It’s a warm afternoon in the summer of 2018, and we just opened the Healing Nature Trail a few days ago. A middle-aged sister and brother and their spouses just arrived for the guided Trail Walk they scheduled.
“I came because I heard about the healing power of Nature,” stated the brother. “I was given six months to live—I have terminal colon cancer. It has metastasized, and my doctor said there’s nothing more he can do.”
“What is your connection with Nature now?” we asked. “You have a special relationship with any animal, or any particular place?”
“We have a cottage on a Lake here, and I love spending time on the water and walking through the Woods. But other than that, I don’t have any real relationship with anything in particular.”
In the Trails welcome center or three display cases filled with small animal tokens made of wood and stone. We asked him to take some time to look them over and see if any particular one spoke to him.
“This one,” he said, as he reverently cradled the effigy in both hands. “This is the kind of energy—the kind of strength and resilience—I need.” He was holding a five-inch-tall Buffalo made by a traditional carver in Mexico, who works with a sacred wood nearly as heavy as stone.
The Healing Journey
“May I take him with me on my Trail Walk?” the man asked.
We nodded.
All he had to say at the end of his Walk was if it would be alright to take the Buffalo home with him.
Again, we nodded.
The next summer, he came by for a visit. “My cancer is in complete remission,” he said, with the soft, reverent voice. “The doctors can’t explain it—they said they’ve never seen anything like it.”
He handed the Buffalo back to us, and we said, “Please keep him; You two are one—you belong together.”
“But there are other people he may be able to help.”
“Buffalo’s spirit and healing power go beyond a single token,” we replied. “You can see that he already came back here in the form of another token, waiting to again serve.”
The Honoring
One summer dawn seven years later, Tamarack woke up with the inspiration to commemorate the first healing associated with the Healing Nature Trail by honoring the healing power of Buffalo. Tamarack had the image of a Buffalo standing on the rise at the head of the Healing Nature Center driveway.
An online search for life-size Buffalo statues brought up dozens. Those images triggered the memory of a Buffalo figure standing in front of a store in a nearby town. Tamarack called the store owner, told him the story of the Buffalo healing, and how a Buffalo statue was sought to both celebrate the event and give honor to Buffalo.
“He is for sale,” said the owner. “But he’s looking kind of rough, he’s been out there in the weather for a few years. We have him marked down to $1700 because of that.”
“Yeah, he’s seen better days,” stated Tamarack. “He needs some restoration work, and I’d like to see that happen, as he deserves a second life. We have someone on staff who is a good crafter—I bet he could do it.”
“In that case, I want you to have him,” replied the storekeeper. “I like what you would do with him. And I don’t care about the money—In retail, you sometimes lose, and I’m happy with that, or else I would be doing something else.”
Tamarack gave him $500 anyway, in recognition of his generosity.
The Buffalo, completely restored, now hails passersby and greets pilgrims coming to return to the Nurturing Bosom of the Mother.
Buffalo’s Shepherd
Yet something was missing. There is a saying, “The Wolf is the shepherd of the Buffalo,” which was meaningful to Tamarack because it honored the Wolf-Buffalo relationship, so he and Fox posted a sign with the saying in front of the Buffalo. Only one thing was missing from the scene: the Wolf.
With the site being so close to the road, Tamarack was concerned that adding a Wolf would only tempt someone to come by and heist him in the night. Tamarack spent a good share of the day researching ways to solidly secure a Wolf statue, but came up with nothing satisfactory.
That evening, Lety and OdeMakwa came home from town with a picture they took of a Wolf statue in someone’s front yard that we had passed by hundreds of times but never noticed. That discovery was too serendipitous to write off as mere chance, so Tamarack immediately went to town to check out the statue.
To his amazement, he could not budge it, as it was made of solid concrete and had to weigh several hundred pounds. Eureka—it was just what we needed! The homeowner gave Tamarack the contact information for the shop she bought the statue from, and a few days later we had our own. Fox built a rock outcrop for the shepherd to stand watch from, and the Vision was complete.
Another “Chance” Event?
On the morning Tamarack woke up with his original inspiration, we found the glass “Welcome Home!” sign at the start of the Healing Nature Trail shattered in a thousand pieces on the ground. The prior night was calm, and we could find no clue as to how or why the panel fell from her Birch log frame.
…And Another?
At the same time of that discovery, the image of a life-size howling Wolf statue appeared amongst the many Buffalo images Tamarack’s Google search brought up. Again, there was no rational explanation, as all Tamarack entered in the search engine was “life-size Buffalo statue.”
Knowing that events occur for reasons beyond what is recognized at the time, Tamarack arranged for the sculpture to come and join us.
He just happened to fit perfectly in the frame of the destroyed sign—it was as though the frame was built for him. Now he is the child of The Mother whose howl invites and welcomes Her Human children coming to reconnect with Her and be renewed by Her healing touch.
… And Yet Another?
Not too long before those events, we gave a presentation on Wolves at a nature center’s annual banquet. While we were packing up to leave, a cook emerged from the kitchen to tell us she had a life-size sitting Wolf statue at home.
Tamarack was left speechless, as he was in the process of looking for exactly that, to station as a Guardian at the doorway to the Trail’s welcome center, but he was unable to find one who embodied the calm, clear, and grounded spirit of a Guardian.
“May we come and see her when you are off of work?” asked Tamarack when he caught his breath.
“Better yet, I’ll bring him over. I live just down the road—I’ll hop in my pickup and be back here with him in two minutes!”
He came home with us that evening, having a back seat to himself and being properly seat-belted in. Now, mounted beside him where he serves as sentinel beside the Welcome Center door is the quote that so profoundly inspired Tamarack to dedicate his life to helping renew the sacred Wolf-Human relationship.
