four corners of the square are the Prayer Robes, Chock Cherry Stems supporting a fistful of tobacco wrapped in black white red and Yellow cotton fabric, two of which also support purple and blue cotton bound tobacco balls. Sage covers the ground where Mark had rested. Green cotton bound ball rests on the altar made of pure earth hoisted to the earth’s surface at the mouth of gofer hills. Marina urged me to make prayer robes and place them on the ground given the absence of Chokecherries in the area. She reminded me to focus on intent and that each time I bound the tobacco in the multi colored cotton swatches that I was to smudge the fabric and to get white cotton strings to tie each robe.
Marina reviewed with me her knowledge and preparation of the Chanupa. The stem was considered “male”, the bowl “female”. She reminded me not to call the Chanupa a Pipe. She said that Selo and Wallace Black Elk had said, “Only plumbers carry pipes, spiritual people carry chanupa.” A canapé is a prayer vessel she continued, its’ a prayer vessel that connects men to earth mother and carries the prayers you load into it. You take a pinch of tobacco and smudge it prior to placing it in the bowl. The sage smolders and smokes in the abalone shell. Kneel down with the two separate pieces, unwrap the pieces from their red felt covers bound by string, smudge each and place them together focusing on your prayers. In the Lakota way you sing and call to the spirits to help you. “The entire ceremony is a prayer,” Marina said. “Your vision quest is about trying to find out what the spirits want you to known and your sacred direction”. The word for vision quest in Lakota translated literally means “Dream Cry”. The spirits may show up in a myriad of ways, from little people on horse back to animals, a touch of an eagle’s wing on your cheek or the crest of your head, a hawk, it differs for all,” she continued.”When you kneel with your pipe at the close of your quest you will put a small pinch of tobacco in the bowl facing west hold the Chanupa to the sky and then down to mother earth. Then move your arm toward the north, east, and south toward father sky and mother earth while still facing the west. Pray and ask for help and direction from the creator and your spirit guides,” she continued.
She reminded me that the Chanupa was my protection in the wilderness that I could pray with it each day without smoking from it until the close of my four days and to keep sage in the bowl prior to filling it with Tobacco. She closed by saying that the Buffalo calf woman had brought the Chanupa to the Lakota people long ago and told them to use the Chanupa as a support when times were hard, as a means of communication directly with the creator.
I made it home, finished my conversation with Marina, told her I loved her and looked forward to seeing her at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly on the other end of my vision quest.
I unfurled the yard of red felt and measured it against the outline of my Chanupa’s two pieces, cut and bound the material and wrapped it with red and white string gathered from a sage bundle I had lying on the mantle. I fed the basin of the Chanupa with the sacred sage and placed both bundles in a burlap bag and added the sweetgrass my mentor Megisikwe had given me when I moved into my pipestone colored floor casita in the wavering hills of Arroyo Hondo.
I drove to Megisikwe house for the anointing of my Chanupa. She specifically reviewed the reverential way in which I was to handled the Chanupa both in the ways of the directions to which I was to hold it, to sage it, and to house it. Megiskwe inspected the Chanupa, prayed on it, saged it, and we smoked it as the thunder and lightening crescendoed out the window. The weather brewed into a frenzy and subsided as we did. I was to leave the Chanupa with them during my travels to visit my parents in New York, and during that time they were going to bury him (it was a male Chanupa) in the New Mexico soil for four days to give him an opportunity to be reborn and coupled with me. During my absence if a name came to me for my Chanupa I should acknowledge its new identity. I would return to Megisikwe and my unnamed Chanupa with seven tobacco ties . In turn she would host a chanupa burying ceremony and upon my return share with me stories from their vision quests. I was to return in one weeks time. I drove home and the rain continued growing in volume and intensity under a moonless sky. It was small and wet, a dog? No, a coyote pup crossing in front of me as my car slowed. I was excited and called Megisikwe to tell her of the coyote pup sighting. ”Youthful energy” she commented and dog energy, just like her red healer pup and her other dog that had surrounded my Chanupa’s anointing at her home.
The Next day I flew to New York’s Albany airport where my father greeted me for a two hour journey along the shores of the Hudson River. My mother stood at the kitchen sink readying the dinner meal. We embraced and ate and reconnected.
The next morning I awoke and dressed for a run. Down Barnard Avenue to Lockerman, on to Ferris, a right to Beechwood. Rascall Flats, Tim McGraw, Gweneth Paltrow crooned as I strode at sea level some twenty minutes into the run I hit my stride, and they burst forth from the woods. Two twins. Two fawns, just like that out across the road and down a house’s driveway on their way to another patch of green. Set against the coyote pup, I felt the path of the vision quest had its hand in nature’s exquisite visitations.
The next day I found myself listening to the pouring rain out the second floor window of the Rheinbeck New York Yoga studio. Yoga music and inscence bounced against the cool rain filled air wafting in the screened in windows. The lights dimmed and we took Shavasina, or corpse pose. Ernest, Ernesto. As if whispered came the name.
I smiled to myself. Here was the pipe’s name that Megisikwe had indicated would come to me and I knew it was my new Chanupa Ernest knocking on my door of consciousness.
I had my father drive me to the Joanne’s fabric in Poughkeepsie New York. I carried seven bolsters of cotton fabric, white red yellow black blue purple green. ½ yard of each for my vision quest and for the prayer ties I was to fashion for Ann and Onde. Thread of red, black and red as well. The clerk asked me what this fabric and thread was for. I responded for my vision quest. The woman looked at me blankly. I gave her a brief explanation. I realized how far I had come in my move out west out across the great divide.
During my four day visit in New York,
the newscasters spoke of nothing else other than the Earthquake and now the impending hurricane bowling down on North Carolina heading up the coast toward New York at the break neck speed of 13mph.
I welcomed my flight to Baltimore and then Albuquerque ahead of the squall. I had returned to my two homes of New York and Kentucky in the last two weeks, tying up spiritual loose ends in preparation for moving forward into this quest of vision. This opportunity to transform and distill my essence.
Saturday morning, I rode with the children in the therapeutic riding program, tended to Gabrielle and Penny Jane, gathered groceries, tobacco and headed home to bathe, meditate and make the tobacco ties for the evenings ceremony.
Out came my abalone shell, sage, red cotton cut into one inch squares, a pinch of organic tobacco, black thread wrapped round and round some 13 times and again, and again and again I held the pinch of tobacco against my heart, listening for the thought, the dream, the impulse of prayer of intention. I prayed for the willingness and patience to listen. I prayed for the ability to hear the subtlety of the wisdom and the essence of spirits. I prayed for the willingness to change and be the change I was called to become.
My Subaru carried me the twelve or so miles along the dirt and pinion clad landscape on my way to Megisikwe’s. She opened her door and welcomed me with her infectious smile and embrace soon followed by the two pups. Out came my tobacco ties inextricably tangled together incapable of separating. I produced a Navajo fashioned turquoise and silver bee pin and antique Navajo silver and turquoise winged creature. These I had purchased at the estate sale where my Chanupa had called me. Megisikwe commented how well they would adorn the leather chanupa pouch that was being fashioned for me. She remarked on how the pieces completely echooed the ornaments on her deerskined chanupa bag.
We sank into conversation of vision quest. Megisikwe shared her experience of her first such quest some thirty years prior. She shared how the Ojibway sipped tea and how the medicine person visited each day, a difference from the Lakota who were fierce in adherence to absence. No fluids, no visits. My quest would lie between the two.
And then Megisikwe shared the vision she had shared with her grandmother Kee. Upon relentless questioning, Megisikwe had told her mentor of the vision of an outstretched hand with a shell, a shell she attributed to the mediterannean, a vision she felt lacked relevance for the Ojibway people, people of the lakes of Canada and northern United States. But grandmother Kee grew quiet and thoughtful.
And then she spoke. The cowry shell that Megiskwe had seen was the shell of the Ojibway people. It came from their creation story. It was the image that the Ojibway people followed in their exodus from their original island home, a home they were banished from for misusing their powers. She told of the ridges of the cowry of Mengis shell, and how her Ojibway people would rub their fingers along the ridges 36 in all. This rubbing worked like a meditation, with the rubbing one could hone one’s senses, the senses beyond the mere mortal five we of modern society acknowledged. Thirty one more senses awaited me, should I accept the invitation, the possibility of seeing or sensing the unexplored senses.
Finished speaking we gathered in the garden. I held the hoe to dig up my pipestone Chanupa Ernest from the garden. He made it out in one piece. The pipe stone had stood up to the test, not harmed or broken as often happens when a Chanupa is not to bond with a human. We left the garden and Megisikwebode me well as I took my absence.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of Penny Jane disemboweling a book of poetry, the binding drawing her canine attention. It was late, CNN was repeating its warning of Hurricane Irene traveling up the coast toward my parents home on the Hudson.
I had an hour run scheduled, but felt a walk to my friends Jan with Gabrielle and Penny Jane first was advised. This lacked logic. It was already an hour later than I typically arose, it would be hot and uncomfortable by the time I ran. I dismissed my sound mind’s advice and made my twenty minute trip to Jan’s. We walked along the sage covered path, penny jane darting across the landscape, Gabrielle on leash kept close. Once at Jans her dog Miguel leapt toward us, play bowing and smiling as only a golden retriever can. There was no sign of Jan despite it now being after 8, an hour later than our typical morning redenvous. Just as I had descided Jan was not to awaken in time she appeared wearing her nightgown and a long sleeved white cotton shirt acting as a robe. She apologized for not arising sooner and asked if I might like a cup of tea while she changed into hiking clothes. Jan produced a cup of Chai and a chair for me at the kitchen table. I took a sip of my Chai tea as my eyes rounded a clump of shells in the center of her table. Cowryshells, some 8 in all strung along a leather strap. And then a stash of dozens of smaller cowry shells in a zip lock plastic bag. Remarkable. Here was the calling card of the Ojibway people. The directional marker for the migration of these woodland people. The Algonquin people who had carved out the canoes that I had paddled in, the portages I had marched along for those seven summers of my childhood in the Canadian Wilds of Algonquin Park.
When Jan returned to the kitchen. I questioned her about the shells. “Jan where are these shells from? What are you doing with them?”
“ I brought the out yesterday to make a belt. They are from West Palm Beach”.
I shared with Jan my story and she immediately absorbed the significance. She handed me one of the shells to take home and promised to make me a necklace of cowry for my upcoming vision quest.
After hiking with Jan and Miguel, Penny Jane and Gabriel I made my way back home. The dogs tired and thirsty and hankering for a nap. And I took off for a 55 minute jog out along the rail trail with views of blue mountains and open skies, the open skies the Dixie chicks had sung of to me during my Kentucky days along the Ohio River. Once home I showered and got a call from my friend Robin. How about a trip to tne New Mexico Museum for a look at the exhibit, “how women made the West”.
My earlier feminist, solidatiry days beckoned. Robin and I walked from her home down toward the plaza. As we reached an Italian restaurant that she thought suitable for a quick bite, Sky walked out of his Native Insturment shop just in time to catch up on my latest readying for my trip to the canyon. I sent him words from Selo Blackcrows widow Marina. He smiled in recognition, that the creators conveyor belt was set in motion as was I.
Robin finished our salads and headed on to the plaza and into the museum. Our male guide took us with our group of 5 to select stops within the exhibit. A beautiful northern Cheyenne dress ornamented with porcupine quills, a lost art he confessed. And cowry shells, four rows of them. The informational signage said it was a Cheyenne dress of deerskin,cowry shell, and porcupine quill circa 1860.
The Cowry’s were beckoning and I was well on my way.
I finished relaying this story to Patty as we drove down the hill from Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest volcano. We drove down the steep hill into the town of Waimea commenting on the beautiful ranches and homes. We continued down to beach 69 where Neil Young reputedly had a oceanfront home which she pointed to. It was a beautiful white sand beach, the day was glorious, sunny blue skies, azure waters of perfection, so clear the translucent fish that flitted by were in clear view.
We lay and soaked up some sunshine and munched on some fruit. In time Patty walked into the water and swam returning toward where I lay on a towel. A Young man was talking to Patty, and held out his palm and handed her a shell. ”Here this is for you,” he said. Patty smiled, then gasped and held out her hand for me to see.
In her hand lay a small Megis shell.
As it turned out Patty had lived on the Michigan Peninsula for ten years the ancestral lands of the Ojibway people. She had attended countless Pow -wows with Ojiway friends there. Perhaps the Megis were tipping their head to their sister who had come back home, home to the Pacific from whence it all began……….
I felt exposed as I sat in the faux velvet seats of the Stadium 14 theatre as the film “we bought a zoo” unfolded. A man, played by the ever handsome Matt Damon, grieving the loss of his wife along with two children despondent in their loss of their mother, buys a zoo where peacocks cry, dromedary camels graze, zebras sneeze, and fescue grows. The man, one Benjamin Mee is a retired journalist, having spent a lifetime circling the globe, gathering one adventure after another as a spectator, buys a zoo and through resuscitating the fallen zoo, becomes a participant in his life of adventure, not simply a voyeur. The zoo, called Rosemoor, closed for repairs, is in the process of rehabilitation for a greatly emphasize scheduled re-opening of July 7., 2007 (7/7/07)
