Earth, Fire, Wind and Water are my soul mates

Who?

I was lost in a land named the Escalante. This is the land on a bench in the Grand Canyon of Arizona way. The water/rain had washed away my trail to follow. There was no rain where I was but from a mile up on the rim little flash floods came down the canyon walls. The Sun was back out on a 115 f degree August day. The wind blew up some loose dirt to burn and scold and scald my skin and eyes. But I was on my earth. I was sixteen years old and I was all alone. What looked by man’s eye to be 100 yads away was 2.5 five miles away. I was a guide. But I had fully destroyed my ankle and sent the people ahead with the other guide while the path was still clear. I had only my shorts, a knife and my running scandals and each step was like burning hell reaming up through my ankle. Only 5 miles to go in a land known as Surprise Valley for it did not belong where it was, and that was the strange thing, I did belong here. I sat to rest and cut a core out of a barrel cactus to get the pulp to rest on my tongue. I slice a prickly pear cactus and used the “leaf” to spread the cool aloe type part on my leg and face and body.

I would not die this day for earth my mother was with me. I was in a space not known by many and I looked up and saw an American Eagle and a Giant Condor play tag in the rising heat of the desert. It was so red from the color of the Supai formation that I also became red to b e a part of.

I laid down in a shallow grave I dug as that was still cool dirt and I lowered my body temperature to near 100 degrees. The headache was coming from the heat. But the nausea and pain was relieved a bit by gnawing on some “Mormon tea” spines.

Now it was time to move my life of peace and the wind and the fire of the sun. I took some dirt in both hands and I raised them up to sister sky. And said “take me away – take the pain away”. And she did and I began to run toward where a beacon told me to run. I had made about 2 miles and up from a canyon rose a man bigger than cousin tree. He made a shadow upon mother earth and was near naked but with a strapped on water vessel. His hair as long as a big man’s arms and blowing not from the breeze which was absent but from his run and the shear power of his being where he belonged also. He was my big brother and I mean big not only at 6’6” but more so in presence of stillness inside.

“are you ok to touch little brother” is what he said. And I kneeled and kissed my earth that loves me. And we sat in the red dirt and admired the beauty of being in the Grand Canyon and what was so great and a part of our soul.

And then he said “I love you man” and swooped me up and began to carry me to our camp. And no this man did not even slow. He began to run. And we were one in the sun and the wind carried us home to a creek and the river.

We are not American Indians, what we call “The People”, something named Dine’ and do not worship these elements. But we know them. We were partly raised by them. And we are wholly raised up by them.

Fully embellished and probably made up of several incidents as the writer goes back in time it sometimes flows together into one dream.

But we were young river runners and guides in the Grand Canyon and we had both hiked the canyon and run its river several times before my 15^th birthday. And we were trained in wilderness emergency medical treatment and trained to track and ran miles every day. We were raised up for many months a year without running water or gas or for some time even electricity. We hiked since we were 3 years old.

I am not sure if this world was part of us, or if we were part of it, or maybe both.

It is not a religion in the traditional sense. Yes we can look up some groups that claim a whole bunch of rules and name it “Holistic Christianity”. That is why I call my spiritualism “wholistic”. It is not about mumbo jumbo. It is about really loving the elements. And yet knowing Christ. Sorry but that is it. Any further definition or restrictions or box building just does not fly. Is it somewhat ”Zen”? Yes. Is it somewhat derived from the most recent indigenous people of our place? Yes. But it is really only about personal relationships with that which is good and loving and real.

You see my brother just has some doubts about Christ. Not that He existed, and not that a God would send His children to this wonderful place. It is just that God has not told him who Christ is and he does not buy into the book being non-manipulated by man for man. Love and our earth and elements are proof of God to him. (funny thing is that he looks like common renditions of Jesus) Go figure.