Dharma-Blog

Early in the morning on 1/3/07 we were putting the last suitcases into the truck when a huge flock of snow geese flew directly over our heads. Now we normally see snow geese during the migration in our area. What was different here was there were thousands and thousands, so many it made us stop and just watch the beauty of the multitudes of giant Vs heading south. We have had such a warm winter so far that many Canadian geese were flying north again. This was our first sighting of the beautiful white and black snow geese. We took this as a significant symbol.  So Cindy ran into the house one more time before our annual journey to the southwest to bring the collection of animal symbol books from our library. Then once on the road we drove by an entire field covered with the majestic white geese.  We found in the books that they represent the full moon of the winter solstice and the beginning of a spiritual journey. We were under the solstice moon. Cindy also had been having dreams that were telling her that she would be seeing things differently after a forty day journey after we looked at the calendar she realized our trip was scheduled to be exactly forty days. So you can say we started this trip with a positive attitude.  

On the Second day we stopped in
Missouri to visit some caverns. I swear our guide was imitating Smith from the Matrix (Hello Mr Anderson). 

Then on the third day we planed on visiting some crystal shops outside
Hot Springs, AR and then go to
Mt. Ida, AR that is the quarts crystal capital in the
US. On the way through the Ozarks our GPS kept freezing up and driving us crazy so we decided not to go to our fist choice and programmed a second choice around
Hot Springs. Again the GPS stopped working a number of times and we didn’t have any maps of the area. Also we felt like we were not making any progress on the road. It felt like we weren’t going anywhere. Finally my inner guidance said to give up on the shops we were trying to get to and just head to
Mt. Ida. That felt much better to both of us and the GPS started working again. Great, so we stopped for lunch around
Hot Springs and headed to into the Ozarks again to reach
Mt. 
Ida. Shortly after we started we came to one of the rock shops we were trying to find. We were stunned it was 20 miles beyond where we thought it should be so we decided we would just follow our guidance while in the Ozarks. We did find some great crystals and other stones for our meditation garden. But we lost a whole day in what we began to call the Arkansas Vortex.   We made it out but our Trip Tick was not so lucky, it was lost forever in the AR Vortex. 

We zoomed through
Oklahoma,
Texas and
New Mexico. We stopped on the last day 1/8/07 to visit the
Petrified Forest and painted desert. During the trip we had some close encounters with ravens that wanted to get in the cab of the truck with me but I had to leave them in the desert also we came across a heard of antelope. The antelope are symbols for communication and that has been a message for me since the cancer and the near-death experience. Then I found my new favorite rock shop. In
Holbrook AZ there is Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co. They have the largest collection of AZ minerals I’ve ever seen and they do not even go to the
Tucson shows and they supply a number of rock shops across the
US.

We are now here in
Sedona AZ and setting in with some day hikes and good restaurants.  We will be here for four weeks. We found a small energy vortex in the walk in closet in the master bedroom. This has thrown us for a loop even Cindy who normally can’t feel earth energy. She used her pendulum to test the energy and it went nuts going mostly in a clockwise direction. Our first stop was bell rock to anchor our energy in a familiar spot Cindy asked what the name for one rock formation was, and without thinking I just heard Raven Squat Rock, well we continued and climbed up higher than Cindy has ever been and found a nice place to meditate between bell rock and courthouse rock. While we were there we hear the raspy call of a raven from the rock formation that Cindy had taken notice of. So we think I might have heard it wrong, maybe it’s Raven Squawk Rock.  A day later I found an old trail I use to go to in the past as a young man. I found a good meditation spot near the house up on Brin’s
Mesa all the way I was followed by two Ravens. Ravens may be the totem for this visit to my old stomping grounds. My heart is open and singing when I’m on the trail.

More later

Dave