the HOPI / HIPPIE connection, part 1

THE LOST TABLET OF THE HIPPIE


This is a story that deserves to be told. It contains people and ideas that merit a wider audience and it contains mysteries -- old and new -- that may yet get to be figured out.


In the winter of 1971 I was cutting firewood up at a farm outside of Eugene, Oregon. It was part of the Back to the Land movement as they called it a generation ago, when thousands of people -- young people mostly -- fled the cities for greener pastures at the edge of the backcountry, -- planting gardens, cutting firewood, building buildings with recycled materials, domes, yurts and living or at least trying to live, in some kind of communal harmony.


At the same time we already had become an information outpost of the Gathering -- letters being written, invitations being distributed, ideas being brought together in preparation for the first Rainbow Gathering now only a year and a half away.


People came looking for a community of people to be part of, looking for a group of people who wanted to touch the earth with their labor. And also looking for a place to freak freely, to abandon ship from the upheavals -- the marching in the streets or the marching away to war -- of the sixties. For draft dodgers heading to Canada we were a stop on the Underground Railroad. For runaways we were a secure unharmful spot offering food, and good advice. For the young local citizens and loggers we were a place to go party. For scientists or architects or botanists we were a place providing in-the-field examples of geometric architecture, organic farming, small scale logging, and solar technologies. We were experimenting, sometimes experimenting wildly, with herbal medicines, and very carefully with midwifery, meditation, yoga, acupressure chanting, and so on. It was a wonderful, bold time. And we knew that all over the country -- 5n the h533s 6f r4ra3 A0er5ca -- there were others like us, in both smaller and larger groups working on the very same problems and the same dreams.


Into this farm rolled a large deep-purple square-backed truck containing a small clan on their way north. They had been on the road trading. They said they didn't want to use any money so they had adopted the trading lifestyle. They had a truckful of good stuff Tools blankets books, toys, candles, rope, clothes, stuff we could use. It was fun to go to their big purple truck and trade.


As they left they gave us a pouch of Hopi corn seed. They said it was a gift really for the nice welcome they'd been given. And with the seed they gave us planting instructions for the traditional way to plant the corn.


A few months later spring sprang, the ground dried out, and we turned the soil I the lower field. First we planted the frost hardy greens, then the transplants from the cold frame greenhouses we'd built, followed a few weeks later by plantings of corn and beans.


We brought everyone together by blowing the conch shell. We talked about the way of planting where the man with a stick goes ahead, poking the holes and the woman follows behind planting the seeds, dropping them into the holes the man has made. But in the discussion seeking balance, people wanted to do it both ways with both men and women each taking turns with the sticks and the seeds.


It was beautiful. All done in silence. The corn pouch was passed with reverence for the life inside it. As we planted, the afternoon began to cloud over and a light rain started to fall. In the end we held hands in our OM circle as the clouds burst over us and wetted down the valley. The sun dipped under the clouds filling the forested hills with golden misty light and a rainbow rose up from the river and arced down -- I thought it was going to land on where we'd just planted the corn. But no, it touched instead on the godseye standing on the center of the garden. The whole scene was dazzling. The sun, the mist, the rainbow, the new planted deep brown earth, us apart of it all.


Then someone's small voice said, "Why don't we go up the hill to the meditation platform to take this all in"


Single file we went up the trail, a flute casting slow notes across the valley. As we get to the prayer platform overlooking the valley, someone notices a rock nestled in the decay of a giant cedar stump.


But it's only after we've sat that we look it over, passing the carved stone among us. We leave it setting in the stump as it was.


Over a joyful, noisy dinner, amid many other topics, the rock is mentioned. "Hey did anybody see that carved rock out by the prayer platform?"


Nobody had but those of us who'd just been there.


For most of the next year the stone sat where it was


The rock itself was carved on one side with images that were themselves made up of smaller images, figures and faces, and within those smaller signs, figures, designs, until smaller than that it was hard to tell where the carving left off and the natural pattern of the rock began.


More than 7 months later I left Oregon for the East Coast and holiday visiting. But along the route we made stops passing out invitations to the Gathering next July. The invitations were printed and posted, but wherever possible it was given by word of mouth, in coffee houses, yoga centers, community newspapers, laundromats, street corners, on campuses, at rock ' roll shows, places of worship … wherever, whenever. And my travelmates and myself were not the only ones out doing this. There were other carfulls traveling criss-cross the countryside meeting people and spreading the invitation


One set of travelers went through the American Southwest and then eastward and up the coast to where we met up. We planed a trip to Washington, D.C. to distribute invitations and we traded tales of where we'd been


One of their stops had been in the Hopi Lands where they'd heard the yearly ceremonial telling of the Hopi histories and prophecies


They spoke of the part of the story about the times yet to be, where people called the Warriors of the Rainbow would come and somehow set things right in the troubled world -- and they would come bearing a rock, a carved rock that would signal to the Hopi that these were the people of their prophecies.


A rock? A carved, inscribed-type rock? I recounted the tale of our corn planting and we made plans to go back to Oregon and bring the stone down to the Hopi for their examination. First I got on the phone to Kaushal and asked him to go get the rock and hold onto it, protect it.


Returning west, we found the tablet safe and dry, now wrapped up in a small white woven cloth and tied with a coiled cord.


We loaded up two cars and a van with fourteen of us and headed toward the southwest. Close to our destination we stopped at Jacques' place on a remote mesa. He'd been living there for years, acquainted with the Hopi and Navaho peoples.


"You gotta purify yourselves, make yourselves ready," he told us. And we followed his advice taking time to fast, bathe ourselves, meditate and wrap up our hair as a sign of respect.


Then we went early I the morning, to the Hopi village where Feather Knew there was a Kiva, a prayer space, that was open and where we could sit and meditate before going on. An older woman met us and explained that this Kiva used to be open but that too many people had come and abused the space so the Kiva wasn't open to the public anymore. On we went, guided by Feather and Jayson to Thomas Banyaca's house. He wasn't home.


Our next stop was David Monongye's house. Already the sun was starting to bake us. People were home there, and I and Rome and Barry went inside. The radio was blaring loud tinny music. A woman was feeding young children. An old woman sat still on a bench at the side of the room. There were buckets of fried chicken on the table. An old man sat eating. "Come in, c'mon in boys," said the man, gesturing toward us at the door. This was David.


And in we went. "What do you want. What brings you here?" He asked over the din of the radio and the children.


"We … we brought you a stone tablet which we found." I began, getting right to the point.


"You brought a what?" He said, trying to hear over the lunchtime noise.


For a moment the possible foolishness of this entire journey flashed thru my brain. "We brought you a stone tablet." I went on slowly and clearly this time, "which we found."


The younger woman's hand switched off the radio.


"Do you have it with you?" Asked David.


"Yes, it's outside in one of the vans."

"Well go and get it and bring it in."


Like a curtain rising on a whole different scene the place transformed. The food was swept off the table. The children ushered out another door to play. The old woman had lit a candle and was sitting by it at an altar in the corner when we returned inside with the wrapped up stone tablet.


"Open it up." David encouraged

oh gosh what a cliff hanger ....i´m off to part two......

thanks, zuni, i have an instinct for "leave'm wanting more"!