(Image from Vision Quest Tarot)
In the far northeastern corner of Oregon there is a town called Joseph. It is right on a gorgeous lake called Lake Wallowa and it is the ancestral summer home of the Nez Pierce Indians. This is where my husband and I went for our honeymoon and again the following summer because we fell so head over heals in love with it.
When you are driving from town out to the lake on the right hand side of the road there’s a small hill, really just a rise in the land that hides a field from view of the road. (If you hit the Old Chief Joseph Gravesite you past it.) There are a couple small signs and this is the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site. I cannot tell you what you will experience if you are ever lucky enough to go there. I can only tell you what I experienced.
The first time we checked it out we just saw the sign on the road so we pulled over and got out of the car. We were on our way maybe to a meal (I don’t remember) and we thought it was just a small thing. I think we didn’t even lock the car. I can tell you that the feeling I had walking up that hill was like a strong pull. Like I was being physically pulled forward. I am not a runner but I wanted to start running to whatever way on the other side of the hill. I felt pure, overwhelming joy. We had to go back to the car but it was like being dragged away. I was momentarily mad at my husband for making me leave.
Later in our trip we were heading into town for dinner and we decided to check out the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site first. When you get up over the hill (if you park in the lot and take the more obvious entrance) you will see in front of you an open field with trees clustered on both sides and spectacular mountain views in front of you. I remember vividly that it was windy that day and the sound and sparkle of the quaking aspen was magical. The native grasses were just the right height that I could run my hands over them while walking without needing to bend down. That feeling was so familiar. My husband reminded me that the restaurant we were trying to go to was closing soon and we would miss it if we didn’t turn back. I told him, “this is more important” and he agreed. I cannot articulate what was so important, I only know that it was the most important thing I could do right then.
As you continue following the path you will come to a beautiful little pond and there is a bench at the edge of the pond facing the mountains. When we got there the wind had stopped for a little bit, it was completely still, not a breath of wind, and the water was like a mirror. It was so quiet it felt like we could possibly be the only people left on the planet. As we were sitting there enjoying the view a wind came up around the pond. We could hear it before we could feel it to see it’s effect. It was nearly a roar coming through the trees and we could hear the aspen again. Then the water that moments before had been so mirror like was full of ripples. The wind felt so powerful it was overwhelming.
Walking back to the car and leaving this place was solemn. I don’t know another word for it. We were both deeply moved by the beauty and by something else. I don’t have the words to explain what I experienced there because I don’t understand it. I’m going to say some things that make me kind of uncomfortable as a white person. I know enough of history to know that this isn’t mine. But I still love it. I’m not sure where I stand in reincarnation and I won’t really know until I die. This is the only time in my life where I had an experience like you hear about of a deep knowing of something I do not know and have not experienced in this lifetime. That land felt familiar to me and being there felt like home and a deep sense of belonging. I felt like I had been there before and coming back was joyous and leaving again was painful. I want to be clear, my husband is the only person I have shared that feeling with because it makes me deeply uncomfortable. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to even entertain the thought of “maybe I was there” because of the cultural history and rampant cultural manipulation and appropriation that happens to Native Americans. In that moment I truly did experience a feeling of deja vu and I have no idea what that means.
Maybe it’s not about me at all, maybe it’s about the land. Maybe land has memory just like people and when you stand in a place where so much has been taken away from people and so violently that memory is still there in the ground and the air and the plants and if you are still you can hear it. Maybe the powerful emotions I felt that day and again when we left Joseph that trip were the memories and spirits that I am sure are still there. The world is a large and complex place and we understand so little of it. I don’t have all the answers, some days I feel like I don’t have any answers. I want to find a way to be more open to these experiences. Even trying to write about this my analytical mind keeps demanding to take over and to explain all the reasons that what I felt isn’t true. Pile on top of that the worry about offending someone, I feel like doors that I want to open are closing inside of me.
I want to find a way to reach out and touch the unknown and maybe the unknowable. I want to live my life in a way that the wind blowing in the trees feels like magic. I want to have every person I meet be a reintroduction even if I haven’t actually known them in this lifetime. I want all of this to be real and true. The problem is that for me for this to be real and true it has to be provable. How do you prove magic? How do you find evidence of past and future lives? How do you find faith?
Screaming in the Dark 