Every Journey of the body requires a transformation of the beliefs that will get that journey done.  This is the story about my 900 mile journey on a hand cycle that caused me to throw out every thought that did not empower me.  As a result I learned to find happiness at each wide open plain, around every turn and in each face I met.  This is the story about how to become really happy.

Several years ago my truck got stranded in a Baja desert.  I had been spending the morning hours hopping around on my crutches, negotiating the rocks and the sand, exploring cave walls and vertical rocks that had pictorial-glyphs drawn and chiseled by American Natives thousand‘s of years ago.  

I drove into the Baja the night before as I  crossed the border town of Tecate and followed the interior Mexican highway as it wove 3,000 feet down the cliffs of the base of the Sierra Nevada’s into a dry lake basin.  When the highway touched the eastern tip of the salt flat I turned the wheels of my car into a sharp right and onto a dry lake bed called Laguna Saluda.  I maintained a speed of 60 M.P.H. for over 90 minutes until I saw a small cracked white sign with the words painted in black, Canyon de Guadalupe with an arrow pointed toward one of the dozens of canyons that fanned out onto the flats.  Rock cliffs, dry white sand and desert sage had been all I had seen for over 2 hours. I turned my truck to the right followed a sand packed road up into the cliffs of one of those canyons.  At a granite boulder the size of a large shack, I turned right and heard a surreal sound of water as my tires splashed through a stream which announced my entrance into a palm forest with pools of water flanking both sides of the dirt road.  A hundred more feet and I rolled the truck to a stop next to a camp site at the edge of a cliff that fell 200 feet into a white granite canyon with a small spring fed brook splashing cold clear water flanked on both sides by blue palms.  I closed the door of the truck and listened to the sounds of finches chattering, water splashing into smooth granite pools, and palm leaves clattering like wooden wind chimes as the warm breeze blew through them.  

The place had been named Canyon de Guadalupe by a homesteader who believed the Virgin Mary had led him there over 40 years earlier.  Jose, well over 70 years of age, soon came to greet me and collect my $10, per car, per night fee.  As a much younger man he had been a rancher who had stumbled into the canyon of blue palms looking for some stray cattle.  His cows had found a hot spring fed forest of pools and grass.  Feeling the need for a bath, the cowboy soaked in one of the many pools that flowed through the forest.  The hot lithium fed waters worked magic on his arthritic bones and aching muscles.  It was a month before he stepped out of that forest, pain free and rejuvenated.  Shortly after that visit he returned with the intentions of setting up a second home in that healing forest of water and palms. 

It was there that I now stood feeling the hypnotic effect of a water-rich ecosystem that thrived on the edge of an expansive arid desert.  The sun was setting.  In an hour it would be dark.  A bath sounded good.  In a short few moments I was sitting in the hot water overlooking the dry lake basin below.  

After the soak, I stretched my hammock between two stout palms that stood next to my tub on a moonless, star-filled night.  The warm desert air rose from the basin as my bed gently rocked back and forth throughout the evening causing 10,000 stars to float in and out of the black palm leaves silhouetted overhead.  The waters splashed: the night owl screeched and I floated in a world as foreign as my sleeping dreams.   

I opened my eyes at sunrise and peered up at a gold and red light pouring over the top half of the mountain peak that rose up 1,000 feet over my camp.  As I looked to my left I looked down over the edge of the cliff and saw a soft blue light filling the granite canyon below.  My spirit was invigorated with a desire to explore the rock walls I had driven past the night before.  At 8:00 A.M. I gathered up my camera and a gallon of water and drove down into the desert basin, stopping my truck many times, taking photos of the blue sky, red rocks, and ancient carved pictures of humans, snakes, sun and many other images.  At 10:00 A.M.  I felt like breakfast was a good idea, so I attempted to turn my truck around on the narrow sand packed road and buried my front tires into a sand dune.  I spent the next two hours doing everything I knew to free my tires, but I had no luck.  Except for one vehicle up in camp, I realized that the possibility of anyone driving on this desert road was very slim.  No one would be coming for me. The sun was blazing hot, and my water was nearly gone.  At noon I slung my small pack of water and camera over my shoulder and started my long journey back to camp. 

After a few hours, the water was gone.  The heat felt similar to a glass – blowing furnace.  After another hour I had to stop every 15 steps and sit down in order to allow my body to cool enough to calm my palpitating heart, which is the first sign of a heat stroke.    In those many moments of sitting quiet under the brilliant blue sky I noticed how utterly still it was.  My breath and my thundering heart were the only sounds I could hear.  In one sitting I heard the scratching skittering feet of a small two inch gecko crossing the sandy road three feet in front of me.  At another moment I heard what sounded like bellows blowing against sand paper and looked to my left to see two immense ravens pounding the hot air under their wings flying along the canyon walls.  By 6 PM the sun was beginning to touch the highest mountain summit and I realized that my body was dehydrated, my consciousness was floating on the edge of unconsciousness, and I calmly wondered if this was my last hike. 

At that moment I found myself standing on a small rise near a dry river bed and it happened. I heard a man’s voice singing.  It was a song in a foreign language.  It was ancient.  It sounded like the songs of the American Natives of the Great Plains that I had heard on a recording years earlier.  I looked for the source of the singing and realized that it was coming from all directions.  That was when I saw them. Bright human figures formed by light stood in a circle around me.  An uninitiated part of me thought that my mind was creating this from heat exhaustion.  Something else within my thoughts asked me to consider that perhaps there are mysteries in the world of nature that my personal experiences could not explain.  At that moment the song became more pronounced.  

Even though the song was in a language I did not speak, I understood the intention of the song.  It was a death song and it resonated through the bones of my body.  It had a calming effect on me so I began to hesitantly sing along.  I had never experienced this before and in another context I would have closed my mind from hearing this.  However, the singing had a tranquil effect and my thoughts reasoned that I was being visited by angels-American Native angels who had come to me because I needed them.  The energy of the song was allowing me to release my fear of the very real concern of dying.  As soon as the song finished, another song entered my body.  Again, I could feel the intention of the song, as though it was nourishment and water entering my body.  It was the song of strength.  

As soon as that song finished another song entered the space around and through me.  It was the song for endurance.  Each song created an experience in my body that gave me the energy to continue for the length of that song.  Some songs lasted only 100 steps and some lasted much longer.  When one finished another song would fill my body, conveying another form of strength that would give me the energy to continue to walk.  

It was 9:00 when I arrived in camp.  I walked steadily over to the water jugs and drank till the thirst was gone.  Euphoria had filled my whole body.  I had met the ancient ones.  Inside that knowledge I had discovered that I belonged to a family of humans.  I had been initiated into a new awareness.  Even though my American education did not provide me with a language to understand the larger picture of what had happened, over years, I became aware that I had developed an  awareness that the ground I am walking on is alive and I have a relationship with her.  Stories that I had heard about the American Native’s almost sacred awareness of the land they lived from then on made personal sense.  I no longer felt like I was visiting this planet in this body.  I felt like I was home.  

Later that night I met my neighbor who had a four wheeler.  He drove me down to the flats and pulled out my vehicle.  He marveled at the distance I had walked.  I marveled at the awareness I had gained. 

Two mornings later I returned to the flats as I was driving back to the states.   I was met with a herd of grey donkeys with black and white strips.  I stopped my vehicle as they passed the road where I had been stranded.  I watched with a sense of revelry.  

A year later I drove back to Canyon de Guadalupe with my friend Gary.  When I came to the rise in the road where I had met the ancient ones, the songs began to fill my body.  I marvel at the effect those songs had on me, and still do have on me.  

I no longer need to go to Canyon de Guadalupe in order to feel my relationship with the Earth.  I carry that connection in my heart.  When I walk down the Sonoma streets and see the foot hills to my left, I can faintly hear the ancestor's voices singing in the vast parts of my inner world.  Each time this happens, I feel a sense of calm.  When I walk, I somehow know they are with me.  

The Blue Palm 

Acrylic on Canvas