Kachina/Cat-Cheena

There was enough peyote after the meeting for more than a few buttons to be dispersed to anyone who wanted them. I found this to be an opportunity to take what some of the indigenous people call “a spirit or vision quest”. A mountain lion had taken one of the kid goats from the herd and that gave me good reason to find the cat and to see what I could do about its intrusion onto the mesa. I wasn’t sure what it was that I would do about it if I found the goat… or the lion… but it was a chance to find out something about myself. I started out with a pouch of two small buttons and nothing else to eat. I had taken a bite or two before heading out so I was already high. This trio of nourishment would take me up the Arroyo Hondo… past the ranchos, beyond… upward and branching off, up the sides of steep draws and slopes.

     I saw some fresh stool, and a big cat track here or there that seemed magnified by the peyote. I sat for a spell and ate one of the buttons in my bag. Rested and with renewed vigor I arose and stripped off my boots to let my bare feet touch the ground. I stashed my boots behind some rock where I could find them. My clothes were a burden too so I stripped them off and left a marker by the creek below …. the branches of the piñón, juniper and prickly pear vibrated with an aura… the ground under my bare feet… the rocks even… made for a cushion and seemed, how can I say it? friendly? Yes, a friend to my feet.

     Whoa, how can it be? I found cat tracks in a shady spot where the snow hadn’t melted… going up from there and through some brush. It was more out of curiosity than anything else that kept me going… kept me going until nightfall. Wondering about my clothes I sat on a rock thinking… what was I thinking? I’d heard of these monks going high into the Himalayas wearing only a diaper… why couldn’t I? The stars in the moonless night spread out over me… they didn’t look cold or distant. I sat in the lotus position as the hours passed. I would start to shiver but then a warmth would come over me. My thoughts slowed and I saw in the sky… imagined… hallucinated… dreamt of  a cat standing and dancing in a circle above me. She was dressed like one of the kachina dolls I’d seen with paws from under the skirt pounding out a rhythm… the pounding was my heart but it was beyond my heart…and then it stopped… gradually stopped… the cat turned and the night sky stars shone through the garments where the beads had been and the cat vanished… it was Pleiades. I was thrilled… I am having a vision… the reward of the vision quest like I’d heard of!


     The cat then appeared out of nowhere… it wasn’t a hallucination… she crossed over and beyond by twilight silhouetted against the sky on the ridge above me. What was I going to do? Was she stalking me? Was it just a coincidence? The words of one of the folks by the fire back at the parking lot, Red, was known to say: “There ain’t no coincidences… everything happens for a reason and it don’t gotta be explained by mystical mumbo-jumbo: God is in charge here.”

     The cat stopped… turned to glare in my direction. I glanced down for a rock to toss or stick to defend myself with and, when I looked back up, the cat was gone. Was it a threatening glower or was she telling me to follow her? Was she telling me to stop… go back to my little goat pasture and wait for the next time. I figured it to be a taunt…. “Come if you dare or go back!” I rushed up the ridge hoping to catch sight of her. The Kachina image still burned into my consciousness… “Go… go see… go look for yourself at where I am and what I do.”

     “Yes,” I answered out loud… “I will see for myself.”

     The morning light grew bright in the sky above me as the ground cleared a way for my feet.