Medicine messages from spider and mama moose
I recently attended a talk with Doug Harris who is the tribal historic preservation officer for the Narragansett tribe about Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscapes in the “New England” area. Doug described that when a native person was killed in a bad way – by an animal or murdered by a human, stones would be placed in the area with prayers to help restore sacred balance. This was one type of ceremonial stone grouping. Another type of ceremonial stone groupings include the stone serpents that earlier humans of this area constructed. To a contemporary human, it would be easy to assume that they were stone walls constructed by earlier colonial farmers, but that is not always the case. The third category of ceremonial stone landscapes I remember Doug describing were used to view important astrological events such as meteor showers or equinoxes and solstices.
There are thousands of these ceremonial stone landscapes throughout the region, and I got really curious about if there were any on the land where I grew up in the settler town of Savoy, MA as there were indeed several stone piles/walls along the edges of the fields on the land where I grew up that my family had assumed to have been created by colonial farmers.
I was excited to tell my mom about the talk I had attended with Doug, since she still lives on the land where I grew up. I discovered that my mom had previously met Doug and had been interested in inviting him to Starseed (name my family chose for the land where I grew up) to look at the stones on the land here to see if any of them were Native American ceremonial stone landscapes.
A week later, I was back at Starseed and my mom told me she had been exploring the stone “walls” in the woods and wanted to take me back there. We walked the length of two different stone lines, and then continued deeper into the woods in search of a beautiful stand of trees we hadn’t visited for years.
So rarely do I take time to just be in the woods in this way. When I am up at Starseed, I am usually working, and don’t usually take time to just be present in the woods in this explorative way. I was surprised by how many cobwebs I encountered. At least that was my first perception – that they were cobwebs that needed to be cleared as I walked through the woods, and the first one I encountered I swept away, only noticing the spider after I had already broken the web.
The next spider web I encountered, I took care to walk around it. What right had I to destroy another being’s home just because I was out for a walk? This was my first cue to deeper presence of how I behaved when a visitor in someone else’s home.
My mom and I were attuning to the trees – some of them were quite large – much larger than when we first moved to this land 33 years ago. Shortly before moving here, the previous “owners” had logged the woods pretty severely. My experiences as a child spending much time outdoors were in these primarily recently logged forests – then thick with blackberry brambles, saplings and other large trees. I remember when I attended the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and our orientation happened in older forest I noted how different more mature forest was from the woods I had grown up knowing.
I was hungry, so we went inside for lunch. After we ate, I was eager to return to the woods. My mom wanted to go to a particular spot, a spot I was stunned to remember having visited in a dream years earlier. This was astonishing to me, because I remember so many of my dreams, but the dream had been a really powerful journey into some wetlands, originating from the location that my mom wanted to visit. I asked if we could instead walk over to the wetlands, and my mom willingly consented. Instead of going to the area of the wetlands that corresponded with the dream I had had (the base of a series of four beaver ponds), we went to the headwaters. Two years ago some logging had happened there, and my partner Joseph and I had walked the boundary line to make sure the loggers weren’t crossing the deed line. It was the only time I had ever been back there, and I really wanted to show my mom because the trees were old and beautiful back by the state forest where the land had not been logged in many decades.
We came upon two birch trees far older than any of the birch trees I ever remember seeing in the recently logged woods I grew up in. They seemed like grandmothers. As my mother leaned her back up against one of these grandmother birch trees, we were both struck by the powerful majesty and medicine of these old beings.
We continued walking towards the state forest. We were talking back and forth about who knows what when I think because my mind was attuned to stones, I noticed out of the corner of my eye what looked like it could be a big black stone about 30 feet away. Since none of the stones in the woods around here are black, my curiosity was peaked. As a walked closer, it moved! That was no stone! Even though it was partially hidden by an evergreen shrub, I immediately sensed it to be a moose. No it couldn’t be a moose, I thought because I had never once in the many days of my childhood playing in the woods seen a moose. Maybe it was a neighbor’s horse? I didn’t think moose were black any way. But, something inside me said, no, that’s a moose, so I said in a somewhat hushed voice, “Mom, it’s a moose!” We retreated a few feet to behind a tree and spoke in whispers as we peered at the animal.
It was laying on the ground and partially hidden by the shrub. We couldn’t see it fully but we could see its large black bottom and belly on one side of the shrub and its long snout/mouth on the underside of the shrub. The top of its head was obscured by the shrub so we couldn’t fully see, but there didn’t seem to be any antlers. It seemed quite relaxed and from time to time would munch on the shrub.
I wanted to get closer to see it more clearly, but I didn’t want to disturb it. With the largeness of its belly, and showing no inclination to get up even with us two-leggeds being only 35 feet away, I assumed she was a pregnant she, and I didn’t want to disturb her. My mom didn’t want to get closer because once she realized that it was indeed likely a moose and not a horse, she seemed scared. Moose are very large animals and can be dangerous if not deadly to humans. She started looking around for a tree to climb. I encouraged her to stay put. The presumed-moose didn’t seem to be going anywhere. We stood there behind the tree and peered at it for about five minutes. The presumed moose seemed to be calmly taking us in as well in between munching. I couldn’t believe this was happening! It was so magical as we mutually took in each other’s presence.
After about five minutes, my mom was still feeling anxious, so I encouraged her to walk away first. It is true that being 39 years my senior, I could run faster than her should for some strange reason the presumed moose charge us. As she started walking away, the presumed moose paused its munching for about 20 seconds, I’m guessing hearing my mother’s footsteps and observing to see if there was any danger before resuming munching. I stayed for another minute or so and then quietly retreated, following my mother back home.
When we were out of earshot of the presumed-moose we began talking again. Could it really have been a moose? It suddenly dawned on me that I had been referring to the moose as an it. I was reminded of this violence done by the English colonizer language of making a living being into an it. As we talked about the presumed moose on the way back to the house I noticed this, and every time I referred to the presumed moose as it, I caught myself and shifted my language to say “she.”
When we got to the house, we were both eager to do a little research on moose.
What did they look like? Could their bodies be black? Yes!
Did that animal’s snout look like a moose’s snout? Yes!
What time do moose give birth? June!
On May 4th, that indeed was a mama moose, very close to giving birth. No wonder she didn’t want to get up from her resting spot when humans came loudly barging into her home. It suddenly struck me of how I had been behaving in the home of another – talking loudly, not really aware I was even in another’s house who may have been resting. It was a beautiful call to awakening for me to be respectful when I am a visitor in another’s home. Just as I had no right to clear away the spider web homes, I am so glad my mom and I kept a respectful distance and didn’t further disturb this resting mama.
I feel awed that I was so strongly guided to go to that spot, a place I had ever only been to one time in my life. It was as if my inner guidance and intelligence having attuned with the land, called me to that spot.
I feel grateful for the medicine messages – to be respectful when a visitor in another’s home. My relationship with the woods feels transformed – this is the home of many living beings – I ought walk respectfully and cause as little disturbance as possible.
Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass that after 500 years of being a good neighbor, one can become indigenous to a place. With the social position of a settler colonizer in these lands, I seek not so much to find a way to become indigenous in some move to false innocence, so much as to simply ask, how can my role be not as a dominator, tearing down spider webs, but as a respectful visitor, a respectful neighbor to those who were here first, whose home this also is?