Sacred Places Update – Minton Turtle Effigy July 2011

Reid Dickie

I visited Minton Turtle Effigy on July 3, a hot and breezy day in southern Saskatchewan. The dirt road up to the site had about a foot of water at its lowest point so I opted to walk rather than drive. Donning my rubber boots I slogged through the damp spots to the top of the highest hill around. The grass at the effigy site is tall and thick from the year’s abundant moisture, making the effigy difficult to find for first time visitors. But it drew me in and I felt the welcome warmth and compassion I usually experience when I come here. With my new video camera, I took a panorama of the horizon from the site.

Looking southwest from the turtle effigy, this picture shows Big Muddy Lake, usually a dry bed rimmed with white alkali, fluid and blue on the horizon this year.

The Saskatchewan government has recognized the site by erecting three explanation boards for the place.The archies are still trying to figure out what the heck this thing is!

Finding Spirit on the Canadian Shield

Reid Dickie

Today my young friend Troy, who also practises shamanism, and I drove out to Whiteshell Provincial Park in eastern Manitoba which encompasses part of the southwestern edge of the vast Canadian Shield, the oldest rock in the world. Our intent was to visit Bannock Point Petroforms. The day was cloudy and cool.

To get to the site, we passed through Rennie, MB, proudly optimistic as you can see. Two hours outside Winnipeg we arrived at the petroform site. After smudging with sweetgrass and bringing ourselves into the moment we walked the short path to the stones.

Webbed Flight, my spirit helper, walked this very land 1200 years ago and today has free rein. He sings, cries, laughs, prays and dances around the large ceremonial circle laid out around a small stand of old pine trees festooned with colourful cloths. Webbed Flight’s gestures, postures, ancient language, song and spirit connection all found expression in me today around the old lichened rocks. Webbed Flight “lived again at home.”

We spent two hours communing and being present with Spirit, ending off with Troy and I drumming around the circle. We came away feeling refreshed, regenerated, very calm and peaceful. This evening, as I write this, the relaxed and happy feeling from Bannock Point and its ancient rocks still floods my consciousness. I am grateful to Spirit for yet another rejuvenation. It was a good day.

I took a few pictures of the various animal and human forms. The first is a horse, maybe, with a smaller version below its mouth. Next is the torso and legs of a human form, the rest of the body disturbed. And last is an abstract shape I found near the ceremonial circle. Click to enlarge.

Tiger Bear Eagle

For more information on power animals, see FAQ

Have I Found What I’m Looking For?

Reid Dickie

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

            I was sitting in the Tim Horton’s at Stafford and Corydon and I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by U2 came on the radio. (I know, Socrates, Tim Horton and U2 in the first three lines with Ken Wilber and St. Francis of Assisi yet to come! Please bear with me.) It got me wondering if, in my lifetime, I have found what I’m looking for, a question that demanded some serious introspection. Then I thought Chris and I could both blog on the question and post on the same day. People could compare and contrast our answers. Chris jumped at the idea. He is twenty-five years my junior and had an upbringing much different from mine. This should be interesting.

My search for an answer started with making a list of the most important things I have gone looking for in my life. It turned out to be a six item list: Love, Friendship, The Muse, Happiness, An Audience and My Life Purpose.

• Love: When I was a romantic lad growing up in Shoal Lake in western Manitoba, I had an imaginary dream girl, the perfect woman who would love me forever, cherish everything about me, forgive all my sins and die happily in my arms, all the same things I would do for her. Her name was Johanna, inspired by Bob Dylan’s Visions of Johanna. I held onto my vision of Johanna through high school, took her to Toronto with me to learn radio announcing and brought her back to the prairies where I started my career. Still not having found my Johanna by that time, I was starting to lose hope, thinking it was all just a childish thing ready to be discarded. However, I kept searching and I found her. She was just using another name – Linda. I am among those incredibly fortunate men who found a perfect soul mate to love and understand him. I found the love I was looking for in full measure.

• Friendship: At The Celebration of Light and Linda last fall, I was joined for a photograph by five guys I went to school with 50 years before. It is a most telling picture showing deep camaraderie and love. I could call on any one of these men today and they would help me, no matter what, and I would do the same for them. These are lifelong friends with whom I share common childhood experiences and mutual admiration. I have human friends of all ages and endeavours and find them stimulating and satisfying. My closest friendships feel more like family. Through shamanism, I have a pantheon of spirits who are also my friends but of an entirely different order. I have found the friends I was looking for.

Six buddies from Shoal Lake: from the left Terry Lewycky, Dennis Lewycky, Ernie Bart, myself, Mark Fikkert, Ron Bart

• The Muse: My creativity is a family legacy from my mother and her father. Imaginative and always ready to tell a story, real or imagined, my teacher Mom exhorted me to get inside my own head and discover what’s there. I’ve had an eager and unabashed connection to my imagination ever since. On my About page, I wrote (quoting myself, writer’s bliss!): “I seem to have tapped into the source of an endless stream of ideas that flow like quicksilver through my mind, some of them getting captured and sent far and asunder in my own words. As Terence McKenna said, ‘Imagination is where we are coming from and imagination is where we are going to.’ I have honed my imagination to a fine nib that dips into the rainbow ink of many worlds, leaving behind a sometimes elegant, sometimes smeared trail of word crumbs. If they ever help anybody find their way home, my job is done.” Finding a life partner like Linda, equally imaginative and creative, was an unexpected bonus. Looking for The Muse is a process, it never ends. I have found The Muse and an ongoing connection to its process.
• Happiness: The big truth here in ordinary reality is we only get little stabs at happiness, not long blissful swaths of it. The happiness we do experience is seldom of our own making, often artificially induced, always fleeting. Needy egos, the bind of the mind and the rolling thunder of life’s experience keep us from sustained happiness. Developing an inner practise like shamanism opens up new realms of potential happiness often leading to bliss. My power animal, Tiger, brings joyfulness into my life daily. Linda made me happy during her life and continues to do so after her death. Her consistent message is “Be happy.” Although this is not the forum to detail this, using wisdom flowing from her new vantage point, Linda has shown me a glimpse of heaven to illustrate why I should “be happy.” I have found happiness wherever I looked.     
• An Audience: Both Chris and I are seeking our audiences this year. In my life, I have frequently had an audience: as a radio announcer, as an artist and performer, as an old friend prowling the stage of The Park Theatre at The Celebration and now with this blog. Today I’m finding my next audience in a whole new way. The content – me – is the same but the format is new and exciting, awash with instant possibilities combining images, video, audio and words. I am finding my audience here, view by view, in this burning ground of history where everything is immediately retrievable while the whole world watches.  
• My Life Purpose: It’s not radio, not retail, not any of the myriad odd jobs I tried. It’s not even writing. My life purpose became clear to me when I was 45 years old. In 1994, I discovered a little book called The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner. He laid out the core elements of shamanism as it had been practiced for over 50,000 years, adapted the techniques and technology for modern people and, suddenly, I had access to the spirit world. I had found my Way! Though it would take me a few years to realize it, I had found my purpose, as well. Widely traveled, I visited dozens of ancient sacred sites on the Canadian prairies, performing rituals and exploring the realms opened up through my daily practice of neo-shamanism. Discovering my spiritual calling, my purpose has enriched my life beyond measure. 

St. Francis of Assisi said something so profoundly simple in its truth that it took me years to understand it. He said, “What you are looking for is what is looking.” I knew the things I was looking for, that was the easy part. But what is looking? I pondered this many times. My searching and scrambling seemed to be what I wanted but I never had any real perspective on myself until I figured out what St. Francis meant.

So, what is looking? Our very essence, this vast empty awareness in which we and everything we experience and perceive arises, that’s what is looking. Call it Spirit, cosmic consciousness, God. Ken Wilber calls it “the deepest suchness of our being where all worlds arise.” Spirit is what’s looking, partaking of the world through my eyes and my being, in fact, everyone’s eyes and beings. Spirit is the tireless watcher, the eternal Witness to all that arises. The most satisfying discovery of my life had always been plainly obvious. To experience it, all I did was get out of my own way.

The Answer: Yes, reflecting back over six decades I can honestly say I have found what I’m looking for and I have been found by what is looking for me. In both cases, it is Spirit. If I die tomorrow, I’ll have a smile on my face.

However, although satisfied so far, I am still committed to the search, to learn my whole life long, to shine my curiosity into new realms and discover what’s there. I can report today that what’s there is incredible!

Check out Chris’ blog to see if he’s found what he’s looking for.

 Chris welcomes the world to his blog.

The Day Before Yesterday

Reid Dickie

PAST LIVES? YOU BET!

RETURN WITH US NOW AND

 FOLLOW THE SPIRIT LINES THROUGH

 REID’S TEN MOST RECENT INCARNATIONS

             Between 1994 and 1998, I went on hundreds of shamanic journeys during which I met and engaged a pantheon of spirits. By using 50,000-year-old shamanic techniques involving meditation, intent, drumming-induced trance, power animals and spirit helpers I have discerned several of my recent incarnations. Largely due to Maug, an old tree spirit who turned up in one of my early journeys and still consistently helps me, I was supplied with varying degrees of detail ranging from scant to full-blown for each embodiment. Some dates are very specific, others less so. Working backward from the present:

Reid Dickie, since 1949

            Family spirits have been integral to my shamanic practice from the beginning. Grandmothers and fathers, aunts, cousins, Dad and beautiful Linda have aided and abetted me. My mother, whose death spurred my curiosity so intensely it eventually found shamanism, has been a major spirit helper from the beginning. With intent, I encountered her on several early journeys and she has helped me often since. This is a verbatim report from my journal entry about my shamanic journey on March 30, 1995:

            “Eagle, silent after initial greeting, flew me to the Sky Realm (Upper World). I could sense my energy turning into pure light. This usually occurs as we approach the Sky Realm. My soul begins to shift from energy “ball” to simply light. I landed behind Mom who turned when I spoke her name. We hugged and sensed it was terrific to be together again. I asked about Dayna Lee and Mom reached down and picked up my infant sister. They are never very far from each other. She’s an amazingly cute baby, grinning happily all the time.

            “I asked Mom what it was like to lose a baby child and she said both her and Dad were physically sick as a result. There was disbelief and so very much grief. She said she had felt grief when Dad was reported Missing-In-Action on D-Day but she somehow knew he would return. Losing Dayna Lee was more final yet Mom always felt she’d be reunited with her daughter.

            “Then almost a year later we had you. I said I really appreciated the pain she went through to have me on that hot August morning, both of us red-faced as the sun. She said every moment of labour was a kind of ecstasy for her because she knew it would result in a wonderful object of love. Then she had me re-experience my own birth.

            “It began with a thundering sound that I thought was a drum but in fact was my Mom’s and my hearts beating together within the confines of her body. I knew I had to leave her body and it seemed a familiar rather than terrifying experience. I felt the fluid drain away from around me and my head being squeezed as I passed through her loins. There was no feeling of being ejected or rejected by her but more of a slipperiness that we both shared. I wasn’t fearful but opened my mouth wide as if to gulp in air or something during my passage out of her.

            “My tears flowed freely as I lay in trance experiencing this. I felt a sudden burst of pressure then I was in a cooler environment, shivering and crying. But it was more a combination of laughter and crying. That emotional mix was replaced by sheer laughter from us both, hers a new mother, mine as new baby. I felt the new air filling me up and wanted only to feel the warmth of her body, which came very quickly, feeling her arms holding me, seeing her red-moon face and feeling the love it beamed at me. At that moment, I recall the sensation of feeling ensouled, a fullness that somehow completed me making an end to this part of the journey and beginning a new one. I remember the fragile tenuous nature of soul at first but as the moments passed and Mom’s arms encircled me, the soul settled into my being. I was here to stay for a while.”

Pierre Rabine

            Frenchman, born about 1924, who died during WWII at a young age, about 20. He was killed by what we call “friendly fire” at Dieppe.

Bess

            Irish woman who lived to be in her 90s. I felt like an old old woman, wrinkled with white moustache and bright shiny eyes. She died in the early 1910s.

Huckola

            German peasant farmer who lived for about 40 years in south east Germany and died of a disease that ravaged the area about 1820

Male Lion

            On Serengeti Plain in Africa for about 40 years. I was surprised at inter-species travel.

 Syan

            Male Pygmy lived in dense jungle to be very old – in his 80s. He made me sense smallness in the immensity of the jungle. I felt extremely content in this form.

Maug

            “My first meeting with Maug was reported in my journey on July 31, 1995 on Lughnasadh Eve. I was sitting on the ground between two towering spruce trees, I encounter a grown black bear, not my usual power bear, which passes in front of me front left to right. In a moment, the bear changed form into a grey haired woman wearing a brown sack like dress and a brown shawl over her shoulders. As she approached me, she said her name was Maug and that I knew her by another name – Aspen Smoke. She said she was born in 1581. She is the person I was until 1633 when she was burned alive for being too successful a sorcerer.

            “She sat down slightly to my right. She told me of her life. When she was 52 years old, she died after having spent her life alone in a hovel in a dense Austrian forest of oak, spruce and ash. She was a recluse by choice, rarely seeing people, preferring the company of trees tho in the forest she did have a small number of other women acquaintances who shared her need for solitude.

            “Maug was orphaned by a disease that killed both her parents when she was about nine. Maug escaped the disease that killed her parents by “holding live coals in her hands” and carrying the scars for life. The large scars on her small palms and fingers shone bright as sun every time she washed her hands. When she clapped, sparks would arise like effervescent fireflies. The scars saved her life. They were in exchange for the plague. The trees told her what to do. With that, she placed her palms against my forehead and a powerful jolt of energy entered me. I fought not to fall back from the force.

            “Thereafter she’d been raised and cared for by a wise woman named Hebra who lived in a hovel in the forest. Maug inherited the hovel when Hebra died ten years later. It was with Hebra’s guidance that Maug developed her rapport with trees.

            “Maug went into great detail about how to understand the language of the trees and bushes” “Know that the wind is the bucket the voices of the trees echo in.” Often trees talk to each other but more often, they talk to whoever is about: birds, animals, people, rocks, clouds, etc. Trees will also give you a warning of approaching danger. “Be aware of that when you hike on your next trip,” she said very explicitly. When I asked her how I was to understand what the trees say, she said to remember the jolt from her hands. I’m not sure what that means but it was a memorable sensation from her scarred palms.

            “Maug told me of the children and babies of other women in the forest that she had healed or guided toward safety when they died in infancy. She talked of her general distrust of people, showed me a large glistening pumpkin sitting next to us which connected me to the source of ecstasy when I touched it. She briefly and nonverbally recounted the burning, mentioned the funny name Webbed Flight has given me (Aspen Smoke) and said he was a respected teacher and I was lucky have him.

            “I had asked for Maug’s wisdom and with a small laugh, she said my path was “brittle with love” and it leads me into the clouds and into the earth, darkness and light at once. But I was not to fear, just “look for the path of love in every step and it will rise up before you.”

            “Then as suddenly as she arrived, she shifted back into bear form, saying we would meet again but not for sometime. Then she was gone. I sat alone when suddenly Bear was walking toward me. She paw-licked and embraced me saying she thought it was time for me to meet Maug tho it took some coaxing to get her to come to this meeting.

            “My next encounter with Maug was six and a half months later on February 17, 1996. A very somber moment ensued. the branches of a blue spruce tree next to me began to rustle and shake. They seemed to give birth to the small greenish figure of an old woman who popped from the branches and landed grinning on the ground. It was Maug. She told me she’d lived in that tree for over 200 years, even in the seed for six years before it germinated.

            “Since she was old, she said we should “lean” which we did against another near-by spruce, not hers. I asked about lives before her. She spoke of two incarnations but said she would tell me many more things in the future. I had a feeling not all of them I wanted to know. Maug said to go see your mother, which I did.

            “On January 20, 1997, I met Maug in a deep evergreen forest. She materializes from the boughs of a big spruce in a rustling, chuckling sound, a green vapour that solidified into a small white-haired, far-eyed woman as gnarly as the oaks that share this forest. She spoke her quick dry speech, chastising me for whatnot. I like her better than ever.

            “I ask if I can ask her some questions. She agrees and I ask, “What have I forgotten about you?” She tells me I know very little about her so she’ll start from the beginning.

            “I see her being born on an area of flattened brown grass in a forest, her mother, a dark figure, crouches and liquid flows red from her body. She slides back and a baby appears on the grass followed by another larger red gush of fluid. As soon as the umbilical cord is cut, a whirlwind picks up the newborn and swirls her laughing into the air. She sails high up into the sky toward the warm sun. Giggling on the wings of the whirlwind, that baby flies down to be set ever gently on a lower bough of a large spruce tree. The whirlwind moves on and the dark figure takes the baby off the bough. The midwife assisting is Hebra who, upon seeing the wind lift the child away then set it down gently, knows the baby has special abilities. The child is raised in the forest until she is six when she first sees a horizon which makes her very frightened; so much so that she never wants to leaves the safety of the forest again.

            “Hebra taught her the whole world is enchanted with spirits. Every bird, tree, plant, rock, river, cloud and animal has a spirit. She learns to recognize and communicate with these spirits. She learns about the uses of various plants through the spirits that live in them. She says what I have forgotten and all other moderns have forgotten too, is that everything is alive.

            “As Maug is making this point, the drum calls me back. We will continue her life story later like on February 16, 1997 I met Maug who appeared in multiple forms from a towering forest of evergreens. I asked her power over infant mortality. She’d been a midwife and could, an hour or two after a birth once the soul was settled into the newborn, tell by placing one hand on the baby’s head the other on the baby’s tailbone, what sort of life the child would have. Positive and negative sensations were the most obvious with realms of subtlety added the longer she held the child. She stated she didn’t really have any power, just predicting abilities. When I mention Dayna Lee, Maug says it was just fate; she had nothing to do with it.

            “She told me more of her rapport with trees. Living deep in an old forest, she felt secure amid the trees. They offered her protection and peace. Sometimes she would climb a tree near her house and spend the whole day 50 or 60 feet off the ground, communing with the tree. She had half a dozen such trees she climbed. She mentioned the communication with trees being called “tree prayer.” I thank her as the drum carries me back.”

Isha

            Before Maug, our spirit abided with a black African man named Isha (eye-sha) who was a healer and hunter in a small settlement in “Swaziland”. He lived to be in his early 90s, had white hair all his life and rapport with amphibians.

African child

            In the southern part of what is now Sahara Desert in 1391 a black baby boy was born. A few weeks later he was eaten by a cloud of carnivorous locusts that were plaguing Africa at that time. The baby had no name yet but was ensouled with our spirit. Then there is a substantial gap before the next embodiment.

Aspen Smoke

            About 1200 ago, around 800 AD, (born or died?) a shaman who lived in eastern part of Manitoba spanning the Canadian Shield and the lowlands below. I carry his spirit name as given to me by Webbed Flight.

I post this today, February 12, 2011, marking my late parent’s 69^th wedding anniversary. Those crazy kids eloped, got hitched, rode the train to Winnipeg and honeymooned in the Clarendon Hotel on Portage Avenue which today houses an exhibit about the Titanic.

With love, I honour their union for the wondrous opportunities it created in my life and without which this page would be blank.

Safeguards at Sacred Places

SAFEGUARDS AT SACRED PLACES 

“The here of vigilance and the now of seeking.”

-Beautiful Painted Arrow

            Because of the nature of the energy present at sacred sites, it is important to visit them in an appropriate manner. Ancient sites require of us a special attention; they require us to be wise in the present moment. Here are some basic safeguards when researching ancient energy. Smudging is a suitable cleansing method, either a small twist of sweetgrass or cedar inside your vehicle or outside, but not if it’s dry weather. This comprehensive list is by writer Maxine Asher. Adherence is personal but I have found #6, #7 and #8 to be most important.

1. Maintain optimum mental and physical health.
2. Practice interaction with vibrations at local ancient sites.
3. Do not preprogram information about the area you plan to visit.
4. Begin work in relatively untraveled regions.
5. Eat lightly before visits
6. Transmit less and receive more.
7. Never enter a site in ‘neutral’. Always manifest a positive aura of protection at all times.
8. Always discharge energies after leaving a site.
9. Systematically record observations and experiences.
10.  Be patient in waiting for results.
11.  Travel alone whenever possible.
12.  Be careful in your handling of words and intonations at ancient sites.

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY ELEVEN

BIG BEAVER BUFFALO EFFIGY

July 19, 2010

 “Twinges of sweetness emerge in me”

            The highest hill around offers 360-degree exposure to the blue dome, a dancing ground overlooking vast rolling prairie dotted with farms nestled in coulees, scant bluffs, patches of hardpan and the crawling shadows of clouds. Half a mile further down the road I came in on, Saskatchewan ends and Montana begins. To the southeast, I can see the Big Beaver border crossing into the U.S. The vista includes a buffalo jump about four miles west. To the northwest is Buffalo Gap where the bison herds passed through to drink at Cow Creek. To the east is the large campsite where nations met for countless generations.

             This place protects the only known buffalo effigy in Canada. Forty-five feet across and twelve feet high, Buffalo is clearly laid out in stones, now half buried in the hard prairie dirt. A spirit pole has coloured cloths blowing from it and there are tobacco offerings on the stones, both signs of recent medicine making. The hilltop is strewn with tipi rings and a larger ceremonial circle to the southeast. Here I can sit on one of my favourite sitting stones and stare off down the distance. Sitting Bull visited this site many times for ceremonies to pray for the return of the buffalo to feed his people.

Spirit pole with cloth offering cloths next to Buffalo Effigy,  facing north and the road I came in on.

          On my way from Turtle effigy (see Day Nine), down a dusty good gravel road south of Big Beaver, SK, through a barbed wire gate, up an incline, over a Texas gate and at the top of the highest hill around waits Buffalo Effigy, peaceful, desolate, quiet. Approaching holiness, I feel tingling in my back and hips and the tight grin. The day remains hot and perfect. I smudge and do sacrament in the car. I will visit this place three times this summer, making about a dozen visits since the mid-1990s.

            I begin singing my power song as I approach Buffalo, circling the stones in a halting dance. I am recognized and welcomed. Penetrated only by the buzz of flies, zizz of wind through grass and, occasionally, the shriek of a red-tail hawk, the cone of silence descends over Buffalo. I am enclosed.

            A common experience every time I have visited Buffalo is a great sense of loss and sadness, the haunted echoes of a specie brought to the edge of extinction and the unbidden change that wrought upon the indigenous people. My personal loss makes this encounter more intimate for me now.

  Stone by stone representation of Big Beaver Buffalo Effigy. Liver stone just above left front leg.

         I dance freely sunwise around the effigy, singing my song, being present. My prayerful circles result in an invitation to sit on Buffalo’s liver stone, naked and only in the sunshine. Buffalo’s liver stone is about two feet long and a foot wide, black and mottled with orange lichen.  I pray til the cloud passes, strip and sit on the hot stone, which burns for a couple of minutes. More heat. I sit with my legs pulled up and my arms around my knees, eyes shut.

           I feel the stone rise several feet off the ground and we float there wavering in the breeze for several minutes. Heat pours down on me, the wind blows through me, I am loved, not alone. Filled with peace and purpose I recognize what is happening to me. I am purging more grief, twinges of sweetness emerge in me, be happy.

            After a few more blissful minutes curled on Buffalo’s liver stone, I give gratitude to Spirit for bringing me here today and moving through me once more.

            Standing  a little wobbly, I pull on my shorts and slowly walk once around Buffalo. Buffalo’s generosity reinforces the healing from Turtle. I am a lucky lucky man. I am living a dream.

            I retrieve my offering box from my medicine bag and leave some homemade tobacco mixture as an offering on the large stones next to the spirit pole, which stands a few feet away from Buffalo. The cloths wrapping the pole signify past medicine making by others at the site.

       Stock picture of Buffalo clearly shows the outline and the large liver stone in a dry short grass year. Spirit pole is to the right of the effigy.

             I am still amazed at how willing sacred places are to contribute to my spiritual development, to sense what I need and point me there. Today was an excellent example with love and healing from both Turtle and Buffalo coming in full measure. The ability of sites to abide healing on such a personal, intimate level bespeaks their long use by shamans and, in my case, continued use by neo-shamans. Spirit is always eager to pass through us, to heal us when we are in need, ready and open.

            Few sites have demanded physical nakedness from me but both Turtle and Buffalo required it today for their healing and I obliged. Only two other places have told me to be naked: the Spirit Sands on all three night hikes I have done there and the Two Feathers Medicine Wheel on the Saskatchewan/Alberta border west of Leader despite its huge red ant guardians. Unencumbered access to the whole being and the intensity of the healing required dictate the amount of skin needed.

         

Flat and patterned with orange lichen, one of my favourite sitting stones on the prairies is on a bench just below the Buffalo Effigy. The view of the rolling landscape atop the Missouri Coteau is spectacular. In the draw below the stone is the last Canadian farm. Half a mile further, Montana begins. The bench still has tipi rings.

             As I drive down the gravel road away from Buffalo, I pass a van full of people, a tour of local sights offered by the Coronach Tourism Department. Buffalo effigy is a stop on their tour. My timing was perfect but it would have been great to hear the guide say, “And here’s a naked white man floating on a rock.”

DAY TRIPPING

CRIDDLE VANE HOMESTEAD

October 3, 2010

         When well-educated Percy Criddle brought his wife Alice and his friend Elise Vane and the women’s nine children (all of them fathered by Percy) from England in 1882 he chose a quarter section of virgin prairie just south of what became CFB Shilo. He named it St. Albans and, though farming provided some income, Percy’s diverse interests included astronomy, music, medicine and sports, especially golf and tennis. Percy’s women had four more children in Canada. It was these thirteen adept, creative and hard-working children that made the place and the family a success.

            The eldest Criddle son, Norman, a noted entomologist and artist, built a laboratory on the farm to study local insects. When I visited St Albans, or what remains of it, with my childhood friend Susan this year, Norman’s lab was still standing. We opened the door and the only thing in the bare room was thousands of flies swarming and buzzing loud and crazy at the far sun-lit window. Susan joked they were looking for Norman for revenge. Another visitor told us not to go into one room of the old house as it was filled with wasps. Nature bats last.

Norman Criddle in front of his first entomology labat St. Albans. The current lab was built later.

            Besides the house, lab and a few sheds, little remains of the Criddle/Vane homestead. Walking trails take you to the ruins of the tennis court and golf course with signage filling in the details. A pleasant way to wile away an afternoon tasting Manitoba history.

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY TEN

MOOSE MOUNTAIN MEDICINE WHEEL

October 9, 2010

“The Ancients have spoken today”

            Older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids, Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel is still used ceremonially today by the Nakota people on whose reservation it sits. My intuition and experience here suggest it may be 8,000 years old, an early post-glacial construction. Spirit dances here daily.

            When Chris and I went looking for it in June, it was elusive. Although I had visited here twice before in the 1990s, I couldn’t figure out where to the access the hill. I left frustrated but determined and called the Pheasant Rump Nakota Nation band office a few weeks later. I spoke with an elder about getting permission and directions to visit the medicine wheel but he said to call another time.   

            In September, I called back and spoke to elder Beverly who was very accommodating, said to come on by, her house was just below the hill. A month later on a bright Saturday morning, I headed out Highway #2 into Saskatchewan, arriving at Moose Mountain early afternoon. I easily found Beverly’s house. She wasn’t there but a beautiful young woman named Keisha gave me directions up the hill.

Central cairn of Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel

            Two wind- and rain-washed ruts lead through the grass up the steep hill; some of the inclines were 60 degrees. Over rough hills and through rougher gullies, I carefully drive, always rising toward the summit. Wolf willow scrapes against the car’s side panels.  Past the band’s Sundance site on a bench below the hill, one last surge of Avenger muscle up up up and I arrive, a hundred yards from the medicine wheel. As I step from the car, my heart is pounding, my spine tingles slightly and the muscles of my face pull back in a smile, all familiar sensations at these places.

            The day is an anomaly. The north wind pushes in a 25-degree  C day in October! The sun roams behind occasional hazy cloud. I spend my entire visit shirtless, enjoying summer’s reprise. I roll between the barbed wire strands and walk toward the medicine wheel, stopping to wait for the welcome, there it is, smile and proceed.

            Set atop the highest hill around with an astounding 20-mile view of the foothills, rolling prairie beyond and the flat farmland left behind after glacial Lake Souris, Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel has a large central cairn five feet high with a “nest” in the middle of it. A single ring of stones circles the cairn and five stone spokes radiate outward. At the end of each is a smaller cairn.

Astrological alignments of the five satellite cairns around the central mound of Moose MountainMedicine Wheel  from research by John A Eddy Ph.D. National Geographic January 1977

             I rattle, sing my power song and spiral around the outside of the stone circle. Very quickly I feel peace and holiness surround me; every step, every breath, every glance is a miracle almost too beautiful to bear. I spiral in toward the centre where I am summoned to the nest at the core of the cairn. I carefully climb over the rocks to the centre. There, on a bed of rock, open to the heavens and the earth, I ask, with a wavering voice, “What?” Even before the answer comes, I am trembling and tears begin to flow.

            Spirit gave me three clear and real directions at that moment, ponder points. I heard a soft but firm voice tell me I needed to go deeper into this, control my ego and write. While my body is on its knees, a weeping bag of snot, my mind is recording those instructions, already processing, and my spirit is soaring in ecstasy.

           All three parts of my being are fully integrated and harmonic at this moment. Each transforms the others. There is no separation between body, mind and spirit, The One into the Many, the Many into the One. A state of bliss.

            There was a short addendum to the final instruction. I heard another voice tell me, “People believe you.” I was shocked. That had never occurred to me before. Other than fact-checking, I seldom think about my credibility. I just write what happens. It was reassuring to know I am believed, which is, actually, never up to me to decide.  

             Slowly, carefully I leave the cairn and lie down in the brown grass outside the site. The dry spikes prickle my bare back. Filled with gratitude, I hear Linda’s voice say, “Be happy, baby.” I am. I am.

            After half an hour of pure pleasure prone on the hillside, I rise, make one last spiral around the outer ring, rattling and singing my song in gratitude then float back to the car. I drive down a few hundred yards to a flat bench and park to give myself some time to rest and reflect.

            As I get out of the car and look up, I see, coming in from the west, a bald eagle spiraling on the updrafts. Near enough to recognize, it slowly floats overhead, re-enforcing the message just given to me at the stones. Eagle is one of my power animals whose unenviable mission it is to try to make me wise. I thank Eagle whose presence reminds me of the huge responsibility I have at sacred sites to take away their wisdom with care and passion, to unpack my experiences with love and kindness.

Beautiful, multi-hued rocks of central cairn, Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel

             I have a little digital voice recorder I use to record my important thoughts along the various trails of my life. This sweet gadget later gives me a chance to quote myself. Oh, writer’s bliss! As I was leaving Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel after my experience, in a whispery, reverent voice I said into the little machine, “The Ancients have spoken today. I have the message. Thank you, Ancients. I leave more enlightened than when I arrived. For that my only way to express my gratitude is, ‘I will fulfill, I will fulfill.”

            More than anywhere else, Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel spawned this series of reports. I came upon this format while pondering my visit there. For that, I am truly grateful to these old stones and their message.

DAY TRIPPING

ST. LEON WIND FARM

May 29, 2010

             Restlessness overwhelmed me around noon today. I checked the weather satellite and it looked promising so I headed out to Carman, had an unsuccessful rummage in their MCC, bought 6 fresh doughnuts at the bakery and proceeded west toward Miami and the Escarpment which loomed blue and dark on the western horizon under thin variable cloud.

            I drove past Miami and up onto the first of the three steps of the Manitoba Escarpment. Up the second level and finally atop the next level of prairie. A few miles later on the very top of the Escarpment, I encounter the St Leon wind farm, my first experience with a wind farm.  Those suckers are big! And stretch for miles and miles across the rolling hills. Dozens of them! Very strange and surreal motion relationships with the car moving horizontally and the huge turning blades right there next to the road. If Alfred Hitchcock were making North by Northwest today, he’d have a wind farm in it.

            I pass through Notre Dame de Lourdes and descend off the Escarpment into Rathwell. As imposing as the windmills are, the rolling black shelf cloud that covers half the horizon before me is awesome! I am driving right into it, cloud darkening around me. I drove 240 north to Portage la Prairie and the rain begins, buckets by the time I arrive at the PLP Horts.

            I have encountered the once-in-fifty-years rainstorm. I watch the streets of Portage fill up with water. It lets up a little after an hour and I decide to try the TCH home. I get to the rest stop just outside PLP and pull in hoping for better visibility. It eases once more. By the time I get to Elie, this storm is maelstrom proportions. Zero visibility with people still passing me! I sit on Elie’s main drag for half an hour and it lets up more. I keep driving back into it, of course. Stupid white man!

            The result of the rainstorm is flooding over a large area, especially between PLP and Winnipeg. The land is drenched with standing water everywhere. The rains that came even before I left the city meant the ditches were full, fields inundated, both sides of the Escarpment alive with ditch streams, La Salle and Assiniboine Rivers and Tobacco Creek overflowing their banks. Ah, the joys of living on a floodplain.

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY SIX

 BOISSEVAIN DANCING GROUND

 June 21, 2010

“The ensouled sunrise and the ecstasy”

            Outside of Boissevain, MB the Lorna Smith Nature Centre sits atop a rise above the Boissevain Reservoir. This is actually a dancing ground or ceremonial site that was used for centuries. Though there are no stone designs laid out on the ground, this site is the hub of a medicine wheel, an astrological observation point based on seasonal time.

            I have visited here at various times of year and day and always felt a strong urge to experience it on summer solstice sunrise ever since I found out about this site from local historian James Ritchie in 2003. This year it happened and what better way to experience it than on a five-day sacred journey with my young spiritual ally Chris in the passenger seat. We camped the night before at William Lake Campground just east of Turtle Mountain, making our trip to the dancing ground for sunrise about a 30-minute drive. Our campground and the ceremonial site are both located on the 100^th meridian, “where the Great Plains begin.”

Spirit moves through the perfection of the morning

           From this site, it is possible to see stone cairns or circles laid out across the land aligned to the sunrise and sunset of the winter and summer solstices. To the SE in the distance there is a mound with a farmhouse on it and to the SW there is a cairn of white (painted with limestone paste by aboriginals) rocks. These two points mark the sunrise (128 degrees) and sunset (232 degrees) of the winter solstice, the shortest day.

             To the NE of the dancing ground there is a pile of white stones across the reservoir and to the NW, there are a line of burial mounds. These two points mark the sunrises (52 degrees) and sunset (308 degrees) of the summer solstice, the longest day. From this one spot it is possible to tell the exact times of the solstices. This site expanded my definition of the term “medicine wheel” to include not just a stone circle with lines radiating from it but the whole general area and prominent points nearby.

            Though the sky is mainly cloudy as we drive to the dancing ground on solstice morning, a clear gap in the eastern sky hintsat a new day. The opening in the clouds persists until well after sunrise then the gap closed and the rain started just as we were leaving.

            Chris and I smudged with sweetgrass in the car and brought our awarenesses firmly into the moment making sure not to approach the site “in neutral.” This is a rule I learned when visiting ancient places where thousands of beings, organic and inorganic, have paused over the millennia. Be present and alert, engage your spirit helpers for protection and discover the site in your own way.

 

Overlooking Boissevain Reservior, the hub of the medicine wheel

         Places and times as significant as this require some guidance for their power, needing an intent or purpose. I am at the stage where I need to shed or integrate the final harrowing gasps of remorse and regret that have haunted me badly since early April. With them, the depression arose. Although I have developed useful personal resources to deal with depression, when its sources are regret and guilt coated in grief, I am much less effective. Diluting my depression is another part of my intent.

            Chris and I are the only people here. In the east, a small purple bruise is starting to appear against the late blue night. Out of the car and into the fresh cool night turning into day, I am in one of those in-between places where shamans can express themselves fully. It feels comfortable and good but I must be welcomed. I quietly sing my power song then state my intent for the visit.  I wait for a subtle relaxation of the contraction of being. Until I feel the knot loosen a bit, I’m unsure if I am welcome. Having visited the site several times over the past few years, this morning I am welcomed as the local spirits recognize my power song. I smile with gratitude.

            A promise of gold gleams on the eastern horizon. I feel Webbed Flight pass through me laterally, his way of refraining from the day. I don’t feel him again that morning. Linda gets my eyes. She sees with delight the burgeoning day.

Solstice extremes for Boissevain, MB (lat: 49 degrees 10 feet)

             The tall grass is wet with sweet dew as I kneel and face the east. I pray quietly, sing my power song in gratitude and re-intend, re-intend. Crimson hues streak the emerging gold. I am directed to a stone in one corner of the fenced meadow. As soon as I find it in the long grass, I sit there. I feel reaped of heavy remorse, guilt peels away from me and I am re-emerging, becoming, evolving. Some regret shifts away from me to the stone. I find another stone in the opposite corner and sit there. More remorse, more depression leaves me. The stones in the other two corners each liberate me more, drawing the processed grief out of me. Though drenched in dew, I feel new lightness haunt me, Linda’s voice whispers in my head, “Be happy, be happy,” always the same message. The east is almost alive with morning.  

            Chris’ experience at powerful sacred places like this one is not as broad as mine. I catch his glance across the waving grass to see him smiling, glowing in the morning. Chris is fine, well prepared for this. The thought reassures me and frees me.

            At that moment, the first rays of day reach us. In the pure love of the dawn I am ecstatic, the purview of the shaman. Light pours through me and I dance soaked with dew, laughing, flying, being. I gather the special energy of this new day in my body through my hands, eyes and face. I turn toward Chris and see he too is dipped in gold, awake, aware, alive. Behind him, the sky is grey with imminent rain and across it, a perfect, vivid rainbow. Always a sign of hope and endurance in my life, the rainbow reinforces the healing of the stones, the ensouled sunrise and the ecstasy in which I am immersed. It is impossible not to laugh in sheer joy, feeling loved and alive.

DAY TRIPPING

SATTERTHWAITE HOMESTEAD

August 19, 2010

            On Highway #5 along the east side of Riding Mountain National Park six kms south of McCreary a little roadside stop has given respite to weary travelers for over 115 years. Known as the Satterthwaite Homestead, the site contains several historic relics from the region’s early settlement.

              If Highway #5 had flashbacks, it could easily recall being the Burrows Trail, which moved thousands of pioneers into the area around Dauphin. Before that, natives used the trail for its ease, as did untold herds of bison and other wildlife. The physical origin of the trail began when the last Ice Age ended. As one of the beaches of old Lake Agassiz – cold, deep and filled with glacial meltwater – the Arden Ridge, as it is known, stayed clear of overgrowth and become a convenient path, the only high ground between two lowlands.

            Jane and Thomas Satterthwaite’s house sat right on the Burrows Trail. Built in 1895 from logs with a sod roof, it became a stopping house along the Trail. Whenever a traveling preacher came through, the house became a church. The Satterthwaite’s even built a large wood frame Eaton’s Catalogue house straddling the trail.

             What’s left of the original log house tumbles down in the corner of the yard. An approximation of it has been built on the site. A section of the original Burrow Trail with ruts cut by Red River carts and wagons is fenced off and protected. A mature garden of local flora with signage and an information sign about the Burrows and other trails through the area give the stop extra interest.

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY FIVE

STAR MOUND

 July 2, 2010

“The cone of silence descends over me”

            In extreme southern Manitoba, a few kilometers from the North Dakota border outside of Snowflake, MB, the prairie rises sharply into a 200-foot high hill, one of several mounds in the area, used as a landmark for millennia. This is my second visit to Star Mound, a precious little site that harbours reminders from several significant eras.

            Easy to access on a good gravel road, Star Mound offers a spectacular 360-degree view of the prairies. Rolling hills cut with treed breaks flow off to the north, shadows of massive lazy clouds slide across the land, the garish colours of the monoculture glow. Explorer La Verendrye witnessed this vista; artist Paul Kane made sketches from its summit. Instead of tractors, half tons and toxic canola yellow, their landscape had buffalo, tipis and tall rippling grass. Had they come in spring, they would have found the sides of Star Mound glorious with crocuses.

Beaver shaped burial mound, tail to left, body to right, with flagpole, sign and geodetic marker on top

           The heat thickens but the hilltop is cooler than the flatland below. The gentle slope of the hillside scoops up every little zephyr creating a constant breeze that keeps the sweat and bugs at bay. Tiny happy voices winkle on the wind.

            I wait for the telling welcome and feel it behind my eyes. I smile and rattle a small gratitude song. Stripping off my shirt and shoes, I sing my power song as I enter the site. Prominent on top of the hill is a large burial mound in the shape of a beaver, one of only two such relics in western Canada. The mound is about 8 feet high, 20 feet across and 50 feet long. Hidatsa and Mandan used it for centuries to bury their dead and hold ritual. Now it’s my turn.

            I have come with a modest intent: to encounter the local spirits and discover healing possibilities they may have. Circling the mound in a slow sunwise dance, singing my power song and spontaneously gesturing, I feel the place bring me into its deep present. The veil is thin here. The cone of silence descends over me and I am awake and alive inside Spirit once again.

            Climbing to the flat top of the mound, I lay on the mowed grass and wait, quickened, present, perfectly still. Little earth and wind elemental spirits surround me. The wind blows through me, my skin and the earth’s skin commune, the Ancients stir underground and bliss awakens in me. I burn here, languishing in pure pleasure. Ecstatic again! The bliss in this case stems from the harmonic integration of all three aspects of my being – body, mind and spirit. Here and at most sacred sites, when that integration occurs, I am healed on every level possible, including the psychic, subtle and causal realms. The simple act of integration begins the healing, thereafter my intent combines with my spirit helpers  I rise and give thanks for another rejuvenating encounter with Spirit.

            On top of the burial mound, a flagpole flies the Canadian flag, a small sign signifies the mound and a three-foot tall cement marker from the geodetic survey of the Canada-US border indicates distance to the border. Star Mound School, sits next to the mound. The school is so well preserved and furnished as a museum, you could walk in, sit a class down and begin teaching. It is an honourable reminder of the one-room schoolhouse.

            The top of the hill features several huge boulders moved in for an unknown purpose but beautifully displayed next to the school. Excellent meditation stones! On the west end of the hilltop a suspicious buffalo rub stone has been brought in and signed. Trying to figure out where the buffalo rubbed against the stone seemed too difficult. I think they positioned the stone wrong when they set it down.

            As I sit in the Avenger writing this report in my journal, a half ton truck rattles up the hillside and parks next to me. Bert Moyer gets out and introduces himself. He grew up five miles from here and farms five miles from here “but in the opposite direction.” Bert is “a reader, not a watcher. Goddamn TV!” We hit it off and spend half an hour jawing.

Star Mound School opened in 1886 and closed in 1962. Now an excellent museum, it sits next to the burial mound.

           This is the “according to Bert” section of the report. Bert says this is the sixth location of the school and points out the other five locations in the landscape. He didn’t attend this school. He tells me the hill is composed of “200 feet of bentonite and the usual glacial junk under that,” and points out the hole a few away where they drilled to get this information. Bert tells me Star Mound is one of three mounds around here. Pilot Mound to the east and another one, whose name Bert can’t remember, just across the border in North Dakota. 

            Bert says this place is respected and cherished by people around here. He’s come to clean up after last night’s fireworks display for Canada Day. “Had near a thousand people out here for it.” I am amazed! The site is virtually clear and clean but for a ballpoint pen I found in the grass. There is zero garbage anywhere on the hill. Bert will have an easy job cleaning up.

             Whether or not we fully appreciate the power of a sacred site, people often feel an unbidden respect for them, something transformational that affirms they are a human being here now. Star Mound is one of those places – accessible, holy and respected.

DAY TRIPPING

PEMBINA VALLEY PROVINCIAL PARK 

July 2, 2010

            Before going to Star Mound, my wanderlust takes me on my first visit to one of Manitoba’s newer provincial parks, Pembina Valley. Located south of Morden on the banks of the Pembina River, this small park once encompassed part of a farm owned by Henry and Elma Martens. The couple wanted to preserve the area’s natural elements and landscape and offered to sell the land for a park. The combined efforts of Manitoba Conservation and the Nature Conservancy of Canada, who jointly purchased the land, resulted in this lush little oasis.

           The day swelters but a sweet breeze whistles along the Pembina Valley, cooling the bare skin and keeping the mosquitoes away. Around me is an almost circular windbreak of mature spruce and blue spruce, three deep and very effective against the winter winds. I feel well tended and safe among these old trees. During my entire 90-minute stay, I am the park’s only user.

            Numerous trails of various difficulties provide wildlife viewing opportunities and magnificent vistas of the Pembina/Tiger Hill region. Picnics and family gatherings can be accommodated although no camping is allowed and the washrooms are primitive. I am lazy today so prefer the shade of a beautiful basswood and the wiles of my pen to a hike in a forest full of bugs. I languish instead.

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY 1

MEDICINE ROCK

 August 19, 2010

“I am afraid to touch it”

             I’m not sure how I first learned of Medicine Rock but I’ve been drawn to it in the past without success finding it. Four fruitless searches for the site – twice on my own, once with Linda a couple of years back, once earlier this summer – turned up nothing. I was beginning to think Medicine Rock didn’t want me to find it. That happens. But this time – aha! Fifth time is the charm. I have help this time. After four failed attempts, I find someone who actually knows where it is and can direct me.

Medicine Rock festooned with foliage and the offerings of countless generations.

            Harry Harris at the Alonsa Conservation District gives me immaculate directions to Medicine Rock, which deliver me there lickity splickly. I’m good at following good directions. East of Riding Mountain and south of St Amelie, MB I drive on good gravel that becomes not so good gravel that becomes no gravel at all, just dirt. The Mighty Avenger gets a good prairie trail workout heading into the bush then further into the bush then just a little further into the bush then a bit more bush, all the while churning up a fine black dust behind us. Next to a rough hand-painted sign leaning up against two oak trees, a path leads into the bush. Medicine Rock, at last!

            I smudge with sweetgrass in the car, get out and stand in the wonderful silence.  I wait in the warm afternoon for a slight loosening of the contraction of being we all have and can feel as tightness just behind our eyes. Until I feel the knot loosen a bit, I’m unsure if I am welcome. I wait.

            Turning, I see, 40 feet down the road I came in on, a half-grown black bear. It stops, looks at me and sits down. I say, “Holy shit, there’s Bear.” Bear is one of my power animals. Then another half-grown bear comes out of the woods, yawns, sits down and paws the air next to the first. I get into the car and wait for mama bear to show up. The two cubs eventually amble across the road and into the woods away from Medicine Rock and me. A few minutes later mama bear bounds across the road after the cubs, paying no attention to me but certainly knowing I am here.

            I am thrilled to see one of my power animals as guardian of Medicine Rock. The powers of courage and strength radiate from Bear, appropriate since many of the travelers and hunters who left offerings here over millennia sought those same powers. I wait in the car, alert, quickened by the knowledge I am not at the top of the food chain, a situation that occurs about frequently enough. In a while, I re-smudge and emerge into the afternoon to wait for the welcome. I feel a prickle down my spine and my face tightens into a big smile. I am welcome. Everything feels fine. I walk the short path to Medicine Rock singing my power song.

            Medicine Rock is a huge boulder, six feet high, ten feet across and eight feet deep, nestled in an aspen and oak glen twenty steps off the road. It is thickly garnished with verdant and wild foliage that grows from tiny cracks and narrows shelves on the rock. Encircled by dense growth, riff with elemental forest spirits and tangled in the music of aspen, oak and lark, the old stone is alive, its heart beats once every century. Content, it radiates power. Immediately I am brought fully into the moment, humbled, in awe of the ancient stone. I am afraid to touch it. I tremble.

            Walking around the stone on a recently mowed area, I hear a red-tailed hawk overhead, ever-present frequent guardian of sacred places. When I ask the old stone if I can take a few pictures, there is subtle acquiesce from Medicine Rock that escapes the grasp of language. Most inner events at sacred sites are state-specific, that is they exist only in one state and cannot be translated easily or at all into another. At this moment, my physical sensations are shivery and lightness, emotionally I feel very balanced with little bliss currents pulsing through my awareness.

            One of the on-site signs explains the Ojibway legend of the mischievous little people who inhabit both the material and spirit worlds. Medicine Rock is thought to be a gateway between realms. To keep the little spirits from becoming malevolent, tobacco offerings are left on the cracks and crevices of Medicine Rock. I leave one of my hand-made feather flyaways on a bush near the old stone, sing my power song again and thank Spirit for getting me here.

            Medicine Rock gives me a little gift. Just as I am about to get in the car to leave, I look down and there is a round piece of chert on the ground, about the size of a loonie and covered in little black polka dots. I pick it up and it’s a small scraper with evident chipping along one edge to make it sharp. It is small enough for a child’s hand, perhaps learning the life skills. I ask the scrapper to travel with me and it agrees. Thank you Medicine Rock.

             (Over the past few hours while researching and writing this report, I have wondered where the little scrapper might be. I have lost track of it. Searching for something unrelated just a few minutes ago, I accidentally picked up my briefcase by the bottom, spilling its contents all over the floor, scrapper included. Wonder spawns wonder.)

Side view of Medicine Rock

             I drive away elated and fulfilled. Since this is my first visit, I came with no intent other than to discover and explore. My experience at Medicine Rock is worth all the attempts and now becomes another useful part of my personal mythology. As a shamanic resource for me, Medicine Rock generates enormous strength, which I can now access to augment Bear’s contribution. When I need to return, alone or with a spiritual ally, Medicine Rock is an easy site to reach in dry weather, impassable when wet. The road leading into the bush just past the bush through more bush is black dirt, zero gravel.

 DAY TRIPPING

ASSINIBOINE VALLEY ARBORETUM

 July 28, 2010

            On this warm July evening along Highway 83, the wide Assiniboine Valley a few kilometers south of Miniota, MB offers its beautiful vista including several fields flooded by the river. At the south end of the valley, just off the highway, I discover the Assiniboine Riparian Forest Centre, an endeavour of Manitoba Hydro’s Forest Enhancement Program.

             Situated on the high banks of the Assiniboine and not flooded, the Centre covers several acres with dozens of varieties of trees and bushes, all well planted, mulched with straw and very healthy. Over 600 trees were planted in 2008 with more added this fall. Each variety has a written description and picture of it when mature, easily read from the winding well-maintained pathway among the flora. Along with Manitoba’s familiar coniferous and deciduous trees, the arboretum features many fruit trees, berry bushes and some hybrids.

            A maintained pathway, accessible from the arboretum, offers a pleasant stroll through the forest along the banks of the Assiniboine, a river with many secrets along its wide valley. The trail has benches and picnic tables, school and public tours are offered. The Riparian Forest’s grand opening is set for Spring 2011.