Journal 2007

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13 January 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

On these brilliant winter days, and cold, dark nights near zero degrees, the neighborhood critters still drop by. In snow on the deck, within inches of each other, are tracks of Fox, Jackrabbit, Squirrel, Junco, Bluejay.... Before dawn, when the night is coldest and mountain stars flare, all movement stops. This ridge is quiet. No breeze. No stirring, twittering, flapping. No footsteps on the crunchy snow. Even the owls have stopped hooting as everyone waits in silence for the light and heat of the winter sun.

* * * * *

22 January 2007, along the Rogue River in southern Oregon, at the ancient village of Ti'lomikh....

Patches of snow speckle shady spots on the valley floor, and snow in the mountains is crusty from clear, cold nights filled with the brilliance of mid-winter stars.

This is the height of the native storytelling season, the moon we call "Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire."

On winter nights community lodges were crowded with folks eager for imaginative breaks from the leafless landscape. They were hungry for nightly immersions into the depths of stories that reminded them of warmer days to come, days to wander up mountain slopes to the best berry-picking places, up and down rivers to the best fishing places. The stories reminded them of summer-rich treks to visit relations in distant villages now cut off by mountain passes clogged with snow and ice. The stories not only transformed the landscape. They filled that vista with vivid memories of ancestors, families and friends, and their day to day lives ... full-throated dramas of birth, of love and life, of death....

This season of stories also has its origins in the making of the stories themselves. During long, dark nights just right for dreaming, nipped by air as pure as a frozen vision, the most creative among the people were inspired to spin tales that grew with each telling, stories that blossomed by spring into full-fledged myths, cycles of stories that snowballed each winter for centuries.

Many of these myths survive today. We tell them night after freezing night. As long as they live, we live. We are reminded of a rich landscape lucid with each breath of our lives. As the storytelling moon waxes and wanes, and waxes and wanes again, the season turns slowly to spring.

* * * * *

Near dusk, Doty and Coyote walk the Old Time Rogue River trail to Ti'lomikh. Winter sun disappears behind the ridge, and another layer of frost covers the frozen ground. The trail is empty. No one else walks between villages. Everyone is in the winter lodge, cozied up for the evening, awaiting another night of stories. Doty and Coyote crawl through the entrance and find a warm spot near the fire. Coyote tosses on another log and the fire blazes, spreading orange light across the wrinkled face of an old woman who is just starting a story. "A long time ago, on a day filled with sunshine, Coyote was high-stepping up and down the river trail looking for something to do in the world...." Coyote grins. Doty nods with a sense of resolved acceptance. As they listen to the story, people scoot closer to the fire. The air is as warm as summer, and everyone feels at home.

* * * * *

5 February 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The past several days have been full of story treks....

* * * * *

On my father's birthday I climb Upper Table Rock at dawn. This is the first birthday after his passing. I climb this sacred rock to honor him. When I was six, my father first took me up Upper Table Rock, and not long after, up Lower Table Rock.

"Wow," says Coyote. "Look what that led to."

"Yes," I say. "A lifetime of stories and journeys."

The valley is filled with fog that ebbs and flows, opens and closes, giving glimpses of the river and the forests, then taking them away and leaving a sea colored orange by the sunrise. Parts of the upper trail are slippery with snow and ice, and on top the frozen vernal pools dazzle under the winter sun. I wander around for several hours, finding memories from my youth, including the crevice we crawled up from the base of the rock to the flat-topped summit when I was a kid, years before there was an "official" trail. I remember thinking that this must be the way the Indians got to the top.

* * * * *

Later that afternoon, I wade the icy Rogue River with friends to the ancient story chair at the falls at Ti'lomikh. For 25 years I have searched for this chair, and today I sit in it for the first time. A friend takes a photo of me holding a photo of Grandma Aggie's father sitting in the chair in 1933, on this day, my father's birthday.

* * * * *

A few days later I journey deep into the Redwoods and to favorite places down the coast. At the mouth of the Klamath River at Requa, I watch the late afternoon sun send rays through a bank of fog on the horizon, spotlighting the Pacific with light that twinkles like stars on the waves and disappears into the darkness.

* * * * *

Yesterday, I walk the old time Indian trail along the Klamath River through the village of Coyote's Paw. Though the day is balmy, the village seems frozen into another era ... the creek is a wide expanse of ice, the Ghost Dance trees look like they have stood here since creation, the depressions in the Rain Rock are filled with acorns and forest debris from a forgotten season. Several horses, startled by my presence, gallop out of the village and up the river. The sound of their hooves crash through time, a sound not unfamiliar to folks living in this village on a day like this one hundreds of years ago. That day and today mix with centuries of memories that make up the story of this place.

Downriver and to the south, a bald eagle follows me around frozen Bass Lake as Mount Shasta pales in the long shadows of late afternoon.

* * * * *

28 February 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Snow. Lots of it. Two weeks worth. More than I can remember this late in winter. Having lived in the Rogue Valley all of my life, my memory goes back a bit farther than the fellow quoted on the news: "I can't believe this weather. I've lived here for 3 years and I've never seen anything like it!"

Here on the ridge, there are drifts over 2 feet deep. Early in the morning, in the light of an almost-full moon, there is a quiet breath between storms. Moonlight slants through trees whose boughs dip toward the ground with the weight of snow. Moonlight reveals the criss-crossed paths of critters. The white landscape turns brilliant as it reflects the light and sends it skimming across the meadow and into the woods. Thick drifts on the roof is good insulation, and my lair is cozy and warm. These snowy days are made for reading and writing and rehearsing, for wondering and for wandering through stories.

* * * * *

12 March 2007, Bass Lake, Shasta Valley, California....

Early morning walk around Bass Lake. I am here after ducks and geese and swans wake up and before the fishermen arrive. The sunrise is a faint glow of light in the east, silhouetting Mount Shasta. Not a breeze. The air is so quiet and still that the sudden overhead sound of a swan's wings is almost a roar. I gaze to the summit of one of the buttes near the lakeshore. A rugged ridge of basalt is broken by the large, rounded ears of mule deer watching me in the dim light. As I walk back to my rig I hear the rattle of paddles as the first fishermen of the morning launch their skiff and head out across the lake.

* * * * *

A few days ago at Lava Beds, Doty sits in the vision chair at the entrance to the cave called Symbol Bridge.

Twenty feet above him, clinging to the top of the massive collapse that formed the entrance to this cave, is the charred stump of a juniper tree struck by lightning. Before him sprawl the remains of the tree, shattered trunk pointing toward the chair. This happened a long time ago. Behind Doty is a sequence of symbols painted on rock. They say: Sit here for a while to experience something interesting, perhaps a vision. A few feet away are more symbols ... the creation of the Crab Nebula in 1054, the myth of the sun traveling through a lava cave, the good-luck presence of Chief Rattlesnake....

Doty is surrounded by stories and the spirits of those who experienced them. He sits for a spell but nothing as grand as a super nova or a lightning storm shows up. Not even a snake! Patience, says the voice of an Old One, patience.

Doty hides his watch in his pocket. He stops watching the path of the sun. He closes his eyes and imagines he sees the stories. One by one, as mythtime dances with dreamtime, he hears the crack of lightning, the crash of the tree. Through his eyelids he sees a flash as bright as any night-sky explosion. The cave rattles with echoes.

The Old Ones are right. Sit quietly for longer than a spell and the old stories will gather at the chair. Sit longer still, and your own story will come to visit.

* * * * *

25 March 2007, Ti'lomikh, along the Rogue River of southern Oregon....

Rain sweeps in this morning as snowmelt swells the river. The roaring of the falls is muffled by the steady swoosh of rain. Canada Geese get just as wet standing on islands in the river as floating the riffles. As the river deepens, morning clouds turn darker grey and black.

* * * * *

"So, Mister Romantic Storyteller -- he who claims to be have been born 300 years too late -- tell me what storytelling and lovemaking have in common."

"All right, Mister GoodBadDog Coyote. I suspect you have several 'correct' answers just to make me look bad. So let's save some time. I don't have a clue. Tell me."

"The better you are at them, the fewer props you need. Ha!"

* * * * *

16 May 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The longer and warmer days of May have woken up the landscape around Dragonfly Place. The giant oaks, the last of the trees here to leaf out, are new-green and already providing afternoon shade for the year-round bickering of ravens and jays and squirrels. Daffodils are bright yellow in the meadow. Along the road, many-colored irises bloom where they were planted over a hundred years ago when the road up the ridge led to a pioneer homestead. Before the homestead, the Takelmas had a seasonal camp here. Many generations from diverse cultures have enjoyed this view of the Rogue Valley turning geener each day at the height of spring. It's a good place no matter where you come from.

* * * * *

23 May 2007, along the Row River....

In the light of a campfire, I tell stories to 5th grade students at an outdoor school. Crow lands in a tree above the telling. A songbird sings as I sing a Hupa song. Characters enter and exit their mythtime stage. They are seen as shapes in the flames. Shadows dance in the wings. Coyote tells a Coyote story to keep the old pooch happy, and stories flow like the river, flow into moonlight.

* * * * *

28 May 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Yesterday, as we journeyed up the canyon to the Naming Ceremony site for Taowhywee Peak, Magpie flew before us, guiding us along the path. As the story of that day gets told and retold, we might call it, "Gift of the Magpie."

* * * * *

20 June 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Just before dawn on this last day of spring. Time of transitions. Birdsongs fill the morning, welcoming the first light. Bats swoop through shadows after insects before settling in for the day. Stars close their eyes. Mister Fox makes one more saunter past my home and heads down the ridge at the end of his nighttime rounds. Like the birds, I welcome the sunrise with a prayer and a song. Slowly, summer-like heat drives the cool morning air away.

* * * * *

Inside mythtime, time makes its own rules. The Storyteller began to tell a story last spring and got interrupted. Now it's summer and time to take up the narrative again. Somehow this shift of the seasons makes no difference. Seasons circle the year as each story dictates. The Storyteller stands in the place where he left his characters. He reaches out and picks up a word as one picks a spring wildflower. He looks to the horizon. He smells the last scene. Even in mid July, everything within reach of his senses is bursting with springtime. The Storyteller takes a step down the path and picks another word.

* * * * *

19 July 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Cool morning after a few days and nights of lightning and thunder and pounding rain. The air down the valley is clear and crisp as if the industrial revolution never happened or at least forgot to invent the smoke-belching smokestacks of lumber mills. Resident birds who have been holed up in the storm-proof branches of pines and firs have hopped into the open to soak up the morning sun and munch seeds scattered across the meadow by the storms. Coming back from the coast the other day, sauntering through mountains wet with rain, two elk crossed the road and headed up the slope into the clouds. Following their lead to climb higher, I'm wandering back ino the hills today in search of an ancient rock carving I have seen in an old photo. With the rock damp after the rain, in soft morning sunlight, the symbols will be clear and the carving will tell its story.

* * * * *

22 December 2007, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Last night was the longest night of the year but not the darkest. A nearly-full moon lit the meadow here on the ridge and angled shafts of pale light through the woods, spotlighting the nightly browsing of deer and the clock-like rounds of Mister Fox. Near dawn, clouds cover the sky. They hide the mountain light of the moon, veiling the rising of the winter sun, quietly nudging another storm into this new season.