Ancient Trail near Native American Village Site

ONE PATH

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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In the shade, the ravishing late spring flowers,
tier upon tier of Chinese purple houses, interwoven
with pink fairy lanterns, crowned by umbels
of evenly spaced Ithuriel's spears. Where

the embankment slopes steeply, I climbed
onto a rock by the rushing water. I felt dizzy,
leaning into poison oak. Women had ground acorns
in a stone at the confluence of those creeks.

I had never been there before, but I
somehow knew a path would lead me
to another rock with mortars above me
on a ridge. I found the path

a few feet away running below
the branches of a huge oak.
I don't know if we can return
to people and places we love,

but on that one path I was part
of tapestries forever changing,
the threads eternal,
not bound by time.

A kaleidoscopic blue and pink
and purple, the penstemon flower bloomed
where the path met with the other
village site, and I lost myself

in the shade, near
the pounding stone,
near the pounding stone.

Indian Pinks

ONE PATH

   I think relatively few people go out into nature anymore, even for fishing, hunting, or camping. Many children are terrified of anything natural, such as spiders or mice, and often react in a panic when they encounter unfamiliar creatures. I think people are afraid that they will find nothing but spiders and snakes and ferocious predators and dead animals in the natural world. In all the years that I’ve gone out into nature, I’ve seen only a few spiders and snakes and predators, and they wanted to have nothing to do with me. And it’s extremely rare to find a dead animal in the wild. But I have encountered ravishing beauty and awesome trees and sublime mountain peaks, and I have often experienced a shift in consciousness that enables me to experience the spiritual dimension.
   My theory is that the brain tunes to a vibration similar to the “Heartbeat of Mother Earth,” also known as the Schumann Resonance, which is on the border between theta and alpha brain wave frequencies. In other words, a person who is comfortable in nature shifts into brainwave frequencies which are produced when a person is meditating, using the imagination, daydreaming, experiencing a flow of ideas, or performing a repetitive task. Theta brain waves are associated with profound inner peace, mystical knowledge, symbolic visions, transformation of unconsciously held limiting beliefs, physical and emotional healing, inner wisdom, and psychic abilities, all of which I have experienced in nature.
   One such experience occurred in late spring when I went hiking along a creek in Watt’s Valley. After hiking for a mile or two in the heat, I was exhausted and plopped down on a stone by the creek. After a minute or two, I noticed cups in the stone and heard women laughing. No one else was in the area. I had plopped down right next to a Native American pounding stone. Suddenly I knew without a doubt that a trail would lead me to another pounding stone on a nearby ridge. I had no way of knowing this—I had never been there before. I scrambled up the slope and in a few seconds found the path. I followed it up the hillside and in a few minutes found the pounding stone on the ridge. As I walked on that path, I knew that the soul is not bound by time, that the spirit moves within fields upon fields of energy, forever changing but eternal. I felt sure that I had returned to a place that I had known in a past life.
   I do not mention it in the song, but I also knew without a doubt that I would find other pounding stones on the ridge across the creek. That day, I climbed the slope on the other side and didn’t find anything, but I sensed a strong presence. Disappointed, I headed back home as the sun was setting.
   I returned a few months later to the other ridge and discovered pounding stones and house pits that I had intuited were there. I didn’t find them the first time because of all the leaves and dirt and grass on top of the stones. Oddly, as soon as I found the pounding stones, I could see the house pits clearly as well, as if some inner sight had suddenly been granted me.
   Every time I return to the city, I feel my mind shift back into the beta brain wave frequency, and I start to doubt my intuitive knowledge. Only one brain wave frequency is acceptable these days in our society, it seems, and people have come to fear intuitive knowledge as much as they fear encountering spiders and snakes and ferocious predators and dead animals.

 Pounding Stone and House Pit in Early Spring

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A LAST HOWL
Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Found the pounding stone again
Under a blanket of oak leaves
And heard the cackling woodpecker
Forty years after you died, houses

Crowding closer. Went down on my knees
Before the stone, the mortars
Empty eye sockets, portending an end
Without grace. Had I been asleep--

Hearing the lark as one
Momentary ring appeared in the creek,
Then another, the petals
Of flowers beginning to tremble,

The oak canopy awake
With quiet tapping, whatever
I needed to say lost
In the stillness vanishing

Slowly with my dreams,
The roots quietly sucking up the rain,
The creek beginning to flow again?
On that ridge, I was a ghost

Of another nation, seeing not herds
Of antelope and deer and elk, but a herd
Of cattle in the floodplain, the new freeway
A few miles away, the city

Lost in deepening smog, a last howl
Far off in the distance.

Tiger Lilies in the Wild

A LAST HOWL

   As I explored the foothills near Fresno, CA, I gradually developed a sixth sense about a nearly forgotten civilization. Many years ago, when my wife and I first trespassed to get a closer look at a couple of buckeyes joined at the roots, we also discovered a Native American village site that still contained distinct house pits, as well as pestles in the mortars of one of the pounding stones.
   When my wife and I found the pounding stones near the couple, which is what my wife and I from then on affectionately called the buckeye trees joined at the roots, a long-buried memory suddenly surfaced: My father loved to go fishing, and once at the Kings River when I was eleven or twelve I found a pounding stone. I had no idea what it was, but, fascinated by its mystery, I stayed with it a long time, hoping that it would eventually communicate its meaning to me. For awhile, I desperately wanted to understand it, as if it held the secret to another order of existence, but I didn't even know how to describe it to my parents, so I soon forgot about it. Soon after my wife and I found the pounding stone by Fancher Creek, I searched for the pounding stone that I had encountered many years before and eventually discovered it blanketed by oak leaves and moss under a drooping oak tree.
   Searching for pounding stones in the foothills and mountains became an obsession. I began to go out by myself at least once a week to look for Native American village sites. Over the years, I have explored extensive areas and have discovered Native American trails, maintained by cattle, leading to village sites all over the foothills, with one especially large, nearly uninterrupted section of land from the Kings River in the south to Dry Creek in the north. Eventually I could sense when I was near a Native American site, as if I had developed some kind of psychic radar that reveals the remnants of Native American cultures.
   After awhile, my wife got tired of hearing me talk about pounding stones and tried to banish the subject, especially when we were traveling on Watt's Valley Road with other people.
   I also became deeply interested in local history, or what might be considered its neglect. I discovered that “the couple” looms near a creek that ended up playing a small role in the development of Fresno, California. Around 1870, a farmer diverted water from the Kings River, using the bed of the creek as a canal. The railroad got wind of the farmer’s bumper crop and it became clear that the Valley could provide food for a booming population in the Bay Area. Soon railroad tracks extended through the region. Legend has it that the tracks passed by a pond with an ash tree, hence the name of the town—"Fresno" is Spanish for “ash tree.” Fresno has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. When my family moved to Fresno in 1971, the population was only 100,000 or so. Fresno now has over half a million people. Due to cultivation and urbanization the Valley has transformed completely from a teeming wildlife area with countless flowers to a crazy quilt of farms and rural towns. My wife eventually got tired of me talking about how this piece of the Valley's history was usually ignored.
   When my wife and I found the Native American site next to the buckeyes, I felt like a witness to thousands of years of human history, a witness to another civilization that I had been completely unaware of for most of my life, and I also felt a sense of timelessness that I didn’t ever experience in Fresno. As I stood next to the couple, I realized that when human societies disappear, nature slips back into a cycle devoid of the sense of time adhered to by most modern humans.
   I went out to the creek and found the pounding stones again. Very little had changed after all those years, except that for me the "couple," one of which has fallen over, are now just buckeye trees by the side of the road.

 

Pounding Stone at the Confluence of Big Creek and the Kings River at the bottom of Pine Flat Reservoir in a Drought Year

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THE CONFLUENCES

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Descending the steep slope
on unstable stones,
I remembered--
from another life--
a vision of my return.
Before the dam,
before the road,
I had seen my future self
among dark skeletons
of oaks and sycamores
preserved by cold water,
and bridge abutments,
like walls attached
to nothing—
As I lived the vision,
the river meandered
in the drought
as it did before
the dam, pestles still
near pounding stones—
ancient paths
still vanishing
in the grass.
Am I living
a vision
even now,
always
at the confluences?

Pounding Stone at the Confluence of the Kings River and Sycamore Creek at the bottom of the Pine Flat Reservoir in a Drought Year

THE CONFLUENCES

   At Pine Flat Reservoir, where a pounding stone juts from the steep, denuded slope halfway between Trimmer Springs Road above and the reservoir below, a soul path grows clearer. The canyon below holds the dark weight of suppression: buried beneath the water, at the confluence of Sycamore Creek and the Kings River, an ancient village site of a vanished Native American tribe lingers, the reservoir stretching out like a vast collective shadow.
   Under water now an old dirt road meanders through the village site between skeletal oaks preserved by cold water for over sixty years, the support columns of a bridge like abandoned fortress walls within the creek bed. Not far away, where Big Creek meets the Kings River, a stone chimney looms above cockleburs that have spread wherever the reservoir has devoured the oak woodlands.
   A soul journey can be strangely unbalancing. Legend has it that two out of three who enter the magical forest go mad. In a drought year, when I was exploring the former contours of the river and creek at the bottom of the reservoir, my soul flowed into a confluence of time: Even though I thought that I had never been there before, I suddenly recalled that I had in some other life envisioned what I was experiencing, and my soul not only foresaw my return but also knew that I would remember the vision.
   As I was living this vision from some other life, I sensed that my core self is like a vast watershed with forgotten trails and streams, transcending the comfortable "I" of my personality, transcending even what my culture has done to ecosystems and races. Somehow my soul knew of the devastation of this place beforehand and also knew that I would experience this wasteland.
   I have hiked all over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, finding Native American trails and village sites wherever I go, on public and private lands. The pounding stone on the steep slope is atypical. Most pounding stones dominate comparatively flat land where a tribe could build huts, on ridges or near water. The reservoir has eaten away the trails as well as the vegetation, so it is impossible to know how the stone connected to other sites, but I at least can surmise that it served as a lookout point where women ground acorns, warning the village below of potential threats.
   As I peer down into the reservoir from the pounding stone, I hear only the lapping of water and the wind moaning occasionally around the canyon. The sense of disconnection is palpable. A trail must have led down to the village site that is now under water and up to other encampments because vanishing trails still link Native American sites in one huge net across the entire range, the boundaries rewoven with barbed wire. This pounding stone on the denuded slope represents social and environmental and historical disconnection on a large scale, but what my soul revealed in the vision at the bottom of Pine Flat Reservoir is that everything is connected, even beyond space and time, transcending the disconnections caused by race and culture. The soul, or higher self, a state of lucid meta-conscious awareness, knows the divinity and kinship of all things; the collective shadow reveals in stark contrast the need to strive for the courage to live from the perspective of eternity, to re-establish the sense of kinship, harmony and order for self, family, and community.

Flowers in House Pits near a Pounding Stone:Sycamore Creek
   For years I have explored the watershed of the Kings River, finding again and again places that feel familiar, the paths next to streams leading to ancient village sites--places so familiar, in fact, that I have often believed without a doubt that I once haunted that watershed in another life. At the same time, I feel in some ways that over the past thirty-five years, I was intended to know the terrible shadow of disconnection, so that I would experience a spiritual transformation moving me from a transient sense of identity to a sense of eternal and expansive Being. If there is fate, then I have to believe that some part of myself, my higher self perhaps, did not let me veer from the difficult path even though my incarnated personality expected so many other things.
   Because I have experienced disconnection on many levels in the past four decades, I continue to explore a spiritual path that honors ancient wisdom and allows me to experience the mysteries without fear of purgation or hell, a path that enables me, in shamanic relationship with the land, to call forth the elemental energies of nature and the powers of local deities and great Shining Ones, a path that celebrates the interweaving of visible and invisible energies, Other worlds and Under worlds, and the spiraling cycles of transformation, birth, death, and regeneration.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Holes

 

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HOLES

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Near a series of smooth holes
in the rock, we sat quietly
for hours, not catching
anything. In one hole, a butterfly edged

on the slick surface toward stagnant water.
In another, two butterflies hung frozen,
wings open, the web
barely visible against gray stone.

You died a week later. Twenty years,
and the butterflies are here again.
The stone is cool and smooth,
almost comfortable enough

to sleep on. In another twenty years
I will wake, the same
age as you,
the water still flowing

into the deep pool as we gaze
at the buckeyes, the butterflies
rising and falling, our bodies
still shadows in the flowing water.

HOLES

     When I was eleven, my father heard a rumor that the North Fork of the Kings River was teeming with trout, so the next Saturday my family ended up scrambling down a steep slope to grasp fishing poles all afternoon. I wasn’t catching anything, and eventually a huge rock on the other side of the river caught my attention. I suddenly felt inexplicably certain that I would find something valuable on that rock, so I risked my life leaping from stone to stone across the rushing water as my parents yelled at me to come back.

     When I finally reached the huge rock on the other side, I searched every inch of it. After awhile, I started digging the humus and dirt out of the cracks, believing that I might find a knife or something like it. At that point in my life, I had no idea that people had flourished by the rivers and streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains for thousands of years.

     More and more frustrated as I searched the nooks and crannies, I finally stood up and grunted under my breath, “What the hell am I looking for?”

     I then clearly heard a disembodied male voice near me, “Native Americans.”

     I turned around completely without seeing anyone. “What do you mean, Native Americans?” I implored.

     After what seemed like a long pause, the voice replied, “You will find out.”

     My mother, perhaps noticing my consternation, found her way to the other side of the river directly across from me. She yelled over the roaring water, “What are you doing over there?”

     “Searching for something,” I replied.

     “Like what?” she asked.

     “Something Native American.”

     She gave me a puzzled look. “You mean Indian?” she shouted. At that time in the United States, “Native American” was not a commonly used term.

     I stared back at her for several seconds and nodded my head.

     “Be careful!”

     Several times, I have heard a calm, male voice predicting the future, and each time the prediction has come true, almost as if some kind of hole can form in the space time continuum that reveals the future.

Native American Pounding Stone with Pestles in the Mortars

     The disembodied voice hinted at the adventure that I would experience decades in the future. About twenty years after I heard the voice, as I was hiking on a distinct path through a woodland forest, I unexpectedly came upon a Native American pounding stone. I kept following the same path and discovered more pounding stones in the area. Over the years, I have found numerous Native American village sites in the foothills, many of them with house pits and with pestles still in the mortars of the pounding stones. 

     Forty-five years after I heard that clear, disembodied voice, I found two Native American pounding stones on the North Fork of the Kings River about a quarter of a mile north of the fishing hole. The large stone that I searched so carefully when I was eleven, by the way, resembles a large pounding stone.

     Just after my seventeenth birthday, my father and I returned to fish together at the same hole a week before he died of a heart attack. He was fifty-five years old. I remembered sitting quietly that day near one of the smooth holes made over the eons by rushing waters; in the hole two monarch butterflies hung with their wings open in a barely visible web.

     After I turned fifty-five, twenty years after I wrote the song, I began experiencing Atrial Fibrillation (A fib), a form of heart disease, and I decided to return to the hole, one last time, I thought. 

     I vowed to do everything in my power to avoid the ominous prediction in the song. After I did much physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual work on my own, spiritual healers finally cleared me of dark energy, and my heart disease disappeared.

     Since disembodied voices have accurately predicted my future on more than one occasion, I now believe that we live in a hologram that contains all of time at once, which might lead one to the conclusion that all experience in our dimension is predetermined. Due to my own spiritual work and the aid of spiritual healers, I have experienced a deep healing that has resulted in optimal health on all levels--physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. So I now also believe that effective spiritual work can create a profoundly harmonious change that "reprograms" the cosmic plan. In the linear time of our dimension, a negative pattern that can affect an individual, a family, a community, or even a society can be altered on the spiritual level to create greater balance within the "divine programming." 

   If you are following my logic, you might claim that the spiritual healing I experienced was also programmed in the divine plan, but my intuition tells me that dedicated human beings using free will can co-create with the Source and reprogram the plan to create greater harmony in our dimension even on a large scale....

All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Pounding Stone in Creek

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THE SUN IN THE TROUGH

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

I want to take you down
to the stream which snakes
below the ridges crowned
by pounding stones.

Near a spring, a trough abides,
Sept. 23, 1924 scribbled in cement.
The sun sparks my crown in the trough,
illuminating my subtle body.

I want you to see
the sun at our crowns
radiating down
into our hearts.

That light joining
our hearts together
as ten minutes pass
or ten thousand years

until we remember
that we are as timeless
as water, blackberry
brambles, quail grass.

Cattle Trough

THE SUN IN THE TROUGH

   “The Sun in the Trough” initially had different lyrics, which I changed after I experienced a profound sense of timelessness as I gazed into a cattle trough in the middle of nowhere. In the stagnant trough water, the sun blazed just above my head, like my crown chakra, my divine core. In the reflection, my body was a shadow while the sun illuminated my aura. In the timelessness, I knew that the trough had been placed near the spring almost a hundred years ago and that the Native American village site had existed thousands of years, possibly over ten thousand years, and I also suddenly knew that the spark at the core of every person is eternal. As I felt the unified consciousness within everything around me, I knew the personality is transient, merely an illusion. 

  All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Pounding Stone and House Pits on High Ridge

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FARTHER

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

Once we walked on many paths
and found the pounding stones,
and we knew that each path
goes farther back into the past
than we could ever hope to go.

Once we held each other close
and waited out the storm.
When we looked into each other's eyes
we knew that they were deeper
than we could ever hope to plunge.

Once we climbed higher
than we had ever hoped to go,
but the cliffs all around us
showed that we could not hope
to ever go any higher.

Now you've left, and I wonder
if you went farther
than I could ever hope to go,
or if you just could go no farther.

Loop Trail above San Joaquin River
FARTHER

   My wife left me after thirty years of marriage to rekindle an adolescent romance with a man she had known over four decades ago. When they were teenagers, their relationship had ended when he fled to Canada to dodge the draft (which I find laudable since I have always believed that the Vietnam War was an abomination). He is an artist who paints murals of undersea and forest environments. (Since I am also an artist, I can appreciate his work.) He lives in Florida and has a sister in North Carolina. That’s all I know about him.
   After four decades, my wife found him on Facebook at a time when she was reconnecting with a lot of old high school friends. After I discovered his name on her phone, I went to his website, which shows some of his murals, and I discovered that my wife three years before had lavishly praised his work.
   Nowadays, I usually feel that I'm over the break up, but I confess I still don't totally understand it. My wife loves her children and grandchildren, all of whom live in California, so pulling up roots and moving to Florida was a dramatic move for her. My wife was an extremely responsible person, but she had reached retirement age and was ready to begin a new phase of her life. 

   I have sometimes wondered if my wife was fleeing from disease and death since her mother was ill and her father died at a time when I also appeared to be going down the tubes due to a chronic illness. I don't blame her, especially since, at the time, due to my condition, I might have experienced a stroke that could have left me a vegetable—if it didn't kill me. In truth, since I was sure at that point that I was dying, part of me just wanted her to let go of our relationship and have a good life. Part of me didn't want her to have to stick around to experience my demise. 

    After she left, I did much physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual work; I have completely recovered from my illness, and I have started a new phase of my life as well. Nevertheless, even without any blame, the end of our thirty year relationship still remains perplexing, for my heart at least....

   (NOTE: The three cards in the Tarot associated with Gemini, an Air sign, as well as the ethical triangle on the Tree of Life, which includes the energies of Jupiter, Mars, and the Sun, reveal on one level the toll that suffering can take. Each Number Card contains two major symbolic associations, one known as a decan, or ten degrees of the zodiac, the other known as its Tree of Life correspondence—its  position on the Tree—both of which add meaning to Number Cards Two through Ten of each suit. The three cards associated with Gemini in the Minor Arcana are the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords. I now find these cards very instructive....)

Follow Mr. Mellifluous on the path of Gemini.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Rooms that Dream

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EPISTLE

 

A year ago, I lay ensconced

in stale clothes, unwashed plates, week-old

newspaper, dinnerless and exhausted.

Another time opened the dark bedroom door:

An evening with a child digging tunnels

entered, so clearly,

and riddled every level of my senses.

I began to bless

the detritus of each blank moment

even as someone fled and a searchlight

slid across the walls.

My mind would not disbelieve or dim

and even the bed

lost the misery that had clung to it.

 

__________

 When I glanced at a window, a face

behind mine suddenly surfaced,

like memory or the soul

or the person you are becoming.

I write now in order to find you--

some fragment of you

that wishes me well. Some kind of time,

a child, like wind, opening a door.

 

__________

 

Porchlight edges through the curtains.

The melanges of the year mingle,

and the menages of memory mingle.

One note of your voice overlaps

silence or speech when I least expect it.

Your voice must change as you move

from one time to another,

or perhaps its range

ends here, in the certain

path that shines across this table.

 

Angels: Ithuriel's Spears, Fiesta Flowers, Fiddleneck

EPISTLE

      At the time of the first event described in the song above, I was overworked, undernourished and miserable, and I was lying in bed, trying to rest in a dark, messy bedroom. Suddenly I found myself inside a three-dimensional, holographic memory: I was watching my son digging tunnels in the dirt of the daycare center next to our apartment. The memory was far more intense than the experience itself, during which I had felt merely bored and anxious. Within the memory, I experienced an indescribable bliss, my consciousness ballooning far beyond "normal." In that dim, stale bedroom, I was reliving a simple, mundane experience in super-consciousness, and I remained in a state of ecstasy until I finally fell asleep.

     These moments resemble other times when I experienced super-consciousness, the only difference being that I was suddenly reliving a memory more real than my room, my actual surroundings. I was startled, especially because I was an agnostic who vacillated toward atheism now and then, and I sensed that I was experiencing Universal Consciousness. In other words, God seemed to be randomly checking out one of my memories, and I was reliving a few moments as if they were super-real, more real than the past or the present, as if all time exists at once and the divine aspect of the self, connected with the Source, can experience any moment in absolute clarity and bliss.

     I suspected after I experienced the holographic memory that every moment, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can be relived in joyful super-consciousness. Trying to rekindle memory with that kind of intensity is easier said than done, however. The experience has since placed other memories in stark contrast: I have become keenly aware of the fragmented, shifting nature of memory and the self. I have tended to dwell on what I have lost as relationships change and memories seemingly vanish, but I have always believed since then that despite inevitable feelings of discontinuity and loss, there remains a glory from moment to moment that the mind can somehow access, given the right conditions. I have never figured out what those conditions are, however.

     I have experienced premonitions and heard voices as a child that accurately predicted events decades in the future, which suggests that predetermination or a type of “programming” exists within the Divine Plan. However, I believe now  that human beings can become cocreators with the Source. We can work with Shining Ones such as Archangels to change the programming of the hologram as long as we are purified and dedicated and working to create greater harmony and balance in the world, by, for example, neutralizing dark forces--for the Archangels, who each rule an order of Angels, are intermediaries between God and creation. The change in programming must come down from the dimension of pure, Universal Spirit to the the physical dimension, the plane of action. As great powers of harmony capable of linking the dimensions, the Archangels can bring the changes down through the planes.

     All high-frequency spiritual work transmutes the negative into the positive to some degree, but we have the opportunity to set the intention on a larger scale to mitigate the horrific or abhorrent aspects of our current reality. This benefit of working with the Shining Ones is a closely held secret of the mystery schools, but now in this time of terrible crises that are threatening the entire planet, this knowledge needs to become more widely known--we can claim that power now.

All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Trees Growing within the Foundation of a House

THE GLITTERING WEB

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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When I was young, I nearly stepped
into a glittering web large enough
to capture me. I stared, transfixed,
until I glimpsed a jewel with many legs
in the corner of the web. I galloped away
as though I'd witnessed the terrible weaver
of our fate. Soon I found oak trees growing
within the foundation of a house next
to the river. Alone, I inched along
the top of the foundation wall until
a disembodied voice stated, "You will
be back in thirty-five years." I dashed
in terror along the path until I found
the web torn apart, fluttering in the breeze,
the spider gone. I returned unexpectedly
thirty-five years later.
I did not attempt to grasp the water
as I pondered the river. I did not mourn
all the torn webs. I sat quietly, waiting
to hear the voice again,
but all I heard were warblers,
my soul drenched with peace.

Pestles in a Pounding Stone

THE GLITTERING WEB

   I’ve had a number of experiences that suggest that we each have a destiny. When I was eleven, on several occasions I heard voices that predicted the future. One day, for instance, as the rest of my family was fishing, I discovered the foundation of a house in the floodplain of the Kings River. Tall oak trees were growing inside the foundation where, long ago, a house used to stand. As I was playing on the foundation wall, a disembodied voice predicted that I would be back in thirty-five years. I was the only one there.
   Thirty-five years later I returned unexpectedly to the foundation. As I was growing up, I had no idea where we were most of the time when my family went fishing, so I did not know where the foundation was located. The day that I discovered it again, I was simply driving down the one-lane road next to the river and happened to look down at the floodplain at just the right moment. If I had looked down a second later, I would not have been able to see the foundation.
   Other predictions and powerful intuitions about the future have also come true, usually many years later, one notable prediction being about how I would search for the remnants of Native American cultures. Perhaps every moment in one’s life is predetermined, or perhaps all of time exists at once but we can only experience a thread of time. If that is the case, then the recent upheaval in my life was always part of my fate. My wife was destined to leave me after thirty years of marriage.
   If I feel sorrow for all the torn webs, perhaps I simply need to learn to let go. Perhaps I just need to appreciate them for what they were. My fate is to find the village sites of a people who had lived in the region for thousands of years, not to find the people themselves—they are long gone from those places. My fate is to find the foundation of a house in the floodplain of a river with trees growing inside of it, not to find a family in a mansion by the river. My fate is to find peace even while finding myself with the remains of what has been lost.

 All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

Buckeye Trees Joined at the Roots

ROOTS AND CURRENTS

Words and Music by Jim Robbins

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In a place that dreams, ten trunks
rise from a low throne, the breath
of vanished tribes whispering
that we have stepped

into another life. A trail leads
past roots through the domain
of the buckeye and the wildcat.
I see a god of the hunt

in my mind's eye as deer
crash through the brush,
the tribes pulled into quiet currents
as we wake to a vast ocean

of breath. The sprouts
of horse chestnuts plunge
into dark earth. I suddenly feel
like I could flow through all things.

ROOTS AND CURRENTS

   My wife, I think, loved my watercolor of two buckeye trees joined at the roots. My wife discovered after I painted the picture that sometimes two or more tree trunks grow from one seed, and since my wife and I considered their union symbolic of our love for each other, we vowed that when one of us died, the surviving spouse would spread the ashes of the other on the roots of those trees. We called the trees “the couple,” and we would slow down to honor them every time we drove through Watt’s Valley. We soon realized that buckeye trees change dramatically, so much so that you might not believe that you're seeing the same tree from one season to the next. Sadly, soon after my wife left, one of the trunks collapsed, the dead trunk remaining linked at the roots with the still-living trunk.
   When we were traveling together in the car, my wife and I would often read each other's mind. Our thoughts would often concern people or events that had nothing to do with where we were or where we were going or what had recently happened, yet somehow we would think of the same things. It didn't just happen because we knew each other so well: Often a topic would occur out of the blue, and we both would be thinking about it. Sometimes we would try to figure out who had first experienced the thought and who was being telepathic. Sometimes I realized that I had experienced a mental image or a phrase, and my wife would then bring up the subject. Other times my wife would have the thought and I would bring up the subject. Eventually we realized that we were both telepathic when "mingling auras," which is what we ended up calling the phenomenon. Whenever we described this phenomenon to other people, of course, no one ever really seemed to believe us.

Buckeye Tree at the Native American Village Site

   Once, as I explored the Sycamore Creek watershed, I followed a trail that led to a ridge with the most majestic buckeye tree that I’ve ever encountered. Ten large trunks rose up from its root system out of what looked like a low throne. As I approached it, I almost tripped over a small pounding stone with two mortars. I continued on the trail and found myself standing in the middle of a house pit. As I stood in the house pit, I suddenly had a vision of a god with antlers on his head and a spear in his hand. A few seconds later I heard deer crashing through the brush on the hill above me. It was as if the god were alerting me about the deer. I have experienced visions of gods and goddesses at other Native American sites before, as if shamans had created god forms for helpful nature spirits to ensoul. I sighed and whispered to myself that I was too out of shape to chase deer. As unbelievable as it may sound, I suddenly felt a wave of laughter that seemed to emanate from the place where I had envisioned the god.
   I suspected that other pounding stones were in the area, so I explored the ridge a little more and discovered another pounding stone with four mortars brimming with dirt and humus. Not far from the pounding stone, I found a collapsed mine and an indentation in the ground where the miners had apparently set up their encampment. I wasn’t surprised to find evidence of mining at a Native American village site because I had found other Native American sites in the area with collapsed mines. Miners during the gold rush, of course, had been known to exploit Native Americans.
   Unlike the other collapsed mines in the area, this one had not been dynamited to keep unsuspecting explorers from falling into a deep hole and disappearing without a trace. I was afraid for a moment that the mine had collapsed on the miners and their Native American workers. The mine, still containing a small hole on one side, had been conquered by poison oak. I imagined that a bobcat or a mountain lion used it as its den.
   I returned to the massive buckeye and smelled a freshness that I’ve rarely ever encountered. Though one of the oldest buckeyes in the woodland forest, it was emanating freshness into the ocean of air, its breath carried by currents all through the forest. Its recently fallen seeds had each sprouted a root that was sliding into the earth. The tree and its progeny were pulling water and nutrients from all the tribes of trees and flowers and animals and people that came before them and eventually breathing some of their energy back into the woodlands.
   The buckeye on another level was startling because it was so different from the other buckeyes in the area. When I took my wife to see it one day, she literally did not believe that it was a buckeye tree. The buckeye reminded me that nature is another order of existence, full of mysterious and majestic creatures and unexpected spiritual vibrations, and you never know when you’re going to encounter them. As in any relationship, you just need to remain open.

All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.  

     Ithuriel's Spears, Fiesta Flowers, Chinese Purple Houses

SPIRIT OF PLACE

Words and Music by Jim Robbins
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At dawn, we follow paths
into a forest that dreams,
where we find abandoned
villages, last night's rains

veining the slopes, the quail
reminding us that we
are awake. I sense a spirit
watching us

as I slide my fingers over
wet moss. When the spirit senses
our love for moss and rocks
and mushrooms and grass

and for each other, she
gently touches our souls
and drenches us
with her joy.

Pounding Stone at "Fairy Creek"

SPIRIT OF PLACE

   Whenever I venture into the unknown, I search for signs of undisturbed grace, and I must confess that I continue even in middle age to risk my life to find places unmolested by humanity. Once, as I was just beginning my quest for the pristine, I encountered a skink on a trail next to a stream. It gazed at me for twenty seconds, as though it were a guardian of the stream, then scurried off into the grass under some leaves. Then a rattlesnake, about fifteen feet away, slithered across the trail. These brief encounters with reptiles revealed that I had discovered a place that very few humans had troubled in recent times, and I was overjoyed. As I continued along the trail, I found newts and turtles and frogs just about wherever I turned. Chinese houses, Ithuriel’s spears, fiesta flowers, larkspur and fairy lanterns wove a living tapestry on the hillsides. Finally I reached a quiet pool and stood gazing at a waterfall. A snake swam over to me, raised up its head and gazed for awhile at me, seemingly devoid of fear.
   At that moment, I had an eerie feeling that the whole place was watching me. The snake suddenly was not just an individual being, but a facet of the consciousness of its whole species. Not only that, the snake seemed also to be a facet of consciousness of some overarching consciousness, a spirit of the place. I had the distinct impression that through the consciousness of this snake an Over Soul knew how I was responding to the creatures in its domain. Suddenly every flower, bush, and tree, every frog, lizard and snake seemed a facet of this overarching consciousness that was aware of me.
   I shook my head, thinking I was in some kind of trance. Later, though, I discovered that many cultures believe in vital, overarching spirits known as the “spirit of place,” or Over Souls. The Romans, for instance, depicted the “genius loci” as a figure holding a cornucopia, a patera (a shallow dish used for libations), a snake, or some combination of the three. These overarching spirits, personified symbolically as humans, are considered extremely powerful and intelligent by some. Others consider them nearly omnipotent and omniscient inside the realm they inhabit, while some consider them vast, semi-sentient well-springs of magical energy. They are part of a spiritual territory that people tend to ignore.
   As I have witnessed more and more environmental degradation over the years, I have come to one conclusion: We must begin to see each ecosystem as an array of creatures linked by an overarching consciousness, not just in a physical web. We must accept that we are inextricably linked to that consciousness. If we continue to treat nature, without reverence, as only a lifeless store of resources, we are doomed to continue on our merry way to our own destruction.
   After I mentally purified my aura, I became much more sensitive to the spiritual vibrations within nature. In some regions of the wild, I quickly sense an overarching intelligence. In some areas, the genius loci is absolutely terrifying, in others, resentful, but in one place that my wife and I call “Fairy Creek,” the spirit of place is loving and nurturing, almost maternal. Every time I go there, I experience vibrations of joy and love and caring. I eventually developed a theory about the phenomenon. Several pounding stones exist in the area. I believe the Native Americans over time developed a deep sense of reverence and love for the creek and its genius loci, which she reciprocated, so not only does she care for the plants and animals, but she also still cares for people. At Native American sites that are closer to modern civilization, I sense only resentment. Our ancestors knew that you need to establish a parley with the spirits of nature. Almost every culture has at some point personified the spirits of nature as deities. Modern American society, possibly due to its never-ending exploitation of resources, remains willfully ignorant of the spiritual side of nature, which my wife and I had occasionally experienced together.