Chapter 3
Tell me my story of the bears again grandpa. Grandpa sat with his beautiful grand daughter on the edge of her bed. Her room was decorated with angels, bears, bear/angels, flying owls and all her toys. It was like a sacred sanctuary, peaceful and yet full of special energy. The little girl had this energy since she was born and her mother, with wife of his son said she growled as she came out and looked strange. Umm. This was another night, another chapter of the story, and he began.
“My beautiful bear girl. What happened next is very wonderful. Remember in the last night Great Spirit the sky made love with bear woman and gave birth to the bears. Well you remember too that that was in the beginning before there were many people, animals plants, when all was brand new like daddy’s shiny new car. Well, time passed, many people were born, many tribes formed from the people, many animals were born, many plants too and the earth started to look kind of the way it did before all the cars and big building, it was nature, forests, seas, animals plants and not many people. All the people lived in peace and in very small groups like big families for of course, they were one big happy family. But, my beautiful grand daughter, it was not always like that. Way back in the way before when animals still could speak and be understood by the people and when people and animals were blurred, and not separate many things happened to people and bears which made their lives one and one. The story I will tell you now is very old. My grand mother told it to me, her grandmother told it to her and I will tell it to you now. And I stopped and disappeared, and my great great great great grandmother appeared inside me around me all over and spoke through my body and voice and she sung in a lilting chant:
“ahh yah he.. art and healing yah hee. Once upon a non time, in the land of the spirits, there was a little girl. (I could see, my granddaughter closing her eyes and turning into the little girl as I sung this story to her.) the little girl looked was just like you she was the same age .. one day, the little girl was walking in the woods with the women in the small village that they lived in near the coast, below the huge mountains and glaciers. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, summer in the far north where the sun shines and never sets. The little girl walked with the older women she was a feisty little girl with a very strong personality and was fiercely independent. So the little girl and the women started picking berries. They had baskets they had wove from strong grass that were sturdy and strong. They put the berries in the baskets, the berries were hard to pick and took a long time to find and pull of the sharp stalks. The girl started to get tired and cranky. She had picked a lot a lot of berries, she filled her two woven baskets, they were even getting heavy and she was not a happy little girl even though the day was beautiful, she She was getting more and more irritable by the moment. She walked over the next group of berries she saw behind big tree. These berries looked especially delicious to her, they were bigger, softer, more juicy looking, they even seemed to light up and draw her to them. Now, you understand my beauty that she actually was a very special little girl. She would see things and sense them and see lights and hear animals but she also was cranky and a little arrogant, the little girl looked up at a beautiful tall old tree and then felt herself step on something soft and slippery and then.. she slid and fell down. A woman behind her laughed. Now, the little girl’s name was Chookaneidí which meant grizzly bear, but they called her chooki, so chooki asked the women, what was that horrible stuff I stepped in? the woman who laughed said it’s the bear poop silly girl. The woman said, well you know, the bear finds the very best berries, and drinks salt water from the sea and.. poops right next to the berries, we all look out for this when we pick berries my beauty. Now, the girl like all people of the Tlingit knew about bear poop but she had in fact actually never seen the yucky stuff up close and she knew that it was dangerous. There were even rules about children and bear poop- Boys could walk over it but never touch it- and little girls needed to close their eyes and walk carefully around it and never touch it, but you remember that our little girl had a very strong character and was very much her own little girl and she said to the woman“ I hate bears, they are dirty animals who poop next to my beautiful berries and make me fall. I hate them, and I hate their poop.”
Well my dearest granddaughter, at that very moment the world cracked a little.” “What does that mean grandpa,” chooki said. “well my beauty there is this world you know. It sits there and is what it is. And then, once in a while or maybe all the time, cracks appear and let in the other world that surrounds it. it’s like a bowl cracking and suddenly light comes in and you can peek through the crack and see beyond to the land of dreams. And when .. the world cracks, there is a noise like a cracking clay bowl, and the light changes, and gets open and brighter and the sound changes, and gets warmer and softer and the smell changes and gets like orchids and then.. anything can happen. Ummm.