Between Shark’s Teeth and Stardust – Full Moon Hike on Spirit Sands

Reid Dickie 

“Rock medicine is an act of touching the roots of the system of time and history in which we existed and from which our lives have meaning.” – Richard Grossinger

Sand is the last remnant of extinct lakes and rivers that have run themselves to exhaustion. Caught somewhere between shark’s teeth and stardust, the prairie sands exert their individuality and share the lessons they have learned. They teach us the connections between the earth body and our bodies, the cellular shifting that is the main work of all bodies. Every grain of sand holds some memory, some long-dusted-away footprint of its ancestors – the boulder, the rock, the gravel – former shapes with which wind and water have had their way. Each grain possesses faith in its masters – the shape of the dune and the curl of the breeze.

At the summit of the log ladder, Spirit Sands opens into a marvelous vista. Sweeping away in all directions are clean muscular dunes, windbuilt in high rows, furred here and there with wolf willow. The setting sun reddens the sand, shadows deepen as the long twilight slowly dismantled details of the landscape. A small bank of purple clouds builds in from the west as the reds and oranges fade. This close to the solstice it never gets completely dark.

It is easy to see why, for thousands of years, people used this place as a vision quest site. The silence, the expanse of sand and sky, the positive energy, the solitude all helped those seeking their vision.

Stars twinkle overhead as I shuck my boots and socks and feel the cool sand between my toes at the top of the highest dune. A coyote’s plaintive wail echoes across the indifferent sand; another answers. I howl my gnarled city howl, more of a strangled yelp. The sound makes me laugh. I yelp again, more like a howl. Another yelp, better, freer. A real howl tending toward wild sails from my mouth over the dunes. The response: dead silence or was that the snicker of a coyote?

A warm light breeze lifts a shiver of sand off the dune, giving it a small, barely audible voice before sending it sailing down the dune face. A red moon, two days shy of full, bulges above the horizon. Naked, I perform my shaman tai chi, dancing to coyote and sand music as my moonshadow darkens. Tendrils of aurora borealis, breath of the Great Spirit, sweep twisting across the deep blue dome.

I lie down on the cool surface of the sand, which sticks to the moist parts of my body then peels away as it dries. I nestle into the sand. Two inches below the surface, the sand is warm, the hot memory of another day’s intense baking. The wind blows a steady force of vaguely ticklish sand against my back. I fall asleep.

When I awaken, the breeze has cooled. After a short cavort I dress and, barefoot, slide down the double duneface to the trail. There is no need for a flashlight. The engorged moon lights my way.

In the forest, fireflies blink like sparks from invisible fires. The skunky odour of spruce hangs in the humid air. Reindeer moss glows eerily from shadows in the silver moonlight, which transforms a stand of wolf willow into shimmering spirit figures.

I pass through the Valley of Reptilian Deadfall, a low meadow where, years ago, a powerful storm left a swath of blown down spruce. During the day, and even more so by moonlight, the prone trees resemble glowing skeletons of bleached, multi-legged lizards.

When I reach the parking lot, empty but for my car, the sun is a hint on the eastern sky. After a few minutes of tai chi I feel ready for the two-hour drive to Winnipeg. An older van pulls in. A young couple from New Brunswick have come to hike Spirit Sands at dawn. They have heard the Sands are beautiful at sunrise. Indeed, they are.

Thunderbird Nest Video Report

Reid Dickie

The Thunderbird in Ojibwa and Cree legend was a super eagle with a wing span two canoes wide capable of transforming into human form. The Thunderbird spoke thunder and lightning flashed from its eyes. Difficult to see because of its disguise as black swirling clouds, the Thunderbird fed only on snakes and protected humankind from the Great Horned Serpent of the Underworld. This area of Manitoba supports a large red-sided garter snake population. Many Thunderbird Nests are found in eastern Manitoba but this is the only one west of Lake Manitoba.

 A report on a visit to the site in 2007 is posted here. This fall I returned to Thunderbird Nest and recorded this video report.

Medicine Rock, Video Report

Reid Dickie

To ensure safety and success, millennia of hopeful travelers and hunters left offerings on this old serene and sacred stone. I left my offering for the same reason. Walk into the bush with me now, breathe next to Medicine Rock, leave your offering.

Shining a Light Into Hidden Places

 Reid Dickie

This summer I have sat on desolate hilltops, communed with Spirit and received guidance and healing. I have slept in the deepest coulee next to a burbling stream dreaming my life into existence while Spirit danced through the trees. I have travelled in trance to the Lower World deep in the earth and to the Upper World high above the treetops, meeting helpful and engaging spirits everywhere. My awareness spans more worlds now than ever before in this lifetime. My imagination builds, integrates and transcends the dream that is my life as it flows seamlessly day-to-day, evolving quickly now, slowing sensibly then quickening again.

Being given the three stone tools at Pine Cree Park, which became tools for me to use in my re-enchantment of the world (part of my current job description), was a significant turning point in this life, in my being. The process of the stones’ passage through my life was pure and well-defined and my purpose intensified. The stones told me to tell you the story of how I got them and what I did with them. I am a messenger. I suppose I’ve always been a messenger of one sort or another: on radio and television, through art, writing and blogging. I’ve been well-trained for my current role. I don’t have a beat-you-over-the-head message. I have a here’s-what-happened-to-me message. Finding the three stones at Pine Cree Park is another chapter in my story of shining a light into hidden places, seeing what’s there then showing and telling you what happened, of bringing home the mystery and the ecstasy.

Chris, Buffalo Effigy, June 2011

DREAMING UP THE ROAD

DRUMMING UP THE ROAD

Star Mound School “Learn to labor and to wait”

Reid Dickie

I have written about Star Mound in the Sacred Places series with mention of the old schoolhouse that sits next to the beaver mound. Located in extreme southern Manitoba near Snowflake, Star Mound School opened in 1886 and closed in 1962. Moved six times in its existence, the one-room schoolhouse now rests as an excellent hands-on museum on a historically significant site. The school museum retains the original desks and fixtures, books and pictures. All that is missing is the blackboard. The building is simple wooden rectangular box with steep gable ends. The porch was a later addition. The decorative features of the small flared pediments over the windows and indented frames painted red add charm.

Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us, footprints in the sands of time.

Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, still achieving still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.

In addition to a beaver-shaped burial mound, possibly one of only two in the country, the top of 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 this vantage point. 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.

Today the site also offers a number of buffalo rub stones, a geodetic survey marker denoting the place’s relationship to the Canada/US border, a small picnic area, constant breezes coming up the hill and a peaceful oasis to commune with Spirit. Step out of the wind and into education as it was a hundred years ago.

Find more stories about Manitoba schools on my Schools page.

Out There It’s Summertime

Reid Dickie

I’m just back from a eight-day ramble on the prairies, mostly in the Missouri Coteau and Cypress Hills areas of southern Saskatchewan. I visited half a dozen new sites, revisited some familiar ones, shot almost 2 hours of video (expect plenty of reports from afar as a result), met wonderful new people and spent time with some old favourites. My intuition quickened, Spirit whispered through the trees in Pine Cree Park and Old Souls aided and abetted me along the way. My reward for the 2800 kms and ensuing events is serenity, a renewed sense of purpose and a bolstering of my humanity. You get what you intend.

The trip began with a perfect Saturday at the Regina Folk Festival with Linda’s cousin, Mike Panko and his beautiful partner, Brenda. Mike’s an Old Soul and a ton of fun. Here’s Mike and me at the fest.

A day of great music culminated with an energetic set from k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang closing the evening concert which also featured Taj Mahal. k.d. is in fine form these days with a new band, high energy, great new songs from her Sing It Loud CD (buy it if you haven’t already) and a back catalogue that would be the envy of any singer with perfect pitch. The show began with the lead-off track from the CD called I Confess, to my ears a Roy Orbison homage of high order. (That was one of the Tunes of the Tour as was Moonglow because Wendy Thomson performed it beautifully with the moon rising above her on the second floor balcony at The Convent in Val Marie. Both tunes sift through the inattentive spaces in my mind as the miles go by.) k.d. covers two songs on the CD and performed both of them: Heaven “by that great country band, Talking Heads,” as she introduced it, led eerily, perfectly into a new arrangement of Hallelujah; and she swung the Little River Band hit Reminiscing. She sang Miss Chatelaine, Western Skies, ending the show with a rockin’ version of her now-evergreen Constant Craving. To end the encores and evening she sang Neil Young’s Helpless.

After a restful night on Mike’s futon and a long, leisurely breakfast with him and Brenda, I was westbound onto the Missouri Coteau. The Coteau stretches from the northwest in central Saskatchewan south between Moose Jaw and Swift Current into South Dakota. It’s the next step up on the prairies after the Manitoba Escarpment and features lots of hills and gullies, some of Saskatchewan’s best scenery and worst highways, friendly people and endlessly changing vistas that surprise and enchant the curious seeker. It’s one of my favourite places to drive. The highways are lonesome and long, the sky runs ahead of me just as far as it extends behind me and there’s enough room to think, to evolve, to expand my awareness and discover what’s there. I head south from Moose Jaw to Assiniboia then west toward Pine Cree Park, my camping destination for the night.

Located in the foothills to the Cypress Hills between Shaunavon and Eastend, over the years Pine Cree Park has sheltered my little tent more than any other campground on the praires. This is a shot of the South Fork of Swift Current Creek, which runs right through Pine Cree Park; its pleasant burble can be heard from most campsites in the park.

Set in a deep mysterious coulee on a Continental Divide, Pine Cree Park is a truly rustic camping experience. There is no other like it in southern Saskatchewan. Soft-shell camping is encouraged, the park is non-electric, the width of the road and bridges prevents any unit longer than 28 feet from using the park and weight restrictions on the bridges apply. It gets extremely dark. Great for stargazing. Here’s another shot of the little stream through the park.

The little park has custodians this year, something new. Joan Hodgins and her nephew Darcy tend the park and live in two trailers just at the entrance. Both wonderful helpful people. I bought a generous tailgate load of firewood for $5 delivered. Joan offers outdoor programs at the park and both her and the lad demonstrated a great love for and understanding of this sacred place. Joan helped me understand the significance of a gift Spirit gave me just after I arrived in the park. I will have a video report on the gift soon.

The next night I moved from soft shell camping to luxury on the prairie, staying at The Convent Country Inn in Val Marie. A former convent saved from demolition by Robert and Mette Ducan about 15 years ago, this is my favourite bed and breakfast out there.  Other guests included Wendy and Eldon Thomson from Saskatoon who’d also attended the Regina Folk Festival and were out for a drive on the Coteau. Up on the second floor balcony, Wendy serenaded us with her lovely singing and guitar playing until way past dark. The balcony affords a wide view of the Frenchman River valley, Grasslands National Park beyond and the star-filled night sky. The Convent is for sale, a bargain at $525,000. Video coming soon. UPDATE: Watch my video tour. Here is a picture of me in front of The Convent.

Two more shots of The Convent: the first floor breakfast room and the second floor sitting room.

The next day I took the eco-driving tour of Grasslands National Park. There is some development occurring in the park. A small, primitive campground has been set up at the Belza Place which has a vast view of the Frenchman River valley, and closer to the prairie dog Dogtown, another development is being built. Spend a couple of minutes with the prairie dogs in GNP. Here’s a shot of the vista from the Belza campsite.

After a night at the Stage Coach Motel in Willow Bunch, I took a private tour of the Big Muddy Badlands offered through Coronach Tourism. Tillie Duncan, who’d lived in the area her whole life and knew it like the back of her hand, was my guide. She took me through the Sam Kelly Caves where outlaws like Dutch Henry and Butch Cassidy hid the horses and cattle they rustled back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We also visited two sacred sites that were new to me: a ceremonial circle and a turtle effigy, both high atop a butte on the Giles Ranch which is private property and accessible only through guided tours. Though elderly, Tillie was spry and full of vigour, offering countless entertaining anecdotes about the area. She still farms 13 quarters, growing durum and lentils this year! I recommend her highly for the Big Muddy tour. Here’s a shot of me taken near the turtle effigy.

A night in the Country Boy Motel then I re-explored a couple of the accessible sites Tillie had shown me, like the 1902 Big Muddy North West Mounted Police barracks and the family cemetery of an early pioneer, James Marshall, all with magnificent vistas of the huge Big Muddy valley. I revisited Castle Butte and took some great video of the place. Again coming soon to a blog near you. The only rain of my eight-day journey occurred Friday morning when I awoke in Weyburn. By the time I got to Manitoba, the sun was shining again. I was thrilled to discover Hwy #5 through Spruce Woods Park is now open and the park is slowly getting back on its feet. This is my report on the park’s current status.

I arrived home feeling rejuvenated and fully in touch with my humanity. The mighty Avenger and I will travel the prairies for another month. There is always room in the virtual passenger seat for you. Hope you are up to the drive all the way “out there” and back. Come on along.

Sacred Places Video Update – Big Beaver Buffalo Effigy

Reid Dickie 

On my recent excursion into the Saskatchewan Holyland, I spent most of a morning at the buffalo effigy south of Big Beaver. My visit resulted in this video report on the site and its vistas.

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!

Sacred Places – Castle Butte, SK

Reid Dickie

June 20, 2011

“Enticed back, fulfilling an unspoken responsibility.”

I wrote about Castle Butte in a post called Local Knowledge. Castle Butte, a quarter of a mile around and over 200 feet high, is a huge, ever-eroding sandstone monolith that stands like a sentinel over the vast distance of the Big Muddy Valley in southern Saskatchewan, a prominent landmark for millennia. Many times, I’ve stood next to Castle Butte and gazed down the miles-wide valley, its stratified walls burnished by afternoon sun. Since the valley has filled up over the past 8,000 years, I imagine it five times deeper, engorged with torrents of cold glacial runaway meltwater, carving a new language in a system of channels across the land, its syllables the unstoppable will of gravity driving fresh water toward a warm and welcoming sea. The same water chiseled Castle Butte’s precious shape.

This picture shows the butte holding a cloud.

This year, like last, I visited Castle Butte with my friend and spiritual ally Chris. Just like the returnees I write about in Local Knowledge, we were drawn back. Our detour due to flooding allowed the chance to visit the butte. We were eager to return and happy the gravel road through the valley was easily passable. My experience with Chris defies the reports in Local knowledge since we were alone both times we stopped there. This year, the butte’s sparse greenery is lush from the rains, as you can see in my pictures. When it rains heavy, the butte looks like a fountain.

These four pictures show the streams of erosion on one small face of the butte.

This picture shows one of several pinnacles that Castle Butte sports.

A hoodoo, sculpted by the elements, at Castle Butte.

This is the view across the Big Muddy Valley from Castle Butte.

Castle Butte stands as mute witness to its wild, watery genesis but a full participant in its saga of erosion and change. The wind and water still etch their calligraphy into its soft, willing sandstone, the people still return and all the while, Spirit aids and abets our needs. Majestic and mysterious, Castle Butte waits.

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.

Sacred Places

HERSCHEL PETROGLYPH

 July 26, 1998

“The petroglyph grabbed me as soon as I approached.”

             A red-tailed hawk cries over Coal Mine Ravine as it sails on the warm July updrafts on my first visit here. Standing next to a large carved stone, I recognize this as a dreaming place and a teaching place, a place to seek inner wisdom and outer knowledge. A powerful and majestic Buffalo spirit pervades the site.

 

            Jutting three feet out of the ground is a huge well-lichened boulder coming to a rounded point with a flat side facing the rising sun. Carved on the flat surface is an elaborate design of cups and grooves. A deep vertical groove divides the surface with branches running to each side. Two circles divided by a line and the pocks offer an enigmatic message. Walking slowly around the stone, from a vantage point behind and to the right of the stone, a magical thing occurs: the stone takes on the shape of a buffalo charging out of the ground. The image is so clear it stops me in my tracks. I notice later as I leave, the image becomes clearer the further away you are from the stone! Plains creation legends say the buffalo arose out of the ground and was made of stones.

            The little gully where the stone rests since dropped by a glacier offers a vista of rolling prairie, farmland and mixed pasture. Below is Eagle Creek Valley, an old run-off channel. Around the stone the usual Saskatchewan flora abounds – prickly pear and pincushion cactus, sagebrush, foxtail, reindeer moss, wild rose, wolf willow and an array of yellow, white and purple wildflowers. Tiny white mushrooms grow on the abundant cow plop, the empty shells of dry purple puffballs crackled in the breeze.

            Around the edge of the gully, a large well-used buffalo rub stone looms, its aura one of physical relief and extreme pleasure, the earth around it packed hard by centuries of hooves. I climb on top of the rub stone and sit, open and communing with the place. I hear satisfied snorts and bellows announcing an unknown buffalo communication.

            Both stones invite physical contact. I sit and lean my back against the carved stone and immediately feel safe and protected. All seems possible here. Those who came to seek their visions here felt this same safety, the same potential. This is an ancient place, which hosted shamans and vision questers; lonely people searching for the comfort of Spirit found it here. As do I. In light trance next to the stone, I feel the wind blow through me and hear ancient buffalo hides flap against tipi poles. The familiar bliss courses through me.

 

            A large portion of the stone is underground. Based on the digging the archies did around the stone, they estimate the carvings to be at least 1500 years old. In front of the stone was a foot of post-contact offerings, under which a six-foot round cobblestone circle sat. Beneath that, layers of pre-contact offering were found. Nearby there are two other carved petroglyphs, neither as obvious as the petroglyph stone. As a ceremonial site this place harbours a very deep past.

            Its ceremonial use isn’t surprising when you consider Eagle Creek Valley has offered up plenty of strong evidence of long usage. Tipi rings, fire pits, buffalo jumps, petroglyphs, effigies and possibly a medicine wheel dot the valley and surrounding hills. On the approach to the buffalo stone, there is a series of seven tipi rings in a row going up the side of a small incline. These are pre-horse rings when they were set in lines to advantage the breezes that blew up the ravine. Post-horse tipi rings are in a circle to create a horse corral. 

            Fewer than 50 people live in the village of Herschel. SK making their large and well organized Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre and Tea Room even more impressive. Tours to the petroglyphs are organized solely through the museum because it is on private property, a fact I didn’t know on my first visit. (By the way, I highly recommend the saskatoon pie at the tearoom!)

            How does the centre interpret the legacy carved into a rock on a lonesome wind-swept hill in the Bad Hills of central Saskatchewan? One explanation suggests it is a ribstone of a buffalo with the long central groove representing the spine, the branches are ribs and the divided circle symbols are cloven hooves. Another pair of carved hooves were unearthed lower on the rock. The cups represent many or plenty buffalo. That is the hunting magic spin.

             The stone and the site have been used as a teaching place. Along the crown of the petroglyph stone are a series of carved indentations representing the moon phases, one of them connected to central groove. The seven stages of life may have been taught here, according to the interpretative centre.

Plenty of things to see and do for history buffs in the Herschel area    

        Many signs of recent medicine making dot the site. Coloured offering cloths hang from nearby bushes. At numerous places around the pasture, sticks with red, yellow, blue and white ribbons accompanied by a large flat stone with a line drawing of a human being are stuck in the dry earth. Some have bones and sage bundles as well. I later find out these are markers for teaching tribal children from a nearby summer camp about their culture. 

            I bask in the peaceful warmth of the big carved stone on a Saskatchewan hill, settled and happy. I find Spirit here. I am home, again.

******

         Currently I am working on a three-part series of articles called Sacred Places and Consciousness.  The series examines the changes in consciousness that occur at sacred sites and how to access sacred consciousness. I hope to have the series done in the next three weeks.  Sacred Places is the most viewed and most revisited page on my blog. Thank you for sharing my journey. Humbly, Reid.

New Sacred Place Report Tomorrow

           We’ll take the gravel road out of town and find ourselves at the top of another lonesome wind-swept hill in western Saskatchewan. Join me there. The next Sacred Place report posts at 12:05 AM Sunday Feb. 27.

Ralph Rasmussen

               Ralph Rasmussen owned the land next to the Big Beaver Buffalo Effigy in southern Saskatchewan. He was a second-generation rancher, mainly cattle with a few acres of crop. I first met Ralph when I was on my second visit to Buffalo in June 1996. Short, straw-hatted, middle-aged, raw and rugged wearing one of those 1950s beaded belts with RALPH in standout colours, he came rattling up the hill in an old half-ton, parked and we chatted for half an hour.

            A self-avowed bullshitter, he talked about the spirit pole and the rocks as being the grave of Standing Buffalo. He remembered this place from his childhood since the family home was right at the base of the effigy hill. Buffalo is on municipal road allowance land and when they were building the road, they wanted to go over the hill destroying the effigy. Ralph claimed he convinced them to go around the hill, which is what the road does. He told me about a Mandan elder and his son who came here every summer solstice to pray and smoke the pipe. It’s Ralph’s Herefords who are leaving cow plop all over.

                                                                                                                                                               On my return visit in 1998, I ran into Ralph, playing a confused game of solitaire, at Aust’s General Store in Big Beaver. He’d moved off the family farm, which could no longer withstand the winters. When Linda and I traveled the area together in 2000, we saw Ralph in Aust’s again. He was making little pins out of dimes and gave us one. I heard a few years later he’d passed away. I have fond memories of Ralph, how willing he was to share, how curious he was about me and what I did.

            This first picture below is the current state of the Rasmussen farmhouse and yard where Ralph and his family lived, taken in summer 2010. The house is in a traditional Norwegian style set at the base of a ravine.

 

            This is some of Ralph’s rusting junk sitting next to the Texas gate into the effigy site. Besides the outhouse and the rusting Massey-Harris combine, there is a maroon Ford LTD Custom 500 with a vanity plate that says RALPHO and a bumper sticker that reads, “Eat lamb. 10,000 coyotes can’t be wrong.” The Ford seems to be settling comfortably into what could be its final resting place. At the top of the rise is Buffalo effigy.

     

12 SACRED PLACES

12 SACRED PLACES

DAY EIGHT

BANNOCK POINT PETROFORMS

August 17, 2000

“Songs spontaneously arise in me”

            The Cree call it Manito Ahbee; the tourist guides call it Bannock Point Petroforms. Whatever it’s called, this easily accessible place is ancient, alive with Spirit and a creation site. The dense forest gives way to open areas of dark, pavement-like rock. Patchy carpets of dry crackly black moss grow on the tablerock. Human, snake, turtle and other shapes are laid out on the bald tablerock of the Canadian Shield in Whiteshell Provincial Park, rocks just slightly younger than Spirit itself.

            This is where Webbed Flight, my spirit helper, lived about 1200 years ago. He is very energized every time I visit here, as he is today.

Turtle effigy at Bannock Point

         

            As I arrive, the clouds break into pieces of the sky and the day warms quickly. After smudging, I step into the fresh spruce aroma of the Whiteshell.  Immediately I am welcomed, calmed and reassured by Webbed Flight that I am protected here. I say a short prayer of gratitude and, singing my power song, walk the short path to the site. I shiver with a strong and benevolent Bear presence and with the love I feel from the local spirits.

             Creation legends say Great Spirit set the Anishinabe people down on Earth here among the rocks and trees. The energy flow from this places rushes westward. The Anishinabe followed that energy and their culture of animal symbolism diffused across the prairies. Today a reverent stillness pervades the place.

Snake effigy at Bannock Point

            I wander the site with Webbed Flight strong and available to me. He sings his short raspy song; I feel his bliss. He is home! I sense his delight when a snake effigy, short, old and big-headed, almost knocks me flat as I stand at the end of its tail, toes touching the last rock. Snakes are short power vectors that concentrate energy into intense bursts. Instead of falling, I sense flight and regain my balance immediately. Deeper in the site, the head of another snake sends me into spontaneous dancing, gesturing and singing. Movement is very important here, so much open space to inhabit with it.

              Spirits abound in all corners of the site, the edges are alive with forest elementals and at ground level there is a greenish haze from the abundant snickering lichen. Off on an enormous flat stone, a large ceremonial circle with openings at the four directions encloses trees laden with colourful cloths. Tobacco and other offering abound on the stones. How much divinity has passed through this place? How long has the human spirit communed with the Absolute here? This place has existed for but one moment – this moment!

Human effigy at Bannock Point

                    I circle it slowly, presently, rattling softly. Songs spontaneously arise in me surging out of my mouth into the warm day. My hands gesture a visual language accentuated by chest thumps. Deeply communing with Webbed Flight now, my voice becomes his, my words his meaning, my breath his wisdom. I feel balanced, a completion occurring every moment. I am ecstatic to give voice and sacred manner to the loving powerful spirit of Webbed Flight, my friend, my mentor, my guardian. I am Aspen Smoke because of him and his naming.

                Over the years, Webbed Flight has guided me on the path in my brightest moments and searched til he found me wallowing in the darkest mires. He lives again through me but never have I experienced his being with such power and clarity, such love and perfection, as I do when we share this familiar place. Here we both living the same dream.

Section of large ceremonial circle at Bannock Point. Trees hung with offering cloths

              We are the conceptualizing animal, thus able to give meaning to Nature. Here, to express the unfathomable ancientness of these exact rocks, ancestors created sacred forms and figures with pieces of old old rocks. It is impossible for us to know the lack of cynicism and trust in Spirit these people felt as they laid rock next to vulnerable rock on barren stone. It was body-to-body communing, the living earth inhabits the living body and vice versa. At the same time, Spirit rides that delicate balance, Eros and Agape, the One into the Many, the Many into the One. Other sites in this series have that same reciprocating flow.

           Rocks once touched by ecstatic shamans still pound with the power of creation, thrum with a sense of place from which creativity springs. Sometimes the safety I feel at these sacred places is almost unbearable. I am in a state of grace, liquid in the environment, welcomed, even coddled. I share this feeling with Webbed Flight and we sit together on sitting stones he first knew as a boy. As a shaman, he claims to have made petroforms here himself, imbuing them with the necessary power and symbolism.

            Roaming away from the circle, I find a small abstract design tucked under a bush. I strip off my shirt and perform my warrior tai chi around the little cluster of stones. I can’t stop smiling. Neither can Spirit.    

DAY TRIPPING

BARNEY’S MOTEL, BRANDON

August 12, 2010 

            For no discernable reason I could see, the tourist guide says Barney’s Motel was nominated as “funniest motel in Canada,” unless they meant, “But not funny, “Ha! Ha!” and you consider red ants crawling about your room hysterical fun. All rooms face the highway but there is virtually no traffic sound inside the room. A friendly park bench under the front awning offers full view and ambience of the TCH with its non-stop rush of semis, SUVs, pick-ups and sedans – my evening entertainment already in progress.

            Barney’s is the worst motel at the best location – an intersection with lights of the Trans Canada Highway and Highway 10 that runs from Flin Flon, Manitoba to Corpus Christi, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. And I am encamped here in Room 105 for the night the weather changes.

                 I saw it coming. I was having sacrament behind Barney’s as a sharp line of darkening cloud moved slowly in from the west creating a phosphorescent orange and silver sunset. That evening the arc of summer reached its zenith, acme achieved, its first and last gasp of Orgasm. The Hinge was moving. As I stood and watched the advancing cloud, a red-tailed hawk, familiar from every sacred site I’ve ever visited, cried twice over the fields. “Every moment sacred.”

              After dark, the Hinge slowly swung, bringing rain, refreshment and a spectacular lightning and roar show when combined with the running lights of the big rigs (a ride at the Ex) and the howling of the trapped but untamed horsepower under their cabs, everything backlit by the flickering lights of the fry pits along the route. I had a front row seat for it all at Barney’s. (One anecdotal scene was the truck that usually had LIGHT SPEED in huge letters along its load had LIGHT PEED instead.)

            I watched the dark silhouette of a hitchhiker become waterlogged during the storm yet, afterwards, dance in wild circles under the eerie orange glow of the intersection lights, getting a ride into the wild prairie night surprisingly quickly.

            Barney’s Motel is a landmark in Brandon. It was there when we visited as a kid tho I don’t recall ever staying there. It always had a garish neon sign but the present endeavour is rather lame.  Once a thriving concern with a reputation, fires and futility has left Barney’s bedraggled and sad. But what a location!