Author: Mark Bolton. Images: Chat GPT.
Dear Carolynn. Another from the archives. It's a story of wisdom I created for a journal entry. It was written around thirteen years ago when I was trying to communicate with someone I liked a lot. This was about a year before I met you, and three years before you died. Her name I will keep private but when she and I were hanging out... well, she just wasn't there. She didn't seem to be anywhere. So, I did what anyone would do. I channeled an American Indian to guide me.
“What brings you to my teepee, Hawk Feather on Dog?” his grandfather asked.
“I come to borrow your wisdom,” the young man said. “My thoughts won’t lie down.”
“Then speak,” the old man replied. “The fire has room.”
Hawk Feather on Dog sat and started to talk.
“Grandfather… four seasons ago I meet woman whose spirit runs ahead of day. I call her Always Running Late. She is from another camp, but we walked the same trail for a while. We laughed in good weather. We made it through rough water too.”
“But now Spring is near, and the trust between us feel covered over, like something buried in buffalo grass. I can’t reach it. I don’t know how to uncover without tearing ground apart.”
The old man listened, still as a cottonwood in no wind.
After a time he asked, “Do your voices still find each other?”
“Yes,” Hawk Feather on Dog said. “But only in small pieces. Like smoke that thins before it rises high. When I turn toward her, she turn away. When I step close, she step back. I miss her.”
Grandfather waited. Quiet is part of medicine.
Then he said, “Grandson… you are speaking of canoe meant for two paddles.”
“When you both pull at water, canoe go straight. When river argue, you stay upright because you move together. That how it is when two spirits are lined up.”
Hawk Feather on Dog nodded.
“But right now,” the old man continued, “Always Running Late is tired in a place you cannot see. Her hands cannot find paddle. And when one paddle stop, canoe turn in circle.”
The young man’s shoulders fell. “So what do I do? How I bring back her trust?”
Grandfather looked at him carefully.
“You paddle for two,” he said, “and you think that will save the canoe. Sometimes it does. But there is a danger in it.“
“If you lean too far to pull the whole river yourself, you will tip canoe. If you grip paddle until your hand bleed, you begin to hate water. If you forget your breath, you sink inside your chest.”
Hawk Feather on Dog swallowed. “Then what is the right way?”
The old man spoke gently, like someone guiding a horse through a narrow gate.
“Be steady, not smaller.”
“Keep your side of canoe true. Paddle enough to hold line. Not chase her, not drag her, not prove your worth.“
“Speak plainly. Offer your hand. Leave space.“
“And watch canoe. If her silence make boat unsafe, you do not keep smiling while you drown. Choose nearest bank. Rest. Decide what you carry and what you cannot.”
The young man whispered, “But what if she never paddles again?”
Grandfather’s eyes were on the fire, but his words were for the young man’s heart.
“Then you know you love her without abandoning you,” he said. “That is clean thing.“
“Trust is not something you wrestle into being. It return when both hands are ready. Your job is not control her paddle.“
“Your job is keep your spirit upright, if she come back to canoe, she find you steady…if she choose another river, she does not leave you broken on shore.”
Naturally, Carolynn, as you would expect, I gave it a happy ending xoxo
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