If I want to escape from the sterility of modern life with its hyper concern for safety, constant communication sources, and profound stability, I like to think about pre-historic, pre-agriculture, indigenous, hunter/gatherer, or tribal life. I realize you can’t lump a bunch of humans into this category and be anthropolgically sound, but for this reflection I can.
I used to romanticize about wearing a sunbonnet and tending a garden. Now, that sounds like drudgery. I want to cherry pick the things from what I fancy Indians did and think about that. I don’t choose to linger on chewing hides to soften them for clothing as Innuit women did. Nor do I want to wallow in buffalo blood as I endlessly tan the hides like my Comanche sister friends. Although I’m not sure how I would feel about these pursuits truly.
I don’t want to plow up the soil of 160 acres but I do want to wander the forests of North America, untouched by chain saws, freeways, and power poles. I want to forage for edible plants, and make my own house. I want dancing to be part of my spirituality. I want animal visions to be messengers of the beyond and to be in tune with every source of my food. I want to apologize to an animal’s spirit before I kill it; knowing that we are intimately connected. I want to drink straight from a spring and I want my cycle to coincide with that of the moon because I’m constantly privy to its light. I want to raise my children with my mother and sisters and look to elders for their wisdom. I want to wait for my man to come back from battle and comfort him with food and my body.
I don’t want to go to the little red school house. I want the saguaros to be my teacher. I want my book to be the one inscribed by the stars.
Nor do I want to show up at the church steeple where some ideas from a far away land and the knowledge of another tribe have to be my guide. I want to learn from my own people, their stories, and their ways. I want my ideas about God to be something I absorb through watching the owl, navigating the river in a handcrafted vessel, and feeling the electricity of the earth pulsating through my feet.
I don’t want to live within the wall of a house and have to ever maintain it and keep my children isolated within it. I want to hold my baby when she cries and feed her at will; keeping her close to my body as my instincts dictated; not force her to conform to an arbitrary sleep schedule. That my children could learn from play and play to learn, growing naturally into adulthood in the fold of a family clan.
I want to harness my intuition to survive instead of going to Target. I want to learn the lore and patterns of creatures that are my foes, friends, and food. This is what I idealize. I dream of fashioning a weapon that has been perfected slowly and passed down by oral tradition. I want to eat a food that I have intimately handled from start to finish. I want to bathe in the river and follow the chime of the seasons in my habits of life. I want to pick up and move if I need to and be able to assemble my belongings in one day. I want the earth to be my mother. This is what I dream of.
