Four Quarters of Light (42 page)

It was time to descend the windswept hill. We stumbled and tripped our way through the woods, then pulled ourselves limb by limb through the soggy tundra. I felt more able now, and I was anxious to learn what Charlie or Lena might be able to tell us about the stony cipher. Debra fell in behind me. At times when I seemed utterly lost she would point out the direction we should take. All the time I heard her voice behind me explaining the power of the spirit world. She was convinced by her own travels in this alternative realm, and from our early conversations in Fairbanks, that I too had been introduced and initiated into this other reality.

‘Is that why you contacted me so many years ago with those letters about the Dreamwalker?' I asked, beginning to see things falling into place.

‘Perhaps,' she answered. ‘I'm not sure exactly. I only remember that I had to contact you. Sometimes there are requests laid upon us from the spirit people that you simply have to follow through on blind faith and trust.'

‘But the timing was so perfect. Your letters were like a light shining in a dark place. They were the key that enabled me to complete my book.'

Before, she had simply listened. Now, she responded, ‘Well, there you are, you have your answer, and maybe there's one for me too.'

Throughout our descent Debra's disembodied voice behind me explained many different aspects of working with the other-world spirits. It was a powerful place, and also a dangerous zone. It must never be taken lightly nor misused. It was a contract between the individual and his or her spirit adviser; it in no way impaired our freedom or our life in this world, though it would unquestionably redirect its course. She spoke of the persons one might encounter in the spirit world. All would not be helpful because some of them are lost themselves. She hinted at changes or sacrifices I might have to make. She was passionate about how the ego was the greatest impediment to understanding, to progressing one's
understanding, and to the ability to ‘travel' in the spirit world.

I listened to her talking over the hour and a half it took to reach the camp. It was as if all the information she was feeding me was coming from somewhere other than herself. I may have been the leader on the descent but Debra was still the guide. As I tried to comprehend all this different thinking and new understanding that was pouring in on me, I realized just how in need of a guide I was.

At last we reached the clearing that marked our destination and the camp. The cabin was billowing smoke that curled up into the air then disappeared. The thoughts inside my head were like Charlie's chimney, full of thick smoke that was dissipating before I could see what it might mean.

As we approached the cabin door, Debra came up alongside me, as if to confirm her reality. ‘You should wash your back when you get a chance,' she said. It was another way of telling me just how close the two worlds are.

Later that evening, Debra and I sat in the kitchen with Lena, drinking herb tea. We asked her about the cryptic stonework we had found. For a few moments she sat silently, though there was much animation in her eyes. Then she walked off and rummaged through some books piled on a shelf. She discovered what she was looking for and handed us a small photo. It was of a small boy about eight or nine years old. He was smiling out at the camera, obviously fond of the person who was taking the picture.

‘This is Oneson,' she said.

As I passed the photo on to Debra, Lena continued, the animation in her eyes now brightening with tears. ‘Poor Oneson, poor, poor Oneson. It was very sad for him.'

Both Debra and I knew what was coming and for a moment I wished we had not unearthed this memory. But Lena didn't weep. Instead she told us about one of her daughters (the mother of the child in the photo) who had died from diphtheria, leaving her only child to be cared for by its grandparents. Lena and Charlie named the infant Oneson as he was the one and only son of their daughter. The name became the child's given name. He spent
several years with Lena and Charlie before going to attend school. As a child he learned quickly and was very athletic. He was a favourite with many of his teachers, and the other kids were all drawn to him. Lena called him a special child, and I was sure she was being more than a fond grandmother when she said it.

One day Oneson was out playing with another boy, but after a few hours the other child came home to his parents alone. Everyone thought Oneson was still playing with the other children or had gone home. It was not until many hours later that Charlie and Lena became anxious about Oneson's whereabouts and people realized he was missing. The young boy he had been playing with said he did not know where Oneson had gone, but the child was withdrawn and uncooperative. Everyone knew a bad thing had happened. Lena declared that there were many bad omens about that day.

Before many more hours had passed Oneson's body was found with a hunting rifle beside it. The boy was dead. There were no witnesses to what had happened, but the demeanour of his playmate over the next few days suggested much. The boy became more withdrawn; even when he was told of Oneson's death he kept asking where he had gone. Everyone accepted that a tragic accident had occurred.

It wasn't until some days after Oneson's funeral that the truth became apparent. The playmate had constantly been telling everyone that they must never be jealous of other friends. Slowly, it became obvious that some childish jealousy had caused one child to shoot his friend. Now his friend had left him for ever, and sadness and guilt had left the child morose and withdrawn. That was how everyone understood the death of Oneson. But it was an affair of innocence, and Lena and Charlie wanted no more suffering. Oneson was buried where we found the stones. Lena hadn't been up there for many years. She was too old to go there alone, but she asked if she could go with us the next day.

The remoteness of the camp and the image of the child in the photo made this tragic story very poignant for me, and the quiet stoicism of Lena's telling of it reinforced it. I thought of my own
sons and how they would have loved it here, just like Oneson. But would I have had the practical courage of Lena to endure one tragedy compounded on another? First her daughter, then her daughter's son. As if she was reading my thoughts, Lena announced, ‘He's not gone far. I think he heard his mother calling him and he went home to her.'

The next morning Lena made it to the top of Oneson's hill with less effort than me. She read Oneson's name in the stone quietly to herself, her head all the time nodding as if she was agreeing with someone. Then she sat down and let the sunlight and the wind caress her. Once she turned her face up towards the light. She looked beautiful. The great earth mother, queen of heaven – all the names of the divine were only names for something that radiated out of her. I took her photo, and I have it still, to remind me of her and that such divine beings can still be found in the extreme wilderness. As I studied her, I thought how life and death are at such people's doorstep every day. They deal with mortality daily. Lena's seal skins, her fish racks and her hide house were testimony to the fact. But they respect the animal they kill. A host of rituals are played out to its spirit. They know the spirit has power over them greater than death could ever have.

I walked off to be alone, and to leave Lena to her thoughts. Debra also went off on her own. I saw her hunkered down collecting something, then she walked even further away from us and studied the land like an animal scenting the breeze. When I reached the spot where I had stood the day before in contemplation of the confluence of earth, sea and sky, I sat down. We would be leaving the next day, so I opened my mind to allow whatever memories, emotions or impressions that were buried there to swim to the surface.

I thought of the hours I had spent with Lena, teaching me how to skin and tan her hides. I laughed at how I had draped them around me and the impulse I had felt while trapped in the wolf skin. Then I remembered that only yesterday I too had been ‘skinned' on a rack up here. It was some kind of complicated metaphysical irony I could not work out. I also thought of Oneson
and why I chose his place. I couldn't work that out either. The old raven had called us up the hill, but something else had made me stop there. Was it the spirit of Oneson, happy that we had come? The child who caused Oneson's death had continually scolded others about the dangers of jealousy and wanting what others have. In the end he got what Oneson had now, loneliness. But there was something else that struck me. I recalled the almost eerie voice of Debra warning me about the danger of the ego as we had descended from this place yesterday. Was finding Oneson's grave and learning his story a way of re-emphasizing her admonishments? In a way, Oneson's death was the result of someone else's, albeit innocent, ego.

But maybe my intellect was working overtime. I lay back and closed my eyes. The sun and the breeze washed over me like Lena's luxurious furs. I sank into the exquisite quiet like a dream. I heard voices, but knew it was only my imagination. It sounded like Jack and Cal calling out to me from way off. I was remembering the story I had read to them so often about going on a bear hunt. Suddenly, I thought how the story had acted itself out with me yesterday. I had indeed walked through the swishy-swashy grass, splish-sploshed through mud, stumble-tripped through the dark forest, climbed the hill where the wind woo-hooed and had an encounter with a bear. Then I had run back, retreading the path I had journeyed up on, with the bear following me, speaking through the body of Debra. In the original story the escaping children lock themselves in their cabin. The bear cannot get to them and is left to wander off alone along a gold-dappled ocean – just like the one before me now. I had always insisted to Jack and Cal that the bear in the story didn't want to hurt the children, only to make friends and play with them. My spirit bear also was a great fearsome creature, according to Debra, but he too was lonely and wanted to make friends and help. I laughed at the association I was making. It was irresistible, and I could only conclude that I had indeed been on a bear hunt. And that the bear found me!

Just then a voice called out my name. This time it was not my imagination. From the top of the hill Debra and Lena were
waving. I climbed up to them. While I had been away, Debra had asked Lena if she would like her to perform a blessing, and Lena had agreed. The three of us sat in a crude circle holding hands while Debra called on the spirit world to look after and bless the life of Charlie and Lena. It was a simple thing in that simple place. And I wished it for Charlie and Lena also.

As we were standing to leave, Debra gave me a handful of bones which she thought might be finger bones and some feathers. This was shaman stuff and I asked what they were for. ‘You will know in time,' she said. Then she asked Lena if she knew of any violent deaths that might have happened here long before Oneson was buried. Lena confided that the bones of a young child, a girl, had been found ‘way over there' and that many, many years ago, ‘in older time', there was much fighting and killing. I looked at Debra as Lena walked slowly a few feet in front of us. ‘I knew it,' she whispered. ‘I could feel lots of them way over there.'

On our way back Lena seemed in high spirits. She skipped through the undergrowth like a teenager. She was smiling and full of laughter. The visit to Oneson and the blessing had worked quicker than I could have imagined.

When we got back to the cabin Lena went in to make something for Charlie. Debra and I walked round to the other side and sat in the shade of a few trees. I explained to her that I was still trying to sort through my responses to all that had happened, to get to the substance of what she had been explaining to me. Debra was consoling. ‘You must learn to walk before you can run,' she commented. Without thinking, I announced that my youngest son Cal had learned to walk since we arrived in Alaska. She smiled. ‘Baby steps first, Brian, right?'

‘Okay,' I answered.

But she was insistent. ‘You really have to be sure about taking this further.'

I was only sure that the way to understand this stuff was to take it further. By way of helping me, Debra explained her own early encounters with the ‘other world'.

‘I remember how stunned I felt when I came back to this world. I didn't have a lot to latch on to because the symbolism was so different from my spiritual practice of the Hebrew mystical path that I didn't know where to go or what to think. I felt a little crazy, but I knew what I wanted. I knew it was all real and I wasn't crazy.

‘I didn't know what it all meant until I found a book that had been given to me ten years earlier by a friend which I had never read. It was called
Shamanic Visions
, by Joan Halifax. The wonder of the book was that it was a compilation of first-hand accounts by shamans from all over the world instead of scholarly, anthropological accounts. Each shaman described in his own words the experience he'd had of being initiated into shamanism. Several accounts, the northern and Arctic ones, were almost exactly like mine, so when I read them I knew what had happened to me. It explained a lot to me and helped me move on. For several months, every time I closed my eyes to meditate, the animal was there, no matter how hard I tried to have a “regular” meditation. My animal always led me back to my grandfather teacher who kept teaching me and telling me that I needed to shamanize. I couldn't imagine how I could do that, being a white middle-class woman, but he assured me I could and if I accepted the gifts they would take care of the rest. So I thought, “Okay, I'll do it,” and to my amazement people started coming to me for healing work almost immediately.

‘A series of events occurred that led me to the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, which then led me to teaching as well. To me, the most telling was that I live in a very conservative town and I had received hate calls from fundamental Christians about my mystical path, but to this very day I have never received one about my shamanizing. After ten years I finally was curious enough to ask my spirit teacher why, and he said because I was doing healing work, they have protected me all these years by throwing a cloak of invisibility over me so that I can do my work unseen. It actually makes sense to me. It explains why I've been able to do this work without any problems, and even why it's
been so easy. I've had very few obstacles put in my way. In fact, it all seems to happen easily, as long as I remain committed to the work, stay impeccable, maintain my ethics and don't take it personally. In other words, it isn't really me in this, so I have to be very careful about not bringing my ego into it. When I slip and the ego gets involved the work starts to become difficult. It is a path, and one can inadvertently start to wander. I always know when I'm being impeccable because all this shamanic work goes well for me. When I start to wander, it doesn't. It's really not so hard to stay on it when the path is so clear. It has not been that difficult a journey, and in the beginning, when I felt crazy, it was the most difficult. Now I don't worry at all about shamanizing. If it is correct, the veil protects me.'