| TIMETREE CHAPTERS: 1 Two Indians 2 Spring 3 His Brother The Wind 4 The First Years 5 Comings And Goings 6 Another Spring 7 The Great Meeting 8 Alone Yet Not Alone 9 Remembering 10 Tomorrow Gone Home Page |
Once Upon A Time, |
SPRING
When the next winter was past and it was spring, Tall-Tree-Standing returned to the canyon. Standing outside the hidden cave, he saw a great burn on the other side of the canyon. He followed the game trail down to the river far below and then swam across the mighty river. The shadows lengthened as he climbed laboriously through the undergrowth, to finally stand at the edge of the burn where the fire had begun a year ago. The blackened earth was green with new life. He marvelled at the freshness all around. The old tangled growth was now replaced with a beautiful green carpet of grass shoots swaying in the gentle breeze. As far as he could see along the mountain ridge to the east, black and white tree skeletons stand like abandoned arrows stuck in the ground. Upwind to the west, the forest was still full and green and thriving as before.
Tall-Tree-Standing walked slowly up to the dormant giant he was named for. Its massive lower trunk was both gold and black. He could smell the pine pitch, sweet in the air. Carefully he presses his palm against the smooth wood as if to feel its heartbeat. Without moving his hand, he looked down and smiled to see a small bull pine seedling. The handsome young Indian slowly lifts his eyes and sees another, then another seeding, and is much pleased.
Tall-Tree-Standing looks upward along the stripped away bark of the blasted tree and it seems to grow before him. Startled, he removes his hand and staggers back as a great woodpecker glides into view and settles on a high branch, far beyond an arrow's reach.
That night he slept under the great tree. Next morning he kneeled and chanted to the spirit of the tree and then drew from his wampum bag a fine, clear blue arrowhead. Then he turned to the nearby seedling he had seen, and dug a hole near it. He buried the beautiful flint point as a gift to the great tree. Then, with tenderness, he detached a tiny pine needle from the infant tree and stashed it in his medicine bag. The seedling was but three fingers tall, small against the young man’s cupped hand. Then he arranged a sun ring of small stones around the new-born tree.
On the morning of the third day, Tall-Tree-Standing entered his village a changed man. The villagers observed the way he walked, and how he held his head high. And his eyes commanded those around him in the space before his father’s teepee. They ceased their chores and stared at the young man, their eyes following him to the high teepee of their chief's lodge.
Tall-Tree-Standing waits in silence for his father to emerge. He neither calls nor moves; he does nothing but wait. He never shifts his gaze from the chief-father's tepee. Finally the chief steps out.
Without words the father stands before his son. Slowly the son unlaces his medicine bag and lets fall upon the father's bronze palm, the single tiny pine needle.
"Today, father, you live forever."
The father's eyes shine. Then gentle smiles of pride cross their faces. "Now," says father with warmth, " we eat and drink, and you shall tell me of your journey."
The year was 1536, four hundred and fifty years before the telling of this tale.
| TIMETREE CHAPTERS: 1 Two Indians 2 Spring 3 His Brother The Wind 4 The First Years 5 Comings And Goings 6 Another Spring 7 The Great Meeting 8 Alone Yet Not Alone 9 Remembering 10 Tomorrow Gone Home Page |
Once Upon A Time, |
