For Joshua (3 page)

But he brought me out, mainly through jokes and stories, and it wasn’t long before we were sharing our
experiences. I felt like an equal. He allowed me to feel like someone who really mattered. Finally, I was someone who counted, although I had much to learn. John, like any good teacher, made me curious about my feelings, my mysteries, my maps and territories. And like good teachers do, he gave me a compass that led me to explore further than I had before. John did that for me.

He talked to me about the traditions and teachings of our people and how they might just work for me in today’s world if I was strong enough to try them. We’d walk through the foothills or the prairies and he would point things out to me and explain how our people understood them. Things like how the prairie grasses symbolized humility, how the mountain symbols painted on a teepee represented faith, why the eagle is such a revered and honoured creature. He talked about the four sacred medicines—sweet grass, tobacco, sage, and cedar—and how they came to be delivered to the people and what they were used for. He explained how much the world had changed in his lifetime and the lifetimes of others of his generation, and how change affected the lives of our people across the country. He explained the nature of traditional life in the tribal times before the settlers came. He told me how important it was for our people to reconnect to those old ways of being so that they might sustain us through
even more difficult changes to come. These things and more he explained to me.

When I had questions, which was most of the time, he would explain quietly and humbly what he knew of these things. I never felt he was talking down to me during those conversations. Instead, I felt included, as though these teachings had always belonged to me and I was simply being reminded of them, not lectured to. I loved him for that. When my questions became more pointed, more direct and probing, he figured that I had learned enough to understand at a deeper level and he started to teach me about ceremony.

A ceremony is a very simple thing, I remember him telling me. It’s a way of talking to the Creator
—Gitchee Manitou
in the Ojibway language. It’s a way to line up your life and how you live it with the simple way of the heart.

Before he explained this to me I had believed that a ceremony was something that would intimidate me, something that would make me feel small, something I should fear. But I learned that a ceremony makes you bigger. It gives you power. It clears your heart, mind, spirit, eyes, ears, and mouth so you can experience the world as it is, not as it’s taught to you or as it seems to be sometimes. A ceremony is an act of love, John said. Ojibway ceremonies, when they’re done the right way with the right intention, are
meant to help you know and understand yourself and your place in the universe.

To get me ready for the arrival of ceremony in my life, John explained the Medicine Wheel. I’d heard of it before, but like so many of the traditional ways of my people, I really had no idea of what it meant. I had some vague, romantic notion that it was an item of regalia to be worn on my chest, a tattoo maybe, or some mysterious object to hang on my wall that would protect me from all kinds of evil things.

“A Medicine Wheel is like a map,” he said.

“To lead me where?” I asked.

“To where you live.”

“You mean my home?”

“Yes. Where you live. Your insides. The Medicine Wheel acts like a guide to take you there,” he replied.

“And why would I need a map for that? Can’t I just find the way on my own?”

“Well, we human beings like to think we can,” he said. “We all like to believe that we can discover the necessary truths on our own—but we can’t. Like it or nor not, we need help, and the Medicine Wheel is one of the greatest tools our people have to help us find our individual truths.”

He went on to explain that a Medicine Wheel was a circle divided into four segments, each representing a
direction from the physical world, our Mother Earth. The east, the direction of the rising sun, is the place of illumination, and its gift is innocence. The south is the direction that receives the most light from the sun and is the place of growth. Its gift is humility and trust. In the west, the sun sets and is the place where introspection happens in the long night to follow. The gift of the west is honesty. The north is the place of truth. After travelling the other three directions and looking at his life, the traveller who arrives in the north is graced with the gift of wisdom.

“You look at your life, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, how you felt about it all. That’s how you travel the Medicine Wheel,” John said. “The four directions also represent body, emotions, mind, and spirit. When you look back over your life, you look at the four parts of yourself and you gain wisdom. You find your truth.”

“I don’t get it. Where is this Wheel? Do I have to go somewhere to start making my way around it?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You can use the Wheel and its teachings anywhere. It’s inside you where all truth is. You just need to be willing to look for it. If you want to learn about yourself and your life you can walk the Wheel anywhere. And that’s exactly what I have in mind for you.”

He went on to tell me that it was important for me to
perform a ceremony for myself, one that would enable me to experience what it was like to use the Medicine Wheel and its teachings in my life. Rather than spend an agonizing time talking about these life teachings and how they applied to me, John wanted me to do a ceremony on my own that would make the Medicine Wheel clear to me. I was to gather a yard of white cotton cloth that I would cut into as many small squares as possible. Then, I was to gather some white thread, tobacco, a blanket, and a large canteen. When I had these things I was to let him know. I trusted John, though it felt odd to follow directions without a full explanation. But I believed that a collection of things as seemingly harmless as what he was asking for couldn’t bring too fearful a result, so I went along.

“Is there some place you know that’s special for you?” he asked when I had gathered all of the materials.

“Yes,” I said, without a lot of thought.

There was a hill where I had been going for a month or so to watch sunsets. The hill faced the Rocky Mountains, which were only about twenty miles away. I’d found it by accident one day while driving aimlessly about. Maybe the Ojibway in me, the part that remembered a home territory much like this, with high craggy cliffs and thick bush enveloped in a huge, tangible silence, was attracted to that
setting. I don’t know. But I do know that it was one of those places that felt right, and I’d returned again and again.

To get to the top I needed to park my car by the side of a gravel road and walk about half a mile around and up to a small copse of trees where there was an outcropping of rock with a ledge from which I could dangle my feet. The drop from that ledge to the road was more than two hundred feet and I had seen eagles and hawks soar between me and the road below. It’s an eerie feeling when you see great birds from above, and eerier still when they make their silent passes against a backdrop of coyote howls from the hoodoos and hills all around you. There were bears in that territory, too, though I hadn’t seen any during my visits to the hill.

I’d sit there silently and watch the sun fade into the arms of the Rockies and then make my way back down in the gathering darkness, filled with a sense of mystery and a foreign calm that always lessened the closer I got to the city of Calgary again.

“Sounds like it’s the right place, then,” John said.

We drove out together late one morning. It was summer, and the brilliance of the sun seemed to fill everything we passed with a vibrant energy so that the world was virtually quivering with life. I was vibrating, too, but with a different
energy. I was anxious and uncertain and the fact that John didn’t talk much on the drive unsettled me further. I sensed that what he was about to ask me to do was a big enough matter that small talk seemed insignificant in the face of it. I felt the knot of apprehension grow in my belly. When we got to the hill we walked to the top of it in the same dense silence.

At the ledge he drew a large circle on the ground with his walking stick. To the west I could see the Rocky Mountains, and I could follow their ragged sweep to the south and north over foothills thick with trees. Eastward, forest, rock, and the huge bowl of the sky hovered over the great plains. The road looked like a pale grey ribbon from that height, and John’s car was a small dot of colour at the base of the hill. I felt distant from everything at that moment. When he’d finished inscribing the circle, John told me to sit in it with all my articles.

“This will be your home for the next four days,” he said. “You can’t step out of this circle for any reason. That meal we ate in town is the last food you’ll have for that length of time, and the water you carried in has got to last you through.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I would have no fire. I would have nothing to read. My job for the next four days was to sit in that circle and look around at the world. I was to pay strict attention and think about my life.

“Each time you think of something in this world and in your life that you are thankful for, you put tobacco in the cloth and tie it,” John instructed. “You look around you and you think. Go back to things, places, people. Try to remember how you felt at certain times in your life. It might be hard—you may cry, you may want to run away—but if you stay and do this thing, you’ll find things to be thankful for. You’ll learn what it means to have gratitude and you’ll make a pouch for each of them.”

The pouches were to be tied together with the thread until they formed a long chain. “Then what?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know,” was all he said.

It seemed like a huge demand. To go without food and shelter was nothing new to me. I’d been homeless on a few occasions in my life and sleeping outdoors was hardly a new experience. But to do so by choice was different. I was suddenly very afraid. The fear came from the idea of being alone and powerless on a hill far removed from the things I’d learned to take for granted in the cities where I’d lived. This was going to just be me, armed with nothing, alone in a world that suddenly seemed untamed and unpredictable, far wilder than it ever had before. I was going to be left alone with myself—and it terrified me.

My mind raced. For the next ninety-six hours I was to be
silent. I could pray aloud if I felt like it, or I could even sing a prayer song, but beyond that I was to remain silent. John told me that the circle I sat in represented life and because of that I needed to be very respectful. I could not kill anything in that circle. If I needed to relieve myself I would have to bury my waste and keep the circle as clean and as pure as possible. The blanket was all the protection I would have. When I grew hungry and uncomfortable I was to pray and let Creation know how I was feeling, but not to ask for anything but the strength to see this ceremony through to its end.

“Are you sure I’m ready for this?” I asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he replied.

“What if something happens? What if some big animal—a bear, or a wolf or something—comes along? What do I do?”

He smiled. “You’ll figure that out if it happens.”

“You’re sure?”

“No. But I’m not the one who has to be,” he said with a grin.

“But why? Why is it so important that I put myself through something like this?”

“That’s what you’ll find out when it’s over.”

And he walked away.

There are silences in this life that can open up and swallow you whole. You tumble into them, senseless and disoriented. The sudden lack of direction leaves you immobile, foot-stuck, and mute, language suddenly a guttural rasp in the voice box. As I stood in that small copse of trees and watched John make his way back down the hill I wanted to shout that I wasn’t ready for this. I needed more time. I didn’t know enough. I was scared. But I couldn’t find my voice. My throat was dry and coarse with desperation and I took a big swallow of water to ease it. The further away he got, the more alone and isolated I felt and the bigger and emptier the world seemed. When he got into his car and
began to pull away I waved my arms at him, but he either didn’t see me or was content to leave me on that hill.

I watched his car until it disappeared and then I slumped down to the ground. There was the first chill of an evening breeze and the shadows thrown by the sun were suddenly deeper and longer. It would be evening soon. I looked around at the view that had seemed so friendly before this day but now was heavy with unseen dangers. I was scared. More scared than I could recall ever having been. Without a fire at night I would have no way to prevent anything from coming into that circle. I was afraid to be hungry. Four days without food is a long time and even though we’d had a really big meal before coming to the hill, the thought of being hungry for days frightened me. I was afraid my water would run out. I was fearful of the weather suddenly turning into a summer storm, of lightning, thunder, hail, and cold. I was afraid of insects. But mostly I was afraid that I would fail. Failure at this ceremony would mean that I didn’t have what it took to be Indian, to be Ojibway. It would mean that I belonged nowhere, that I would be alone forever.