CAN WE REGAIN WHAT WE LOST?

From 1975 to 1984 we lived without running water. We had a pump outside the kitchen door and an outdoor toilet at the end of a path some fifty feet away. We had wood stoves for heat and a wood cooking range in the kitchen. I still had a private practice going in the city until 1977 so we kept our electricity hooked up and a telephone. In 1977 I left my practice in the city and we terminated our electricity and telephone. From then on it was kerosene lamps and candles for lighting. We intended to live off our small farm the way the homesteaders did. Someday I may write more extensively about this time, but I bring it up now to help fill out the background on a story I would like to tell.

During this period we attracted many visitors. Despite having no way of communication we had plenty of company. Some people would come for a Morning's visit and stay for the weekend. Others stayed for a week or two. In the Summer we had people camping out in the woods that surrounded our property. We met some wonderful people and sat around the campfire until the light would break many times. We had many long winter stretches alone, of course, but even then we often had company on weekends.

I rejoined the World's work force in the Summer of 1984 and our life changed.

Flash forward to 2002[?]. Jamie was working and I was alone in the house. It was Summer. Two gentlemen came to visit. I knew one of them from those early days. I wasn't sure whether I had met the other before. He identified himself as a Medicine Man.

They must have visited for a couple hours. We settled all the important questions in the world. I noticed, off and on, that the Medicine Man seemed to be doing something with his hands, blocked from my view.

Just before leaving the Medicine Man gave me a braided band of grass about two foot long. He said it was sweet grass and I could put it under my pillow or hang it near my head and it would give me sweet dreams.

I hung it on the edge of a picture in my bedroom. I loved looking at it but can't say it improved my dreams. It may have.

Some sixteen years later we moved here. We gave away the picture the sweet grass hung on and I decided to hang the sweet grass in my new study. I thought it might bring a peaceful aura to my surroundings and it went with the décor.

It hadn't occurred to me that my dreams were work filled and troubled since we moved here. Then I went through my 'mattress week' and they became more troubled.

On the basis of an intuitive flash I moved the sweet grass to my bedroom and hung it on a picture near the head of the bed. My dreams improved and continued to improve. It has been about two weeks now and last Night I had the best sleep I have had since moving here.

We could debate this until the cows come home. I don't want to, I believe we have lost a great deal when we moved from the earth onto our present extensions. We all come from indigenous folks at some point. What did we lose?

One time at the end of a dinner party [I don't remember the conversation], my Grandmother stated we came from “Good Peasant Stock.” I was somewhat taken back by this pronouncement, because the family was more likely to wax eloquently about their important forebears.

I don't know what Grandma had in her mind that day, but I mulled it over and over and I began to love the picture of being a peasant, living on the land self sufficiently, living and loving the rhythm of nature. Peasants had some sense of their indigenous roots and they formed the backbone of the whole society.

I would love to retrieve what we lost. I would love to be able to go through the woods and see a plant and know it would help with a headache or fever. I know our Universe is Unconditionally Loving and Nature as part of it, has a remedy for everything that ails us.

HAPPY FRIDAY FOLKS!

Love and Peace, Gregg