How I found my place on the Medicine Wheel...

Sometimes you find yourself wondering if you're the person you were supposed to be or if you're in the right place on the Wheel...the only one who can decide is you...

It's taken me YEARS to find mine...and I should've known instead of muddling along, falling off the Pollen Path, straying from the Red Road...

Now with my Tsunali (Friends in Cherokee) I have found my place, my focus, my home.

This campfire signifies our community. Everyone is welcome to warm their bones, have some kawi, eat some frybread, listen to songs and stories...

The first two parts of my blog tell about how I met these wonderful folks...

This is the personal part. The one that is the story of how I ended up at the fire...

I lost my way quite early. My head was always in the clouds and my face in a book. I was always searching...didn't know exactly what for...but I found it.

I learned about Vision Quests and Astral Projection...they're quite similar in their way.

Wiki describes a Vision Quest as a Rite of Passage. Very true. Most Native Americans have a version of this. Some use sweat lodges. Some use herbs and other substances to attune the person to the Spirit World. It is where the child gets their grown up name, sometimes their Totem Animal and their ultimate position in life.

Astral Projection is your "soul" leaving your body due to fasting, prayer, meditation, lucid dreaming or even extreme stress.

This was the first and only time that I had done this...I haven't been on a Vision Quest since...

I found myself flying cross the country until a light caught my eye. I swooped down and found a tepee. The flap was open and there was smoke wafting from the smoke hole. I flew in and settled on a rock. This Native American man that I had never met, let alone ever seen, turns from his conversation with the others and welcomes me by saying. "Welcome, WhiteSpottedCrow. I've been waiting for you."

We smoked and talked...I don't remember exactly what about... A while later, at least a year, I was reading my Fate Magazine and there was a picture of the man that I had talked to!!

Floyd "Kanghi Duta(Red Crow)" Westerman! This was before "Dances With Wolves" came out, if I remember correctly also...

I tried to tell my family and they just thought I was a loon...oh well their loss.

A few years later and I had kept this wonderful memory to myself, enjoying recalling the experience as the miraculous and wonderfu event that it was, especially since to the best of my knowledge, I have no Native blood whatsoever.


Even later when I was working too many hours and too many days, I spontaneously astral projected: no funny stuff, no alcohol, no nothing...

I was met outside my window by the HUMUNGOUS jet black buffalo! Not that they're running around loose here. He took me running. And I mean running...for hours and hours, miles and miles...I'd get home when the dawn was breaking physically exhausted, but mentally refreshed. I'd feel the road under my hooves and the wind flying through my mane...so Shapeshifting, SkinWalking in Navajo parlance, was part of the deal too.


This happened for months in a row, sometimes every day, sometimes once a week...depending on how stressed out I was. He finally told me his name was "Charger." I had forgotten it until I was selling shoes and the name on the box was Charger Black. You could've knocked me over with a feather!!!


When I worked for World of Science I found out that he was big for a reason...He was a Bison Antiquus. An animal that had been hunted by Paleo-Indians during the last Pleistocene Ice Age...They were 25% larger than today's American Bison. Another link in a chain of events...

Finally, one night, Charger didn't come around...I felt his loss. I did more research and found that some of your totems are with you for life and others come around just when they're needed. Obviously, I NEEDED him at that time...

I have an Aunt, my mother's sister. My mother was adopted so there's no blood relation, but we have always gotten along. She was made an honorary Navajo when she was wandering around the SouthWest. She taught me how to make Dream Catchers. I will ALWAYS be grateful to her for that.

I read up on the culture and found another wonderful "person". Kokopelli, the hunchbacked, always happy to see you, mythical fluteplayer, fertility God of the SouthWest.

Katsinas (kachinas) are another part of the wonderful SouthWestern cultures. I've also learned about the Rotten Belly Tribe of the Plains Indians...the ones who show you how NOT to do things. They'd make noise during ceremonies, just be generally contraries...I think my son is part of this Society...he'd make Mother Theresa wanna pop him one. The Rotten Bellies quite similar to the Koshari (Sacred Clowns) of Hopi Culture.

I've always said Hello to the Eagles/Hawks when I see them. And I say Hi to the snakes in the yard. I even had a family of Crows in the yard for a while. I took a fallen yearling to the Wildlife Centre when noone else would stop. Birds seem to be one of my Totems, along with Bear, Wolf, Dog, Otter, Skunk. I have a chicken as my witch's familiar...

Need I say who rules the roost?

So I continue on my path, wearing my tacky sox, comfy ripped jeans and trying to impart knowledge, peace, healing, humour, as I go...

And by the end of my life, I hope to hear, she was a pain in the ass, but I'll miss her...