I read this article in the New York Times today, and the film really hit home with me, so I thought I would share.
You can read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/opinion/sundance-haida-totem-pole.html
Watch the film “The Family Who Brought Totem Poles Back Home”
In the corners of the garden, I can see words caught in the geometry of webs that bob and dance in the breeze. I feel the sunflowers ushering poems through the labored
Humming Bird keeping time to the biology of existence.
“Invasive plants were like all evil things; the only way to ensure that they wouldn’t return was to face them head-on, battle it out, and win. Anything else was only a temporary fix. I sighed, thinking of my own life. I was letting the weeds grow all over me. They were threatening my happiness and, in some ways, my life. So why couldn’t I face them?”
― Sarah Jio
I seem to keep courage in a box, only reaching for it when life is set a blaze. My day to day has been ran over by fear, a crippling fear that eats and gnaws at my insides. Like brambles who bribe me with their berries, I allow this fear to grow until I am unable to move at all. I lose relationships to this. I lose myself to this. The garden is teaching me courage of everyday life. And in these times, everyday life is getting increasingly darker, so the practice is appreciated.
Be well Comrades.
The curve around a domed landscape harkens an era of black smoke and tar. Roads and the gorge became intwined in a historical knot of progress and expansion. Along with the trailblazing of the railroad, the fuel dependent pathways would change the course of what it meant to transport goods and culture. As the pace quickened along its shores, the river seemed to halt and stall behind pale dams hungry for a dragon named energy.
The very base of this mountain holds vigil, and reminds the River how it use to sing, and the mingle of wind holds time with the sun.
The Cowlitz name for Mount St. Helens is Lawetlat’la, which roughly translates to “the smoker”, and on May 18th, 1980, I watched as she awoke and gave her smoke to the world. I was six years old, and have never been the same!
I was six years old and bewildered by what I saw and felt that day. I could hear so clearly the call of my Ancestors and the Call of the Land. This was God, this was the true power of God. On this day, I became an Animist.
Photo info: These photos were taken by photographer John V. Christiansen at 8:32 a.m. local time on May 18, 1980. They were later featured in a 1981 edition of National Geographic magazine.
The shots were taken from Pahto (Mount Adams), looking across to Lawetlat’la (Mt. St. Helens) just over 50 kilometers away.
The persistence of strength and hard work, just to live, and to function each day. When the flowers bloomed, and the rains subsided, you noticed.. and, you smiled.
Moore/Nelson Flume near Stevenson, WA., early 1900′s.
Che-che-op-tin, is an old Watala/ Cascade word meaning, “the navel of the world.”
Che-che-op-tin, (beacon rock) © H a v e n
The constant sounds of falling water and rustling winds make up much of the landscape of the Gorge.
Dog Creek Falls, Washington
Myself, I’m one of the generations. My mother is one of the generations, wandering out there in alcoholism, and death, and murder, and domestic violence, and thinking there’s no way out. Well, there is a way out… Like I tell my children, my grandchildren, ‘You don’t have to walk that road of alcoholism and drug addiction. I walked that road. I took all those beatings for you guys. You don’t have to walk that road.’
- Verna Bartlett, Ph.D., Native American elder and sexual abuse survivor
My sweet Grandmother and myself in 2009.
I recorded this from my Grandmother while she was waiting to go home for Hospice and pass on to her Creator.
Across many North American indigenous cultures, the thunderbird carries many of the same characteristics. It is described as a large bird, capable of creating storms and thundering while it flies. Clouds are pulled together by its wingbeats, the sound of thunder made by its wings clapping, sheet lightning the light flashing from its eyes when it blinks, and individual lightning bolts made by the glowing snakes that it carries around with it. In masks, it is depicted as multi-colored, with two curling horns, and, often, teeth within its beak.
This Thunderbird petroglyph rests at Horsetheif Lake in the east end of the Columbia River Gorge, in Washington.
The salt of time has worn the edges a little thin as the image wains in it’s slow compost. The timeless ghost of the unidentified figure suspended in haunted air. This bridge between the past and now, triggers my own memories, sneaking across forbidden entries, to break to the other side, and bathe in the glory of the Springs. The constant murmur of white waters washing across old stones and the sulphured air, and many generations baptized. I have come to believe that this is where the Gods live.
Two swinging bridges across Wind River. An unidentified person stands on one bridge. Written on the back of photo- “Swinging bridge Shipherd’s Hot Springs.”