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Following in a Shaman's Footsteps
Took place June 23, 2008by Jeffrey Pierce
Don't Miss Part Two!
Several hundred miles into a journey that would carry us from our home in Salem, Oregon to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Bri and I took a side trip to Toquima Cave, located off a lonely stretch of highway approximately 80 miles from Reno, Nevada. We undertook our entire trip without an itinerary or destination in mind. The morning after our handfasting, Bri and I simply hopped in the car and started driving, trusting that wherever we found ourselves would be exactly where we were meant to be.
Somewhere in Nevada, we had picked up a brochure, "Engraved in Stone: Nevada Ancient Rock Art" which had refererd to Toquima Cave. "The Western Shoshone consider this range their cultural property," the brochure remarked. "According to tradition, this area holds special spiritual qualities where spiritual leaders would communicate with the spirit world."
Which is as close to a calling as a modern shaman has the chance to hear.
The road leading in to the cave site.
The road leading into the site was long (approximately 18 miles of nearly straight single-lane dirt road) and hot (since it cut right through the middle of the desert.) What's more is that the directions included in the brochure are misleading, referring to a sign that reads, "Toquima Cave Picnic Area." There is no such sign. What's there is the Toquima Cave Campground, a six campsite flat space chiseled out of the surrounding landscape. So we kept driving right passed the sign.One of the things that you learn when you study shamanism is how to sense and read the energy around you. As the rocks and hills that would ultimately hold the cave fell behind us, I felt a pull toward a rock formation well off the main road. Bri agreed. Securing plenty of water and shouldering a daypack filled with emergency supplies, we set off across the desert toward the summoning rocks.
The terrain surrounding the ritual site.
Shamanism holds that everything is alive - and that each living thing, be it person, animal, rock, or plant - is valuable and important in its own way. When you begin to see the world around you as being a single, interwoven family, you begin to listen to those family members. Among the rocks and trees there waited a hidden path - and as we began our honeymoon and the next chapter of our lives together, I taught Bri how to read and follow that path. The terrain leads you here, a tree indicates the path here. We allowed ourselves to be led deeper into the rock formation until we reached the first portion of the path that ended in a small, natural cave.
A small cave used to prepare for the larger ritual.
It's not uncommon for a shaman to embrace a deeper ritual in stages, preparing for the rite before seeing it to its completion. Sometimes a preliminary ritual is required. Sometimes it's as simple as stopping for a moment and allowing yourself to shift before stepping into the site and engaging in the accompanying ritual. As we stepped off the trail and stopped before the small cave, it was clear to me that was the case with this site.
Charcoal left behind in earlier times.
In fact, to confirm what my intuition was telling me, we found bits of charcoal in the small cave - a natural place to build a campfire and protect the eternally dry surrounding landscape from the potentially devastating flames.The terrain led to a natural circle of stone, a high amphitheater enclosed by a lower wall of stone. It was obvious that the preliminary ritual would have been held here, just a dozen strides or so from the small cave.
The stone walls form a circle behind the trees.
As we stepped into the area, we discovered that the walls were covered in small, hand-carved circles, similar to the holes carved in the rock walls at Hickison Summit, a second site approximately 75 miles away from Toquima Cave. It was nice having a cultural bridge (the carved holes) to work with and Bri and I stood among the ancient rocks and talked about the symbolism behind the carvings. "The actual ritual would have been performed here," I explained, gesturing to the stone circle around us. "The holes would have symbolized the shaman entering the cave. Here the energy would have been raised, the rite would have been performed, and all of that intense, present energy symbolically carried into Toquima Cave."
Circles worn into the stone. The circle second from the left is several inches deep.
Most of the holes were quite small, but even so one of the smaller ones (the second circle from the left in the photo above) had been carved several inches deep into the rock. The largest circle we could find was more than two feet (0.6 meters) in diameter.
A large circle more than 2 feet (0.6 meters) across.
When doing shamanic work, it's appropriate to bring a gift. And without discussing the concept, both Bri and I brought the one gift that the desert and all its inhabitants crave - water. Independently, we began pouring water from our abundant supplies into the holes that were carved into the rock walls of the site. Something simply seemed appropriate about the entire concept.
One of the "paths" that leads through the rugged terrain.
We stopped for a moment and talked about how, once the ritual was completed, that the shaman would have followed the same terrain clues to Toquima Cave. The path wouldn't have followed the road, but would have snaked through the hills, rocks, and low mountains, leading the shaman to the site. Sure enough, we found the relevant trail and followed it for a distance, before turning our boots back toward our trusty car, Zen, parked across a wide stretch of desert.
Remember, when walking in the desert, be careful where you step.
We found a few tokens to take with us - an ancient antler from a pronghorn antelope and an accompanying vertebrae, a small bone from a desert rodent, and a couple of really cool rocks. In tune with the land and the spirits that inhabited it, we worked our way across the hot terrain when suddenly I felt the spirit of a rattlesnake curled up in the center of our path, cooling itself in the shade. It never moved, coiled quietly, waiting for us to go by.After all, we still hadn't reached Toquima Cave.