Hemblecha

I was about nineteen when my sweat lodge leader agreed to put me on the hill.

It was the third day of my hemblecha, and it was dusk, the time of day when the barrier between the spirit world and the real was the thinnest. I knew I had to move quickly in order to make it back to the safety of the circle that had been created to enclose my vision quest space.

My circle was filled with my biggest fear—spiders. I have something like arachnophobia; I get very tense and panicky when I see even one small spider, and when there are multiple spiders, my body fills with pure terror, and I freeze, unable to breathe. But by the third day of being surrounded by them, I almost welcomed their presence. I was so bored by then, and so hungry, that I welcomed any sort of distraction.

I had been warned in the sweat lodge before my vision quest: “If you have to leave the circle, do it quickly,” Joe, the ceremony leader, had said. “As long as you stay in the circle, you will be safe.” I grabbed the roll of toilet paper that had been left by my brothers and set two prayer sticks—sticks painted red with little pouches of tobacco, or prayer ties, tied to the ends—across a two-feet wide length of prayer ties, creating a doorway that allowed me to leave and return as necessary. The prayer ties were set in a circle and connected by red yarn around my star quilt, where I had spent the last three days fasting and praying.

Raising my hands to the skies, I spun clockwise and stepped outside. I leaned down to grab the prayer sticks and tucked them into the yarn belt tied around my waist. I tiptoed to a spot about ten yards away from the circle and squatted, keeping my head up and my senses aware—just in case. My legs shook, weak from the lack of sustenance; I hadn’t consumed anything more the past three days than half a thermos of peppermint tea that Joe had brought me that morning. My stomach was so small by then that I couldn’t finish the entire thermos and gave the rest to the altar and the spirits. I was surprised that I had to go at all.

Mid-squat, I thought I heard the brush moving on the other side of the circle. It could be the wind. There were so many small noises up on the hill, where I had thought it deafeningly quiet the first hours I sat there, consumed by the tranquility of the forest. That first night, I woke to the hissing of a cat I couldn’t see. Startled, I was afraid to move—or breathe—and held myself tense, ready to run or fight, while I listened to its terrifying growl recede down the side of the hill into the darkness. I laid for hours afterward, listening to every crunch and crackle of sticks and leaves, until every pore of my skin seemed to respond to the sounds and movements around me. I had fallen asleep sometime the next morning, lulled by early birdcalls and the warmth of the rising sun.

If there is anything out there, I thought to soothe myself, it is probably just another deer.

 

 

There was a deer that woke me up on the second day of my hemblecha. I heard her snort and sat straight up; I didn’t see her but heard her grunting and rushing off into the trees. I thought I saw a glimpse of her tan hoof slipping on the fallen branches that littered the ground, but it could have been a leaf. Before then, I didn’t know that deer made noises like that.

She came back that night while I was sleeping. Again, I heard her deep snort right above my head. My eyes shot open and straight into hers; she was peering down into my face from above. She huffed and then backed away as I sat up slowly, hoping not to startle her. The moonlight shone on her fur, making it look like it was all in black and white, like an old movie, but still I could tell by the shades of shadow that she had beautiful tan, white, and black fur with a black tail. Her big, beautiful doe eyes reminded me of a starlet and reflected the moon, like camera lights in her pupils, and accentuated her ethereal beauty. Delighting in my admiration and awestruck expression, she twisted and turned her body this way and that, high-stepping like a pop star’s backup dancer, her eyes trained on me, then dashed into the woods like a woodland sprite.

 

 

A few weeks prior, there was a peyote meeting in which all of my ceremony brothers and sisters and I had stayed up all night, praying and eating medicine. Long after most had gone to sleep, my brother Blaze and I found ourselves with the last bowl of mush (a mix of peyote tea and “mushed” buttons). Before he limped off to bed (our ceremony leader had a limp from a bad car accident many years before) Joe told us, “You can’t go to sleep until it is all finished; it would be disrespectful to the medicine and the spirits.”

So there we were, two Indians with one large bowl of mush meant for five. We split it in half and began eating. He couldn’t finish, so I finished mine and his. By sunrise, I was floating sky high and in a completely different world. That’s when Joe decided it was the right time to take me to Yoncalla to find my hemblecha spot—the spot where I would sit on the hill, fasting and praying for four days and four nights. Before we left, he brought out a bag of dried peyote and asked if I thought I could handle any more.

“Of course,” I said, not wanting to seem weak or scared. He handed me the bag. I filled a plastic spoon with one large scoop and swallowed it whole. Blaze’s eyes widened; I always felt like I had to prove myself in front of the ceremony men but would inevitably regret it later. The bitter, earthy, granular dried peyote was like dust or sand, coating the roof of my mouth and throat long after I swallowed. I breathed in, rolling my tongue around to get the rest mixed in with my saliva, tasting it all the way into my nose, and choked down the last particles, trying not to puke.

No wonder they call it medicine—even back then, nobody liked the taste.

As we headed down the highway in Joe’s ocean-green Cadillac, I marveled at the immensity of the mountains against the clear blue skyline—as I watched them fly by, I could feel the earth inside them, the weight, the heaviness of years and life that they had seen. My perceptions became more and more expansive as the mescaline coursed through my body; I could hear the mountains singing. My ceremony brother, Diego, watched and laughed as my eyes bulged at passing trees and clouds. Anything manmade, I never saw on that trip; the concrete, the car, the buildings, they never registered. I wanted to fall into the earth and stay there until I disintegrated into it. I wanted to be more a part of it than I already was—I wanted to see from the top of the mountain and know what it felt like to stand as still as a tree for hundreds of years, listening to the wind and feeling the raindrops between my leafy fingertips.

When we got to the hill at Yoncalla, I took off into the forest.

“Diego,” Joe pointed at me. “Go with her. Make sure she is okay.”

Diego stayed right behind me, stepping exactly where I stepped. I turned around once we were in the dense forest.

“Where should I go?” I asked. He looked at me with wide eyes.

“Wherever you feel is right, mi-hija.” I turned back around and began half-running, half-jogging up the hill, Diego struggling to keep up behind me.

“Wait up! You’re going too fast.” I could hear his breath lagging. I ran harder.

There was a tree branch in front of me; I ran underneath it. There was a puddle full of mud—I ran right through it, mud caking up to my knees. I paused, not knowing where to go next, breathing in the musky, sweet earth that smelled of recent rain and animal. A brilliantly bright orange butterfly brushed against my right arm and flew to my left. I began following it.

Diego was far behind me when I finally stopped. Looking around, I saw iktomi—spiders. Everywhere. There were spiders making gigantic webs in the trees, spiders in holes in the ground, spiderwebs floating in the air, the sunlight glinting off of their rainbow-colored threads that reminded me of flying carpets. As I stood with my mouth open in thrilled amazement, the silence overtook me, so peaceful. All of a sudden, I knew—this was where I was meant to sit, in this dangerous, wild, peaceful place.

Diego made his way slowly to the spot where I stood.

“This is it,” I told him. “This is where I will pray.”

 

 

The next day, after we got back to Portland and I had sobered up, the reality hit me. I had just chosen a spot filled with spiders, my biggest fear, probably many of them poisonous, some deadly. I cried in fear the day before my hemblecha. I thought about asking Joe if it was too late to change my mind, but I was too scared. I knew what he would say, and I didn’t want to voice my fear to anyone, more afraid of the humiliation than my choice of site.

I prepared for my vision quest with the full expectation that I would probably die. There would be no one else on the hill with me. Joe would only come out once a day to check on me, and even then, we would barely speak. I could get bitten and die long before he checked on me the following day, not to mention the other bugs and animals in the forest in Yoncalla. Despite the fact that the risk of dying via spider bite was low, my fear wasn’t rational. That’s the thing about fear—it doesn’t always make sense. It’s not always linear. I don’t know where my fear of spiders came from, but I know I have never felt pure dread like I do when confronted by a small body with eight legs. I figured if I prepared for the worst, anything better would be a saving grace.

However, once I was settled on the hill, the spiders kept me entertained. My fear slowly ebbed away as I watched a tiny baby jumping spider jump from one side of my star quilt to the other. It was so small, but if I concentrated long enough, I could see the outline of its eyes. It seemed to be watching me, just as I was watching it. I moved my finger close to its legs. It jumped to the left. I moved my finger close to its legs again. It jumped to the right. We went like this, back and forth, until I laughed so hard in delight that it jumped away into the brush. When I was really bored, having run out of things I could think of to pray about and songs that I could sing, I stared into the trees and waited until I could make out the multi-colored webs hanging above me and the strands of spiderwebs floating by in the wind. It kept my mind off of the hunger.

The ache in my stomach was the worst on the third day, when I got up to stretch and fell back down under my own weight. I had taken to doing yoga stretches throughout the day to keep my blood flowing, but started shaking so hard that I decided to stick with the ones I could do while sitting or lying down. Even then, my heart would beat so hard sometimes when I was just sitting that I would have to lay down and take deep breaths to calm myself. It was August in Southern Oregon, so the heat also made it difficult to breathe and move around without feeling uncomfortable. It became more and more difficult to keep my thoughts straight. I concentrated really hard and prayed, reminding myself that I was sacrificing so that my hardest prayers, the ones about my fears and the illnesses and pains of my loved ones, would be answered. When I ran out of prayers again and my mind wandered, all I could think of was blueberry milkshakes and my stomach growled.

Creator, you better have something really good planned to keep me up here, I gazed into the sky, willing whatever higher power was listening to give me a sign that it wasn’t all in vain. It had been a full day since the excitement of the deer. I had taken to memorizing constellations and astrological signs and all the Spanish words I knew and ordering them in my head to keep my mind off of food. I sucked on a rock to keep my saliva flowing and wished for a freak monsoon to pour down on me so that I could open my mouth accidentally and catch raindrops on my tongue.

Later, I thought to myself, Be careful what you wish for.

 

 

Hunching over and wiping myself, I looked down for just a moment and heard a crunch, loud and clear. A twig snapped. And then another.

I looked up and peered into the woods on the other side of the circle, squinting my eyes through the grayness of dusk. Had it gotten darker in just the mere moments I had been outside of the circle?

I slowly, quietly dug a hole and dropped the used paper into it as my heart fluttered. I dashed back to the circle and set down the prayer sticks as I heard another snap. My feet barely touched the ground as I spun with my hands in the air, hit the ground, and snatched up the sticks, closing the circle that was supposed to keep the spirit world out. My faltering faith slowly began to slip away as I frantically wracked my brain for reasons to believe in a God that wouldn’t let me die that night, while the logical side of me screamed RUN!

Crouching low to the ground, I watched as black fur swayed back and forth above the bushes, coming slowly, lazily into view. I knew it was too late to run away. I searched around me for something to protect myself—if I had to, I could at least try to fight it. But there was nothing, besides Joe’s ceremony pipe, lying in front of me on the altar.

I grabbed the pipe and held it in front of me, my right hand holding the stem, my left holding the bowl, closest to my heart. I needed all the protection I could get.

The bushes parted, and a nose peeked out, leading to a wide, tan face with jagged white-and-black markings that looked like lightning bolts. As he waddled toward me, his body came into view through the leaves. He was huge, even on all fours.

A black bear.

I didn’t realize until later that I had been holding my breath the entire time. I kneeled with the pipe in my hands, facing the bear, with my body turned forward toward the setting sun and my waluta. He got to about five feet to my right before he stopped and sniffed the air, raising his head.

He looked right into my eyes. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. A shot of panic hit my chest and paralyzed me.

For about five seconds, we stared each other down. And then he turned around and ran into the woods, looking over his shoulder to see if I would follow. He disappeared into the trees. I prayed to Creator all night, thanking Him for keeping me alive and safe.

 

 

The last day, I rose with the sun and did my stretches with renewed strength. I knew I was in the home stretch. My body didn’t shake or falter. I sang out my morning songs and finished my prayers. I listened to the little boys at the camp yelling and laughing and yearned to be running and playing with them, so thankful to be living and young. Although I knew they were only a fifteen- or twenty-minute hike down the hill, they sounded so close I felt I could almost see them if I tried.

Joe came to get me with some ceremony helpers who took down my circle and wrapped it all in my star blanket. We left the altar for the spirits, with the offerings I had made prior to setting the site. I was not allowed to speak to my brothers or even look them in the eyes until after the closing sweat, where I offered my prayer ties to the fire and thanked everyone who had come with me to help me in my hemblecha.

“You look so skinny,” said Ben when we were able to speak again. He handed me a banana while the rest finished cooking stew. I inhaled as I peeled the sweet fruit and smiled in relief as I bit into its creamy inside.

I will never forget the taste of that banana.

Tags

Belonging, Community, Spirituality, Fear