Waking up to cold water, coffee, pipe and smoking tobacco; nothing new says retired professor and author, Hunter Gray

Hunter Gray, civil rights advocate and author

Guest Post by Hunter Gray

May 6 2013

I slept late this morning -- arising at about 4 a.m.  Cold water, coffee, pipe and smoking tobacco.  Nothing unusual.

And then I began to hear Them talking right close to our home -- obviously more than one.  Owls -- and they kept it up for almost half an hour. This is very unusual.  Owls only rarely come down from the higher rough country that rises immediately above us.  Maria, oldest daughter, who arose a little later and took our now one dog out for a few minutes into the pitch-dark, heard them also -- very, very up-close.

They were talking to us.

But why and what?

In some tribes, and I've discussed this before, there is the belief that, when an owl calls your name, it is a signal of your impending passage into the Spirit World.

But that is not the case with our Native cultures.  We always see the owls as simply very good and learned friends, no more and no less.  There are other living entities to which we do attribute very positive supernatural characteristics -- bears and wild felines, for example.

So what did these verbose visitors have on their minds?

It took me more coffee and pipe-smoking to figure it out.

They're saying that it's high time for me to return to the regimen that I faithfully followed for several years before Lupus struck full blast, now almost a decade ago:  a daily five mile hike up into the high hills, some of them actually smaller mountains.  Initially, I did this day-time, but then switched into the pre-dawn period.  And then I used to encounter all sorts of wild entities -- all of them friendly -- and that included owls, one of whom, very large, always waited faithfully for me each very early morn.

Never carried a firearm on any of these junkets.

All of that ended with the Lupus.  But that Horror is now gone -- though it's taken awhile for me to recuperate on several fronts.  Quite recently, however, there has been very marked improvement in my leg strength and their resiliency.  They were OK in the early post-Lupus period but now they're virtually back to normal.  Interestingly, this particular rejuvenation has been accompanied by vivid dreams in which I'm walking just as always in various locations.

The Owls are telling me, "Time to start coming again 'way up into our High Country, Hunter Bear."

And I think their firm mandate includes Maria as well.

Now that's pressure -- real pressure.  We'll comply.

Here is a relevant post, written not long before the Lupus War:

IN THE DARK WILDS WE HAVE MANY FRIENDS

By Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]

It was completely new -- just a few early mornings  ago.  I jerked to a
sharp, abrupt stop on the rough downward trail. I had never heard
anything like that in the wilds before.

It boomed out in the pre-dawn darkness from a ridge across the valley -- a
half mile or so ahead of us -- a howl, deep and heavy and eerie,  rising far
up and above the very high, steep mountain slopes. The primeval cry flowed
in over the dark green junipers and the brown sage and the thick red maples
in the canyons.

The Great Howl  had been preceded by coyote yelps and cries at some
distance from it -- and it was followed by a few more of those.  But I know
coyotes well, have all my life, and had one as my close companion
in my native Arizona for two years until he left home and got married
on the Apache National Forest.

This wasn't Them.

Hunter, my faithful Shelty, tensed tightly, peering intently ahead.
He's always extremely interested in wild canines but, living with
four house cats and my half-bobcat, pays only polite, cursory attention
to bobcats and mountain lions.

This was a wolf.  I had heard they were coming back.

For years,  now, I've been walking each day for several miles and a few
hours in the 'way up steep and rough country that
begins almost at our back door. That's all public land -- Bureau of Land
Management [BLM] and Caribou National Forest.  And more recently -- all
winter long -- I've been doing it in the predawn darkness  Cold winds, high
winds, snow, ice and even mud don't deter me.  I don't need much sleep
and I do see very well in the dark.

But there is considerably more to all of this.

Ever since we returned to the Mountain West -- coming here in '97 to
Southeastern Idaho and living right on the far up western "frontier" of
Pocatello  -- we've encountered various kinds of hostility from so-called
"lawmen" and racists.  Almost all of our neighbors -- of many ethnicities --
are just fine.

But last fall, when I was doing my trek in the daytime,  I began to see signs
in the new  snowfall indicating that I'd been human-followed  the day
before. And then there was the bizarre situation where, for whatever reason,
several BLM  guys gathered down at the road to intercept me -- and look me
closely and surreptitiously over -- one day when I was returning
home.

After that, although I still do some hiking in the daytime, I began to do
almost all in the very early morning darkness.

And that's a whole great world of its own.

Often there are Stars, sometimes the Moon.  Frequently there are dark and
roily clouds.  Sometimes snow.  And the winds on the ridges can occasionally
get up to 50-60 miles per hour.

And there are always the friends. After dozens and dozens of our trips, they
know us very well indeed.  The darkness belongs to them -- and now to us as
well.

There's a huge  gray/white owl whose hoots can be heard for more than a mile.
It loves to sit high on an ancient Forest Service pole that once carried a
heavy, naked No. 9 wire as a telephone link.  It waits, and when we get
right up to the pole, it gazes down at us and then flaps noisily away --
only a few feet into the branches of a nearby juniper.

Going down the long remote trail into a special valley, a yellowish and
brown mountain lion once waited in the very nearby dark brush -- probably
assuming I was a tasty mule deer.  When we came close to it, Big Kitty
suddenly realized who we were -- and broke noisily and ran -- but only a
hundred feet or so down the slope adjacent to us.  And at that point,
it began to travel with us, paralleling our course in buddy fashion.
It's one of  several lions whose pungent marking spray we sometimes smell
down in the game-filled valley and who we occasionally hear in the thickets
of juniper and red maple.

And early this very morning a bobcat did the very same thing.

And virtually every dark morning, there are several gray/tawny coyotes that
follow us -- close behind and paralleling  -- for at least a mile and
sometimes two on our journey.

They and others all know us well.  And we them. Bears and rattlesnakes
are sleeping but they'll soon be up and about.  The snow is now gone.

And I know we'll see the wolf before very long at all.

We never -- never -- see any other humans.  But in the dark wilds we have
many friends.

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org  (social justice)

See the new expanded/updated edition of my "ORGANIZER'S
BOOK." It's the inside story of the rise of the massive Jackson
Movement -- careful grassroots organizing, bloody repression, sell-out
and more.  It also covers other organizing campaigns of mine through
 the decades since Mississippi. It's replete with grass-roots organizing
examples and "lessons."  And it has my new 10,000 word
introduction.  Among a myriad of positive comments and reviews:
 ". . .a local activist's important account of the deleterious effects
the involvement  of national organizations can have on indigenous
protest movements."  (Historian David Garrow.)
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

See the related:  http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm