Page 143 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

me for this ancient song pounding through the forest. This strengthened my resolve to hold steady

here, despite the waves of fear that sometimes washed over me like a small tsunami. The drums took

away all fear that I was a fool on a fool’s errand. My ancestors were letting me know that I was

welcome here.

As the stars offered their focused beacons in the charcoal sky, I felt their presence, how alive they

were. They too kept company with me, embracing me in the same abiding love I had treasured coming

up the trail. I felt I was in the stars, had never been so close to them, so fully with them. Tears of awe

opened my tender worried-­‐about-­‐the-­‐earth heart, and my own affection flowed out to everything

around me. I loved this earth so much! How lucky I was to be here, in the forested wild with my

beloved earth mother. I felt so grateful for this mountain solitude peopled by spirits. I hunkered down

into my sleeping bag as a chilling wind picked up, and lay down to simply gaze at my ancestors, the

stars.

Hours and hours passed as I lay awake on the dark earth. Spirits arrived and offered personal messages

on my own growth and healing, which I greatly appreciated. But for the bigger question, of how to help

the earth, I waited patiently, knowing the spirits work in their own time and ways, and that one cannot

rush or force contact. The night was calm now, except for the sound of running hooves at one point,

which made me wonder if a deer was being chased by a mountain lion. I was glad it was too dark to

tell.

The vision that I was seeking arrived shortly before sunrise.

A spirit made of smoke floats in the air before me. I sit up to see him more clearly, and he leaps from

sky to earth, and now stands in front of me. He is larger than me, looks almost like a lion, or a griffin, a

bit shape-­‐shifty and not clearly definable. I am given information by my spirits that he is one of the

guardians of the earth. After sitting a moment in respectful silence, I ask: what is our future and what

can we humans do to meet it? How can we bring healing to our poisoned planet? He responds in the

voice of an oracle. “You have destroyed the precious waters of the earth.” I think of our human-­‐made

chemicals, oil spills, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, all leaking into the aquifers, rivers, lakes, and seas.

Have we destroyed them entirely already or is he talking of the future here?

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