Sammy Lane rode very slowly on her way home from the Matthews place that morning after the stranger had arrived.
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
Things are broken, I know.
Hollow.
Our modern celebrations are all about spending money. But the old practices of following the year and cycles are about how it feels to be here now. The practices are made to help us cope with those emotions and move them. . . . It helps us let go of the distractions of fall, and helps us pantomime outwardly the slow march toward the things we cannot always control or see in the dark, both figuratively and literally.
—Amanita Dreamer, “It’s Terribly Mid-October Time”
In my case, I discover I don’t belong in a group of humans I thought I belonged in—or once belonged in. It’s good information, because being where I’m not valued (or, incidentally, where I’m too valued, as in smothered) is one of my least-favorite things—unless it’s a Rosa Parks situation, wherein I belong where I’ve been told I don’t. Most groups of humans, with all their trappings and abandonments, pullings and pushings, are no place for me.
So they rode together through the lights and shadows down into the valley, the only creatures in all the free life of the forest who were not free.
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
Nevertheless, the hollow place that once housed communion still calls for adjustment. Many are my friends; few are the human pillars of my existence. (Other-than-human pillars are a different story.)
Even as I reel from the sense of loss, new spots of what at first I thought were spider bites keep appearing on my legs, two or three each time a previous batch begins to heal—and I haven’t seen any spiders in my bed or chairs or clothes. Could they be an infectious disease? I look up all the skin diseases I think they might possibly be, none of which they look like. Might it be fleas from chipmunks? I’ve seen them scratching. Or maybe chiggers/noseeums?
Whatever it is, it further bars me from human intimacy. Like a leper.
As my thoughts slide toward a rut, a chickadee whirs to the birdbath and flings sparkles everywhere. Sometimes I could swear they sense my mood and send out the brigrade.
Fortunately, mending is one of my Things.
Remember that humans are mostly good and kind and that we are a family of folks just doing our best.
—Amanita Dreamer, “It’s Terribly Mid-October Time”
Sewing up holes and sewing on patches, with whatever color of thread comes to hand first, does this Spider-woman good—as do the weavings of ways and words.
I suppose that means I’m an ensnarer of sorts, but oh, what iridescent beauty is woven by spider via fly.
When chickadees go wherever they go for the night, Raven nestles me under her feathers.
You’re at your best when you’re you, not when you’re trying to be you. So let go a little. Trust yourself. You’ve got this. Sing as you shoot.
—Jason Feifer, “Your Brain Is Slowing You Down—Here’s How to Fix It”
In the silence of my sleeping bag, as all the day’s activities fade away, wave after wave of lament washes my insides out. If I belong more among the wilds, what am I doing with humans?
My battery is low, and it’s getting dark.
—Jacob Margolis’s representation of the Mars Opportunity rover’s final data communications to mission control
I dream of a black jaguar, a lot of skunks, and a fox or coyote, the latter batch possibly because Skunk and Fox sniff around the tent and/or because the white streak in my hair attunes me with Skunk.
Long after his daughter had gone to her room and to her bed, the mountaineer sat in the doorway, looking into the dark. He heard the short bark of a fox in the brush back of the stable; and the wild cry of a catamount from a cliff farther down the mountain was answered by another from the timber below the spring. He saw the great hills heaving their dark forms into the sky, and in his soul he felt the spirit of the wilderness and the mystery of the hour.
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
In morning gloom, under a tiny patter of rain, I remain a cozy cocoon and consider the dreams. Black Jaguar reminds me of John Perkins, who fell deathly ill from strange-to-him Amazonian jungle food and learned that he must “touch the jaguar”: face fears, implanted by his mother, of eating harmful food. Maybe my disorders of body and mind are symptoms of fear and are demonstrating, in the fullness of their expression, that I am in fact never alone and am in fact immersed in love. Maybe Skunk is why I repel so many people—all but my kind—and keeps me safe from painful human machinations. Maybe my beloved trickster, Fox-or-Coyote, is up to delicious mischief.
Once the rain moves on, the idea of absorbing the start of the day from Pa’s Chair pulls me out of bed. I didn’t think I’d feel like making a Phoenix flame (in my can-style campstove), but once I’m up, it feels worth it for a hot cuppa or two, as well as a bowl of oatmeal.
In Pa’s Chair, I fill out my ballot, which exhausts me; they don’t make it easy to find information for making these decisions. When done, I flop to the ground, splay my body in a trickle of sunlight, and soak in the warmth and soil’s solid support until I feel moved to shower.
The big spider who had spun a web across the shower entrance, causing me to climb around to access the shower, is gone. I suspect someone ate her, which is convenient for me although I appreciated her presence.
No—there she is: alive and well, having wisely moved higher in the trees, above the toilet bucket.
With skin and inner wounds cleansed, on the trail to the East-That-Feels-Like-West (toward the Raven Log) I handsaw a couple of small fallen trees that might eventually have settled onto the water line. Then I venture out for a lovely laundry morning—including, as my clothes and sleeping bag go through their own cleaning cycles, familiar jaunts to a favorite café, a free library, and a walking path. After that comes another favorite café, a good one in which to write and to hear a solo friend’s significant dream. She gives me a yellow, wooden-shoe-shaped keychain from Holland.
Healing is a funny little hot-dog–shaped road that you’re traveling down in your very best mustard clogs
—Heather Buchanan, Horror Scoops from October 2024
Upon wrapping up there, to keep from stewing in my own juices I embark on a hike in search of a great tree recently rumored to be at the end of a hidden trail. I don’t know how much of a chance I have of finding it but figure it’s worth a try.
As I set out on the trail network, I call out from within to the tree, introducing myself and conveying, I am here, near you. I’ve heard tell of your grandeur. Please direct me to you, that I might admire you.
A moment later, on a maintenance road, a ranger pickup approaches. I wave the man down. He provides detailed directions.
Even then, I miss the trailhead on two passes. Then there it is.
Then there she is.
Despite being empty (like me), she’s healthy.
“. . . Look, Grant! See how soft the moonlight falls on that patch of grass this side of the old tree yonder, and how black the shadow is under that bush, like the mouth of a cave, a witch’s cave. I am sure there are ghosts and goblins in there, with fairies and gnomes, and perhaps a dragon or two. And see, lad, how the great hills rise into the sky. How grand, how beautiful the world is! It is good to live, Matt, though life be sometimes hard, still—still it is good to live.”
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
Seemingly empty spaces are often guarded by dragons, for their invisible treasures.
I give the dragon some of my water.
Dragons’ jagged mouths can channel love’s flow.
A few months ago I spoke with a shaman from Ecuador who described how an oil prospecting company was set to move into his tribe’s territory. The bulldozers and everything were ready to go. So he communicated with the spirit of the petroleum and asked it to intercede. “OK, give me three days,” it said. Three days later the contract was canceled and the machines were removed. The company had run into sudden unexpected legal issues. . . .
If these people are so powerful, you may ask, then why is the Amazon burning right now? Why haven’t they put a stop to all this? It is because there aren’t enough of them to perform the ceremonies necessary to keep earth in balance. It is because modern education, money, and ways of life have eroded the world-story from which those ceremonies can operate. It is because the whole corpus of political-financial power is itself a system of magic, that lays waste to the world through the power of symbol. (Money, law, government, corporations . . . all are agreements mediated by symbols. The chief magicians, for example central bankers, utter some magic words or type some digits into a computer, and the world changes.)
Underneath the symbolic magic we call money, government, and law lies the mythology from which it draws power—the foundation of the modern worldview, the metaphysics of objectivity and force, the religion of science and its elaboration we call technology. Other loci of power draw on different mythologies, new and ancient. . . .
I’ll just name a few of each, leaving out many: the hidden yogis, invisible acts of kindness and generosity, the shepherds of the dead, the musicians who add new threads into the weave of consciousness, the storytellers, and all those who endure hardship and still hold on to the will to live.
—Charles Eisenstein, “On Political Bypassing”
Where insides have been hollowed out—scoured bare—tender friends can make their homes.
From hollow throats comes song.
The song of one draws many.
And oh, how they speak to the broken-open heart.
Where things break, unicorns can come through.
This has been foretold in many places and many ways.
Wherever unicorns are, all heaven breaks loose!
We pieces—when well rooted, with good grips on solid ground—can dance in the chaos without being carried away.
O wind on the waterfall, and leaves of laughter
—The flap on a package of Sea Witch Botanicals’ Goldberry incense
Not that there’s anything wrong with being carried away.
Unruly beauty can prove too much trouble for the lumberjack’s saw . . .
. . . and being carried away is how seeds are planted.
Of course some beauties can lure you to your death.
When you stop and think about it, what painfully exquisite joy it is to know allure worth dying for.
What’s on the other side beckons.
“O Matt! Ain’t it fine? Look there!” She pointed to the view ahead. “Makes me feel like I could keep on a goin’, and goin’, and never stop.”
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
Out there somewhere, remember, is the Lake with Everything Good in It.
The Bluebird of Happiness and the Yellow Bird of Freedom-and-Understanding are good guides.
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
A nuthatch flits near to suggest that I might safely find what feeds me wherever I blend in.
I ask the bird, May I hold up this device and make an image of your likeness so that others might admire you and receive your message?
They pause in foraging to come out and pose for a couple of photos.
Thank you. From my tenderized heart spill tears of gratitude that such a small pure spirit would share a moment with me.
I tuck away the phone and don a hoodie, ready to rustle up more food for my soul.
As I move through grasses, a tiny golden spider alights on my forearm and dances around it.
Then I meet a buck. We stand eye to eye, with fascination winning out over his fear for a moment before he bolts.
It’s not about showing how sad you are.
A true apology isn’t about your feelings.
A true apology is about empathy for those you’ve harmed and making restitution.
—Yoshino Fumikawa, In the Name of the Mermaid Princess, Volume 7
All these creatures tell me, Whatever humans might do, we’re here. This is how it can be.
Coming to the clump of cedars just above the Old Trail where it turns the shoulder of the hill from the west, he stopped for a last look. Beyond this point, he would turn his back upon the scene that interested him so deeply.
The young man could not remember when he had not loved Sammy Lane. She seemed to have been always a part of his life. It was the season of the year when all the wild things of the forest choose their mates, and as the big fellow stood there looking down upon the home of the girl he loved, all the splendid passion of his manhood called for her. It seemed to him that the whole world was slipping away to leave him alone in a measureless universe. He almost cried aloud. It is the same instinct that prompts the panther to send his mating call ringing over the hills and through the forest, and leads the moose to issue his loud challenge.
—Harold Bell Wright, The Shepherd of the Hills
Through peristent melancholy about my human people, I feel intrinsically and increasingly loved by everyone else.
After the hike, as the Sun is setting, I stop by the riverside wine bar as it’s closing. An egret glides in low over the water and perches on their usual low branch sticking out of the water by a high riverbank. Almost immediately, I flee a desperate guy hitting on me—which is just as well, so I can haul the laundry up the slope in vestiges of daylight.
Once I’ve settled in at home, laundry sorted, I examine my sleeping bag and cushions and clothes again and still don’t see any biters. Maybe the bites are a mystical initiation.
Remembering an adventure dream involving my mom, a retired nurse, I call to tell her about it and the skin condition.
“I dreamed about an adventure with you, too!” She shares the fun. Despite the wall of her judgment in other things, we still have that. Then: “That does sound like bites. As long as you feel fine and they recede and aren’t open or oozing, I think it’s fine. Whatever caused them will probably go away just like it came, maybe when the weather changes.”
The sky brightens in the West-That-Feels-Like-East.
In that hallowed land, birds and cats exist in discordant harmony.
After I hang up, Raven calls again.
In The Raven’s Gift by Jon Turk, Kutcha the Raven, via a medicine woman, helps heal the author’s injured hip. There’s Raven now, in fact—as I write this. Are they calling in healing for me—for us?
Three times, I bring walnuts up to the Raven Log.
Showing the bites to the ravens, I convey: You know I love you, regardless—but please help, if you can and if it would be good for me and those I love.
They fly off. Maybe they have troubles of their own and don’t want to deal with mine.
As the evening chills, though, the ravens return to discuss things. I deliver a fourth batch of walnuts in gratitude.
A faint breeze rustles the tiptops of the trees. The neighbors’ wolfdogs howl at a siren, and I light Timberwolf incense at my ancestor altar. The urge to cry arises again—and the ravens, a penpal, and Mastodon friends vocalize their support. It’s all right; humans gonna human; at least there are these.
I put in earbuds and dance with my shadow and a moth, making magic.
