Traveling with Grandmother PaRisHa is always an extraordinary experience. In the 25 plus years that I've known her it never ceases to amaze me that so much can happen in her presence.
Several years ago a group of us packed up and headed West to Arizona where we spent days and nights camping in the Mojave desert. It was with a lot of apprehension that I made the decision to go because, if truth be told, I don't like creepy crawly things such as the big three: scorpions, any kind of spider - especially ones as big as tarantulas, snakes - especially poisonous snakes.
So weeks before I made the decision to go sleep on the desert floor with all these critters I journeyed into the other worlds to see what would await me. This is akin to time travel because it took me into the future to see what I could see.....and this is what I saw:
I saw a lush, flowering, wet desert as though it had recently rained. I saw myself with my medicine walking stick and wondered why I would think to bring that with me. There would certainly be no real need for it and it would be a burden to carry it on the plane with me. I decided to leave the walking stick home where I thought it belonged. I noticed that we were camping in an area that was cleared of brush and leveled out. I saw that the creepy crawlies stayed to the outer reaches of the camp, as though out of respect for our being there. I saw this through their eyes and from their viewpoint in the desert. I knew in that moment that I would not encounter any of the things I disliked most and felt better about going on the trip.
As the day of my departure grew near, Grandmother PaRisHa sent emails from our desert destination saying that she had already set up camp. She said that when we got there we would be able to see the desert in all its flowering glory because it was raining there. Someone had been employed to come out and clear a section of the desert where we would be camping to make it easier for us to move around. So much of what I had seen in my journeying had already come to pass, before I even got there!
After arriving in Arizona, and while taking my 50 pound suitcase off the back of the vehicle in which we were traveling, I dropped the case on my foot. This was why I had seen myself with a walking stick. It took my foot about 5 days of the trip to heal back to where I could walk without assistance from a stick that someone had gleaned from the desert floor, since I didn't have mine with me.
I never did see any creepy crawlies walking around during the whole trip, something for which I was very grateful.
More to come.....
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