Changing Woman’s Light, part 2 by Sara Wright

Last week Sara told the story of Changing Woman. You can read it here.

What I love the most about this story is that Changing Woman evolves from a woman who is passively acted upon into a self – directed deity  who stands up for what she wants and needs. A second reason I feel so strongly about this tale is that Changing Woman demonstrates the importance of having a relationship with more than human beings – animals and plants. A third reason I am so attracted to this myth is the gender balance that eventually evolves between the two – Changing Woman and the Sun. But I think the most important part of the story for all of us is that Changing Woman never dies. She grows old and then young again reflecting the powers of the Great Round to renew All Life.

Imagine if we were all brought up with this kind of myth to guide us…

  When I returned from NM five years ago, I brought home fragments of worked and unworked chert not realizing at the time that Changing Woman accompanied her stones and that they would continue to exert an influence on me. My relationship with that mountain is not distance dependent. I also continue to re – experience the wonder and awe I experienced as becoming part of that mountain, although these periods wax and wane like the moon. The Navajo call Changing Woman’s Mountain Tsip which means tree mountain and the Tewa use a similar word Tsip’in, to name this Being obsidian or flint mountain.  A shining mountain crafted of stones and trees, yes!

Today professional climbers scale the peaks and others come to search for chert. Some believe the mountain is haunted. Astonishing Jagged lightning strikes can be seen from a great distance. Sudden and violent storms erupt during the summer season, and I learned early on to keep a sharp eye tuned to the skies. Locals that live nearby hike and hunt there, kind people, the only humans I ever encountered. Black bears roamed through the open forests especially near the creeks. Many trees bore the mark of the bear and whenever I discovered some new claw marks on a red pine, I always felt at home…

As the snow continues to fall outside my window, I am submerged in what seems to be a permanent hard white glare. Yet I feel the presence of Changing Woman’s stones working on me from within, offering me protection and deep solace because the story lives on through me as does the power. I don’t question how this occurs.

Once I experienced the mountains that surround me here in Maine as places of sanctity, natural power, replete with forest splendor. I wandered up this mountain I love and live against through spruce and white pine rich with a burgeoning understory, carefully logged by men who loved their trees. Over the past 40 years I gradually began to experience what I would call natural power dissipating as mountain after mountain was stripped of her pines, and fertile earth was replaced by scree and barren soil barely supporting the growth of spindly hardwoods. Although the mountains remain their trees are gone and so is the fresh oxygen rich mountain air that I never took for granted.

Do our mountains mourn the loss of their trees? I think they do.

All I can think of is how a bear would feel without it’s protective fur.  

The future for untrammeled forests looks grim. We are in the process of replacing each woodland ecosystem with tree plantations replete with fast growing saplings that can be harvested within 20 years. I’m glad I won’t be around to see the remains.

 However, whenever I remember to pick up a piece of luminous chert Changing Woman’s story comes back to life…

Earth’s renewal is a given because She who birthed a Nation of Indigenous Peoples (who continue to love and learn from the land) live on as a shining beacon of Light.