- Our friend Maya the Good has been living in the trailer
we call the Cloud Creek Annex for about six weeks now, helping out around
the ranch, and it's a good thing I've learned not to get all caught up
in expectations.
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- Because I never could have expected what's been happening
here.
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- I've mentioned Maya in this space already. Widowed, she's
a former police officer (in Alaska, where her late husband was the mayor
of their town) and school teacher (in Florida, where her two grown children
and baby granddaughter still live in Maya's house) who came to our place
to take writing classes last summer and decided she wanted to move out
Paradise way.
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- "I'm half Creek Indian," she explained as Gwen
the Beautiful and I helped her bring her things into the Annex. "On
my mother's side. And I've always wanted to live closer to the land and
the spirits. When I came here and met Huck the Spotless Appaloosa and Decker
the Giant Hearted and the rest of your animal family, something clicked
in my heart.
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- "Especially," she went on, "when I heard
the impossible music and saw the spirits who were making it. They told
me I had to be here. That this was the place where I'd learn who I really
am."
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- To some people, Maya's search for her roots and her inner
being may sound, well, I guess "nuts" is as good a word as any.
But as a man who gave up everything back in the early '90s and set out
to discover the same things about myself, I think I understand. And as
a woman who, without blinking, loves a man who could do something like
that, so does Gwen.
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- It's all about finding your faith.
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- About tracking down the magic that's within your soul
and out there on the land.
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- About becoming one with the earth, the universe and the
source of all things.
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- That ineffable something the Lakota call the Wind of
Mystery blows everywhere, and it seems particularly powerful on our Mountain,
which (as I've also mentioned here once or twice) archaeologists say once
was home to a civilization older than the one that built the Egyptian pyramids.
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- Of course Maya had to come here.
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- What better place to begin her quest?
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- And what a beginning.
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- The day after we moved in Maya's things, she celebrated
by making a medicine wheel atop the Mound above what we've been told was
the ceremonial center of that ancient civilization.
-
- A medicine wheel is a circle of stones that form "roadways"
to bring helpful spirits from wherever they may be to the central axis.
Here in the forests of Paradise, we've certainly got enough stones for
such an undertaking, and Maya made sure she placed them just right according
to what her mother had told her long ago. She even painted them different
colors to match the directions they faced.
-
- Her reward for this effort came almost instantly. That
night, after being gone from the property for much too long, the Ghost
Dog appeared beside the medicine wheel, lying down at first, then dashing
through the corral with Emmy the Bold, the two dogs - one physical, one
... not - giving chase to something together before the Ghost Dog vanished
again.
-
- The next day, Gwen and I were surprised to look into
the corral and find that Rosie the Sweet Arabian had changed color, her
sorrel coat turning a rich chestnut. And Huck's extra toes, spur-like growths
many horses get on their lower legs, were gone, dissolved into tiny bumps
that've since disappeared.
-
- Since then, there's been more. Much more, making it clear
to Gwen and myself that what we once thought of as the answer - that ancient
Indian ceremonial center - really just presents more questions.
-
- I think I know a way to get to the heart of this, though.
A few nights ago, Maya was visited by the spirit of an elderly man she
now calls "Grandfather." He told her she needs to build a ceremonial
sweat lodge near the Annex, and even dictated detailed plans.
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- Gwen and I are helping her build that lodge. The three
of us have cleared the woods and prepared the land. Soon we'll be digging
the fire pit.
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- And when we're all done ...
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- We're gonna summon us some spirits. And ask 'em everything
we want to know.
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- And listen closely, oh-so-very-closely, to what they've
got to say.
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- Copyright C 2007 by Larry Brody. All rights reserved.
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- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE! FROM PARADISE!
appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written thousands of
hours of network television, and is the author of "Television Writing
from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television."
Brody is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the
world's first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can
be seen on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. He welcomes your comments
and feedback at <mailto:LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org>LarryBrody@cloudcreek.org.
Brody, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion
County, Arkansas. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise
reside in his imagination.
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