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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">John,....I will read your story
tomorrow when I am not so tired. For now I wanted to tell you how
dear it is to have your presence in Friday's Shaking yoga.
Sitting in the meditation group with you is a gift to us all.<br>
<br>
With much love.......Carlie<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 5/9/24 9:25 AM, John Ivey via Thespiritexpress wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p><span>5-9-24.</span></p>
<p><span>I have shown up on the
periphery of a group of people who have roots in the soil of
Coastal California.
A small online gathering occurs via electronic airwaves and
I have been invited
to participate.</span></p>
<p><span>I am not even sure what this
group of souls is. Who am I here? How do I fit?</span></p>
<p><span> </span><span>And even as I arrived, I
approached knowing that disease is draining my life force.
The doctors all say
I will be dead soon.</span></p>
<p><span>I approached and first met Ron
in a ceremonial setting in the Kiva that he has created.</span></p>
<p><span> </span><span>Sense that moment communication
with Ron and this group which he anchors has become
important and significant
in my life.</span></p>
<p><span> </span><span>As I watch the dissipation of
this body and the life force sustaining it I want to offer
something back to
this community that I do not fully comprehend but which has
fully embraced me. On
that note I offer this story of a trip I once took.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I experience a very different kind of
community and awareness when I cross the international
border into Canada from
Alaska and am able to spend time with my friends in
Whitehorse YT. This is
partly due to the fact that these associations originated
from my 11 years as a
staff member at a Buddhist community in Trinity County Ca.
These are people who
traveled there for retreat and/or Buddhist teachings. My
function there was one
of caretaker; for the physical plant, the land, the animals
and the subtle energies
which inhabit the land. I also cared for the human beings
who traveled through
or lived on the land.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>As a group of committed people,
we had
certain deeply developed relationships with the land we were
on, each other and
spiritual practice. We grew food. We grew home. We milled
lumber from the forest. We built buildings. We created
irrigation. My
granddaughter was born on that land.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>We all believed that together we were
nurturing sustainable relationship with the wholeness of
all, rooted in
soil, place and earth. The end came suddenly.
Unexpectedly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Perhaps the greatest lesson for me is
yet to
find peace accepting that end. This is a work I have still
to embrace. Some
form of ignorance clouds my view. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>That sudden end has left me with a
confused
and unresolved grief. I turn to Wildness for healing and to
remember the
wholeness of all.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>In many ways I am still that
misplaced Irish
potato farmer running across North America to escape the
famine and poverty,
charging the “Frontier”, conquering, subduing all in my rush
to find security
and “New Home”. I have crossed the frontier. I have been to
the end of land.
There is a road there now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The road ends at the Arctic Ocean in
a
moonscape of ice, frozen earth, neon vapor lighting, steel
frame buildings,
monster machines crawling, and oil derricks blowing flame
into an endless
Arctic night, as far as the eye can see.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The magic of the Aurora Borealis and
the vast
Universe from which it originates are still accessible. But
you must travel
backward to find them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Thinking again of the international
boarder.
It was a powerful spiritually healing experience to arrive
in the United States
of America from another country and culture alone in a
16-foot canoe surrounded
by boreal forest and tundra; well north of the Arctic
Circle.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The River!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>You could place five Californias in
the
drainage basin of the Yukon River, and still have room for
Reno. I traveled for
two weeks alone from another country and had yet to reach
Alaska when 190,000
thousand caribou began to cross my river.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Bulls! Antlers broad and branched, in
tattered
shreds of bloody velvet plunged, swimming with head high
dignity as if water
and land knew no separation. They are the land come alive. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Calves! Splayed legged, gangling,
necks
stretched forward, eager snouts and faces trained on their
mothers bounding
white rumps found themselves immersed. Hooves paddling with
natural instinct in
the rivers wild and strong pull. They are life becoming. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Five hundred animals at the sweep of
an eye on
one rivers bend. Float among them. Embrace. The Porcupine
heard on the
Porcupine River and still 300 river miles from the Yukon.
The drainage of this
tributary alone would hold one California.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The image of a man called Billy John
arises in
my mind. I met him at his fish camp above Old Crow. A man
of the Vuntut
Gwitchin people he is one who hallooed me from the river
bank and insisted with
waving arms that I paddle to his take out. These camps are
all of a most rustic
nature with hand built cabins and drying racks for fish and
game meat. I was
hallooed into several of them over a couple of days as I
approached Old Crow.
Everybody had hot coffee on and insisted that I be fed. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I beached that canoe and we climbed
the bank.
Billy John turned out to be an 84-year-old man. He had fresh
caribou hanging
and salmon in the smoker. His rifle lay on a table within
easy reach of the
cabin door. I can't remember his wife's name but she was
sitting in a wheel
chair wrapped from head to toe in the afternoon sun on the
bluff above the
river. I reached out as if to shake her hand at
introduction. This old woman
took my hand in both of her's and I found myself captured.
The capture moved
from hands through toothless smile to eyes that seemed to
hold the shimmering
magic of a full on aroural display. She never spoke a
word. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I am reminded of a term that I
learned from
another culture entirely. Dharshan, is Sanskrit in origin
and the meaning I
came to understand was to find oneself in the presence of a
spiritually
accomplished person and receiving blessing on a plane beyond
ordinary mind. I
felt that I came to know the meaning of that word in a
deeper way in that
woman's grasp.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Billy John paused for that moment.
Inside the
cabin we shared food and coffee. He spoke of just returning
from his older
brother’s funeral. "All the Elders are dying." I heard those
words,
yet I am sure I do not have the depth to grasp the real
meaning of his
gaze as he spoke. I did hear myself say, "Perhaps now, you
are the
Elder." He shifted his eyes from a distant horizon I could
not see, found
my own and responded. "Yes. Now I must be the Elder."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I filled myself on the generosity
of people I may never be able to understand. Soon, strong
water bore me
on. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Three days later, I paddled away from
the warm
embrace of a people who spoke directly saying “We don’t just
eat the Caribou.
We are the Caribou”. I traveled alone from such a simple yet
profound grasp of
the interdependence of all that lives, toward my own
confusion in the
techno/modern world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Some days after leaving the village
of Old
Crow, on a blustery stormy afternoon as white caps on the
widening Porcupine
River threatened to swamp my canoe; I lined it along a muddy
and swampy river
bank. Across the mouth of a side slough on a high spruce
covered bluff a small
trappers cabin appeared out of the wind driven mist. As
afternoon moved toward
evening I found myself comfortable from the storm drying wet
socks beside a
wood stove. I cooked food.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Bursting open suddenly the cabin door
was
filled with the silhouette of a man! “This my cousins
cabin!” The words
rolled out like warm honey on the wood stoves radiance. He
filled the small
cabin with his voice, in that broad, full, slow way that is
the interior
native’s adaptation of the English language. He stepped into
the dim light,
surveyed the situation. I could see other men gathering
behind him in the
fading twilight. He leaned over me, a slight trace of
alcohol on his breath,
“This is my cousins cabin”. Glancing at the others over his
shoulder he looked
back, he beamed a bit, “It’s OK if you stay here. we’re from
Fort Yukon and
we’re going to Old Crow for a wedding”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I felt the hair on the back of my
neck and the
tension in my belly relax. We had a bit of a visit before
the two-boat party
blasted off up river into the night with powerful outboard
motors and lights.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>As I relaxed into my sleeping bag I
thought of
that boarder, that straight surveyed line, which we of
European descent find so
significant. That international boarder I had crossed two
days before. I
thought of all the separations created by human mind and
rigid belief. I realized that all of it had little meaning
for those
whose ancestors had made this river land home since “the
beginning of time.”
The village of Fort Yukon is in Alaska USA. The village of
Old Crow is in Yukon
Territory, Canada. The marriage of river, river people and
the unspoiled
wholeness of Wild Earth know of no straight-line separation.</span></p>
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