Hi Orion. We wrote up a little bit for the web site and were wondering if you would put it on for us where ever it needs to go. Pictures are on their way. Thanks for your help! - Lauren
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Every morning, we walk down the dirt road about a quarter of a mile from camp to act out our morning prayers. For some, this means meditation, journaling, or walking your dogs. For us, it means digging little holes in the sandy river-bottom and taking a healthy shit. Besides returning our beloved feces to the Earth Mother, instead of the to the porcelain gods, we are also giving the Mother little shit-covered currant seeds to nurture.
You see, berry seeds need to be eaten in order to flourish. The grinding and acid-bath they receive in digestion is as necessary a treatment for these seeds as a Day Spa is for a young starlet. Without this interaction from humans and bears, the native berries of Nevada have all but disappeared.
One morning, an angry local woman told someone in our camp that if we continued to pass by their sacred dance ground in order to access the river bottom, we could be shot down like dogs for trespassing! This created quite a stir in coyote camp. Some of us wished to respect her blatant threats. Others in camp were unwilling to shit in perfectly good water just to make the angry "groundskeeper" happy. After all, we never said she had to join us in it. Ultimately, we decided to keep planting. Hours after this decision was made in camp, some friends from the res dropped by to say hello. They told us who the river bottom property belonged to. We laughed so hard when we heard the name - they had been out diggin roots with us earlier that day!
Two years ago a few of us from coyote camp came through here to attend a Ghost Dance. We got ran out within an evening because we're white. Now we have returned and set up camp here and the people have warmed up to us in this time. We took an old married couple (John and Vernadine) and a rancher named Doug out on the auto tours one day and watched them transform from grandparent-aged into children as they learned about the breadroot, onions, sego lilies, and their habitats. They talked to us of their Grandmothers taking them out, or going out and doing that very same life-giving interaction with the Earth. Vernadine was spirit walked with the old way coming in to her life, Doug loved the taste of Sego Lilies. It was really a joy for us to see the prophecy of the "ingamoche" come to fruit, of the descendents of the white conquerors returning a lost way to the native people.
Re-introducing them to some food plants was a meaningful experience for all of us. These three people were all quite aged in years, and had missed out on some of these teachings for whatever reason. It seemed that spirit had devised for them to have that experience in life even still. Doug told us the situation reminded him of the tim he learned to use a bow and arrow from a white man. John, about to turn 87, is just now learning to tan hides. Vernadine and Forrest discovered they have the same birthday. Crossing the division between races, age and culture is not always so fun - what a blessing of a day!
Lauren and Forrest
with Fin and Coyote Camp
Check out the photo taken of Coyote Camp by a passerby and emailed
www.pullingforwildflowers.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every morning, we walk down the dirt road about a quarter of a mile from camp to act out our morning prayers. For some, this means meditation, journaling, or walking your dogs. For us, it means digging little holes in the sandy river-bottom and taking a healthy shit. Besides returning our beloved feces to the Earth Mother, instead of the to the porcelain gods, we are also giving the Mother little shit-covered currant seeds to nurture.
You see, berry seeds need to be eaten in order to flourish. The grinding and acid-bath they receive in digestion is as necessary a treatment for these seeds as a Day Spa is for a young starlet. Without this interaction from humans and bears, the native berries of Nevada have all but disappeared.
One morning, an angry local woman told someone in our camp that if we continued to pass by their sacred dance ground in order to access the river bottom, we could be shot down like dogs for trespassing! This created quite a stir in coyote camp. Some of us wished to respect her blatant threats. Others in camp were unwilling to shit in perfectly good water just to make the angry "groundskeeper" happy. After all, we never said she had to join us in it. Ultimately, we decided to keep planting. Hours after this decision was made in camp, some friends from the res dropped by to say hello. They told us who the river bottom property belonged to. We laughed so hard when we heard the name - they had been out diggin roots with us earlier that day!
Two years ago a few of us from coyote camp came through here to attend a Ghost Dance. We got ran out within an evening because we're white. Now we have returned and set up camp here and the people have warmed up to us in this time. We took an old married couple (John and Vernadine) and a rancher named Doug out on the auto tours one day and watched them transform from grandparent-aged into children as they learned about the breadroot, onions, sego lilies, and their habitats. They talked to us of their Grandmothers taking them out, or going out and doing that very same life-giving interaction with the Earth. Vernadine was spirit walked with the old way coming in to her life, Doug loved the taste of Sego Lilies. It was really a joy for us to see the prophecy of the "ingamoche" come to fruit, of the descendents of the white conquerors returning a lost way to the native people.
Re-introducing them to some food plants was a meaningful experience for all of us. These three people were all quite aged in years, and had missed out on some of these teachings for whatever reason. It seemed that spirit had devised for them to have that experience in life even still. Doug told us the situation reminded him of the tim he learned to use a bow and arrow from a white man. John, about to turn 87, is just now learning to tan hides. Vernadine and Forrest discovered they have the same birthday. Crossing the division between races, age and culture is not always so fun - what a blessing of a day!
Lauren and Forrest
with Fin and Coyote Camp
Check out the photo taken of Coyote Camp by a passerby and emailed
www.pullingforwildflowers.org
