402: A Journey of a Thousand Miles - 2010 Edition
November 30, 2009
by Jeffrey Pierce
When I was studying shamanism with Nukah, the Mi’kmaq woman who guided me on that portion of my path, we ran into a simple problem: I’m not Native American. While we, here in the West, may considered an issue with the color of my skin to be racist, the opposite is actually true from an indigenous perspective. Not only are certain portions of their culture considered priceless treasures to be careful protected and nurtured, but those same treasures are also intimately tied to their ancestors. Each generation is a gift that provides the next with culture, with perspective, and with identity. When a Native American shaman calls upon the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, it isn’t a symbolic concept. They are calling on those wise elders of their bloodline who had passed on into the spirit world. The issue wasn’t one of race, but that I wasn’t a part of that chain of lives and, in a very real sense, was simply incapable of ever changing my ancestry.
So Nukah did the best that she could, finding a balance between honoring her ancestors and teaching an eager, if very clueless, student that she had found in me. Instead of teaching me the techniques that her people handed down along bloodlines from generation to generation, she taught me concepts and philosophies and sent me out into the wilderness to find my own application.
While that sounds like an exciting (if somewhat intimidating) approach to learning shamanism, let’s stop and consider what that means for just a moment. If I was asked to find my own application and techniques, then it was also implied that whatever I did would not only work, but would be evaluated by a shaman for its validity. In other words, it didn’t just have to work – it had to work well enough to pass muster.
For instance, when we learned to heal, I actually had to find someone with an ailment to heal or wait until I had developed one of my own. And then I had to successfully heal that ailment. There couldn’t be any grey area that, “Yes, the illness ran its course and you probably helped with its passing.” I had to clearly and definitively heal an illness in much the same way that Nukah’s esteemed ancestors would have done.
So from the very beginning of my time with Nukah, I developed a rather unique perspective that most of us don’t apply to our spiritual paths.
This stuff works.
What we do on our spiritual path should have a tangible, perhaps even measurable, result.
In that spirit, I’ve decided to, as we say here in America, “Practice what I preach.”
I turn forty years old in March 2010. March is a pretty big month for me for a couple of different reasons. First, I dedicated myself to my spiritual path on March 21, 1987 and never looked back. This coming year will mark the twenty-third year of a journey that has carried me around the spiritual globe and transformed me in ways I would have never imagined possible at the beginning of this path. Second, the first article for Old Ways (it was actually several articles published simultaneously) posted to the online world on March 21, 1997 – ten years after my dedication. And last, but not least, March also marks the anniversary of my birth – my birthday.
I’m not sure how it’s seen by the rest of the world, but a person’s fortieth birthday is seen as a milestone here in America – and not a good milestone. There’s a strong implication that life begins to fade, that the best is behind you and it’s time to slowly slide into old age. People have their “mid-life crisis” – panicking that their life is half over and they don’t have anything to show for it. Black balloons are traditionally given as gifts. Birthday decorations feature such cheery sentiments as pictures of tombstones and the phrase, “Over the Hill.”
If you’ve spent much time with me, either in person or online, you know that I’m a big believer that we manifest our own reality. Having spent some time with me, you may be aware that I severely tore my ACL several years ago. If you’ve followed Old Ways over the last year or so, you’re problem aware that I had a pretty significant hemorrhagic stroke in April of this year. Both were healed in a fraction of the time that it takes to recover from such things. (I believe that the torn ACL, a diagnosis that was made by three physicians and an orthopedic specialist, took approximately two weeks to fully heal without surgery).
Standing on the outside of that process, it’s easy for those things to devolve into words. “Hmmmm… Jeffrey’s ACL is okay now.” It removes the fact that it was so badly torn that I couldn’t walk without crutches. That I had no lateral stability in the knee. That my knee wouldn’t support my weight. It also removes the process that one goes through, the journey from being unable to walk to being completely healed (and having a clean MRI and a very uncomfortable orthopedic specialist) in a period of two weeks.
So where is this going?
Somewhere around my fortieth birthday, I’ll be heading back up to the mountains where I did my vision quest during my shaman training, where I did my submersion ritual a couple of years ago, and where much of my early shamanic work took place.
The only difference is that I won’t be driving into or across those mountains.
I’ll be running up into, through, and over them.
I’m still recovering from the stroke. In addition to losing significant portions of my memory and having my ability to communicate severely hampered, I also became extremely weak and easily fatigued. Doing a simple sink full of dishes by hand was beyond my abilities. Two or three minutes into the process, I would find myself completely exhausted and unable to continue, so bone tired with fatigue that I would literally have to go lay down for twenty or thirty minutes to recover my strength.
In mid-March or early April of 2010, less than a year after the stroke, I’ll be strapping on my running shoes and running non-stop across a mountain range – forty miles on my fortieth birthday. There are a number of obstacles to overcome. First, I need to start running. I’ve spent some time in the gym, slowly rebuilding strength and endurance and have graduated to the cardio machines there, but this morning will be the first time I’ve actually gone running since the stroke. Because of my inactivity and readily-admitted love of food, I need to lose about thirty pounds before the forty mile run. I need to establish not only a good endurance base, but also build a fairly substantial amount of strength, as I’ll be starting in the valley and running up and over Oregon’s Coast Range Mountains.
Yes, the first several miles will essentially be spent running straight up into a mountain range.
To understand the process that goes into this undertaking, I’ll be writing about the challenges, insights, and sharing photos and video of the entire event. Bri and a couple of other close friends will be accompanying me every step of the way, much of it with a video camera in hand. We’re intending to make a pseudo documentary of the process and share it online as well.
We haven’t set a hard date for the event for one simple reason. These are mountains that I’m running over. It’s not unusual for the pass to be covered in snow and impassable on foot until spring thaw. In February, much the route is simply closed. The snow doesn’t begin to clear until about the middle of March but much of the timing will depend exclusively on the weather. As soon as the mountains are ready, I’ll be ready, and we’ll head for the hills.
Running. Forty miles. Non-stop. Over a mountain range. Less than a year after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. On a knee that is supposed to be shredded and doctors can’t explain why it’s not.
If that doesn’t demonstrate that you can manifest your own reality, I’m not entirely sure what will.