a river of gold

Autumn has always been my favorite season with its crisp air, and it seemed to come to the Rockies at the same time as New England last year.  I felt so fortunate to have the opportunity to experience the oak and maple turning colors back east and then to come back west in time for the blood moon/eclipse aaand to witness the aspen turn to gold!  Leaves like 14k yellow gold coins hung among the dark pine forest.  A river of gold, riding above the treetops, held by copper mountains and silver clouds growing against a blue sky.

It was quiet.  We practically had the place to ourselves.  Driving through Ward, we made our way up into RMNP.  We picked up a map at the Beaver Meadows entrance, and followed the road past tall blonde grass with patches of bluish-green that swayed in the wind.  Given that there's really only a one-week span of prime foliage alchemy, or maybe because it was a Tuesday and school was back in session, we had so much room to roam and time to wander at our own pace.  The park takes on a different feeling in contrast to the busy summer.  We opted for a one-way rutted dirt road that was about to close for the season and snaked our way through some of the most magical alpine forest.  It had rained and the fragrant soil and dead leaves were most welcome.  There was a waterfall that we followed, too.  It dropped a few times at the bottom and a few from the top.  I brought a single roll of film, and we kept our eyes and ears peeled for bugling elk as the sun began to set.  As the clouds rolled through the mountains, we came upon a bull and his harem grazing on a hillside.  I can only liken the sound to the whirling of one of those long hollow tube toys as a kid.  That and dinosaurs.  What magic! 

moab moon love

eee! I love that wonderful feeling when a book chooses you... when you hold it in your hands and it's exactly where you are right now.  The words and themes woven through the pages are just what you needed to hear.  The external world mirroring the internal world and bringin' you some new magical tools for the road.  The sweet, sweet magic of synchronicity brought No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People, by Evan Pritchard into my world recently.  I wake up and read a few pages by salt-lamp light in the morning (ha!) and feel my native blood run stronger through my veins, however faint it is among the rest.  My soul remembers this way of life.  My heart knows its poetry.  I ache for it...aaand road trips :) 

(I spy blooms & shrooms!)

>> quotes from Evan Pritchard <<

"There is no word for time in the Micmac language, nor in most Algonquin tongues...time is relative and elusive in nature." (11) 

"I can't count the number of Algonquin people I've known who have never worn watches in their lives...It has to do with dignity, perception, and many other less tangible factors such as energy flows and vibrations...Perhaps it also clouds the perception of real time, which is at the heart of physical reality....Time separates us from the past and future, but in Micmac, the emphasis is on the here and now." (12)

"Many native people...need to get away from clocks in order to be themselves." (20)  

"Each person is a part of Creation both as an individual and as part of a group and, although the needs of the many outweigh the needs of one, the needs of Creation outweigh the needs of the many, so there is a balance between the individual and the tribe.  The tribe has the right to include or exclude whom it wishes, but cannot tell anyone how to think or what to do.

The Algonquin person is therefore free to follow his or her own heart as long as it doesn't endanger others within the group.  It's not that the people don't work together in cooperation, they do.  But the harmony among a community of elders which many outsiders marvel at comes from a deeper place, a place of freedom.  Those who don't wish to be there shouldn't be.  Harmony has nothing to do with coercion and control, it has to do with affinity, or perhaps a stronger word, love." (139-140)

"Balancing the bold individualism of the Micmac is the principal of nen-djak, or "family." ...There is a social structure which dictates everything invisibly, and that institution knits the native world together into a cohesive community where no one is left out, everyone belongs and has a job to do.  Men go off hunting for months at a time and come back unannounced...People leave meetings when they want and come back when they want.  People "follow the spirit" so much, it's hard to keep up with them, and you're not supposed to.  These are "the Freedom People."  They fight for freedom, for themselves and others.  On an interpersonal level, Micmac and other Wabanaki people are equally sensitive about "control issues," and I have learned some important personal lessons: communication works better than control most of the time, but it takes courage.  Much of the pervasive dignity of the people comes from having the courage to claim these simple freedoms at every moment." (142-143)

"The essence of time is not a clock, it is the relationship between planets, moons, and stars and how they tug on one another gravitationally as they waltz through space." (149)

"There is no word in Micmac for "goodbye."  In a world without time, everything is cyclical." (148)  "...the Algonquin language has taught the people who speak it to look more closely at the wonder of nature." (135)

here's to simple freedoms & open roads, 

living by the moon and surrendering to spirit!

flow.

<< timmy photos >>

☾

aspen eyes

“He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide eared to all that moved and sounded around him.”

— Jack London, The Call of the Wild

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