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5

DEEP CONNECTIONS

“One year I was barefoot from late spring snow to early fall snow.”

If you’re a Star Trek fan, life here becomes very much like the town in the episode “Far Point Station.” The town itself appeared like any other town, made of inanimate buildings and streets, but the whole place was the “shape-shifting” flesh of one huge sentient being that was injured and forced to settle on the planet’s surface.

Far Point Station was a highly evolved conscious entity that in form reacted symbiotically to fulfill people’s thoughts and wishes. If you went into a fabric shop you found the cloth of your dreams on the rack you swear wasn’t there a moment ago. If you yearned for a particular fruit ripened to a particular perfection you found it was there all along in your fruit bowl, but you just hadn’t noticed it before. That is how life really wants to relate to us all, but our desire-based mindset stifles its effort.

Far Point Station is pure fantasy. Star Trek is science fiction. But the story behind it has some basis in reality. It was said that daily a crow flew overhead and dropped a nice crust of bread to St. Anthony for lunch and if he had a visitor it would drop two. Manna from heaven, feeding 5,000 with a couple loaves and fishes, water all of a sudden flowing from a rock to save Haggar and Ishmael in their banishment to the desert – it’s all the same phenomenon.

There are volumes of such accounts recorded in the lives of the saints of all religions, east and west, that sound a lot like Far Point Station, not to mention the many personal “I gotta tell you about this miraculous thing that happened to me” stories that damn near everyone can relate.

The Stone Camp in particular is very much like that town through no calculated effort on my part. It’s only because circumstance removed the yoke and whip from the hands of desires, bridled them and placed them all in their proper stall. Thus life provides necessity and fulfills desires for me much like Far Point Station. Ponder this in light of Christ speaking about how “the lilies of the field” are dressed while we’re fretting about our wardrobe.

Up here I’m like nothing more than the townsperson who sits in Far Point’s visitors center, the welcome committeeman who is paid room and board for his service. I’m nothing more than a street lamp, a liaison that gives light to The Stone Camp’s character and some of its mysteries, but I’m also like a computer application that was programmed a little by genetics and a lot by environment and experience.

Another part I play here is something akin to a blood cell driven by a vision of ultimate security. I move the nutrients that feed the growth toward that security from one place to another. Then I apply them with wrenches, hammers, soldering guns and screws. My efforts are like a therapy that increases flow, circulation and efficiency. Blood cells don’t contemplate or say much. They’re much too busy working their butts off to reflect on the fact they’re working their butts off.

Basically I just see something broke or something that needs to be done and I walk down to the tool bus (my retired school bus) for the parts and tools I need to do the job. That’s the part my dad taught me. Another part was my Eagle Scout training that, when combined with a strong Protestant work ethic, results in something like “Be Prepared” on steroids. But the whole thing is capped off with a strong desire to know what is truly pleasing in the face of God as opposed to what the “preachers” told me.

The visionary aspect came in large part from a woman named Ruth Scott – that’s the Ruth who let me have her old VW squareback for a buck – and from the trickle of Mohawk blood in my veins from a distant ancestor named Thayendanegea. You have to admit, that’s a strange and intoxicating brew, maybe even dysfunctional!

Thayendanegea

Thayendanegea has many descendants around here and north of here in the Mohawk Valley, so I’m not exactly unique. Still, my connection to him feels personal and even mystical. Born in 1743, he was one of the great leaders of his people during turbulent times. His parents were Christian and his Christian name was Joseph. He was known by the British and the Colonists as Joseph Brant – an educated man who was honored by King George III, respected by George Washington and accused of savagery by the press of his time.

In the past I looked hard in the mirror and strained to see the Mohawk heritage in my face but couldn’t see a trace. I only searched my reflection to see what many ethnically pure people spotted in an instant, like the elderly Jewish couple who had a summer cabin at the foot of the mountain and claimed it was very apparent. I remember sitting at a large communal meal in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. I didn’t know anybody and seldom heard a word of English, so I kept pretty much to myself. At one point someone asked me where I was from and what was my ancestry. When I mentioned I had some Mohawk blood the entire place erupted in words and expressions that were clearly confirmations. I asked the woman who interpreted for us, “What was that all about?” She said, “They all could see it in you.”

The mystical connection that I surmised, or should I say fantasized, came from a book I’d read about Joseph Brant. It may be nothing, but it got my attention, nevertheless. I had already been practicing zero-waste years before I read that the one thing that sent Joseph into a rage was waste. Neither of us could bear to see any form of waste. It was another shock when I read that Joseph had built a tiny chapel in the forest within sight of his house. I, too, had done that.

But if there is a truly self-evident proof of my bloodline, it is what happened one pitch-black midnight in the forest. I was alone, walking barefoot to hone my senses. Some sort of large beast began to track my scent for a good while and it just kept getting closer and closer. I don’t know what it was because it was dark beyond dark. It could have been just a big curious wild dog, because the coyotes hadn’t settled in, bears were rare at that time and it made too much noise to be a big cat.