Out on the prairie finding Horsemint, a popular Sundance Ceremony medicinal plant.
Well, it happened again. All this crazy positive transformative activity around Halloween — marking our 13th year on the farm — led us away from scribing some of our recently planned tales. Having just lit the first of many Winter fires this morning, still weeks from Waniyetu’s official arrival, we’ll be telling Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake stories all the way to March 20, 2027, the official start of Xuân (Spring) and the next Owétu (Springtime) WWSBD? Yesterday rocked btw with more on that shortly. All that said, I imagined singing the title of this post to Elton John’s, “So Goodbye Yellow brick Road… where the dogs of society howl”. The lyrics to that song go on to say, “Back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny back toad”, a tune about leaving stardom behind to return to a simpler, more authentic way of life.
Speaking of a simpler, more authentic Way of Life, we’re wrapping up with Battlefield Rose and reflecting on our summer journey to MT and LIBI, hoping to end at a new beginning, remembering what first inspired the journey. If you’re reading this, you know RoZie and I run The Higher Haven Retreat Center. Building a world-class destination for healing and spiritual development didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it happened over twelve arduously difficult years of back-breaking effort, with a staff of one, me, Paul Sarkes Tootalian. We brought on Rosalita Bernice Tootalian aka RoZie in the Spring of 2020, and it’s been cool having a sidekick to tough out the last six years. The point is: none of this was easy. And when we over extended ourselves a few years back, feeling like a couple of welcome matts being stepped on with regularity by the demands of disrespectful yoga girls, some fox hole vows were made.
Thankfully we’ve worked through that drama, but during those dark days, when it felt like the accelerator of our life was jammed to floor from March to December, I swore we’d find our way out of from under. And so taking RoZie to see the Little Big Horn Battlefield became a whole thing. I didn’t know a whole lot about it then; it just became this comforting day dream. Even though our lives sucked, as sometimes accomplishing a huge dream can, at times, we had the hope of one day seeing the LIBI. I had no idea how we were going to do it, driving the Great Plains in March being a grim prospect, but we’d figure it out. “When you’re in your prime, when you’re seven years old, I’m getting a shot of you thundering across the LIBI”, I told RoZie. Of her many monikers, I like Thunder Horse, because when she rolls by with that bounding stride, all four feet briefly off the ground, the earth shakes and shudders under her physical power.
Some losses swung into our life at the start this year’s retreat season like a big, black wrecking ball, in the form of the death of my oldest sister Sandy. That’s when my promise to capture Thunder Horse levitating over the grassy hogback ridges of the Montana territory needed expediting. The day after I was alerted of Sandra Marie Tootalian’s passing, I was on the phone to Rock Creek Resort in Red Lodge Montana. And the rest, as they say, is (personal) history. Discovering Olivia Rose Williamson was one of a few reasons that trip was so life-changing. Here, she’s describing Reno Hill, the place where the 7th cavalry troopers who survived Crazy Horse’s initial annihilation were holed up, dug in on a mound for days. All night long, they endured the sound of celebratory dances from the Indian camp below.
While turning me on to incredible LIBI history, Rose was also a Sundancer, exuding the energy of a real Native American warrior. There’s a voice I sometimes mimic, a mini-performance running Ceremony, an imitation of Chief Leonard Emmanuel Crowdog and some of the funny things he’d say. “Nephew, (touching the dirt of the earth in the Lodge) always keep this nice, make sure this, this path here (where the rocks come into the Lodge) make sure you make it smooth, you know, like that.”
The biggest joy of being with Rose was when I heard the same funny impression coming out of her, a Native woman, imitating her Sundance Chief: “You think your prayers are gonna come true on the first day? You better think again! You got four days of prayer girl! You gotta stay with that prayer, just like that, you gotta keep it going to day four….” As I write this now I relive that feeling. “This is our pharmacy, this is our medicine,” she’d say, gesturing to the land. “This how we find wellness and a sense of balance in life.” In the picture above, we found horsemint, a medicine dancers smell at the Wiwang Wacipi Wakan Ceremony, Wiwang being the Sun, Wacipi being a dance, Wakan being something Holy or Sacred.
I’ll end for now. I didn’t get the greatest picture of RoZie bounding across the Little Big Horn Battlefield, like I’d planned in my mind’s eye. Actually, dogs aren’t even allowed to romp around the LIBI. You saw her on the ride with Rose, RoZ and Rose, and she ran a bit wild, n the green hills above where Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake’s camp swelled to 10,000 people. “Last chance to live the traditional life!”, per Rose. That’s a good place to end, and begin again and again. We’ll be wrapping up the year with two more inipi purification Ceremonies, our Holiday Aho ho ho down, and start all over agin in April of 2027, with hopes of seeing you soon. Toksha