authenticity to heavens and to the spirit

Summer Solstice ’13

Edison gave us light

to stretch our days,

to ease our seeing,

and we lost the darkness

that made us adjust the rhythms of our days

to the cycles that Sun and Earth create,

next to fall were the seasons of vegetables and fruits--

there’s something vaguely disquieting about strawberries in January,

and while the health of our bodies can love yearlong bounty,

what does it do to our spirit to be divorced

from patterns of expectation and denial

that millions of years of our past 

have set as the rules of the game?

Sun and Earth and Moon continue the precise movements

of their dance with each other, whether we notice or not,

native peoples noticed and seemed to be able to find the eternal

in the predictable dependable choreography of the heavens,

a well-known petroglyph site, Legend Rock, calls to us

to be there for dawn of the Summer Solstice,

with its elaborate unnerving figures carefully pecked into the cliff,

the whole flattened half-hoop of the cliff face 

open to the east for the Sun throughout the year

and it points directly at the dawning Sun this day, 

the draw all open to see the snowy Big Horn Mountains to the northeast

where Medicine Wheel still marks what Sun and stars do

at important times for ceremony,

when our rental car sleekly moves us through the pre-dawn hour,

thick strands and banks of pewter grey clouds curtain us from the lightening sky,

fields of sage along the road echo them with a hint of green added to their demeanor,

all the world is softly clear but not sharply delivered to the eye,

quickly the Sun flames the clouds with a sharp distinction of bright color,

and, before I’m ready, clears the sharp mountains to the east,


the thin crescent Moon of the petroglyphed cliff reaches straight to the rising Sun,

the sunrise reaches again and again for my camera,

I look back at the petroglyphs to see 

if the first light of summer’s day shines upon any figure in any particular way,

and I mainly notice shadow upon my favorite disturbing figures

of a smaller humanoid inside a larger and the larger holding a third by the neck,

I consider how desert varnish, almost mahogany in look,

was pecked out to create figure after figure,

buffed out into a light brown from the revealed underlying stone,

the pecking that shows us the soul of the rock

as shaped by what the artist saw could be revealed,

subtraction of the varnish allows shape to be revealed in its absence

rather like a thought that gives purpose to the random,

rather like life that holds order against change,

rather like the spirit that can infuse us when we let it,

 

 we reach to understand the what, the why, and the wherefore

of the skilled artists who came to this dry tough place

with the sky so open for the heart to soar,

Cottonwood Creek flows enough nearby for me to hear it,

so water and game could be found here,

a jackrabbit I spook agrees,

we leave a little closer to understanding the questions

that native artist sought to answer or maybe just to ask more clearly,

evening finds us high in the Big Horn Mountains at Medicine Wheel, 

as Anglos call it,

though native peoples call it “Where the Eagle Lands. . .”

where the heavens touch the Earth,

near 10,000 feet above sea level,

and perched at the edge of the flat of a huge valley,

Legend Rock off in the far distance,

here, like with the days of the lunar month,

28 spokes radiate out from a central rock cairn:

the lines reach to the horizon to call up

Sun and star to appear at the right time

so that the makers’ lives can know how to synchronize,

or at least that’s a good educated guess,

we make our way out the long ridge,

steep drop-offs of loose scree with colonizing evergreen trees  below,

sage, purple pasqueflower,



 and miniature sub-alpine flowers

jewel the sides of the trail,

at the “wheel” a native man and woman walk the circle 

clockwise in silence and in prayer,

he stops and kneels in silence at each spoke of the wheel,

all of us are led to watch the Sun sink toward the horizon,

within the encompassing prism of the white rock wheel,

I stand at the east edge of the circle,




with a spoke pointing straight out through the central cairn to the setting Sun,

my eyes close and I meditate with my Ute prayer, entreating Earth to teach me,

the two natives stand there, too,

and I cannot keep tears from dropping down my cheek

at the power of place, time, and authenticity to the heavens and the spirit.

by Henry Walker

June 21, ’13