the spirit world

a story of the hunt

the herbs pour green and yellow into the mason jar while i wait for the water to boil.

peppermint for the roadside cheesecake and homemade berry sauce we split three ways on the way home from loading up another tipi on the truck.

chamomile for the million frazzled nerves that encompass a mother of a two year old.

the fire crackles, the sun is setting and prince, our tiny brown dog, snores on the couch.

☼ ☾ ☀︎

today as i was putting amara to bed for her afternoon nap, i pulled out some “light” reading to lull her to sleep: The Spirit World, a book in a series of Time-Life Books called The American Indians.

we pile up the blankets and pillows, and open to the first page.

we quietly leaf through the pages. the first chapter is called Touching the Great Mystery. we keep leafing, she sucking her thumb, me reading as much as i can before she becomes impatient and makes me turn the page.

we get to the part where they have collected all these black and white pictures of priests, shamans, medicine men and women. wrinkles and feathers abound. amara points to a picture labeled “Brave Buffalo, Sioux Medicine Man” and says “Jose! Jose!” and i crack up, thinking of our friend Jose, who i’ve never seen wear a feather headdress or beads or wrinkles like this guy.

shields, rattles, sweat lodges. enormous carved wooden masks from the pacific northwest. snake priests, fetishes that heal the sick, ceremonies that call in the deer, the buffalo, the salmon.

she nods off.

i indulge, reading hunting protocol, ceremonies and practices all across turtle island.

i read about the Northern Saulteaux, an Ojibwa people, who honor the black bear they have killed by bringing the carcass home, dressing it in fine clothes, feeding it so as not to offend the king of the bears, the spirit that gives them nourishment.

or the Inuit of alaska, who have a special welcoming ceremony for the whale they had killed. the wives of the hunters, wearing ceremonial clothes and face paint, would greet the whale, giving it fresh water to drink and thanking it for allowing itself to be harvested from the sea.

how the caribou bones were carefully buried, so a dog could never chew on them and disgrace the spirit that gave its life to the Iglulik.

how the Inupiaq of alaska hung the bladders of their hunted animals, where they believe the soul resided, up high in the lodge and then sang and danced for four days to honor and celebrate the animals who had fed them. later, behind a smoking trail of burning wild celery, the shaman led the bladders back to the sea where they were ceremonially plunged under the ice, and the shaman, submerging himself in the icey northern waters himself, would listen to their feedback. were the inuas, or souls, pleased with the men who had taken them and given them such a fine festival? would they come back next year?

“In a photograph taken in the 1890’s Hupa men carry obsidian knives (foreground) and displaying the pelts of albino deer perform the White Deerskin Dance, part of the World Renewal ceremony held annually by Indian peoples in Northern California.”

amara is fully snoozing now and i close the book and my eyes, and pretend to think i can turn off my brain instantaneously and fall asleep.

downstairs, in our small 20 ft yurt, i hear something excitedly scuttling across the floor. back and forth and then i hear a very concerned cheep cheep cheep! i roll over the edge of our juniper post loft and see baby cat chasing something across the floor.

the thing runs beneath the gold japanese cabinet and baby cat whips her tail across the floor as she wedges her head further and further beneath the cabinet.

the creature, finally, emerges at a full run and zeus, our big dog, runs full force out of nowhere and nails the little thing right there in the spice box. he runs outside with a bag of curry powder and a tiny wiggling body between his teeth.

unexpected.

and it made me wonder: what are we actually hunting (in today’s reality)? how do we take life and consume it? and how do we (or don’t we) honor the spirit of what life gives to us?

water pagamento site, picture taken by scotty

and: what kind of dances do we share with our people to call in that which nourishes us?

do we have a people?

a dance?

a nourishment?

what are we hunting? how are we hunting? are we honorable in our consumption? is the spirit of life pleased with us?

☼ ☾ ☀︎

for four days leading up to this eclipse, a small group of us gathered to honor a request given to us by two Wiwa elders last summer: keep feeding these sites. every three months, return, sing, remember. to the water, the plants, the gold and animals, keep returning, keep giving back. keep the earth alive here and here and here. okay. okay. we do our best.

as a person of ancestral threads leading back across the globe, i wonder, can we, those of us here now, embody a level of earth receptivity, humility and integrity deep enough to allow us to gather and sing in a way that truly honors the living threads of this place? this land?

can we listen deeply enough? are we worthy? are we willing?

☼ ☾ ☀︎

when amara wakes up we go outside to find the tiny thing crushed in the mouth of our dog.

a baby chipmunk. the same animal that, years before, when i was just pregnant with new life, had given me a teaching from the forest, a secret teaching of the mighty celebration that informs all of Life. i laughed and laughed and laughed, sitting there in the forest, and gave my (then) unborn daughter the middle name, Belle, in honor of that moment, that teaching.

long live the people with ears big enough to hear the wonderful mysteries of earth.

shamanic beaver whispering incantations into a forest stream, digitally created by author