The Anasazi Warrior

   

                                                                            

   

   It was not sunny at all. Despite the fact that, time to time, during our road trip, the sun was there to help me capture some interesting images around Arizona, today the sky had that moody, light-grey colour that you normally see during winter. 
   The temperature was hardly above zero and the desert around us, red and dry, had  something undoubtedly dramatic. Maybe not the best time of the year to visit the Monument Valley but surely a wild and unusual approach to experience its unique beauty. Even in winter, the enormous naked rocks, the dead cedar trees and the endless lines of the unmade roads that marked the vast landscape till the end of the horizon were for my eyes a new and unusual part of the planet, full of legendary stories, that I was craving to discover. The atmosphere above our head, had that ghastly feeling as if a heavy storm had just ended on the surface of  planet Mars and now everything was back to freezing cold and silence.

   That night we decided to pass it in a Hogan. It was not in our plans but there it was, in front of us, surprisingly free from reservations, really inviting us to try ourselves and go, why not, beyond our comfort zone. 
   Like all female Hogans it was made from mud and long trunks of wood. Rounded like a red, half-bubble on the surface of the desert it was furnished with only the absolute basics: Two beds, a burning-wood stove exactly in the middle, a gasoline lamp, a frame of an old Navaho woman sitting outside her tent and an old time classic, Ikea style, plastic director’s chair. Above a small bunch of cut woods there was a tiny square window. In front of us we had the epitome of simplicity in real life. At the same time, and mostly because of that, it was a small spiritual temple in the middle of the Native American land. When this place is free from travellers and only when it is the right moment to happen, sacred and incredibly old Navaho ceremonies, secret to the rest of the people, are taking part inside. We couldn't be happier.

   

   It was already around nine. You could hardly see the mesas around the dark landscape. I started emptying the car and Zeffi put on the fire and activated the place by performing some small ceremonies that balanced the energy, cleaned the space and connected people and nature under the same sky. Half an hour later, when the fire in the stove was a bit stronger, the frozen place became much warmer and finally thank God we had some extra light in the dark, we could have our own ritual.

….

   
   It was a ritual of rebirth. There in the Navaho land, away from any form of civilisation and far from what we usually call a western way of life, we "threw" and burned into the fire whatever we wanted to burn from the past.

…

Then we sat on our beds, we closed our eyes and we meditated for about an hour...

   I was turned to the fire, listening to those sweet sounds the wood makes when is burned. Everywhere around me, behind my closed eyelids, I could feel the sweet orange light. Not so sure when it happened but I started losing myself in a whirl of time. It felt as if I traveled deeply into the past. In the beginning I could see nothing but blurred images and scenes of an outdoors life. Shadows of people, tents and horses that were moving around started to unfold in front of me revealing a past life that only some hours later I remembered that somebody, ten years ago, had talked to me about. Irini, my dearest companion in my spiritual journey, during my first initiation to the Reiki Energy, had insistingly mentioned the presence of a Native American warrior. For making this even more personal, she had given me as present for my birthday a similar statue that I keep it in my altar until today. I had never paid the right attention before but was I for real an Anasazi warrior? Was my guru next to me my sorceress mother? Was that Navaho girl I met some days ago in Sedona, my companion in life and Chandy was our dog? Did I really see Zeffi blessing the two of us by holding our hands in front of our tent just before I go for a hunting mission? Even now I can clearly describe the fabrics that were hanging on our bodies…

   
   I came-back by hearing some small strange noises. Like those ones somebody hears when small drops of water fall on a burning surface. I opened my eyes and there, from that round hole on the top of the Hogan, the one that Navaho people leave open on the ceiling for the smoke, small snowflakes were slowly falling on the burning stove. In the safety of our warm, red “womb”, away from all distractions and absolutely connected with Mother Earth, nature was providing some extra beauty to the scene. Tiny white fellas, seemed like falling from the stars, were dancing peacefully for some moments around the iron chimneystack and just before touching the branding iron, they were joining our supernatural evening.

....

   
 ...


   As a gentleman, I kept the fire on the whole evening. Time to time, I would stand up from my bed to fill the stove with woods and I didn’t mind at all. With my eyes sparkled from the heat and a permanent smile on my face I was staring at the fire thinking of people and nature. Why do people love to sit around the fire..? Why people stay silent for some moments in front of a beautiful sky or an open wide sea..? Why sounds from burning woods or fallen snowflakes speak directly to our hearts..?

That night I remembered intensively a period that I very rarely recall: 

   I was only four when for one year I had to stay with my grandparents in the little hometown from which I am descended. Their short house was very old. It had roof tiles, it was made of mud and It had several rooms that I was always afraid to visit. No matter my natural curiosity to explore, inch by inch, the environment around me I was avoiding those rooms like hell. Rats and possibly ghosts were keeping me away till, one year after, I finally moved back to my parents new house. No matter the several rooms, that cold winter, the three of us, we spent it mostly in a small part of the house close to the entrance that seemed to be since a long time ago, a bedroom and a living room at the same time.  One big bed and one sofa in front of a burning-wood stove were all that small room had as furniture. Above that sofa, believe it or not, there was a small square window that my sweet grandmother Maria had always at her right when she was sitting there, knitting sometimes for hours and singing silently all those songs she knew since she was a little girl. 
   In the evening the little room was illuminated red by the fire burning in the stove and the small noises of the burning woods together with the sounds of our breaths were the only things you could hear.

   

   One night something magical happened. A hen we had, had given birth to some little chicks. We were in the middle of the winter and the snow had covered the whole village. My grandmother couldn't risk leaving the fragile yellow baby-birds outside unprotected not even for one minute. So, during that night, she took them all inside, covered them with a warm blue fabric, put them inside a traditional basket and put the basket under the stove. That winter evening, together with the sounds of the burning woods and our breaths I could hear the little peeps of those small sleeping beauties, alone and away from their mother, just like me, but protected and warm, close to the fire of that little room of that muddy house with the snowed tile roof. Then all of a sudden, I left my grandfather sleeping next to me and with small steps, I arrived in front of the stove. I knelt in front of the basket, I slowly pulled up the soft woollen blue cover and by holding my breath I dived my four years old tiny palm inside the super-soft, yellow baby feather content. With my face warm from the heat and with my eyes closed, I slowly and carefully touched the warm, fragile and full of life tiny wings, tiny beaks, and tiny legs. 
   Only now, at the age I am today, in 2019, I believe it was an action of compassion to myself without even knowing it. For the record, this is one of the strongest memories I have from my entire life and one of the first ones. 
It was in the winter of 1976.