Walking the Land: Vultee Arch – Marchiene Rienstra

Copyright Eileen Nauman 2011
All Rights Reserved

Here is Blog #2 on our work with the Vultee Arch in our Walking the Land series

Our adventure started on Sterling Trail up in Oak Creek Canyon. You can see the ice on the trail and it would only get worse. Marchiene spotted a Kokopelli flute figure in the snow beside the path!

WHO ARE WE?

Eileen Nauman (Ai Gvhdi Waya is here Eastern Cherokee name) is 1/8 Eastern Cherokee via her father’s side of the family. Her great-great grandmother was on the Trail of Tears and as a sixteen-year-old, escaped and ran into Kentucky, where she later married into the Gent family. We know only two things about her: that she came from a medicine family and was from the Wolf clan of her people. Her medicine was being a shaman. And this gene has gone down through our family. Eileen was the chosen child to be taught this ‘medicine’ (this means an inherited skill of healing) by her father. She trained with him from age 9 through 18. Later, she had other Native American teachers and in 1990 began training others for Soul Recovery and Extraction, the medicine of her great-great grandmother.

Marchiene Reinstra is an interfaith minister. She has written many books and has been an advocate of women being equal to men in all organized religions. Coming from Dutch missionary parents, Marchiene grew up in India. She is cosmopolitan and has many natural psychic skills. She met Eileen in the mid-90’s and since then, they have become a psychic team in search of understanding the energy of the land where they live in the Verde Valley of Arizona. This includes Sedona, but the scope is much wider than that. Please see our blogs from 2009 as they worked to bring the chakra system of Sedona back online.

Here I am going carefully up Sterling Trail. It is a 2.6 mile, one-thousand-foot steep trail up and over the mountain in order to reach Vultee Arch. Last year we had the Brin’s mesa fire and it destroyed a lot of land. You can see the burned trees in the area.

WHAT IS WALKING THE LAND?

Eileen’s genetic knowing about the land comes through her Native American genetics. She simply sees Nature as symbolic and is able to interpret it so she that she understands the visible and invisible energy in an area and what it is doing. Further, she is clairvoyant and can see the spirits, the guardians of sacred places, vortexes and everything else associated with the land. Her belief is that if we understand the energy and beings where one lives, that you can live in a deep and positive harmony with them.

The land is fed by the human’s gratefulness and attention. And the land’s energy/spiritual beings, in turn, create a far more positive energy framework and environment for the human. They must work together for harmony. Otherwise, if one ignores the other, we are ignoring Mother Earth and all her relations. That is like ignoring your neighbors and pretending they aren’t there or exist.

This blog is dedicated to showing the fundamentals of Walking the Land in hopes that you will take the information and apply it to your own area. And if you will, then you will forge a positive and healing link as a result. And the energy of your area where you live will be amplified, lifted and online so that the positive applications of this teamwork will benefit all. Weather will return to what it used to be. There will be no more floods and droughts, as an example. Water can be cleaned up with prayer and attention to the spirit of it. And so much more. You will learn as we Walk the Land here in the Verde Valley.

TWO BLOGS: Eileen will post her blog on Walking the Land first and then the next day, will post Marchiene’s. Each writes a blog based upon her experience as they walk the land in search of the planetary water snake, known as Bololokan to the Yavapai Native Americans who live in the Verde Valley. There are many powerful planetary beings that work with Mother Earth. Humans can interface with them as well but it is always the planetary, regional or local spirit who decides that. You can’t work with one unless your heart is in the right place, you practice daily humility and understand that humans are a small part of the mighty woven energy that is here on our home, Mother Earth.

Their intent is to discover the natural energy geology of where Bololokan moves/slithers, through the landscape of their valley. In discovering Bololokan’s path, Eileen and Marchiene will then perform ceremony to reawaken this path. In doing that, the energy comes back online and it lifts and helps feed the area in a natural way as it used to be when the First People lived here in union with Mother Earth and all her relations. It will change the weather pattern of the area, which has been in a twenty-year drought. Bololokan is the WATER snake. There are three other planetary snakes for the other three elements: earth, fire and air. Bololokan utilizes the Verde Valley area as one of her many sipapu’s (emergence hole) to come up into our area. She has sipapu’s around the world and slithers inside Mother Earth in tunnels that connect them all.

We’re fortunate to have her with us and we discovered her when we opened up the chakras of Sedona. She came to us and we had no idea she existed before that except in Yavapai legends who spoke of “Bololokan.” Once she contacted us at Rainbow Bridge, one of her sipapu’s, she has been with us ever since. This year in 2010, she asked us to discover her energy path throughout our valley and clean out those sacred points with human attention and ceremony. In doing that, her third dimensional energy in our valley will reawaken and bring harmony to it once more. We hope the drought will be broken and the rains that Bololokan brings, will once more, go back to its normal pattern. Join us on our journey and you can be a part of the discovery and education as well.

Here I am standing with a Grandmother Cedar tree on the Sterling Trail. She’s probably around 800 years old. These Grandmother trees are not only guardians where we must stop, gift a gift of cornmeal and ask permission to go into a sacred area, but also, they send a LOT of energy from the cosmos through themselves and down to feet Mom Earth. And, when you have time, to ask permission to sit and meditate with one of these mighty beings, is a gift. They are old, experienced and knowledgeable.

1.25.2011 Vultee Arch, Sedona, Arizona, Stop #3 with Marchiene:

It was a cool sunny morning when Eileen and I met to start out next adventure of lighting the Sacred Fire at a place called Vultee Arch.
We decided we would start this time in the morning because the hike to the Arch along Sterling Pass Trail was described in our hiking guidebook as very steep and difficult and we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time. We prepared, as usual, by studying topo maps of the area, discerning significant features and shapes, etc. to alert us as to the significance of the place to which we were going. Over breakfast at The Coffee Pot, one of Sedona’s oldest and best breakfast places, we compared notes.

I showed Eileen the hummingbird and elk shapes I had found in the Sterling Pass Area, and she showed me the shapes of a running horse, a vulture, and a bear which she had found. Each of these has a symbolic meaning, which we explored. But the really exciting shape was that of a huge dragon’s head pointing right down at the Arch, which Eileen discovered. Once I saw it, I didn’t know how I could have missed it. Isn’t that how it often is? We look at something, we miss what’s right under our noses, until someone else points it out, and voila! there it is!

That’s why two (or more) heads are better than one and why Eileen and I do better together than alone.

As we gazed at the shape of the dragon’s head on our topo map, Eileen reminded me of the light earthquake that had hit the Sedona area only two days earlier and said that dragons are sometimes associated with earthquakes, and maybe this earthquake was a sign of the presence and movement of the dragon. In many mythologies around the world, dragons are associated with water, rain, and wells, and sometimes thought of as huge water snakes.

This certainly fits with our experience so far in working with Bololokon, the great Water Snake (or dragon) of the myths of the ancient people who once lived in this area.

Eileen told me about Saturn going retrograde on this day of our hike and warned we might be in for a tough time.

Here is a “gate.” There are tree and rock guardians in a sacred area and you have to know when you’re approaching one. If you don’t feel the energy change/shift, then you can see them with your physical eyes. Here, we have two trees bent over like an arch. And a huge boulder that is right on our path. These are ‘signs’ that this is a gate. You need to stop, give a gift of cornmeal and ask the boulder spirit for permission to proceed. Depending upon a person’s heart state, the guardian will say yes or no. In this case, we received permission to move on and Marchiene gave the rock a gift of cornmeal as we left to move on up the trail.

We drove up the steep Oak Creek Canyon road, noticing that there were huge white cloud formations that looked like the giant ribs of —-a dragon in the sky? We smiled as we thought about that. We found the small sign at the trailhead, parked off the road near it, and after putting on coats, hats, and gloves, as well as shouldering our backpacks, we set off up the trail. It was very steep and curved in switchbacks up the mountainside. Very soon, we were in gorgeous wilderness, with soaring cliffs on both sides of us. We were panting with the exertion after a short time, and stopped often to take in our surroundings. Ahead of us loomed a huge guardian rock with a huge guardian tree next to it. (pic) We both immediately felt the presence of Grandmother Komwida, to whom we had both directed requests of help and support for our venture that morning. We paused to ground ourselves, offer cornmeal and seeds to the guardians, ask permission to proceed, and offered prayers to the seven directions for blessing on our intentions and actions.

We proceeded up the steep path, and began to encounter snow and icy patches which we carefully picked our way through. Then ahead of us lay a large pine tree across the path. its needles were still fresh and green, and we could see where it’s trunk had snapped. “The earthquake must have toppled this tree,” said Eileen as we climbed over it. Next, we came to an area where we began to see tree after tree with burn scars on it. “A forest fire went through here,” I said. “And don’t dragons breathe fire?” Eileen nodded. “The dragon’s head on our map was doing that,” she replied. “Well,” I said, “that’s an interesting sign!”

We kept struggling up the steep and increasingly snow covered and slippery trail. We came to a tree with an “eye” in it which I thought was symbolic of a dragon’s eye. (see pic) Near it was another huge guardian rock which we again honored with offerings. I paused to play my flute as a way to honor the spirits of the land and the ancestors of the area. As I continued walking, I noticed a patch of snow on my left which looked just like the silhouette of Kokkopeli, the legendary flute player of Southwest Native American lore, and a virtual icon it’s culture. (see pic)

A short while later, I saw Eileen take a fall up ahead. She had a real load with her back pack and drum and camera. She almost damaged the camera when she fell, and she bruised herself too. At that point, we thought it was probably a good idea to turn back, disappointing though that was. Up ahead the trail rose steep, rocky, and covered with snow and ice as far as we could see. So—back down the trail we went. But going downhill on ice is even harder than uphill. So hard, in fact, that we both finally just decided to be like little kids, and slide down the trail on our buts as the safest way to get back down. We had to do it carefully, but we also managed to have some fun laughing at ourselves and our “icy asses.” When we got to the bottom of the trail we got in the car, grateful to warm up, and consider Plan B. (We don’t give up easily!)

Plan B turned out to be going south on highway 89A to the trailhead of the Vultee Arch Trail off Dry Creek Road. We had not tried it in the first place because the rough dirt road to Vultee Arch trail had been blocked by the forest service for weeks. But we figured if we were meant to our “holy play” out on the land today, the way would open up. And it did! We checked out the forest service road, and the barriers had been removed to the side to allow vehicles to pass.

At last! A trail (sandy) to Vultee Arch and I’m standing at the beginning of it. No ice. Thank goodness 🙂 And a heck of a lot warmer. It is 1.6 miles this trail to the arch.

So we went to my house, exchanged our red 4-wheel drive jeep for Eileen’s low slung Prius, and off we went. By now the sun was high in the sky, and things had warmed up a lot. There was no snow to be seen in the landscape. We drove very, very carefully and slowly down almost ten miles of deeply rutted, rocky road. Eileen took the wheel since she is much more experienced in driving these sorts of road, and skillfully guided us to the Vultee Arch trailhead. We got out of the car and once again donned our backpacks, hats, etc. and paused again to ground, offer prayers and cornmeal with seeds, and ask permission to enter this area. The call of a nearby Raven was a signal to proceed, and we did.

The trail here was much gentler, soft and sandy, and a gradual ascent through beautiful Arizona cedars, then Douglas firs and pines, with soaring cliffs of red and gold and white and beige on both sides. The trail crossed a dry stream bed several times and we passed several huge guardian trees of various kinds, which we honored with offerings.

Here is one of the old Grandmother Cedar trees on this second trail. We always stop, give a gift and commune with them. He honors them and are grateful for their wise and loving presence. You will always see old trees or mighty rocks around a sacred area.

I placed my hands on forehead on one of them and listened. The Grandmother Tree told me to always realize how blessed I am, even when it doesn’t seem that way, and to be blessing the land and its inhabitants as I walked through it.

Eventually we came to a place where the trail wound more steeply upward onto some wide smooth red rock shelves, and there ahead of us was Vultee Arch. (pic) We walked to a place where there was a lone juniper tree shading a large area of flat red rock—-we both felt this must have been a place for ancient ceremonies because of how it was situated facing Vultee Arch. Eileen immediately made preparations for our ceremony and the drum she would use, and we again prayed in the seven directions. I played my flute. Then Eileen began drumming. I stood behind her as we journeyed together. She will tell her experience in her blog.

Mine was this: As soon as Eileen began drumming, I saw Grandmother Komwida, huge, towering up towards the blue sky, standing before us.

This pyramid-shaped red rock sandstone butte is very close to the “skirt” where the arch can be seen.

She bent to pick up the abalone shell and sage Eileen had used. She lifted up the shell with the sage with upraised arms. At that moment, the dragon flew overhead, and very precisely aimed its fiery breath at the sage, setting it on fire. Curls of rainbow colored smoke arose in every larger spiral into the air. Then the dragon flew further south towards Mingus mountain and Montezuma’s well, the place of emergence in the ancient’s creation story.
There, it turned around so it’s tail was in the south, and stretched itself over the landscape and over us with its head reaching up towards the San Francisco peaks at Flagstaff. It was awesome to see, and to me a clear sign of a huge energy released and flowing again through the whole area from the Verde Valley to the holy mountains to the north.

Then Grandmother Komwida looked at me and Eileen and said “I have trained you for lifetimes to be keepers of the Sacred Fire. Make sure it always burns in your heart as well as on the sacred places of this land. And thank you both for your service here and now in this lifetime.” She smiled at us with love shining in her eyes, and placed the shell gently back on the rock where it had been, and faded away.”

Here is Eileen getting out her drum and preparing to do her shamanic journey after finding the right rock to sit on.

By this time Eileen had stopped drumming, and we both sat and wrote down our experiences, and then shared them. We also drew some of what we had seen in our little art journals. Then I played the flute again, Eileen and I both took some pictures, sat and had a snack, and we were ready to go back down the trail. The way back went easily and quickly, taking us only a little over half the time we took going in. At one point I noticed lots of vapor trails behind the soaring cliffs on our left and said “Hey—there’s dragon breath!” We laughed, and I reflected on how good it felt to have a consciousness that wasn’t limited to labeling and understanding something I see in only one way.

Maybe those white cloud lines were jet trails in one dimension; and in another they were indeed dragon breath.

And here is our final destination. The Vultee Arch!

Towards the trail’s end we noticed how many pine cones there were on the path–something we had not seen on trails we walked before.
“They remind me of the infinite possibilities on our path,” I remarked as we came to the end of our hike.