44
Flames flickered to sleep as they picked off the farmhands. Miles considered the tenacity of the ancestral firetenders, who couldn’t simply flick a Bic every time they needed a light. They followed the herd and carried their embers, keeping the heart of the community alive with every transplant, of course fire was sacred.
And even once you learn to rub your drumsticks together, it’s not as easy as 1-2-3-4, you have to nurse the tiniest spark into combustion, and during the moments in-between, that fragment of ignition is the most precious thing in your universe. It heats you, feeds you, and lights you through the valley of shadows, it’s the core of the village and a hub of connection, the fire is sacred.
And nowadays, we just carry that magic in our pockets, with little to no thought about anything other than our next smoke break. It’s infinitely more convenient, even I carry one, but it almost seems as if there’s a direct correlation between the rise of convenience and the disappearance of the sacred.
When you hike through a blizzard just to stoke the Sacred Fire, each piece is a prayer that warms you in every way. When you carry that fire to the tipi, you’re still connected, and as long as you take care of it in a good way, it’ll take care of you.
Then you hide it away in a cast iron cage, and it suddenly becomes a chore, not an honor.
And once you’ve mastered your command of the element, reducing the heat to a number on a dial, you’ve now progressed your spiritual amnesia to just another bill you pretend doesn’t exist.
And it’s the same with food. We used to pray with the seeds, sow them by hand, and by song. Our fingers were in the Earth, there was no shortcut of convenience, only intention of the heart. The harvest was welcomed with ceremony, the bounty prepared with love, the spirits ate first and every morsel was felt in your soul.
Then farming became a job. And food a commodity. You could buy exploits from around the world at your neighborhood grocer. Yet the only prayers on the prairie, were to be spared another agriculturally induced dust bowl.
Now we can order a number seven from our phones, genetically tampered and machine planted, picked before it’s ripe and trucked across the ocean, scattered, smothered, covered, hydrogenated, saturated, mechanically separated, fresh frozen flash fried and delivered to your window, don’t get up, no time for real food, and certainly no time for grace.
The deer is sacred and its energy is a gift from the Earth, but it takes a lot of yourself to honor each part of its life in a good way. The living stock of our Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are prisoners, and inventory, and the sacred can simply not be quantified in a convenient excel spreadsheet.
Traveling across the land used to be sacred as you savored every step. Walking in prayer. Then the Sunka Wakan joined the caravan, the horse, Wakan is right there in the name, sacred. For some it was more convenient to break their property into submission, but others held that relationship sacred, a relative, and their spirits were one as they journeyed the Earth as a team.
Then we hop aboard the clickety-clack of the coal fired buffalo slaughter, cars only bring us traffic jams and a road raged with commuters, and the only thing sacred about jet fuel propulsion is when a cloud of turbulence brings out the believer in those otherwise occupied by the in-flight magazine. Ooh, look at that travel pillow, should be able to sleep though a train wreck with that thing.
Trees were sacred, not measured by the board foot. Plants were sacred, not another weed to poison. Clothes were sacred, not products of slave labor. Language was sacred, not a class to fail. Songs were sacred, not autotuned. Names were sacred, not picked from a book. Children were sacred, not just another phone on a family plan. Elders were sacred, not locked away in early retirement. Women were sacred, not thumbnails to swipe right. Relationships were sacred, not purchased with jewelry. Homes were sacred, not prefabbed and foreclosed. The Earth was sacred, not the inventory of some property manager.
Perhaps there’s no direct correlation, simply a coincidence of substandard consciousness, it’s perfectly possible to pray with your Big Mac and sing to your radiator. Convenience doesn’t necessitate that you stop holding life sacred, but it sure makes it easier not to.
Miles was deep in the coals when Jordan snuck up on him, but he’s native, so it couldn’t have been that hard.
“Aho kola,” he spoke softly, as he took the next seat.
He tossed some tobacco in and watched it sizzle into the stars. They sat in silence for a while, contemplation, prayer, until eventually Jordan was ready to share his heart.
“We’ve been on a good run brother. And on the run. I feel like a different man than when I met you, I can’t imagine how you feel. Glad we got to kick ass together, and pray together, and grow as people through all those moments we shared. You’re family, man, I mean it, my brother, we’re gonna be connected for a long time, no matter where our paths lead us. And...
...and I think tomorrow my path’s leading me out of here. West. I talked to a few Water Protectors today, and they’re heading to Oregon to fight the LNG, and they’re just a couple hundred miles east of here now. It’s falling into place too easy to not be what I’m supposed to do, feels right in my heart, you know? I know I should be laying low, but those idiots can’t tell one Indian from another, and what do they really have on me anyway?
There’s an extra seat if you want it, would love to take my favorite tipimate with me, but I get it if it’s not your path. What we’ve got going on here is a good thing, I hate to leave it really, but I have to, and I know that even these few days of riding together will carry me through the travels ahead. You inspire me dude, and these horses inspire me, and that deer inspired me, and I think it’s time for me to do something with all of it, plus I hear there’s some really tall trees out there.”
Miles was surprised, but not shocked. As his own comfort with last minute travel grew, so did his understanding of interwoven trajectories, and his appreciation that in order to see someone soon, they have to go somewhere first. If they didn’t follow their own compass, then they’d miss those magical connections, and that would be way sadder than any toksa.
Miles stayed up for a bit after the bromantic moment, he needed to share some tobacco as its fireflies lit the way. Both paths felt viable, both fit for the next chapter, it was down to heads and tails.
And after a conversation with Bud, there was no way Miles was ready to climb into the safety restraint of a four wheeled death machine. He was staying. Well, he was leaving, they all were, first thing in the morning, and he would make sure to live a story worth telling the next time their paths were crossed.
The sun stirred the horses, the horses stirred the people, the people stirred the coffee, the coffee stirred the rest of it to life.
Elmer and Jordan stood by as the menagerie prepared for takeoff, they had an empty horse now, just in case Elmer was serious. The boys traded one last toksa, for now, and a seven second oxytocin releasing hug, and in the secret pockets of their hidden handshake were exchanged the most sacred of items, but that’s sacred, and no words in a book can ever compare to the sacred, so I’m not even gonna worry about it.
It wasn’t the same without the incessant hijinks of his running mate, but he was in community, with family, and it opened up space for Brooke to dig into his backstory. She was interested, and interesting, as he imagined most horseback nomads would prove to be. She knew a lot about plants, and food, and she navigated the whole trip by the starlight of memory, and she was nice, and fun, and funny. But she didn’t make him tingle the way Annie had. And that was okay. Their relationship needn’t be centered around a desire to objectify. They could be good friends, not just friends, and he could be present in every sacred moment, regardless of where they were headed.
The groove of the ride had changed. Miles no longer had a tether, so he bounced throughout the pack and deepened his connections as he tightened threads, though he still found himself turning to share the underbreath commentary with his bff. The days were long, the deer was dry, the saddle was still sore, but eventually they posted camp and Miles had a moment in his tent. Not a boohoo sob story moment, like a magical moment. It was pretty neat, really.
He had already offered tobacco to the land before he set up the tent, a yellow prayer tie staked next to his east facing door, new beginnings of the rising sun and safe travels into the night. He burned a ball of sage, smudged himself and his home, and left it smoldering in an abalone shell as he unpacked his most sacred bedroll.
The blanket was beautiful, cherished, and being the nicest thing in his cache, he felt obliged to protect it from the dusty road. He kept it wrapped in his other blanket, and stuffed into an oversized dry sack, and as he pulled it free to make his bed, it shimmered in the moonlight. His fingers excited sparks of current as he smoothed its wrinkles, static had been building up in the woolen coil, charging its spirit with every step of the way. It was rather fantastic.
“Hey dude, come check this out,” he called to the tent next door before he remembered the vacancy.
“What is it, dude?” intercepted Tiana as she loomed over the doorway, caught him off guard, he wasn’t expecting company.
“I meant that other dude, been talking to him all day out of habit, at least it’s been quieter though.”
“Aw, you boys are so sweet. So what was it you wanted to show him? Unless I don’t want to see whatever weird shit you guys were into.”
“It’s all PG, it’s pretty trippy though.”
“Whoa, nice Pendleton, where’d you get that from?”
“Unci. For working on her ceiling.”
“Dang. Good one. Take care of it.”
“And it’ll take care of me, I know. But rub your hand across it.”
“Is this a trick?”
“No trick.”
“Oh well, but I guess I’ll try it anyway.”
She knelt down and slid her palm over the wool as sparklers ignited in every direction, her glance chased electricity from head to toe.
“Wow. This is so cool. Electric blanket. Should keep you warm enough, it’s only like a hundred degrees out here. Sorry your bedfellow’s not here to see it.”
She exhausted the pent up energy and turned to take a seat beside him on the blanket.
“I’ll miss that kid too, but we’ll see him again soon enough. I’m glad you stayed though.”
“Yeah, me too,” accepted Miles, as he tried not to peruse her laidback sentiment. “Just kinda felt right.”
“Yeah,” she knew the feeling. “And looks like you’re getting along with Brooke pretty good too, huh?”
“She’s cool, everybody is, even you.”
“Punk,” she bit back as she punched his arm. “You know what I mean. You like her.”
“I like her just fine. Just getting to know her really. I’m not trying to jump to conclusions with anybody until we know each other in a real way, not now that I understand what real connection is like. Plus, I’m just now figuring out how to listen to my own heart.”
“Good answer. So what’s it been saying?”
“It’s saying that I’m pretty much in love with Bud, I mean Taté Ska, and the whole horseback way of life. It’s been pretty adamant that I’m meant to live by the fire. And to eat from the Earth. And it’s saying that Brooke is...” he teased a confession, “...a good friend.”
She smiled at his playful prodding, “And what’s it tell you about me, mister heart whisperer?”
Oh jeez, Miles finally had a friendly conversation going with Tiana, and now she was setting him up to implode, there was about a ninety-four percent chance he’d say something wrong and spark a lecture of colonial misappropriation. Luckily, when you speak from the heart, it’s harder for your head to screw everything up.
“Let’s see,” he tuned in, as his hand covered his heart with genuine insincerity. “What’s that?” he whispered through the aorta. “Oh. Uh huh. You don’t say. No, she’s cool, cool enough anyway. Alright then, thanks.”
He looked up from the one way conversation, she was still there, eagerly awaiting his interpretation. “It said... well, are you sure you wanna hear this? He‘s sometimes not the most tactful with his feelings, I’d hate for him to hurt yours.”
“Good luck with that one tough guy, you better tell me or I’m gonna punch you again.”
“Well, it’s just that... you see, what had happened was... it thinks that your nose is a nice average size, not too big, not too small, pretty much like the goldilocks of all noses.”
She liked that one.
“And it thinks that you’re brilliant, and incredibly driven, and fearless, and good at frybread, and pretty much a badass.”
Now that was a good answer.
“It said all that in thirty seconds?”
“Oh no, we talk about you all the time, mainly making fun of you, but every once in a while something nice will stick.”
“All the time, huh? And what else do you sit around here whispering about? Nothing romantic, I hope.”
“No, I think I got the memo on that one. Didn’t think that kind of energy would have been welcome at our table.”
“Good call, it wouldn’t have.”
“Plus, I’m not trying to get caught up in fantasy land. I’m trying to live in each moment, and trying to forget everything that other world taught me about women, as I hold everyone I meet in a sacred way.”
“Yeah, you were still pretty colonized when you got to camp, except for the boomerang,” she elbowed. “It was nothing against you, how I may have acted at first, I’m just so tired of having to decolonize every guy that comes creeping around the tipi. I know it’s important to do, and those who get deprogrammed can spread out to help others, but it’s exhausting. It’s an entire understanding of the world that has to be rewired, and I just can’t be someone’s tutor through that whole process again.
Plus, it’s better to slowly unravel it through a range of eye-opening relationships, and to experience it firsthand, and you definitely signed up for the accelerated deprogram at camp. It changed you, all of it, all of you, camp, the kitchen, the farm, the flag, and most of all the trees.
I heard everything you said to that tree cop, it was powerful stuff, it touched a lot of us.”
“Wait, you guys could hear all that? How?”
“Bill wired the tree walkies with remote activation, you didn’t know that? He flipped a switch as the action got going, as much for tactical safety as good old fashioned eavesdropping. It’s probably good you didn’t know, you were able to let that heart of yours do the talking, and a lot of ours were hanging by a limb.”
“Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t say all that bad stuff about you.”
“Shut it,” she warned. “And then you went to the rez, got to live at the edge of colonization and witness its stranglehold on life, and you even got to do a little something about it as you became a part of the family. And you sweat, and prayed, and tended the fire. I don’t know exactly how deep into the rabbithole you leveled up, but there’s something different about you, about your energy, there’s something growing in there and it’s lighting up everything about you in a big way.”
She lit up as she described the transformation he’d been unable to wrap words around.
“It’s been a beautiful thing to watch, to be a part of, we’re all proud of the human you’ve become Miles, proud to call you a friend.”
He’d never felt more content to find himself in the friend zone.
“You’re a different man than you were, a more evolved version of yourself, and I’m thinking that I wouldn’t be all that opposed to getting to know this new guy a little better.”
She looked through his eyes as her fingers found a home next to his, “That is, if you’re not still hung up on Brooke.”
His heart murmured as his fingers welcomed the company, “Brooke who?”
“Good answer.”