East Vision Quest

               I went out on vision quest again this year.  Both preparation and vision quest were hard.  I became depressed during the long practice fasts.  I realized I’d been covering up how I feel about my life with food.  Well, this is something to explore, I thought.  I contemplated the things that might never change for the better, ruthlessly putting aside hope.  It felt like being dipped in acid.  This was the depth of my non-acceptance of my Creator-provided challenges. 

               The spirits apparently also thought I needed to face up to a serious problem I have:  I’m no good at confrontation and avoid it wherever possible.  I found myself boxed into a confrontation with a lodge member, got mad, and kicked him out.  In order to have full focus and a clean heart for vision quest, I had to examine my part in it and make amends.  I should have recommended he find a more suitable lodge a long time ago, before I started to lose perspective.  I’m burned out, I thought.  Who will I get mad at next?  I no longer felt fire in the belly for any of it.

               I may not have a lot of courage, but I do have a lot of follow-through.  Despite feeling low, I invited friends to my return sweat and asked for their help in taking me out and back, bringing water, and preparing the sweat.  The day before going out, I pulled the cover back on the Navajo-style lodge to get it ready, and discovered a coiled up snake.  I went to get my glasses so I could tell what kind of snake it was from further than six inches.  If it was a rattlesnake, I would have to get it in a trashcan and take it away.  There had been a hawk in the area for several weeks, and as I walked to the house, it circled above my head, crying.  The snake turned out to be a bull snake, not a rattler, and it didn’t want to go.  It kept sliding under the tarp as I pulled it further and further back.  Finally I pulled the cover off entirely, and the snake left. 

               Medicine!  This was encouraging.  From the snake spirit, I saw a wall of light and heard, “It’s here!  It’s here!  The chance has come for a great leap forward!”  The hawk’s message was joy of flying; that similarly, I too could freely and effortlessly do what Creator intended.  Well, alright.  If these outcomes were so, the rigors of vision quest would be worth it.

               The night before I went out, I woke up in terror.  I was afraid of being out alone in the dark.  I’m so used to terror by now, it didn’t bother me that much, and I went back to sleep. 

               I got up early in the morning, started the fire, and set up the lodge.  It troubled me that I felt like I was just going through the motions.  Vision quest is a sacred and important ceremony, and I didn’t want to feel this way about it.  Maybe I had done it too many times.  I was worried about what it might mean.  Maybe it was time to stop doing these things.  The women helping me on the other hand, were very enthused.  I kept my counsel.

               The first stone that came into the lodge landed in the north, standing for wisdom, strength, and courage – a good direction.  `

               When a person emerges from the seven stone lodge, they are in the spirit world and need to pay attention to everything that happens, even during the drive out to the site.  One of my friends told us about emergency surgery she had a few years back, and how she placed her life in the hands of the medical team.  This could be how this vision quest would be for me, I thought.  I need to place myself in the hands of the spirits so they can remove what needs to go and put in something new.

               The person going on vision quest should pay close attention to what Charlie says in the outgoing lodge, because that is what the spirits want to tell them in plain English.  This time he told me there would be many distractions – some significant and some not –but I should return my focus to my purpose for being out there.  What was going to go on out there, I wondered?  I took earplugs just in case.

               The power of the beautiful, old, ponderosa pine tree in the middle of my site cut through my preoccupation as we walked toward it.  This feminine presence felt like it contained all wisdom, and welcomed me with love.  I had an odd moment of frozen stillness, like a black-and-white snapshot, and then the world moved on. 

               My bundle of sacred items included a string of prayer ties wrapped around a cardboard tube, the pipe with the ego-death pipe stem, the deer antler pipe, a feather, a gourd rattle, corn meal, smudge mix, and tobacco.  This was my medicine to help me interface with the spirits.  I don’t know how many prayer ties I made, but we unrolled them in a sizable circle.  I was genuinely enthused about them: gray, green, purple, mauve, black, white, red, yellow, camouflage, plaid, stripes; mother-earth-friendly, recycled from old clothes.  They were beautiful. 

               My friends and I made a small fire, smudged ourselves, and loaded the pipe.  I wouldn’t smoke it until I returned from the spirit world.  I blessed the area with the feather.  We said prayers of thanks to the site and the spirits.  I hugged my friends and they left.  Nearby, down a steep, cinder slope, was a forest road.  An ATV went by. 

               I put my sleeping pad under the trees.  It didn’t look like rain, but you never know out here, so I gathered some branches and made a framework to suspend my tarp if need be.  I like building structures.  I stopped at what I considered to be the minimum, because this was probably one of the distractions Charlie was talking about.  I apologized to the spirits for not feeling especially happy about being on vision quest.  I was weary and uncomfortable from fasting, and my ankle hurt.  I had a tension headache.  I had an unbelievable three nights ahead of me, alone in the dark with scary animals.  The ATV came back.  Awhile later it passed by and came back again.  I took my mind off these inner and outer distractions and focused on love, gratitude, and the spirit world.

               I’ve learned to stay in a place of love and gratitude as much as possible during vision quest, because it feels good and also makes time go by very quickly.  It was harder on this vision quest because I feel little affinity for the area.  My heart leaps with delight in other places, but there among looming volcanoes, ponderosas and black cinders, it does not.  So I had to work at it.

               The day was sunny and hot.  On vision quest I cover every square inch of skin, including my face, to avoid ultra-violet light exposure.  Mostly I stayed in the shade.  Later in the day I left my prayer circle and walked over to a nearby rock outcropping.  I looked around a while, appreciating the view, and then sat in another patch of shade.  Still troubled by letting someone go from the lodge, I shut my eyes and asked the spirits if they had anything that might be helpful for me to know about that.  I heard a slight noise.   I looked and saw a snake a couple feet away, moving swiftly toward my legs.   I hopped up with alacrity. 

               “Well, hello there!” I said.  Now this was something to meditate about.  It was a bull snake, just like the one by the lodge.  I went back to my prayer circle and contemplated the snake.  A feeling of deep emotional pain came up in my heart center.  It seemed to have something to do with old, unmet needs and perhaps at last realizing that it was time to let go and move on.  I thanked the snake.  A sense of dignity and grace wafted in return.

               This has got to be important, I thought.  Un-healed wounds could be blocking my connection with people, the spirit world, and Creator.  The snake was probably pointing the way to what I was supposed to be doing out there, and telling me it was time to get started. 

               The sun went down between two peaks.  I smudged myself, and held the pipe up to the directions.  I blessed the trees and the spirits with the feather, and made offerings of corn meal and tobacco.  I felt very much in need of cleansing.

               I walked up to a nearby cinder plateau to watch sister moon rising.  Dusk fell and the night insects started singing.  I went back to my prayer circle and lay down on my sleeping pad.  I worked on offering up my wounded heart to the spirit world, and to accept help and change.  I lay there a long time focusing on love instead of fear, but it was hard.  Eventually the sense of love and safety from the tree must have percolated in.  My headache went away, and I went to sleep.

               I had several short, sharp, dreams – processing, I hoped.  The only one I remembered was encountering a touchy, belligerent, young man, with the face of a wolf tattooed on his back.  The center of the tattoo, over his heart, was red and painful.  “What happened?” I asked.

               “Nothing,” he said.  Then he admitted, “I had a heart transplant.”

               I blessed him all over with the feather I had brought on vision quest.  It’s all I can do for him, I thought.   Was the new heart a healing that happened that night, or was it a symbol of tremendous injury?  I didn’t know.  I did feel a sense of peace, and lighter in my heart.

               The moon set, and I sat up and looked at the stars.  They sparkled brightly in the clear, black, sky, from horizon to horizon.  It was right after the Perseid meteor shower, and there should have been a few meteorites, but I didn’t see any.          

                For quite a few years, no matter what I’ve tried, my life has been static except for increasing health problems.  I’ve known it was time to let go of worldly solutions and focus on one door only: the inner door leading to Creator.  I hadn’t wanted to do it, because I would have to let go of outcomes and accept whatever circumstances Creator thought best – as if I wouldn’t have to do that anyway.  I would have to let go of myself.   I felt that same sense of withheld action on this vision quest as I did in my life.  If something was needed to happen, like the snake, it would happen.  But mostly, nothing would.  The spirits were trying to drive me inward.  Nothing happening was the same as something happening.  I felt comforted by that thought.  I wasn’t being neglected. The next day, I decided it would be me and the tree.

               In the morning, I cleaned myself up, did my dawn ceremony, and gratefully drank the water my friend brought me.  After she left, I focused on turning myself over to the spirit world.   I heard a hawk in the distance, over O’Leary Basin.  It told me to have a care for myself in life; to give service to myself as well as everybody else.  Later I heard another hawk, sending me encouragement.

               That evening I walked some distance to an unlikely grove of aspen trees growing on the north side of a cinder hill.  I wished them all the best in this drying climate.   I watched sister moon rise over this lunar-like landscape.  As darkness gathered, I lay inside my prayer circle, looking up.   An owl called out, and again, I felt encouragement.  A bat flew over, “Hang tough,” it said.  OK, I thought, I guess I will.  I had two painful mosquito bites on the back of my neck.  Maybe they were bat bites.  I kept pulling my focus back to the tree and the spirit world.

               I didn’t have any dreams that night.  I dozed off now and then, and tried to stay in a place of love.  When I woke up and realized where I was, the sickening reality of being alone in the dark landed on me.  There was nothing I could do but accept it.  I heard no animals or scary sounds.

               The next day was cloudy, and a little windy from the west.  I put my shelter up, just in case.  I added some sticks to make it better, but it is hard to tell how a shelter will work until it rains.  I settled in again, to offer myself – damaged and imperfect -- to the spirits.  I heard a lot of hummingbirds.  As I worked on turning myself over, I heard one now and then.  I took this as evidence I was proceeding in the right direction.

               At one point, a little flock of birds burst by me in a rush.  Their message was, if I would make this decision to let go and be transformed by Creator, my life would start to move very fast.  “And what if I don’t?” I asked them. 

               “Ten to fifteen years of no change at all,” they replied.

               Hummingbirds have been known to bring visions, so I asked them if they had one for me.  Immediately I felt their happy, loving presence, and in my mind’s eye I saw sparkling, yellow dots of light.  “Yes, yes, hello, hello,” they said. 

               I didn’t really care at this point what the vision was, as long as somebody knew.  I asked anyway.  “Well, what is it?”  I got a sense of gentleness and service.

                Ten to fifteen years of no change, vs. a life of good service?  I was convinced.  I told the spirits I would do my best, and ceremoniously entered the east door of the prayer tie circle.  I sat down to continue focusing.  A strong wind blew up at once, lasting a considerable while, and a little rain fell.  Winds of change, I thought, reflecting my decision.  Maybe this meant I would succeed.

               So far there had been no scary animals in the dark -- just mosquitoes, and bats flying over now and then.  No snakes wanted to share the warmth of my sleeping bag.  I mentally shrugged.  I’d made my choice to the best of my ability, and if I needed to be terrified out of my wits in the dark in order to let go and change, then the spirit world would see to it, and that was that.

               I always wonder if I’m going to withstand the lack of food and water on vision quest.  My heart works harder, its beating becoming noticeable.  That night I had a dream I couldn’t get out of even after I awoke – something to do with food storage in my shelter and Alzheimer’s patients.  I decided I’d reached the point where I’d better drink some water and sea salt, so I drank some from the quart for the next day.  My head cleared.  It was the right decision.  I didn’t know if the dream meant anything or not.  Persons with dementia sometimes seem to have access to Universal wisdom, so it might have been related to the task I was working on.

               No scary animals came by, and the last day dawned.  I was losing my ability to connect with the spirit world, but I kept working at it a little, in between naps. 

               In the afternoon, my friends came to pick me up, and we went back for the sweat that would be my return door to the normal world.  This vision quest did not have a lot of spectacular things happen, so it didn’t make the best story, but it was an unusually challenging and hard-working one.  I was exhausted.