JOURNEY INTO SHAMAN'S LAND


I catch sight of the hawk again from the corner of my eye. It swoops down to the stream; talons extended, and plunges into the water, only to rise up out of the spray with a large fish struggling in vain. With powerful wings, the bird heads back near the forest to perch in a tree and consume it's meal.

Over the bridge, off in the distance, are mountains. They beckon me, but at this point I can hardly see the cave. Surely, I reason, I can find my way back without too much trouble. But still, I wonder, where are all the people? Isn't someone supposed to meet me, or something like that? A dead relative, or my guardian angel, or, if I'm really lucky, God?

Maybe nobody knows I'm here.

Noise. I need to make noise.

"Hallloooo?" The sound of my voice seems to be swallowed up in this wilderness.

No one is showing up.

I don't know what to do. I don't know where I am. What do I do?

At this point, I decide the best course of action is to feel sorry for myself, and tears start to roll down my face. I snuffle, and being as how there doesn't seem to be any Kleenex in this Heaven of sorts, I wipe my nose on my shirtsleeve. Inexplicably, I start to giggle. I had always kind of wanted to do that, but it just isn't 'proper.' Ha. There isn't anyone here to care what's proper. No one to appreciate the joke, either. Except me.

From behind me, I hear a low menacing growl that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. Oh, great. Now what? Slowly, I turn around, and come face to face with a grayish dog-like creature. A coyote, I think. Not a huge animal, but his teeth are bared, and foam lines his lips as he slowly stalks his intended. Me.

"Oh, dear God," I'm praying, "Wherever you are, I sure wish you'd make an appearance!"

The coyote advances, slowly and deliberately, as if the outcome is assured, and he need not hurry.

"God, help me!" I scream at the top of my lungs, hoping that, if anything, the noise will scare him off, for surely I cannot outrun him. Miracle of miracles, he cowers, but not from my voice. I hear wind rushing at my ears, and feel feathers at my arms, and I am grabbed at the back of my shirt collar and whisked into the air by the very same redtail hawk I have seen three times already! I must weigh fifty times that of the fish he just carted off, and yet he lifts me just as effortlessly.

We rise rapidly into the air and head towards the forest, where I am deposited on a large branch twenty feet off the ground. He gracefully lights beside me, settles his ruffled feathers and is quiet.

I'm speechless. Excuse, me, but did a hawk just pick me up off a bridge and set me down in a tree?

The hawk looks me squarely in the eye, nods, opens his beak, and so help me God, says, "Yes."

Oh, this is awful. I'm not in Heaven at all. Somehow, someone has slipped something into something I drank, or I've inhaled something accidentally, or...or....WHAT?

"What is happening to me?" I hear the words coming from somewhere, but at this point, I'm not sure it's even my mouth.

"You are a traveler in the Lower World," says the hawk. And he waits.

Oh, this is all too much. Too much partying in the 70's.

He is silent.

My left brain, now running from overdrive into overload, cannot cope. I take a deep breath, and decide to deny all logic for the time being.

"Who are you?"

"I am Hawk, one of your power animals." And, again he is silent.

Question, answer. Question, answer. OK, I think I get it.

"And, pray tell me, what is a 'power animal?'"

"I am one of the Creature-Beings of the Lower World who is your personal guide on this journey."

"Journey, what journey?" I ask. "All I want to do is get home. Do you know how I can get home?"

He pauses, then replies, "That is the journey you are presently on."