It was a hard time of my rising corporate life with my right leg encased in a cast for most of the year and my marriage broken since it began. The cast was courtesy of doing a short dance on black ice during a walk in Tahoe during a brief escape from San Jose and my Japanese boss, Mr. Shinozaki, whom we Gaijin called basketball head. He was a jerk and required me to report to him every Monday at 9 which required me to wake at 5 to make a 7 AM flight from LA to San Jose. While our marketing department was in LA he chose San Jose as our corporate HQ so he could stay close to his golf club where he and his Japanese exec buds could drink, play golf, and talk about the decadent ways of Americans.
My marriage was empty and sad at that time as my academic wife preferred to spend time with her university friends while I made the big corporate bucks to add to her status and support our life style. We had a lovely home on the Ventura coast within commuting distance of her campus. It was a long commute for me to my office and I short one for her to the university and we rarely spoke on the ride along the coast. After a year of commuting to and from our offices she said we should have a second home in Lake Tahoe so that we could escape to a neutral place on holidays and long weekends. It was on one of those weekends when we were walking and arguing about my desire to escape the corporate world that I messed up my right knee and subsequently had a high-end titanium cast fixed to my body. For almost a year that cast set off every airport gate detector and made life miserable as I was in the air weekly. So, when my oldest friend from high school days suggested I visit him on the reservation and do a sweat and peyote ceremony I was game ready, or so I thought.
Basketball head told me that it was time for me to take off the cast and head with him to our annual marketing meeting. That year it was scheduled at a high-end luxury resort at the tip of Long Island. The resort was not easy to get to but had a reputation for beautiful golf courses, very attractive masseurs, and an outstanding alcohol selection. There would be three main presenters. Me on the American markets. A guy from England on the European markets and a third regional marketing head for the greater Pacific Rim region. We were the best the company could find and buy to expand the Japanese footprint in the telecom and new IT markets outside of Japan. I made the case that I needed to have a few days to prep for the presentation and that I should spend time with key customers and preparing the presentation. One of our largest IT customers operated a large microwave site in northern Arizona and it provided the excuse to make a stopover before heading to NYC to see my boyhood friend who was living on the reservation while pursuing his doctorate in some arcane subject while serving as principal of a BIA school.
I called my friend and said I was in deep need of some smoke and healing. He had married for the third or fourth time and his newest mate was a full blood Navajo woman who worked for the tribe. He suggested I meet him at his hogan that was outside of Flagstaff and a million miles away from the known world. He would wait for me at his hogan alone as he thought it best that just the two of us meet. So, I got off the small plane in Flagstaff, rented a four-wheel drive car, drove east on a paved road for a bit and then created a dust storm as I skidded across unpaved roads for a few hours following a hand drawn map he had sent me beforehand. It was a drive into another world as I did not see another vehicle or person until I arrived at his hogan that was situated at the foot of a small mountain that looked like someone had stepped on it. The sun was setting behind the broken spine of the hill.
My old friend came out to greet me as I stepped out of the car. He embraced me, handed me a pipe filled with bits of weed and dried peyote, told me to have a toke, take off my shoes and pants and follow him to a small lean-to that had smoke rising from the top. I did as he said, and we crawled into the primitive fire room lean-to that had a fire-pit at the center filled with large stones and smoldering pinon. It was hard to breathe at first as the smoke was thick, but I followed his lead, folded my legs under my body and we kneeled facing each other. He offered me the pipe and said we would first take the smoke then sweat until the bad stuff was leached out of us. Afterwards he said we would see if the spirit in the volcano would welcome us to see the stars. We stayed in the fie hut sweating and taking turns slapping each other with cups of water filled from a wooded bucket next to the pit. We spoke little during that sweat other than to ask about the wellbeing of our families and mutual old friends we had lost contact with. It was a hot, peaceful, time that I’ve relived many times since during those moments when I’m able to escape the demands of the day.
The pipe smoke was different than the weed I occasionally used back home. It was like having a glass of deep cabernet sauvignon cruising throughout my entire body warming and pinching me, so unlike the standard weed high that just tickled the head. As I never took any illegal stuff with me while on business trips this smoke cure was an unexpected and much welcomed change of pace.
My friend finally said that it was time to leave the sweat house. We walked outside. It was a moonless night and the milky way, brilliant in the night sky, flowed directly over us. My friend reached into a burlap bag next to the sweat pit and took out two pairs of worn leather sandals. I reached for my pants that were next to the bag, but he said that we would make our way to the mountain heart unadorned but for our calzones and sandals. It was getting colder by the minute, and I hesitated for a minute then put on the sandals and followed him to the base of the mountain that waited for us.
He said her name was little dzil and while not one of the four sacred women mountains she was still one of the old powers. She had burned bright before the old people of the land first raked her soil for the blue corn that prospered on her dead lips. She was cracked and folded over and along her base were a few dry veins that led into her burnt out core. My friend led the way and I followed wordlessly as we made our way through a vein that put us on our knees as we neared the end of the fire tube. We stood at the edge of a cold dark crater that stretched for at least a few hundred feet before rearing up to the stars. We looked up. The universe inhaled us and we swam with the stars. It was a wordless epiphany, a metanoia of mind and spirt. We laid down on her cracked skin. My mind spiraled into the star river while my body sunk beneath the ancient soil. We were there for an eternity before my friend got up and walked back to the vein, got back on his knees and started out. I was totally greaked at the thought of being alone in the universe and followed him out.
We made our way back to his Hogan where we spent the night drinking tequila, smoking, and laughing. I left the next day for Long Island. I made my pitch to the assembled group and think it went well but I don’t recall a single thought these days as I look for those stars thinking about the end of the day and how the next one will be.
