She began the ascent to the summit of the highest foothill of Stone Island, the low mountains were her home for all these years, and for her ancestors before her. It is cold but not winter, she is now 97 years old and her bones are weary. The small black velvet bag at her hip bangs painfully against her hip as she climnbs. It makes her think of the four hills of life in the tales the old men used to tell around the campfires. The first hill is in infancy where many do not even get a chance to begin the arduous climb, the second is in childhood and adolescence where many mature and begin to discover lifes possibilities, the third hill is in middle age when many too are lost, and the climb becomes sharply steep, it is hard for those on this hill to look back and see their loved ones struggling on the other hills but they must go on are pushed on by time and fate lest they too become lost and wander off on some false trail. The fourth hill is the hardest and only able to be bested by the very best climbers, this hill is strewn with treachorous rocks and pitfalls with many blind canyons, but she has made it to the top and now stands to survey all the landsacpe below.
The pain in her chest comes at once with the cresting of the hill, she doesn’t have much time left. She must dig the hole and bury the velvet bag of her medicines as her forefathers did when they too met their end.
The shamans ways are not to be left when one leaves this Earth. They must be returned to Mother Earth so Father Sky and she will be complete.
It was her line of descent that came to Stone Island from the eastern mountains of Appalachia traveling so far from the home they knew by the great ocean. She was taught many ways of medicine by her great-grandmother and she before her by her father. At 97 she has outlasted all her relatives and even some of her children, the spark within her was great. But when the whites came all was made different and somehow wrong. She studied and reflected waiting for some divine knowledge of how to fight this enemy but it seemed as if her guardian the great Bear had left her until on that day she saw in the sky a great cloud; and this cloud became denser as it flew fast to the north. It changed into the shape of a giant wolf snowy white as the cloud itself, it told her to not despair for the way of the spirits had not forsaken her, all would be revealed she just had to remember she only had to call on Him and He will be there.
She now knelt to the ground and as the pain eased she leaned forward until her head met the earth, she called with all her skill and soul for her guardian, the great Bear and as she meditated on this she noted a noise in the grass as the breeze might blow a leaf by; she looked up in time to see a giant black bear looming over her larger than the ordinary brown variety known to the island reserve, she had to squint up as the sun was behind the animal and as she met the eyes ,bright fierce shiny black she saw the truth. So simple, Love one another that was the secret to life. She quickly buried her bag under the soil loose at the base of the big fir tree she was next to and when she again looked up to the bear he had transformed into a hawk sitting on the branch of the fir next to her. He jerked his head up and down at her job of burying her medicine bag and beckoned to her to get on his back it was time to take flight. As she watched the blue,green and brown earth fall away all she could see ahead was the bright shining light of the sun disk and all she felt was the love of the ages in her heart . This remeberance was a difficult one for me as I felt I witnessed my own death. But at it’s heart I see that the one truth is that LOVE is what can and will heal these terrible times ahead.