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See Sandi's WILD Blog below, Or click on the photo of Sandi and Tiwa on the right to go to Sandi's Blog on RedRoom.com
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Thursday, October 30, 2008
Moving On
In spite of these tears that will not stop, it is a beautiful
morning. The sun spills golden light across the meadow grass, where a dozen ravens have spread out to search for food. Off
to one side, both a magpie and a stellar's jay are perched in a lone ponderosa pine, watching. The sky over the shoulder
of the mountains is achingly blue. My phone rings, and rings again. Emails ping into my inbox. The news travels from one saddened
heart to another: a hero has left us and traveled on beyond the ridge. Tony Hillerman, a real hero of World War II and a magnificent
author/storyteller, has begun the journey to the other side.
The Native Puebloans believe that when death comes,
a spirit hears his ancestors calling him—and the one who is summoned simply responds, traveling a long, steep trail
up from the sacred valley lands, hiking to the top of the ridge, where he can see into the beyond. There, he discovers that
the path grows easy as he joins his ancestors in a world more beautiful even than this—which, on a day like today, is
hard to imagine. Four days are needed to make the journey, and during this time, it is important for those of us who remain
behind to make ready for life without the dearly departed.
I step out my door, face the north, and burn some cedar.
I offer tobacco and blue cornmeal. The magpie flits away, but the ravens stay and watch, wondering if there is something for
them in the blue powder I sprinkle on the ground. The stellar's jay eyes me suspiciously, not sure whether I am friend
or foe. There is a chill in the air, in spite of the brilliant morning sunshine. I wonder that the world does not look different,
somehow. But the mountains and the meadow and the sun and the sky have not changed.
I make time to honor my mentor
and hero. I make a little time to grieve, too, even if this is not the way I have been taught. And then I will begin to make
ready to go to the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference in Albuquerque next week, where I will help to carry on the rich legacy
of this great man.
I go inside my house and watch through the window as the ravens flock to the crumbs of blue
corn and devour them. My offering has been received.
3:31 pm mdt
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Stumbling Down Deer
One night last week, a young, four-point
buck stumbled onto a narrow stretch of mountain back road a few feet in front of my car. The deer teetered on long, slender
legs that failed to move him forward according to his bidding, and he collapsed onto the dirt and gravel, one of his antlers
broken, his mouth wet with dark moisture which began to slowly drip from his lower lip. I got out of my car and approached
the buck slowly, careful not to threaten him. The stag had fallen on his side, but he held his neck and head up with great
effort and looked at me with huge, glistening eyes. It was not a look of fear.
I squatted low in the darkness,
a few yards away. Out of respect, I did not stare at him, but kept my eyes moving: over his face and then his body, over the
road we were on and beyond it to the two-lane highway another thirty yards beyond, where no doubt this fellow had been
hit by an automobile whose driver didn't think enough to stop and see what effect the machine had made on the wild thing
it had clipped.
The deer looked at me in the same way one might when there is nothing left to do but to surrender
and calmly await the whims of fate. He could have been in shock, but he seemed keenly aware. He was certainly in pain, I could
see it overwhelmingly in every signal my senses read from him. He might have been confused, stunned. But something passed
between us, unless I imagined it, something like an understanding. I would stay with him
and protect him from further harm. And we would each do what we were there to do, as it was truly no accident that we happened
upon one another just at this precise moment.
I say that last thing for several reasons. First, it was a
strange evening and I almost didn't get to my destined appointment with the stumbling down deer. I had wrestled back and
forth with whether I would drive the long road from my cabin in the pines to the mailboxes down by the highway to pick up
the mail. Or should I let it accumulate another day? I had plenty of work to do, and the outing would be an interruption in
my progress. But I was expecting an important piece of mail, and it would be better to have it sooner than later. I started
for the door and the phone rang. I went out the door and discovered I'd forgotten my mailbox key. Third time, I made it
to the car, then decided to jockey the vehicles in the driveway before leaving. This kind of bumbling and redirecting led
me right to the deer at the appointed time.
The second reason I think that our encounter—mine and the deer's—was
no accident is that I have been researching, writing and working among the predators this past year: wolves and cougars, the
natural harvesters of the deer. Everyone in Indian Country knows that deer medicine brings an equal amount of the medicine
of the corresponding predators, and vice versa. My latest book in the WILD Mystery Series is WILD SORROW, which will release
in March. 2009. It features the plight of the mountain lion, and the ongoing relationship between a woman and a wolf, much
like the relationship I have with my own wolf companion.
And the third reason is that I seem to witness more than
my share of death for a normal citizen living mostly apart from war, genocide, and epidemic. There is something that happens
when death is near, as if an unseen portal opens for the spirit in transition, an opening also palpable for the sentient witness
nearby. It is as if time hangs in the heavens like the Northern Lights, a brilliant reflection of something else, something
too far away and incomprehensible for us to grasp directly through our senses, and yet something so beautiful and precious
that even its reflection or illusion—or the very hint of it—awakens awe and breathlessness. Time becomes nothing
and everything as each precious moment floats suspended, slow and often painful, but full of grace.
And so, the
moment I saw the deer stumble in my headlights, I knew I was supposed to be there. As I crouched low to the ground near the
injured animal, I focused all my energy into staying in the moment with him. After a few minutes, I dared to engage his eyes.
He turned his head sharply to one side, the better to see me.
He blinked.
I blinked.
He licked
at his foaming lips.
I drew in a breath, and then I spoke softly. "I'll stay and watch over you. I won't
let anyone else come down this road and hit you."
The buck raised his chin and fanned his nostrils.
I heard rustling sounds in the sunflowers and tall buffalo grass in the adjacent field. I turned my head and saw several
deer looking at me inquisitively, two of them fauns, not quite yearlings. They looked from me to their relative, as he lay
on the road. The young ones seemed restless, afraid. They stirred, moved away into shadow, came back and looked again. A female
stepped forward as if to approach, but then thought better and backed away. They all disappeared into the blackness beyond
the reach of my car's headlamps.
I turned back to my companion on the road. He had been watching his kin, as
I had, but now he looked at me once more, and then he lay down his head with a heavy sigh. His breathing was more labored,
and a dark stain formed beneath his mouth on the dirt.
I began to sing softly under my breath.
As promised,
I turned several cars away, waving them back on to the highway and making them go around to the next entrance to the side
road. I felt the sacred weight of my task: serving as a sentry, keeping vigil over a spirit moving to the next plane.
When I had seen the buck's chest rise and fall for the last time, I waited long enough to be sure he was gone, I went
to the glove box in my car and took out some corn meal and tobacco. I said a blessing for this fellow traveler on life's
journey. I thanked him for sharing the last moments of his life with me. And then, with the help of a friend who had happened
by, we moved him off the road and into the grass nearby, where his body would not meet with another car.
So what
was the meaning of this important event? I returned home in the dark to ponder this question. I know that deer medicine is
always a blessing. The plentiful and peaceful deer represents a source of abundance. And the deer is a totem for tenderness,
innocence, and the delicate aspects of the psyche. The Buddha is often depicted with a deer, and the animal is considered
a religious image to Buddhists, representing a return to innocence and wildness. The antennae-like antlers, which grow above
and behind the eyes, make the deer a totem of heightened perception and intuition in many Native American cultures. Their
shaman frequently receive deer medicine through dreams and visions and take the name of the deer in some form as their medicine
name, thus proclaiming their ability to see beyond the mundane. But, despite their heightened senses and perception, even
the swift-moving deer is no match for the big machines and massive roadways of today's human society.
So I
will be working with this deer medicine that has come into my life. I will be thinking about tending my own tender sides.
About heightening my own perceptions, and returning to the wildness that so nourishes my spirit and my work. About being careful
of the dangers of moving at too fast a pace, and of tangling with technology when I am in this tender, receptive, perceptive
phase. And I will be thinking about how this deer medicine represents food for the two predators—the wolf and the mountain
lion—who walk beside me almost constantly now in one form or another.
The next night, I saw the doe and her
two fauns in the meadow grass below my house. Deer medicine continues to inform and nourish me. I wish you the best possible
medicine for your own journey, dear reader. Thanks for traveling these past few minutes with me. — Sandi
12:35 pm mdt
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sandiault.com Copyright
2009, Sandi Ault, All Rights Reserved Music by Sandi Ault,
Photos by Tracy A. Kerns and Sandi Ault unless otherwise stated All Rights
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