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| Raven is my Guide |
Warning:
There are 18 intriguing paragraphs, and they are so worth
reading (4.5 pages)!
Chad Roberts and I were talking about the Mysteries of the
Pueblo people, a couple of days ago while we were floating around on the Verde
River in Dead Horse Park. For those of you whom are not familiar with Sycamore Canyon
or the Verde Valley, it is located in the riparian area below Mingus Mountain, the
Tuzigoot ruin, as well as many other unexcavated ruins – and between here and
the Mogollon Rim (the edge of the Colorado Plateau – upon which sits the Four
Corners). From my understanding, there are roughly 2,000 ruins from the
headwaters in Sycamore Canyon all the way down the Verde Valley near Camp Verde
or Montezuma’s well. During our conversation pondering the mysteries of
cultural evolution, from an environmental anthropological and archaeological
standpoint, Chad said much is revealed at Chaco Canyon. I knew I had to go!
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| En route to Chaco Canyon |
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| I am Woman Who Walks with Wolves |
For some strange reason I decided to trust the map
application on my phone. The last time I did that I ended up driving through
orchards, dirt roads and on river dykes around the Delta region outside of
Sacramento for HOURS! I followed one of the three options, you know how it
goes, and turned left to one of our classically colored brown public park signs
that said something. What did it say? I couldn’t read it through all the
stinkin graffiti. I just trusted it. I was going along then checked my phone .
. . uh, no more reception. I had a 33-mile drive on a primitive road out in the
middle of a vast and dry desert. Did I mention I had a third of a tank of gas?
I filled up at the last gas station and have an atlas; however, the Navajo dirt
roads are not labeled. Where’s a 7.5 minute map when you need one?! I went for
a AAA map instead of a Rand McNally; don’t make this mistake!
So I was enjoying cruising down a primitive road, taking
pictures, singing my heart out noticing that I was not worried. That worried
me. I decided that I’d turn back if I didn’t run into Chaco Culture National
Heritage Park by the time I had a quarter tank of gas. After a few curves,
after seeing a big ass raven, and a cattle guard, I could see the water tank on
the mesa above the visitor’s center. Yay! I made it!
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| Lunch |
Despite all the theories and informed speculation around
Chaco Canyon, I am totally convinced that this was where a diversity of culture
came to Gather. It is a place that offers nothing but the rock, which is the
medium for the art of mason construction. These structures were not “needed” so
it is clear that it was and is a ceremonial place. Was the purpose of their
construction to be a ceremonial place, or was the construction ceremonial? Art.
Ha! Art is often times what people do; how we live and express this experience.
It is all a ceremony. It is intention and process. It is all sacred and
spiritual. Everything else, foods, medicine, materials for tools, minerals and
textiles, beads and the timber (vigas) to hold the roof load and to create
multiple stories (floors), were brought here from neighboring mountains; the
San Juans between Utah and Colorado, and the mountains just outside of Taos.
Every little thing was brought in and consumed or traded.
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| Casa Bonito Kivas |
People gathered here at Chaco Canyon (I’m typing from inside
the back of my truck) from all over the Four Corners area and all the way from
Mexico. Archaeologists have found vessels containing ceremonial chocolate. The Gatherings
brought a diversity and
multi-generational people together seasonally in the summer because winter is
around -38 degrees Farenheit. My take is textiles, foods, seeds, tools,
minerals and so on were brought to trade; moreover, I think tradesmen and women
brought their skills, such as building techniques, identifying plants, and
working with energy to provide and heal in a sacred place, and to teach and
learn from one another’s ancestory lines.
It seems necessary to have a complex and dynamic system of
communication, goods, and skills for humanity to evolve and just to survive. To
support this, trades – skills and stories, were passed down the family line;
whether someone was a builder, an artist, a grower, or a healer, it was passed
down through oral tradition. Chaco canyon culture was passed down through its
elders to its specialists; succeeding generations carried the work of their
predecessors to create a unique vision of their world. Youth learned from their
many elders, and living this way was how people were socialized to live and
travel as a team. Survival depended on it. Environmental changes demanded that
diverse groups of people come together to but their heads together, learn from
one another, to innovate from the unique synergies that came from these
Gatherings. New ideas come spontaneously when we meet new and different people.
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| Hearths inside the large kiva |
Bringing it back to my own life, I have some
interesting, unique, challenging, fulfilling and indescribable relationships in
my life. I haven’t known how to explain them, describe them or energetically
move through and with them. So much so I actually went to an energy worker to
gain some perspective. It helped. The space of this trip is helping. I’ve heard
some crazy things over the last 20 years, and never thought it would happen to
me. We have ancestoral healing to do. I believe it now.
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| Housing "framed in" for imported vigas |
It’s the only thing that makes sense. To back
this up, mid-wives and dulas talk about mulit-culturally too, that the woman
about to give birth must process the birthing trauma of all the women present
in the room. Never heard of it? How about the red tent? Have you had the honor
of meeting and knowing Mama Wapajea, Walks on Water? Our cultural heritage is
not only passed down through an oral or written medium, but also energetic.
This too is seen in the traditional environmental knowledge held by place-based
peoples. How did we learn which plants we could eat, which plants would heal,
which would kill us? How many died to learn this knowledge?
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| Protruding vitas showing previous floor or story. |
Coming back to bringing healing to our ancestors, many
friends on this journey told me I feel like family; remind them of their
artistic auntie who has a gap in their teeth. Maybe their energy lives on in
another, perhaps childhood traumas get healed through relationships we have
with people in our day-to-day lives. Do we fulfill some archetypes, like the
warrior, the healer, the seer, the knower, the one who reads energies? The
subtleties of our experience are real. People talk about a sixth sense; we can
see (1), smell (2), taste (3), hear (4), feel (5), and we can intuit, we can
feel and read energy. If we pay attention to our bodies, and follow our inner
knowing, our dreams, gleaning messages from conversations, the animals, the
environment, and our live our lives knowing and living these truths, we will be
in alignment with our authentic selves. I irrefutably know I live in the realm
of energy and am sensitive to the subtleties and I make decisions from an
intuitive space.
I have had a few supernatural experiences in my life. I,
like you, have probably heard many spooky tales, all which kindle the flame of
fear. I’m not into fear, nor feeding it. I used to be held hostage by my fear,
but now I face it and talk to it, my anger too. Anger comes from fear of not
having control, and us little children in grown up meat suits want to have
stinkin control over everything. That is just not reality. I tell this to you
because I am not about to tell you a ghost story, nor is this story an
intention to make your hair stand on end, it is an example of paying attention
to the subtle realms we are living within.
Despite the few experiences I have had in Jerome and Chico,
I will share my most recent tale, which happened in Casa Bonita at Chaco
Canyon. I have visited many ruins around the Four Corners region, Oaxaca,
Mexico, and at Machu Picchu in Peru. Each place has been a sacred space, a
place of wonderment of ancient life, masonry, and survival. Even in Chaco
Canyon, I visited several ruins with the same awe; however, later in the day I
went exploring the inner complexes of Casa Bonita. I was taking photos, being
silly myself taking self portraits, seriously contemplating the architecture
and making associations between what I was seeing, what I have seen, and what
I’m about to see and do with Earthships.
While exploring associations in architecture around the
Americas, I saw through the doorway of the room I was standing in, four
separate rooms with their doors slightly diagonally lined up so I could see
through all the doors. Great photo op! So I take in the masonry of each room,
squatting down to walk through the next door. Then something strange happened,
I was three rooms away from the final door, which had a slanted beam above it,
and behind that door was darkness.. That was not strange. What was peculiar was
what I saw and felt next. Looking through the rooms at the back wall, there was
suddenly this thick moving energy. It was wavering. I started feeling vertigo,
questioning what I was seeing. I couldn’t quite grasp onto what was happening
so I walked through the threshold into the second to the last room. I was
taking photos . . . la la la. Approaching the door, I saw that thick wavering
energy. I started wondering if I should go into the next room. I walked into
that room totally taken by this low buzzing energy, not that I could hear it,
but could feel it. I couldn’t get next to the threshold going into the last
room, which was completely black. I kind of looked in and got this heavy, heavy
vibe.
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| Forefront threshold, last threshold passed. |
It was clear to me that I was not to enter that room. The energy would not allow it. The space was protected by something I do not know. I’ve never experienced anything like it, I am unfamiliar with it and do not know it. I slightly felt afraid, but more of a deep respect so I turned around and left. In complete disbelief of what happened, and while at the same time trying to make sense of it. I considered going back, but knew deep in my bones that place, that room under ground did not want me to enter it.
Looking back to my journal, this is what I wrote:
It was an enegy field or viel. It was like a hallucination
but wasn’t. It was heavy. A viel. That room did not want to be entered. I felt
a little afraid, but not. I just honored that energy. It was dark. I thought:
death, birthing, food, shadow, magic. There wasn’t anything light about that
space. It was 100% unfamiliar. Otherworldly.
It reminded me of a story a friend in Sedona told me maybe
13-14 years ago about his experience to the Pyramid of Giza. He went on a group
tour. They meandered through the pyramid for most of the day, and then were
about to enter one of the rooms when one of the women almost fainted. She sat
to rest, drank some water and tried to re-enter the room. The same think
happened. She tried to enter that room several times, and with the same
experience: she felt dizzy, got a headache and almost fainted. The guide told
her that sometimes happens to people. The energy of that space would not permit
her to enter, and she wouldn’t pay attention to her body.
On my way leaving Chaco Canyon, I went to the visitor’s
center because I left behind a couple magnets and a book. They were there in a
bag waiting for me with a little note, “These were left behind by the lady in
the pink pants.” J.B. the resident ranger of 25 years was there too. He said
with a knowing and trustful smile, “You were wearing pink pants yesterday.” I
told him I was so stoked to see him because I had an experience in Casa Bonita,
hoping he could shed some archaeological or anecdotal light on the story. His
wise response was, “That experience was meant for you.” He told me that room
had been vandalized; some of the vigas were removed. The BLM vacillated whether
to close that room to the public or not. For the time being it is still open.
If it is vandalized again, it will be shut off. To boot, that room is the only
underground room open. During excavation they found a tooth. Due to the very
loose definition of what a “burial site” is, that room was deemed a burial
site.
In closing, I have to say my experience was supernatural,
otherworldly. The energy was simple to understand: Do not enter. I respected
and still honor that. In my curiosity of human evolution, architecture, living,
art, energy, and ancestry, I undoubtedly live in the realm of subtlety and
intuition. I live in the world of my sixth sense. I bring healing to space, to
people, to the past and think of myself as a Weaver Goddess. I believe that we
do have ancestral healing to do, because the law of energy states that energy
is not created nor destroyed. It is used in thermodynamics and physics. Why
wouldn’t it be true for the qualitative? Energy changes form. There is no
death, only a life-death-life cycle (or life-death-rebirth cycle). We are our
ancestors we still have important work to do. For me, it’s bringing healing to
remove obstacles that keep us from moving forward. This must be my spiritual or
evolutionary work. I empower all of you to talk to your fear, talk with your
anger and treat it like your baby. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a book on it, read it.
Listen to your body, pay attention to your solar plexus, and trust your body,
trust your intuition, and trust your inner knowing.
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| Trust your Inner Knowing |
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