CyberSpirit


Even today in our modern world, Native Americans show respect for their Rain Spirit as they have for thousands of years. This is especially true for Indians of the West and even more true for those living in the hot arid Southwest. Tribes like the Hopi, Navajo, Morongo, Soboba and hundreds of others indigenous to arid areas respect and depend upon rain.

For Traditional Native Americans, rainfall, or lack of, is a matter of life and death. They are mostly agrarian peoples depending on rainfall for natural irrigation of their crops just as many dirt farmers of the world do.

Each tribe has their own rules and customs concerning many varieties of spirits affecting their lives. Those who are typical Anglo-Saxon label these activities "rituals." Some of us have, in some way, taken time and effort to learn about Native American cultures. We are quick to point out the word "ritual" simply doesn't fit. Religion is a better choice of word describing various sacred activities performed by Indians. It seems our prejudice permeates even our words and language. Perhaps we should learn their language, as they have ours, and truly understand.

Christians perform rituals. We pray at dinner, pray on Easter Sunday. Our faces are marked with dark soot on Ash Wednesday. We walk out of church carrying a piece of palm leaf on Palm Sunday. Our babies are dunked in Blessed Water for Baptism. So why do we call ours, religion, and theirs, rituals? I see no difference between the activities.

Attending a Catholic High Mass is a real challenge. I cannot understand a single word of the sing songy Latin being chanted. They burn incense and swing it around in funny looking balls. Holy Water is generously splashed around. A Holy Father wears really fancy clothing usually reds or purple. His congregation alternately kneels, sits, stands, sings, genuflects. It goes on and on for hours. It bores me to tears. I don't go anymore.

My daughter Tracilynne and I are attending a ceremonial Rain Dance on a reservation in parched New Mexico. I had just finished a series of eight courses in Native American Studies. It is my responsibility to teach her all that I learn. What better way than to see it, live?

We make sure to get a printed handout of the day's activities from the Indians. Their description of the Rain Dance is only one page long. Half of it is about the clothing and music. The other half, a translation of the words during the dance. All of it makes sense. Tracilynne doesn't need to take Latin for four years to understand what is being said. Very simply, they chant, "Rain Spirit we love and honor you. We have worked hard and follow our ways. Please give us rain." How logical. "We are good people. We need water."

Water does seem to hold a common bond between all living things, even if religious, ritualistic or some personal ceremony. Holy Water. Rainfall. Our drinking water. Rivers, lakes and streams. Oceans. All types of water exist here on our curious little third stone from the sun. It exists as a vapor, as a liquid and as a solid. We have the best of all three physical forms of water.

Many are surprised to learn we humans are nothing more than bags of salt water. We are over eighty percent salt water. At times it seems most of my salt water is between my ears. In strict disciplined science, we say all living things here on Earth are carbon based. Personally I feel more comfortable saying we are water based.

Evolution or Creationism, it really doesn't matter. Evolution is a well proven and accepted scientific fact for decades now. It is no longer just a theory. Creationism, well, that is matter of faith. All living things here on our rather warm wet mud ball evolved from our oceans. It makes good sense humans slosh. It makes better sense a majority of life on Earth live in our waters.

I am quite religious, ritualistic about water. Not only can I never get enough of it, I can never get in it enough. Water is first nature to me. Breathing our smog leaden air is a dubious second nature.

Long before I was old enough to attend school much less attend University level classes in Native American Studies I have paid respect to, believed in the Rain Spirit. Even my dimmest of memories contain recollections of hours spent out in the rain, in storms, in lightning and thunder. My butt was spanked time after time for going out in the weather, for risking health and life. I never have changed, never will and I am still quite alive.

Traci doesn't get her butt spanked for going out in the weather. Instead we both go out, hand in hand. Mom and daughter romp, play, splash and stand in awe of Mother Nature and her many spirits. I am teaching her to respect and honor all natural things and the spirits of those natural things. Tracilynne is learning not to fear natural events but rather love them. She is learning how to become one with nature as should be.

A few months back, on my way to Las Vegas, crossing a desolate yet very much alive dry desert I am thinking how nice it would be if Ms. Nature would just up and rain. The desert out there is so dry, so hot. It makes you thirsty just looking at it from behind tinted windows cooled by air conditioning. Ten or fifteen minutes away from Stateline it did just that.

Mother Nature, God's right hand woman, throws together a storm just for me. I am not being anthropocentric or anything. It is a helluva storm. I just can't wait. At very first chance I pull off the freeway, off the exit ramp and drive down a crunchy wet desert dirt road towards the most intense part of storm. I didn't have to go but a hundred yards before the freeway vanishes into the storm. By turning off the engine, I begin my ritual in respect for the Rain Spirit.

Stripping out of my clothes took no time. Stepping into a rush of weather I am elated. A sting of heavy raindrops, brilliant flashes of lightning and deafening roar of a happy Rain Spirit, give me a feeling, almost an orgasmic feeling, of being alive. Very very alive.

Slowly twirling, arms stretching outward, head held high, my eyes are blazing with a fury and a pride of one of Mother Nature's many personalities, many spirits. Sheets of torrential warm rain are cleansing my very spirit along with my corkscrewy hair. Lightning bolts are striking everywhere igniting short lived brush fires hissing steam at the sky. My personal Rain Spirit is teasing me and delighting me with raindrops dancing on my body. He is giving me electric goose bumps with thousands of bolts of high voltage static electricity close enough for a sweet smell of ozone to surround me.

"This is so much more fun than a shower at the hotel!" Rubbing raindrops around on my nude body is Heavenly. My hair is drenched enough to gently wind it up and squeeze water out of it like a sponge. "This even feels like the bottom of a shower!" There is about an inch of water flowing over and around my bare feet. It is like a tiny flash flood all around me.

"Do me! Do me Rain Spirit! Take me!" I spread my legs, firmly plant my toes and feet in wet sand. Turning my head to one side and closing my eyes, I stretch my arms out and point a finger, "Rain Spirit please touch me, take me, do me." Lightning is crackling and sizzling everywhere. Thunder is pounding against my body, deafening me. Rain slams into me making my breasts sting and burn. Rain water trickles into my open mouth.

All my hair on my body is pulsating. Standing up. Lying down. Wiggling around. Tingling. Lots of tingling. Ozone around, smelling sickly sweet. He is touching me. "Oh darling Tracilynne. I will never leave you behind again." Crackle. Sizzle. Booming thunder. Flying rain. "My little love I will bring you here. Our Rain Spirit will touch you, make you tingle, make you smile."

A windward tail of the fast moving storm is upon me. It is almost over. Time to move on in my journey. Strong gusts of sidewards rain gently urge me back to my car, back into relative safety from being fried, from being zapped. My Rain Spirit can be angered. I respect him and will not tempt him in greed.

Sitting, dripping in my car I fall into a memory from so long ago. A child, an almost woman, a freshman in college. The small travel trailer I live in, is rooted in the soil by flat tires. It is rusting into ruin next to a seaside State Park. Windows rattling, wind leaks whistling, my trailer is shaking like a roller coaster in a furious Pacific Storm which is drowning California.

All bundled up in warm clothes, I slip an army surplus rain poncho over my head and fight wind to open my lightweight trailer door. It is so beautiful out, rain flying sidewards as it is outside my car windshield back in reality. A huge eucalyptus tree has blown over blocking the small street outside my whistling and leaning wood fence. Someone's trash can is banging bouncing down my street heading for downtown Carpenteria. I am heading for a beach only two blocks and a narrow State Park away.

Leaning into the wind, I pull rain hood strings tight leaving only my face exposed to this seemingly angry Rain Spirit. Struggling against wind along a park roadway, shocked faces greet me from behind wet steamy camper windows. No faces peer at me from tents zipped up tight all puffed up like hot air balloons about to take to flight. Wind is howling in delight in a heavily forested park darkening by an early nightfall.

Small ponds of water are already collecting in pockets of sand dunes making up this beach. Cresting a ridge of a last line of wind blown dunes, slowly crawling their way inland, I am knocked backwards a few steps by the power of a wind coming in off the ocean. So powerful I can taste salt water kicking up with the wind and mixing with rain. Never being one to hide on a leeward side of life, I settle down on a sandy slope facing the ocean with my arms wrapping me, my legs crossed and my poncho ends tucked under me, I appear to be nothing more than a wind blown bush or a wet outcropping of oil bearing shale so common to Santa Barbara.

A nice sandy beach once existed at the bottom of these dunes. Now it's just barren jagged rocks and sand polished shale. The beach has been taken away, washed out to sea, bite by bite. In a week or two, after passage of the storm, sand will crawl back out of the ocean, become a beach again and resume its relentless inland march as sand dunes.

Wind blown waves big as my trailer are breaking directly on the shoreline. They usually break about a hundred yards out delighting the local surfers. These are wild untamed waves nothing could ride, except the wind. Each breaker crashes into rocks and splatters into air with a deafening roar, like something wild and free to do whatever it pleases.

I think perhaps the ocean is roaring in anger about rain masked glittering lights of offshore oil derricks sucking our Earth's lifeblood like mosquitoes. They leave behind a trail of bloody oily ooze which fowls surfboards, bare feet and snuffs out the life of so many sea creatures now hiding in safety of their deep watery homes.

A sizzling crackling bolt of lightning and a bone rattling clap of thunder rattles me out of my dream state near Nevada stateline. Reality time. Time to go. Huge boiling thunderheads make my eyes get smiling crow's feet in admiring them when I step out of my 'Vette. Sunshine is back and less than half mile away, my Rain Spirit is still putting on a dazzling display. Someone on the freeway, now easy to see with the clearing of the storm, honks at me. I am trying to pull my tight Levi's up over my plumb bottom. "How hilarious! Bet they're thinking I am out here making tinkle. If they only knew what I am really doing, what I was doing." Good thing my back is to the freeway. Bare breasts would be really confusing. "God I feel good!"

More dry and mostly dressed again, I left my T-shirt off until my hair dries, my Corvette roars to life like a wild thing. I punch in a Steppenwolf tape,

Get Your Motor Running
Head Out On The Highway
Lookin' For Adventure
In Whatever Comes Our Way

Here And God Are Gonna' Make It Happen
Take The World In A Love Embrace
Fire All Of Your Guns At Once And
Explode Into Space

I Like Smoke And Lightning
Heavy Metal Thunder
Racin' With The Wind
And The Feeling That That I'm Under

Like A True Nature's Child
We Were Born, Born To Be Wild
We Can Climb So High
I Never Want To Die

Born To Be Wild
Born To Be Wild


Native Americans had and have the right idea. All things natural are spirits. They believe as I do in the Spirits of rain, fire, the sun, the moon, clouds, trees and even animal spirits. Everything has a spirit guide. All are equals in their own right.

"Oh Tracilynne. Why didn't I bring you this time? Never again. I will never make this journey again without you love." Thinking about my girl and what we would be talking about besides my driving with no top on. "Traci, love, all things are alive and have spirits. Mountains grow. Wind and rain wear them down. Deserts vanish. Jungles replace them. Our home, California itself, are slowly sliding back into our Earth becoming lava again. Volcanoes will spit us back out again somewhere else on Earth. Another mountain will be born of what was California. Everything is alive. The sky, rocks, oceans, canyons, dirt, water, everything my little love. Let's be Indians Traci, and believe."

To think we refer to them as pagan heathens. We go to church, smear ash on our faces, pray to winged angels, sing ceremonial songs, listen to words of high mass we cannot even understand, we believe in miracles, in life after death and even in the resurrection of a dead man once nailed to a cross. Who are we to call Native American Indians pagan heathens?

Those heathens have it right. Mother Nature's things are spirits to be treated with religious reverence. Without water, we would not have evolved. Without living things to eat, we would starve. Without sunlight, our warm wet mud ball would be a frozen wasteland. Without all these spirits watching over us, we would be nothingness, nonexistent.

Several billion years back, rain water collecting in slimy pools murky with organic junk. Lightning strikes just a right place and wonders of wonders, slime comes to life. How is it Indians recognize the importance of natural things and we don't?

I can't wait for Summer to end. I miss rain. Seems every year at close of Summer my desire to become one with my Rain Spirit overwhelms me as it has throughout my life. Traci and I are truly wild creatures born of water.