What
is it that I see when I look out at the sandstone bluff scarped
against a color of blue in the sky that I can hear? What is it that's
missing when I'm not perched out on an overlook, drinking in with
my eyes the sculpt of land tracing itself into my consciousness?
A thousand stories lie within the stone, including mine, now.
The
land called me here over 4 years ago, to the edge of the Colorado
Plateau, to Sedona and the Verde Valley to meet myself ~ someone
I didn't fully know yet. I'm still getting to know me through the
song of this land and the eyes of the stars here. There is something
here in the desert that listens to me. It's the rocks. And I hear
their voices in the wind. They find out places in me I don't know
are there at first. They give me permission to be what I haven't
tried yet; to live what Phil Cousineau , author of the Art of Pilgrimage
calls a "deeply felt, fully breathed life."
31 years
ago, and over 1,000 miles from here, I would awake in my room up
in Oregon, listening into the velvet darkness of the night to the
breathing of a mountain and the sighs of a valley that were increasingly
filling my awareness--by dreams at night and by visions during the
day. It was a high desert, deep blue-skies country--very unlike
the temperate, rain-soaked state where I was living at that time.
The mountain and the surrounding desert became my constant companions
for the next 27 years, while I walked a Life path that had other
places for me to go first. But on my extended journey here, I wrote
stories about people who lived here and drew pictures of the wild
beauty here, all the while hearing this land singing in my bones.
Through
a series of sychronicities, I found this land I call my Heart Home--Sedona
and the Verde Valley. And there are actually several mountains here:
Mingus, Black and Bear Mountains to name a few. Even as I was coming
here, I could feel the land already washing my spirit clean. Here
there is the rush of waterfalls spilling off of red rock during
monsoon season; the eerie yip and yap cries of coyote song in the
desert dusk; the smudge of sun-fired embers streaked across the
sunset sky, the scent of rain-soaked creosote bush. And there is
the rock.
Upon
my arrival, a mutual friend introduced me to Sandra Cosentino, owner/operator
of Crossing Worlds Journeys & Retreats based here in Sedona. Through
excursions of the heart-- Medicine Wheel ceremonies, drum journeys
and cultural explorations into Hopi and Navajo Indian country, Sandra
helped me deepen and further the bond I had with the wild magic
here-- this ancient land that had courted me from the thick-treed
slopes of the Northwest into the soaring rock and wrinkled hills
of the Southwest.
What
is it exactly that called me here? Mystery is what called me here--the
answers to questions I hadn't known yet to ask, hadn't lived yet.
Something Wise knew I was getting ready to ask those questions--and
to hear the answers, and it called me in so that we could talk.
We
often don't have any precedent in our lives that suggests that this
kind of connection is open to us; don't know anyone who has these
interactive dialogues with Nature, with the wild energies of wind
& rock and the ancient voices of the ancestors. Sandra has been
in dialogue and soulful connection with this ancient land all of
her Life. By example she helped me trust this seemingly unorthodox
conversation I had entered into with this place and welcome the
Mystery to enter into me.
When
I walk the land here, scramble the rocks, I feel the stone in the
bones of my hands and shins. It isn't an abstract contemplation
of the composition of rocks. It's a body conversation with the earth
that holds the days of my life, and all my dreams; all my breathing
and wondering; all of me that I am now, that I will be, am be-coming
as I write this. It is a conversation without words, composed of
meanings that my heart & body understand ~ and finds my mind at
peace, in its being let off the hook of having to come up with answers.
There
is a kind of peace that only comes from knowing we are held safe
in the cradle of the land; under the canopy of the sky. No other
place spells me like the red rocks of Sedona , the limestone cliffs
of the Verde Valley, the thrust of rhyolite tucked in the heart
of Mingus Mountain, or the secrets of the basalt gashes within the
wrinkled hills here.
The
rocks are still telling a story here. I am glad I am a part of it.
Shay
Panther is
a writer, poet, songstress, tour guide .
posted
April 1, 2002
updated March 3, 2008
