Feelings rising from the depths
Until visiting Sleeping Bear, I didn’t fully connect with the mythologies where humans transform into natural physical objects like stars, trees or rocks. We’ve all heard them. Perhaps you recall the Sesame Street episode where the little Egyptian boy in the museum was troubled because he could not get his heart to weigh less than a feather, as this was the requirement to join his parents in the Afterworld as a constellation? One could not help but share his angst, but as for actually believing he would transform into a constellation, well, not sharing his spiritual beliefs… that was a leap for me.
Yes, I’ve heard that we are all stardust. And I know that this is a scientific fact. Carl Sagan famously declared in the 1980s that “we are all star-stuff.” The very atoms that make up our bodies were created in ancient stars. So why is it such a leap to believe that we could return or transform back into something made of our very essence? We see trees rotting and fungi growing. We apply compost to our gardens to help the flowers and vegetables grow. Why would humans or bears be exempt from these ubiquitous properties of life?
Too, I carry with me an insistent memory of a vision supporting this theory of connectedness. I feel like I was given a special clue to the mystery of our existence one summer night and it is this: It was a dark night thick with stars and when I looked down at my hand, I saw the heavens reflected in my palm. It was as though the constellations directly overhead were embedded within my hand. Or perhaps I was just a hologram from one perspective and they passed right through. This sounds esoteric, like a hallucinogenic vision, which would not have made me believe its reality less, but the fact that I was not under the influence of any mind-altering drugs made it more amazing. It was just a flash, only lasting enough time for me to take it in and wonder, and feel at one with it all, the whole shebang. Yep, sounds hippy-dippy, but it happened and I’m accepting the vision as a gift.
It’s a long up and down, up and down and I’m not talking easy hiking, but steep ups and downs, so steep that it appeared each time you would touch the sky at the summit or possibly the burning sun and then surely you’d be close to the shoreline of Lake Michigan, it would just be down the next hill, cool and clear, waiting for you, but then at the crest there would be yet another valley, followed by another mountain of sand to scale. The trail was not only steep, but both air and sand were blazing hot. It was a mouth-parching trek across the dunes to reach Lake Michigan. One actually climbs over the Mama Bear to reach the water and if it wasn’t so crazy hot, you’d lie down there with her. From a vantage point facing the bluff above the shore, you can easily make out her form. She is lying down. The legend is told by the Ojibwe people, the Chippewa, who still live in the area.
Long ago, a mother bear and her two cubs lived in Wisconsin, on the western shore of Lake Michigan. One day, a terrible fire tore through the forest, driving them into the lake to escape the flames. They had no choice but to swim toward the eastern shore. The mother bear was a strong swimmer and urged her two little cubs onward, but they became exhausted and could not keep up. When she reached the eastern shore, she climbed to the top of the bluff to wait and watch, but as she watched, they each disappeared beneath the waves. Heartbroken, she laid down, looking out.
The Great Spirit, Gitche Manitou was moved by her devotion and sorrow, so he created two small islands, marking where they had vanished so she could know where they were and always see them. Then he covered the Mother Bear with sand where she remains looking out toward the two Manitou Islands.
Somehow when you are there, you can feel the truth in the story. Sure as the calcium in your bones, the nitrogen in your DNA and the iron in your blood.