Secrets of an Ageless Journey

This book began simply enough: after retiring on a small acreage in southeast Kansas, raising livestock soon became more of a hobby than a business.           Our livestock and the mischievous wildlife must have missed the part about how they should interact with us. The old saying “what goes around comes around” is a more accurate description of their way of behaving. I began to write down their unusual, humorous, and sometimes spontaneous conduct in short stories.

The most remarkable of all the animals was a very clever and resourceful border collie acquired to help manage the cattle. It did not take long to appreciate the cattle dog’s no-nonsense approach to sorting out all the problems, real or mysterious, and to putting all the inhabitants in their place. It became apparent his inborn mystique was not derived from the everyday world with which I was familiar.

I came to the conclusion that if he could easily exist in my everyday world so could I in his instinctive world of nature and spirit. In the pursuit of such an undertaking I found it impossible to keep a purely subjective perspective.

With Native American Indian culture as the only realistic and reliable authority on the subject, I began to make my way into the cattle dog’s persona. Who knows how or why a challenge was eagerly accepted by the cattle dog and a rivalry came into being? It was a struggle just to stay one step ahead of the other: the cattle dog with his speed and cunning me with my human skills.

I am sure that it was a look of delight that came over him when he had done one better on me. Do not misunderstand—the cattle dog knew his responsibilities very well, responding to all my commands if they applied to the job at hand.

To my surprise other animals joined in the rivalry, mostly on my side, maybe just as payback for the cattle dog’s manipulation or maybe just to make it fair. What became clear was that most of the animals understood humans much more than I had ever anticipated. In that unguarded and natural environment the animals took on individual personality traits that were in some ways similar to those of humans. “I really do have a life too, you know.”

I could only imagine that some process of invading the border collie’s domain had brought on this situation. To the cattle dog and the other animals, it must have been in some way a signal for a new order of the land—something like a new playing field. For some, they were stronger, faster, and more cunning, and I respected that. For others, domesticated or wild, I was a source of refuge and support, even to lodge complaints.

I knew I had gone too far when I began relating personality traits of an animal to an individual person, even though the philosophical metaphors were amazingly accurate in predicting behavior.

Still, that was on my part— what about the animals? I could only rationalize the close interaction between me and the animals shaped something of an extended family circle; it was even conceivable the animal members of the family became conversant by inference, predicting, or possibly as a result of some degree of theorizing. It did occur to me that possibly some controlling invisible force, maybe even a spiritual presence, was involved. What else?

In any case, it was not difficult to understand why in Native American Indian legends and traditions animals and humans are portrayed as relatives in a single, unified, and highly integrated system with all aspects of daily life having spiritual meaning and purpose.

What would it have been like to live in an age when Native American Indians viewed themselves as being one with the energies of the earth, nature, and all of the Great Spirit’s creations? From my experience, participating in the natural order of life with our animals, I had very little knowledge and some basic skills when compared with the strength, slyness, and, yes, sneakiness of the animals.

It is no wonder Native American Indian legends tell of gifted ones who existed in both the visible, everyday world and in an invisible, spiritual world; something like a sixth sense where they became more perceptive to the subtle nature and inner meaning that exist around them. In time the idea of gifted ones became more compelling if thought of as having the presence within the community that secured balance and harmony.

Imaginary or not, I began to write about animals and birds, coexisting with humans each with their own individual intellects, a unique particular knowledge of the universe, and their own skillfulness for living in it. My once leisure activity with the animals turned into a quest for any fragment of information on the subject.

After a time the historical epic of one Native American Indian nation became the spirit of a book, Secrets of an Ageless Journey: The Mysterious Gift.