Trumpeter (1990)
ISSN: 0832-6193
Coming Home:
A Story of Prince William Sound
David La Chapelle is an artist, writer and healer who lives in Juneau, Alaska. He has been guiding wilderness quests for the past 10 years. His writings include a study of the I Ching, and exploration of the Spiral as a symbol of evolution and numerous stories for the child in us which never grows up. His main teachers have been the Olympic Mountains, John Fire Lame Deer, Muktananda, Joel Kramer and the wilderness of Alaska. He is currently taking a break from Oil Spills and has to life his head to see the top of the mountain from his back door.
When the earth was new, and the lands were being gathered from the sky, and purpose was given, and the raw strength of stone was like a jewel in the web of the body of the creator, There and then, when the destiny of all the lands was given to the guardians of the peaks, it was there, at the beginning, when life remembered and was the great web of the body of the Great being, it was then that the land was given a name. it was given a name by that which moved beyond it and around it and through it, and the land was told to be a heart. And it was given rhythm and it was told to beat firmly and strongly and to be the pattern and the way and to make mountains and sea, to beat out the form of trees, to make great ice sheets to make great whales, and hummingbirds. The great beat of the heart would give salt to the waters and make the rivers run long and full and with great strength through the land. And the great beat of the heart was to make the salmon plentiful, to make the salmon like lighting in the sea, to make salmon swim home. And the great beat of the heart was to make this great land Home, nome to the eagles and to the stars, home to the snows and home to everything that flows through its tender and pure waters. And the great beat of the heart was to hold the great ocean and the great land in balance and to give protection and make sacred the sanctuary of the Sound so that those who crossed its waters would hear the heart beat and remember, Home, we are Home. And this heart was in the land and in the wind and in the trees and it beat with great rhythm through millions of years. And it did not weaken with time it only grew stronger, gathering purpose, gathering strength, so that the heart was strong enough to light the skies at night in weaving webs of color. And the lights of the north would shine out across the planet and ancient tribes would look and see and know that the messenger from the heart of the north was still beating. And for this they were thankful for so many of them had passed through the sacred waters and were brought to this land to remember the creator's ways and through their lands and in these waters, the great beat of the land gave them strength and made them strong and kept them in remembrance of the creator and kept their ways pure, kept their hearts open and they remembered to live in balance and be one with this land, to be true to themselves and to the source of life from which they come. And the heart beat stronger, it grew strong enough to become quiet, to become subtle, to mix with the smell of spruce and the currents of an ebbing tide, it became subtle, like the flash of salmon color in a fast moving stream, it became subtle like the slow and steady movement of the great glaciers as they come home to the sea, it became subtle like the slow and steady movement of the great glaciers as they come home to the sea, it became subtle, but the heart was still strong. And the people who lived there, who came to be next to this great heart, they came to live gently upon the land. They lived in myth and mystery. They kindled camp fires that burned with the beat of the heart and in the embers of the fires was the warmth of home which made even the rains welcome. And the land and the people, they were accord and beat as one. And they were strong and they were meek and did tell of the heart beat because they were not separate from it And the great migrations began of peoples and salmon, of Humpbacks and trumpeter swans, of Arctic terms and Orcas, of geese and of the seasons, and it was good and it was made that way by the creator so that all beings would remember to come home. And each migration that passed, each bird that sailed in the sky, each eagle that flew home, each whale that sang of home, each being would remember, home, home, home. And to this great land that was home came a strange and homeless peoples, a people which had forgotten the purpose of their migration. A wandering tribe which sought to fill the vacancy in their hearts with the pillage of the land. This strange and wandering tribe knew little of home, they knew little of the heart beat of the earth, they knew little of what they did, and they crossed this great heart of a land like a blight They wrenched metals from the earth, they killed fish in the water with their dynamite they brought strange and difficult diseases they fashioned their world with great machines and they were not able to hear the great beat of this land for they did not have the subtlety to see the fish as they truly moved or see the light upon the water or see the hearts of the gentle people which they forced from their hearths And in the face of this wound did the land falter? No it did not. it grew stronger, it only reached deeper, the great heart beat said home, this is home. And so it came to be that some of the people of the homeless tribe lived on these shores long enough so that as they would sleep they would hear in the echo of their dreams something true, something pure and something named home and they would wake a little kinder and little more full in their hearts, and some of their pain was shed like the snake's skin of the passing seasons. And not all that came to this land could hear the beat of the heart and the ones that did and choose to live on these shores lay down their hearts on the land they could call home and they did not know that it was the beat of this great land that had healed them and gave them what their own tribe could not which was a home. And it came to be that great ships passed through these waters great vessels of emptiness which would fill their bellies with the rich black blood o the mother and would carry it south to fuel the great fires of consumption which the wandering tribe had ignited to fill their empt hearts And did the land falter? No. it only bore the burden and kept the heart beating and carried these great vessels of pain daily on its waters carrying the precious blood of the earth and the sadness of the people who called the ships South And the weight of this burden reached down into the heart of the Sound and into the heart beat which had been wrapped in such subtlety for so many years and the heart broke free and with its beat drove a ship onto a reef with the strength of its love and said, "a sacrifice is necessary." And it called for the blood of the earth which had been held in the vessel and it said "Come back to me, for I am home." And as this blood covered the land it flowed to remind everyone across a whole planet, all of those who listened across the whole world, and it said to them "You shall know that this is home." And not an eye saw, nor a heart felt this sacrifice without knowing that the Sound was a home. With this sacrifice the great migrations will begin again and perhaps the wandering tribes will shake off the burden of never having a home and will come back to itself and wear once again the cloak of the greater web of creation and the heart will beat in harmony in balance. And this oiled land did not falter, its heart only beat harder and the land reached out through all the great veins of the world called many home and it embraced those who stood helpless on its shores and it listened to the grief in their hearts and for every tear they cried it showered them with love And it gave them a home a home worth caring about, a home worth loving, a home worth coming back to A home. And this was the gift of the creator who so long ago, so many cycles before set the heart of this land a beat this was the gift And all the whales, all the birds all the otters and all the hopes which died in the black mother's blood were called home, to a true home, to a home where they made a difference to a home where they were loved and to a home where they loved. And that love poured down upon the land in streaming light and filled all the hearts and it took all the tears and scattered them upon the waters and they glistened there, reflecting all the many kinds o love like the scales of light on the waves as the sun sets on th heart beat of the Sound. And the whales they sang their song and the great migrations streamed across this land, to Africa, To Antarctica, To the Great Plains to South America to All the world, and the black blood of the mother it went Home.
Copyright retained by author(s)
PID: http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5348gv0
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