Читать книгу Grandfather's Journal - C.W. Hanes - Страница 3

When I was a little boy, my Grandfather would take me for long walks along the Red River in the hills of the Ozarks. As we walked along the trail beside the river, Grandpa would tell me stories about when he was a little boy; stories that his Dad passed down to him. Grandpa was almost full-blood Cherokee (tsa-la-gi) and he said I was over half.

Grandpa and I had a favorite place where we would go to sit and watch the river’s dark waters roll by. It was a huge rock ledge that hung over the river. I guess it was between 100 and 140 feet above the river. It had stairs made of rock going down to the water to a lower ledge that was only a few inches above the waterline. You could see where the rock was worn down from boats and perhaps canoes; the Indians used this area more than a hundred years ago. I asked him, “Who built these rock stairs?” He looked at me and smiled. “Native Americans built those several hundred years ago.”

I asked Grandpa, “Why do we call this mountain on the river ‘Spirit Mountain?’”

He looked down and said, “Well, there have been stories passed down for generations about this mountain. Things have happened here that cannot be explained; people have seen visions of the past, or what some would call ‘spirits’ of our ancestors while walking through these woods. They’ve seen the spirits of Indians walking or hiding behind trees and rocks as they did hundreds of years ago.

“Do you remember, Jacob, where the creek runs into the river about 1,000 yards upriver from here? When you walk up the creek, if you look closely, you will see some of the rocks are displaced from their original locations. There is a path that crisscrosses back and forth across the creek, just wide enough for a small two-wheeled cart to be pulled over. The path goes from the creek all the way up to the top of the mountain. About three-fourths of the way up, you will find a round rock wheel, nine inches thick and about four feet in diameter, with a square hole, cut out in the middle of it. It’s the wheel off an Indian cart that is about three hundred years old. If you follow the path, you will come to a dead-end unless you know where to change course, and if you do, it will take you to a hidden place; a cave that is about two-thirds of the way up the mountain. This cave is protected by native spirits so that nothing found in the cave can be removed without serious consequences or repercussions to those trying to do so. This sacred place of our people is called ‘Spirit Cave.’

“When you stand at the mouth of Spirit Cave, you can watch up and down the river for miles. But the cave can’t be seen from any place on the river at any time of the year. The natives would watch the river for settlers as they traveled up and down the river. They would slip down to the ledge that we are sitting on and wait until the settlers got close. Sometimes they would attack them, taking their possessions. They would load everything on a cart and take it up to the cave. Other times, they would watch them float down the river through the rapids.

“Stories have been passed down about a pit inside the cave that leads to another cave entrance deep in the mountain. That is where they would store the items they stole from settlers. There is supposed to be gold, silver, weapons, Spanish helmets, breastplates, muskets, and other artifacts.

“Jacob, I have a journal that one day I will pass down to you. In my journal, I go into more detail about a lot of things that you’re not old enough to understand yet. I have the journal put away in a special place that only I know the location of; not even your grandmother knows where to find it. It would have gone to your father if he hadn’t passed away so early in life. So, when I die, it will be left to you and you must find it. You will have to prove yourself worthy before you will be ready to find it and it won’t be an easy task. I have placed maps and one-third of a flute with the journal and an explanation of how to use it. There are three parts to it, and it must be put together in the correct sequence for it to work without any evil consequences. To learn the contents of this journal, there are a lot of people who would do whatever it took; regardless of the cost to themselves or others. But only those who are chosen are the ones who will find it; to everyone else, it will just disappear.

“I will only give you clues on your birthdays to help you search for my journal and, if I die before the task is complete, I have given instructions to my best friend, Adam, to help you complete your life’s journey.

“Jacob, today you turn thirteen. From this day forward, you need to begin writing in your journal. You must write down the clues I will give you so that you may use them to find my journal about the cave. I will also tell you very important things to help you find your way on life’s wonderful journey.

“Here is your first clue:

‘There is a secret stairway leading down to the place where my journal resides and the only way to find it is by the directions that I, and I alone, will give to you.’

“Remember, Jacob, this is for you and you alone. You cannot tell anyone about my journal until the time is right, not your best friend, not even your mother can know about my journal.”

“Grandpa, how will I know when the time will be right?”

“As you listen to me over the next few years, I will teach you as much as I can and as you grow and mature to the young man I know you will be, you will know who you can trust and whom you can tell this great secret to by looking into their eyes. Jacob, the eyes are the window to a man’s heart and soul; they never lie. Those are the places where secrets live inside of us!

“I pray to GOD that you will listen to me and make me proud of the man that I know you will be. A man like your Dad, I was proud of him. He was a man’s man. He stood up for what he believed in and never backed down unless he found that he was in the wrong. At these times, he was man enough to say he was sorry and would apologize. I was proud of him and I’m proud of you. Jacob, you are very special to me. Every grandfather should be as fortunate as I am. You’re a smart young boy and I know you will do the things that are right. I have told you some things today that will help you find the cave. Only three men know where the cave is today. We have sworn an oath to one another to never go there alone or with anyone other than our immediate family after they have first gone through the training, we all agreed to. They would have to search for a journal that would then help them locate the cave. The journal could not be given to them. Remember, I will leave you clues in the things that I say and have written down for you to read in order to find my journal.”

On my fourteenth birthday, he told me: “The journal resides in a library that is very close to him and it took many years for this library to be built. The journal is with two books: one is a very spiritual book that most people have but don’t read and the other, most people had never heard about or even know of its existence.”

We took a lot of walks in the woods up and down Red River, talking about which side the moss grew on the trees, the rocks, and the different sounds the animals make in the woods. He taught me to turn around as I was walking through the woods and look behind me because that’s what I would be looking at when I came back through the woods. This way, it would look familiar to me and keep me from getting lost. At night, the woods appeared to be a whole new forest; the trees looked very different. You thought you were heading to the north when you were really heading to the east. It was easy to get turned around in the dark. Nothing looked familiar, not even remotely the same as it does in the daylight. “Make sure you look behind you in the dark just from time to time just like you do in the daylight, it helps you to stay on the right path,” he told me.

After Grandpa taught me how to find my way around the forest at night, he would take me out blindfolded. Then he would take off the blindfold and tell me to find my way back home.

When I thought I had it all figured out, he would surprise me by taking me up the river for thirty minutes. Then he would stop paddling the boat and let it drift back for a while. He would pull over to the bank, let me out and lead me through the woods, up and down the mountain, crisscrossing back and forth over every little creek that came out of that old mountain. Always, I was blindfolded when he took me out on most of our adventures.

One night, though, it was so foggy that he didn’t have to blindfold me. I didn’t know which way was up, let alone know how to find my way home. I didn’t know south from north or east from west. I couldn’t see the stars or the moon. I did well to see twenty feet in front of me. I couldn’t see any sign of light in any direction. It took me all night to find my way out of the forest. When I finally did come out, Grandpa was standing there waiting for me, even though it was three miles from the house.

He must have followed me all night, keeping a close watch on me; I never knew he was around or heard him make a sound. I’ve watched him walk up to a deer within twelve feet and the deer never knew he was there.

For my fifteenth birthday, he took me up the river again to a rock that he hadn’t shown me before. It had carvings and paintings with strange words all over it. When I asked him what it meant, he told me it was all in his journal and I would have to figure it out when the time came. Grandpa and I have a special bond between us – we have the same birthday. I have often wondered if that was just a coincidence or fate from GOD that we were both born near the end of the month of May.

Grandfather reminded me of last year and the library and then gave me a new clue.

“Jacob, in this library there are forty-eight warriors standing seven feet tall, all in a row, twelve warriors above facing the north are facing seven Angels from the south, twelve warriors below facing the east are facing seven Angels from the west, twelve warriors above facing the west are facing five Angels from the east and the twelve warriors below facing the south are facing nine Angels from the north. The seventh warrior above facing the west has a book in his hand. The seventh warrior tells you part of what you need to search for.”

We got back into the boat and headed back to the house. As we were rounding the bend in the river, a big black bear was standing on the side of the riverbank looking at us as if to say, “I have seen you. I know who you are, and I am watching you.” My Grandfather told me that all animals only allow you to see them when they are ready for you too, and not before. If you look back over the years when you have been with a friend, and you saw a deer or some other animal in the wild, and they didn’t see the animal, or the other way around, why didn’t both of you see it? Then there are times that you both see them. Your spirit must be one with nature and the things that GOD has given us to enjoy. We have a world we see all the time but then there is the spirit world that very few of us can see even for a brief moment of time. If people would just read the Bible, they could understand a lot more than we do. GOD talks about it several times about seeing into the spiritual world.

How do you explain knowing things that you shouldn’t know, or seeing things you don’t understand, or knowing about places you have never been?

Some Native Americans believe that you shapeshift in your sleep and travel to places you want to go or to teach you about another past. Shapeshifting is the act of your body transforming into something else, be it a deer, a wolf or even an eagle or some other animal that could teach you what you are looking for. You call upon the spirit of the animal you want to guide you but don’t stay in the spirit with them too long or you may take on some of their animal instincts. Have you ever dreamed you were flying? Just maybe you weren’t dreaming; maybe you shapeshifted while you were asleep. Were you tired when you woke up? Did your arms hurt when you woke up the next morning (sun a le i) and you didn’t know why? Those are things you must learn for yourself. Search in your spirit for the truth! That is what my Grandfather has always taught me.

We took many trips up and down Red River but that was the first time I had ever seen a bear at the water’s edge, watching us closely. We floated on by the bear and I watched Grandpa. He looked as if he were talking to it, telling him I was his grandson, and to watch after me when he was gone.

Several months went by before I saw Grandpa again. But he would call me and talk to me every week, asking me to study hard. “But don’t let people influence you, making you think too small,” he would say. “What if the Wright brothers had let people influence them? People laughed at them and said if a man were meant to fly, they would have wings. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone would never have been more than a kid’s toy. Your dreams are important to no one but you because they are your dreams and your dreams alone. Yes, there will be people that believe in you, but there will also be those who are jealous of you and your accomplishments. Those are people who say they believe in you but don’t really, and you can tell by the way they either encourage you or they say it’s already been done. This is what to listen for when people claim to be your friend or they are just fair-weather friends and they are too busy being concerned about themselves.”

“Jacob,” he would say, “you need to care more about others than you do yourself and serve others before yourself and you will go further than you could ever dream possible.”

My sixteenth birthday was coming up soon. It was only a couple of months away. I couldn’t help but wonder what was in store for me this year with Grandfather. I thought about the last three years, about the clues he wanted me to remember, the library, the forty-eight warriors facing twenty-eight Angels. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I did remember what he said as he asked me to. In early March, we went to visit Grandfather again. It was an unusual spring because we had three consecutive snowfalls of seven inches in just three days.

This visit was a little different than most. We went to the cemetery where Dad was buried. It was March fourth, my Dad’s birthday. Dad was born in 1916. He passed away on January 3rd, 1969, the year I turned thirteen. Dad was up in years when I was born. Dad and Mom said I was their miracle child because I was born so late in their lives.

The snow was so deep that the tombstones were all covered. Everyone’s but Dad’s -- it was eerie. I asked Grandfather why Dad’s grave was the only one that didn’t have any snow on it, none at all. It is as if we were in a greenhouse, the grass was still green and the flowers at the base of the headstone were in full bloom. The temperature was twenty-eight degrees outside. It didn’t make sense. The temperature on Dad’s grave was a warm seventy-seven degrees. “What is going on here Grandpa?” He told me that it only happens on my Dad’s birthday and that he didn’t understand it either. He had discovered it five years ago, the first year Dad had been buried, but had never told anyone what he had discovered. Grandpa told me that Dad found the cave when he was about thirteen and went inside to explore it alone. “To this day, I don’t know how he found it without my map that I have kept hidden for fifty years. Your Dad hadn’t seen the map and he didn’t know about my journal of my own findings yet. Your Dad was a person that was centered spiritually at a very young age. He saw things that most people wouldn’t ever believe were possible. If they had seen them, they would have denied it as their imagination running wild. After your Dad found the cave, he was never the same.”

When we left the cemetery that day, I was frightened and had an uneasy feeling about my Dad’s grave. Was there a connection between him and the cave? It wasn’t like anything my Grandfather had ever seen or had no explanation of why. What did it have to do with the cave? Did it have anything to do with the cave he had explored when he a young boy?

If it did have something to do with the cave, then what was it? What did my Dad discover that my Grandfather and his friends didn’t seventy-five years earlier? Could my father have anything written down in a journal of his own about his experience from the time he was in the cave? Did he ever go back to it? I had a lot of questions for Grandfather and my mother. I didn’t know where to even start. Everything around my Dad had always been kept quiet except that he was a good man.

Today is my sixteenth birthday. I haven’t seen Grandfather, since March fourth, my Dad’s birthday.

That was when Grandfather and I drove out to visit my Dad’s grave and he told me about Dad finding the cave. What was he going to share with me this time? What was he going tell me that would go with the other clues he had already given me? The library, the twelve warriors facing the seven Angels and what did that mean anyway?

I had my own car now -- freedom! Mom didn’t have to drive me out to see Grandfather anymore.

That was a great thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to have his own car. When I pulled into the driveway, though it was more like a road to nowhere, I saw him standing out by the barn. He was getting things ready for us. It was time for another lesson, another clue to where his journal was hidden.

When I got out of the car, he handed me a wooden flute. It was worn from use and he told me it was time to start learning how to play this tune. This piece is called the song of the ancestors or the ancient ones. He pulled another flute almost identical to the one he handed me and started playing. The tune sounded like it was two hundred years old. It was the most beautiful tune I had ever heard. I never knew Grandfather could play a musical instrument. The flute was about two feet long and there were three eagle feathers hanging from it. On the side were seven words carved from the mouth end to the end of the flute. On the other side were twelve more from the end of the flute going back to the mouth end of the flute. It was a language I didn’t recognize. “Grandpa, what do these words mean?”

With a chuckle and a twinkle in his eye, he told me it was all in his journal. “One day it will all come together. Do you remember the other clues I have given you, Jacob?”

“Yes, I remember!”

“Good!! Let’s go down to the river again.” We got in the boat and headed up the river one more time. We pulled the boat out onto the rocks by the steps and walked up to the ledge that hung out over the river. We sat down and Grandfather started to teach me the tune on the flute. He played for a few minutes while I just sat there listening and watching him play.

It was like magic. It was mesmerizing; it took me to a place of peace like I had never felt. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the animals of the forest gather around to listen to my Grandfather as he played this mystifying tune. I turned my head to see deer, turkey, squirrels, bear, fox, and birds of all kinds sitting in the trees as he played. When he stopped playing, the animals were all gone without any sound; they disappeared without a trace. On the way back to the house he gave me another clue.

The third warrior below facing the south seven feet up is looking at the seventh Angel from above facing the north two wings removed under his halo lies the key that opens the book that the seventh warrior from above facing the west has in his hand. Under his halo lies the key that opens the book of what you need to search for in order to find my journal.

“The number of warriors and angels are the key to everything, don’t forget that, Jacob. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here. I hope I’m here long enough to help you with this life’s quest.”

I knew Grandfather was old; he was born in May of 1877. This was 1972, so he was ninety-five years young and he got around better than most people in their sixties. But I was old enough to understand what he was telling me. We fished for bass on our way back home that day, hoping to catch a few for supper that night. It was the first time in a long time that we had fished together.

We hunted and fished together every opportunity that came our way, any opportunity to spend time together. We caught twelve bass that day on our way back home. They sure did taste good for supper that night. Grandma fixed fried potatoes, pinto beans, and fried okra to go with the bass and of course buttermilk cornbread. Grandma sure did know how to cook. To be ninety years young they sure did get around good. They said it was from good eating and good strong family genes. It still got a little cool at night in the mountains, so they built a fire before we went to bed that night. Sunday morning, we got up and went to church as usual. They never missed a service that I knew of. They put GOD before everything else. I think that is why they lived for such a long time and were in such good health. Grandfather was always telling me that we could make our days longer upon this earth by following GOD’s word. As always, I had a great time with them, listening to the stories they would tell about our ancestors.

Grandfather was one of a kind there wasn’t another man like him anywhere in the world as far as I was concerned. After church Sunday morning, it was time for me to go home and get ready for school. There was a week left; I had to get ready for final exams, then the school would be out for the summer.

I spent most of the summer with my grandparents. Grandfather was a very wise man. He knew things that would boggle the mind of most people. He could talk to people on any level of conversation that he confronted. He was just as sharp now as he was when I was little. Most people loved my Grandpa because he was honest. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He didn’t take to people that spoke with a “double tongue”; he could always tell if a person was lying to him.

I learned a lot from him about how to listen to people and watch their eyes or see if their breathing was irregular to tell if they were telling the truth. This is something that would help when I got older. Grandfather and I fished and spent a lot of time in the forest again that summer. I almost had the song learned on the flute by the end of summer. But I was nowhere close to sounding as good as my Grandfather yet. He said I would not only be as good as he was, but I would probably be a lot better. That was hard for me to believe because Grandpa was great, and he had been playing that tune for eighty years. It was time for school to start again and time to go back home with Mom. I asked, “Mom, do you know much about Dad when he was a kid? Did he keep a journal or a diary of any kind?”

“He didn’t talk much about his life after thirteen. I can tell you that he left you a key to a lockbox at the bank. His instructions were to give you that key when you graduated from college and not a day before.”

That was just great: I had five or six years to be tormented by the thought of what could be in the bank vault. Mom said she didn’t know what was in it. If she did know she sure wasn’t telling me about it. “You just keep your mind on your books for now. It will all happen when the time is right.” Now she was starting to sound like Grandfather!

It was a long school year of studying to keep my grades up so I could get a scholarship for college.

Then it was time to go with Grandfather to my Dad’s grave again. It was March fourth.

There wasn’t any snow this year, thank GOD! I don’t know if I could have taken another adventure like last year. This year, everything at the cemetery was different; the temperature this year was hotter than normal it was eighty degrees. It was warm for this time of year. My Dad’s grave was cooler, though it was still about seventy-seven degrees. Grandfather said it maintained that temperature year around. It even made him a little nervous when he goes out there. I wonder if anyone else has ever noticed the difference between my Dad’s grave and the others? It sure makes the hair on your neck stand up. We talked about what it could be that keeps Dad’s grave at the same temperature; could it be something or someone was watching over him?

Our visit was too short this weekend; I had to get back to school because of the extra classes I am taking this year. I had a lot of homework to get done before Monday morning.

The next two months flew by and it’s time for mine and Grandfather’s birthdays again. I wondered what he was going to share with me this weekend. I’m seventeen today; one more year of high school left. But what I was most curious about was my visit with Grandpa today. What clue was he going to tell me today? I drove up to his house and there he stood just like last year, ready to go. We went to the river but this time we took the path alongside the river instead of taking the boat. We walked for a couple of hours until we walked out onto the ledge that hung out over the river. He pulled out his flute again and asked me to play along with him. Playing with him was an experience that I will never forget. This time the animals were so close, you could reach out and touch them. Just as before, when we stopped playing, they were all gone, disappeared into thin air. “Jacob, you’re playing as well as I’ve ever heard anyone play,” he told me “I’m proud of the way you have been practicing. I can tell and so can the spirits of the forest.” We must have played for hours by the way the sun was low in the sky, but the time passed by so quickly it was time to go before we knew it.

“Before we leave, I have another clue for you. Do you remember the other clues?”

“Yes, I remember them! I have them all written down in my journal Grandpa.”

“Good man, Jacob.” That was the first time he called me a man.

“Find the book in the hand of the seventh warrior above facing the west. On the twenty-third page of that book on the ninth shelf of the fifth Angel two wings removed from above facing the east has a note telling you the next place to look.”

Then we walked back to the house, where Grandma had supper ready for us again as usual. Before you knew it, Sunday afternoon came, and it was time to go home.

Summertime was here and it was hotter than normal this year. The lack of rain caused the Red River to be lower than I had ever seen it before. Grandfather said it hadn’t been this low in eighty-four years. One day in July, we got in the boat and went upriver to the same rock he took me to last year. Now the river was seven feet below its normal level revealing twenty (ta’-l’-s-go-hi) rocks surrounding a boulder. Each rock had a word carved on the side. The big rock was sitting on what looked like a pedestal. Or it maybe it was covering a tunnel that went back into the mountain?

On the bottom of the largest boulder was a circle with words craved around it: “MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN” (“you have been weighed in the balance and have been found lacking”). It almost looked like a key.

Grandfather said, “Jacob, pull the boat out on the bank and tie it up. I want to show you something. Follow me.” I followed him to the top of the boulder. Grandfather told me to look down at the rocks surrounding the boulder. When I looked down, I noticed words were also written on top of the rocks. Grandfather explained, “The words on the side of the rocks are for those who are young in spirit and in the natural realm of the world. The ones on top are for people who are more mature in the spirit and those words are in the spirit realm. When you add the two sentences together; well that is a narrow path leading to the true spirit world of the Great Spirit. Jacob, my son, few there will be who find this path!” He also showed me a carving at the top of the boulder” “There is only one Great Spirit. All things were created by Him; so, all things are in the Great Spirit (u-ne-qua) and everything has the Great Spirit inside of it!” As I was looking at the carving in the boulder, I thought I saw fossilized fingers protruding out of the stone. Grandfather told me, “These words spoken incorrectly will cause you to sink into hardening of the heart; hardened by pride. Jacob, many of our ancestors made the wrong choice. By doing so their spirits became entombed in the world of deceit, and their hearts entombed in stone.”

The words written on the side of the rocks of wisdom were: (the natural realm) FORGET, LOVE, (tsi-lv-quo-di), BEING, HIGHER, (ga-lv-la-di) ANGEL, (di-ka-no-wa-di-do-hi), HELPERS, (a-li-s-de-lv-di) WINGED, (go-hu-nv-hi) TO, CHOOSE, (su-ye-ta) TWO, (ta-li), WORLDS, (e-lo-hi), INTO, DEATHS, (o-yo-hu-sa a-tsi-la) WAR, (da-nu-wa) OF, ONE, (sa-quu-i) PATH, (nv-ne-hi), CHOSEN, (su-ye-ta) DECAYS, (u-go-sv) SPIRIT, (a-da-nv-do). The words written on the top of the rocks are the (Spiritual Rim). REMEMBER,(a-nv-da-di-s-di), TRUTH, (do-na-te-u) BECOMING, LIFE, (ga-no-du) JOY, (ga-li-e-li-ga) ENGAGED, (i-tsu-la) ON, SPIRITUAL, (a-do-nv-do) WINGS, (go-hu-nv-hi) HELPS, TO, CHOOSE, ONE, (sa-quu-i) PATH, (nv-ne-hi), TOO, (na-s-gi), TAKE,(a-gi-s-di) IN, SPIRITUAL, (a-do-nv-do) TONGUES, POWER.

“It’s a sign that the time is drawing near for—never mind,” said Grandfather. “The river hasn’t been this low since 1897.”

We wrote the words down that were carved into the rocks. Then I took a piece of paper and laid it over what I thought was a key and rubbed pencil lead over it until each detail on the paper was legible. I took pictures for the very first time. Since the river hadn’t been this low since the late eighteen hundreds; I didn’t know if these rocks would ever be seen again in my lifetime. The carvings on the rocks were there for a reason. Why were they in that order? I thought maybe the pictures I took might help me to figure out their meaning. I took them in the order they lay around the rock.

I had a friend that could develop the photos for me because I didn’t trust having it done by just anyone. Grandfather was puzzled by the things we saw today; you could tell he wasn’t comfortable. He kept watching as if he expected something to happen. He poured water over the boulder and all the rocks and washed away any sign of our being there. Then we headed back to the house. When we passed by the ledge with the steps going up to it, the ledge we would sit on where we usually pulled the boat out of the water was seven feet above the water. There was an opening under it, but I couldn’t see how far back it went. “Don’t stop, Jacob, keep going, we will come back at night using the trail so that no one will see us.”

It was a couple of weeks before we could come back. Grandfather got the rope and lights just in case we needed them. We didn’t use the lights until we got down to the river under the ledge at the edge of the river. The cavern underneath the ledge went down forty feet, then we hit the water, which was waist-deep, so it was a good thing we had our walking sticks with us. The water was cold and dirty from running down the clay walls. We waded in the water for about thirty minutes. It was slow-going having to use our sticks to feel the way. There were a couple of places the water was over five feet deep and some places we couldn’t feel the bottom. All at once, the water got warm and shallower as we went along. The tunnel branched off five different ways. We found words carved into the rock of each tunnel that looked like the same words that we saw a couple of weeks ago carved on the rocks. “Grandpa, which tunnel do we take?” I asked.

He asked me if I had brought my flute. “Of course, you told me to always carry it with me.”

“Play it and see if anything happens.” When I started playing, three of the tunnels started glowing and we heard voices of ancient ancestors singing. I didn’t know if they were saying “Go away” or telling us which tunnel to follow. Grandfather asked me to stop playing and, believe me, I was more than happy to stop. He said it was time to go back now.

“But we’re so close, Grandpa, why can’t we go on?”

“Because this is as far as they will let us go without the correct words repeated for each tunnel. It would be the end of the line for us and we aren’t ready.”

“OKAY, that’s good enough for me.” By the time we got back to the mouth of the tunnel where we came in, it had started raining and water was running into the mouth of the cave. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when we went in there, and no rain in the forecast for a week.

“Grandpa, what is going on?”

“The voices we heard were warning us to leave until the time was right and to return when you had grown more. Learn the ways of the words that are carved on the rocks we have found.” The next morning Red River was full again.

The weatherman on TV was baffled as to where the rainstorm came from because our county was the only one in the state that had any rain last night and there wasn’t a cloud anywhere else in the state.

High school was starting next week. All I could think about was what Grandfather and I had done all summer and I wasn’t ready to go back. But I had no choice because I had one more year of high school and four years of college. At least I was a senior this year. School was boring after the summer I had just spent with Grandfather.

The school year moved kind of slow it seemed but finally it was New Year’s Day and school was half over. I kept practicing my flute and worked on figuring out the words we had written down from the rock and the words in the cave. It looked like there were three, four, or maybe even five different languages combined.

I wanted to start the New Year off right by getting in touch with the spiritual side of life. I knew Grandfather usually used the sweat lodge on New Year’s Day.

I called him to ask him if he would get the sweat lodge ready for me to use today. Grandma answered the phone and told me that he was in it now. It was late when I got there; the lodge was halfway up the mountain and only big enough for four people. Grandfather and I were the only ones that used the lodge anymore, so it was big enough. You could see the steam seeping out from in between some of the branches. My Great-Grandfather had made it out of switch cane woven together and covered it with buffalo (ya-na-s-se) hide to help hold the heat in. Being inside was like stepping back a hundred years, which probably wasn’t too far from how old it was. The pit of rocks was in the middle of the room if you wanted to call it a room. He had the heat going pretty well. By the time I got there, it must have been a hundred and forty degrees inside. It was a great feeling to sit there and meditate, having visions of the past and the future with my Grandfather sitting across from me. It was one of the many things I enjoyed doing with him. We would sit and meditate for a couple of hours. Afterward, we would talk about the vision we saw or if there was anything unique about our experiences. Maybe you believe in that sort of thing or maybe you don’t but, whether you do or not, it does exist. Everyone has had a dream that’s come true or heard of other people that have had their dreams to come true. I know I’ve mentioned it before: There is a world that we see but, at the same time, there is a spiritual world that exists. Every once and a while you are blessed to be able to peek into it. Very few people will even talk to you about it, but most people think it’s nonsense. Nonsense or not, I know the truth and it isn’t nonsense. After Grandfather and I were through using the sweat lodge we walked over to the old horse trough, stepped inside, and dunked ourselves to rinse the sweat off. After we dried off, we headed down to the house to help Grandma with supper. Grandmother had most of it ready. She had sweet potatoes baking in the oven. Oh, what wonderful smells filled the house. Between the sweet potatoes and the fresh bread baking, my senses were in overload. I didn’t realize I was so hungry. No one was as good of a cook as my Grandmother!