uluru finally

Ayers Rock - Uluru
Red Centre, Northern Territory, Australia
April 2016

A major bucket-list moment - I have waited years to get here. And none too soon! As beautiful as she is from a distance - she is most spectacular up close. As ancient and magical as the legends would suggest. Both Uluru and the nearby Kata Tjuta formation (the Olgas) are of sacred to the Pitjantjatjara Anangu people.

Interesting to note that this sacred red rock and the sacred pink granite mountains of the Wichitas in Oklahoma are the same age (550 million years old) and about the same height above sea level (2600 and 2800 feet respectively).

on sacred ground

Cache Creek through the Narrows
Wichita Mountains - Oklahoma
September 2014
Sacred land to several aboriginal tribes

I stray onto sacred ground
The resting place of souls bygone.
Solace is what I seek,
But there is no solace
No succor to be found
Not here among broken, fallen stones.
Nor bent, wilting trees.
I search for you under the moon
Thoughts of you race through my mind
Feelings better left unspoken.
This was our place
The fertile earth from which the black rose of our love took seed.
We exchanged blood amidst these graves.
Transfused our darkest thoughts and dreams.
It is here too that our love died.
A fitting place for something that is no more 

-grim blackheart

some rivers i've known

Crossing the River at Lome
 Togo, West Africa
February 2012

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes

sermon on the mount

Calico Basin
Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area
©trryan - March 2014

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we will ever need--if only we had the yes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of its natural paradise which lies all around us--if only we were worthy of it.
-Ed Abbey, Desert Solitaire 

pawnee summer

Pahaku - Sacred Site of the Pawnee
Platte River Bluff - Eastern Nebraska
July 2011

chickasaw morning

Travertine Creek
Chickasaw National Recreation Area

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail - Dark Morph

Splendor in the Grass

A gathering of Opiliones ( Harvestmen / Daddy Longlegs)

Prickly Pear Cactus in Remnant Prairie

Thistle - a prolific host plant in this swath of prairie

White-lined Sphinx Moth

White-lined Sphinx Moth

Giant Swallowtail

Unidentified Bumble Bee

Pipevine Swallowtail

Tufted Titmouse

White-tailed Deer 

Yvwi Gvnahita - Journey to the Long Man in the Sacred Wai of the Hule'ia River

The source of the Hule'ia River
Nawiliwili Valley, Kauai
©March 18, 2013

Today is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, and to some of my Cherokee friends it is also the day to honor the Long Man by making a visit to a stream or river.  A river or stream is held sacred to many Cherokee and the practice of of going to water for purification was once common among the tribe - especially on the day of the vernal equinox.*  The Long Man is the conscious spirt of a river or stream whose voice can be heard in the sound of a waterfall - "creator has seen in the form of a river."

To Hawaiian ancestors, water was sacred. It was a gift from Kane i ka wai ola (procreator in the water of life), and delivered by Lono makua (the rain provider).

Waterfall on the Waipo'o Falls Trail System
Waimea Canyon, Kauai
©March 19, 2013

I honored the vernal equinox here in Hawaii a few few days early with a visit to the Hule'ia River on the south side of the island of Kauai and also to Waipo'o Falls in the Kokee rainforests of Waimea canyon.  The Ryan side of my family is descended from the House of Luxembourg where legend has it that we worshipped Melusina, the feminine spirit found in fresh water, sacred springs and rivers in European folklore.

So on the auspicious and divine first day of Spring - I celebrate the ancestors and those who keep sacred water traditions alive and honor and respect our rivers and streams as living beings. And I celebrate the Aloha 'aina I have for this beautiful land here in Hawaii.

You who never arrived

Fern Lake Trail
Rocky Mountain National Park
September 2012

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you.
I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave
of the next moment.
All the immense
images in me--the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,

cities, towers, and bridges,
and unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once pulsing
with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

Rainer Maria Rilke

We May Be Brothers After All

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.  Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, every humming insect is holy in the memory of my people.

When the last red man has vanished from this earth, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people.  For they love this earth as a new-borne loves its mother's heartbeat.

So, if we sell our land, love it as we've loved it.  Care for it as we've cared for it.  Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you take it.  And with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for your children, and love it...as God loves us all.

One thing we know, our God is the same God.  The earth is precious to Him.  Even the white man cannot be exempt from this common destiny.  We may be brothers after all.

- Chief Seattle

The Sacred Way: Sunrise at Medicine Wheel

To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence.  Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields.  If you would know the earth for what it really is -- learn it through its sacred places.  At Devil's Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds,  you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you.  You become one with a spirit that pervades geological time and place.

- M. Scott Momaday

Bighorn Medicine Wheel

photographed July 2011
50th Birthday Roadtrip

Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

©trryan

The Sacred Way

The Sacred Way - Bear Butte
Near Sturgis, South Dakota

The Ancient Child

Coming Full Circle
Blogger with Ed Young, fellow graduate of PCW High School '79
Walking the Sacred Hoop at Bear Butte in South Dakota

Medicine Wheel
Blogger with Roger Lasthorse, Oglala Lakota (Sioux)
Medicine Wheel, Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
July 27, 2011

"I think he is about to be transformed....."

N. Scott Momaday

The Ancient Child

Eat, Pray, Love, Java

EAT

PRAY

LOVE