Has it really been this long?

Tags

Arizona, blessings, Colorado, Four Sacred Mountains, hiking, nature, Navajo, Navajo Nation, New Mexico, outdoors, prayer, religious, tradition, Utah

Don’t worry, I have a lot to share.

The last big trip I wrote about was a trip to Hong Kong.  In the meantime, I recently traveled to Nicaragua.  Please see some of my information from that visitation at this other link from my Faithless Faith blog: https://faithlessfaith.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/nicaragua/

Maybe I’ll find the time to detail that experience.  In the meantime, I am preparing for a November 2016 trip to Morocco.  I am currently living on the Navajo Nation as of 2015, and so I have become acculturated in many ways.  One of these ways is my consciousness regarding the position and relevance of the Four Sacred Mountains.

To Navajos, the four sacred mountains bound the traditional land given by the holy people.   Navajo maps have the east as “up”, which most conventional maps place in the north.  The sun rises in the east; that weighs largely into this decision.  The traditional Navajo land is defined by four mountains that sit in four directions.  So, starting up at the east, we have Mount Blanca, east, in Colorado; Mount Taylor, south, in New Mexico; the San Francisco Peaks, west, in Arizona; and Mount Hesperus, north, in Colorado.  Although Navajo territory expands through NM, AZ, and UT rather than CO.

In April 2016, I had a Navajo ceremony.  It used these mountains.  At the time, it felt like the ceremony failed me in ways.  But today I realize the ceremony is working in its unique, indirect ways.  It is eliminating from power people who do not belong there; it is giving me opportunities that very few people will ever see; it is keeping my health in check.  As I come into August 2016 and realize that my graduate school endeavor is about to being, I am seeing my need to honor this ceremony and its tradition.

So, today, I will be driving to Colorado.  I am on a tight budget, but I believe I have to respect the ways of the world I live in.  Tonight, I will drive towards Alamosa, Colorado and park my car along a rural route.  In the very early morning, I will start the 17-mile-round-trip job up a trail that circles many lakes, including Lake Como, to arrive finally at Mount Blanca peak.  This mountain is the eastern sacred mountain for the Navajo people.  I will collect a baggie of soil and rocks from this peak, as many medicine men do, and return.  The next mountain this week will be Mount Taylor.

I will climb all Four Sacred Mountains this week.  I will collect a baggie of each mountain and bring it home.  I will bring these bags to my COP22 retreat in September in California, and I will offer a small sample of each mountain to all of my fellow delegates.

This feels right and this is the best way I can represent who I am today through the people who  have helped me and held me up in the past year.  I need their traditions to carry through the work I will do this Fall in Morocco.  I have confidence in this approach.  And I am thrilled to be climbing the four sacred mountains.

I promise, should all go as planned, to post my experience scaling these four mountains.

Ahee’hee.

Hiking in the Terchová Valley

Tags

beer, brzndyove haluskz, cheese whip, Europe, exploring, halusky, hiking, iMovie, Janosikove holes, Juraj Janosik, language, Mala Fatra, mountains, national dish, nature, park, Robin Hood, Skalica, Slovakia, szrove korbacikz, Terchova, Terchva vallez, wine, Zilina

Here in northern Slovakia is the Terchová Valley in the Malá Fatra mountains in the Žilina District where my friend lives.  Today, we went hiking through that district, starting with the region where Juraj Jánošík, the Robin Hood of Slovakia, was born.  We first visited the monument of the hero, then we hiked for several hours in the region of the Janosikove holes.  It was my friend, his father, his wife, and his small son.

I taught Patrik how to grass whistle today.

The terrain was surprisingly rugged in areas, especially around the waterfalls where we had to use rickety ladders and walkways that were slick and definitely not up to American standards of safety.  I was surprised at everyone´s ability to keep up.

Me on the hike.

We only made a couple of stops, including two breaks for beer and snacks.  The first snack was the classic cheese whip, syrové korbáčiky.  After hiking, we had some bryndzové halušky, the national dish of Slovakia.  When we were done, we dropped off the grandfather at his house and had some coffee and icecream.  We got to pet the family dog, cat, and two sheep.  Then we came home for more wine as always!  The wine is from Skalica.  Little Patrik, his cousin, and I played some music and used iMovie to make silly photos.  Patrik starred in his own “music video”.  We have been teaching each other our languages.  A short entry, but a tiring day!

Slovak Caves in the Low Tatra

Tags

Case Western Reserve University, caves, Demanovsk Ice Cave, Demanovska Jaskyna Slobody, Demanovska l'adova jaskyna, hiking, ice cave, Low Tatra, mountains, nature, Slovakia, solo, student, travel

For my first day in Slovakia, Juraj decided we should visit a couple of caves.  We left shortly after breakfast, which included fresh vegetables, fruits, coffee, cheese, bread, and eggs.  It was then a two-hour drive east into the mountains.  The drive took us even longer because of construction we got stuck behind.  When we finally arrived, we paid for parking at the entrance and hiked a long, steep hike up to one hillside.  This was the entrance to the “Ice Cave”.

DEMÄNOVSKÁ ICE CAVE

Tours for the cave (Demänovská ľadová jaskyňa) leave every hour and tickets are sold at the cave within 15 minutes of the tour.  We managed to hike the hill just in time to buy tickets and go in with a large group.  The tour was led in Slovak, but Russians and Polish also accompanied us.  The cave started as cold, then we descended farther and farther and it got much colder.  Suddenly, we started seeing ice.  We dropped into one section and the entire room was full of thick ice.  They had to plow several feet out of the way in order to install a walking and railing.  The ice beside us came up to our waists.  We could see frozen rivers and waterfalls.  Eventually, the 45 minutes was up and we were led back up the 200 steps to the warm outside.

Juraj and I went back down the hill and grabbed some food from a stand.  We then asked where to go for the next cave and followed the vendor’s instructions.  We walked for 30 minutes through the woods, crossing a creek several times.  The walk was long and only longer when we realized we had to climb yet another hill to find the cave and the tickets.  We walked quickly up the switchbacks, much steeper than the last one, and were passed by groups of children on a scavenger hunt.  Finally, we reached the top and were disappointed to find we had missed the tour by five minutes.  What else to do but have a beer?  The hour went by quickly and we were in the next cave in no time with our tickets and four other guests.

DEMÄNOVSKÁ JASKYŇA SLOBODY

This cave wasn’t as unique as the Ice Cave, but it is a “drip cave” and is still really interesting.  We yet again wound down several flights of stairs, going through large caverns to tight passageways.  There were pink and ruby stalactites and stalagmites through the majority of the cave.  There was also a flowing river.  In one section of this river, minerals were dripping to the floor to form what Juraj translated as “cave pearls”.  We then had another 141 steps back out of the cave and a very long walk back to the parking lot where our car was.

We went a different way home to completely avoid the construction.  I was very tired and now also very sore from hiking so much.  We got home and I finally met Juraj’s son, had some dinner, and wound down in the house for the night.