She did. “It looked like a little old man.”
They turned and came back. Their headlights showed it to be a great blue heron, as calm as a mailbox and standing perilously at the edge of the road. These rare, inspiring birds dominate the scene where they appear. You feel them when you peer down those long, wide creeks. You are drawn to look at them no matter how still they are. They keep quietness about them; they hate the commotion of machines and highways. Michael had never seen a heron do as this. It would be killed if it stood where it was.
He got out and came close to the graceful bird. He stepped into its animal gaze and spoke. “You can’t stay here,” he said. “You have to go somewhere else.”
The bird was unaffected. Michael appealed to it. “You can’t stay that close to the highway. The cars don’t care about you. They’ll run over you, they’ll kill you.” The bird just stared. Only when he tried to shoo it, coming a bit closer and making sweeping gestures with his arms, did it react. It flew up and landed, assuming an identical position on the other side of the road.
Michael crossed the road. “This is no time for fun and games,” he said. “I got whatever message you have to give me. I may not understand it till later, but now you have to let us help you. You don’t belong here any more. You have to go to a place you do belong.” The bird processed this in its own way, then flapped its wings and took off above the man-made glow of the street. The two humans followed it with their eyes into the deep turquoise of the summer twilight. Within their sight was a farm with a spotlight over a pond. The bird landed by the sheeny waterside, and Michael smiled. “Better fishing there, anyway,” he thought.
When Mike and Pam reached their home, an hour-old message was on the machine. Leon Shenandoah, chief of chiefs of the Longhouse folk, had crossed over. He wore the feather of the heron in the next world.
The Powerful Dream
In 2001, Michael had another of his power dreams, and this one involved Leon Shenandoah. The visual effect reminded him of a 1960s TV show.
Some of us may recall The Wild, Wild West, sort of a cowboy James Bond show. One of its trademark effects was the way each ten-minute segment ended. Live images of interacting characters froze—with appropriate music—into cartoonish stills, always at climactic moments and just before commercial breaks. The scenes did so in Mike’s dream. But this dream was about ancient Iroquois ceremonies, and the antique freeze-frames fell at the close of iconic rites. They were clearly meant to be teachable moments.
In his dream, Michael looked into darkness as if through an old-time theater or viewing device. He saw lit scenes of Native American people at dances and chants. During the live parts of the dream, a voice narrated, explaining what Michael was supposed to learn from what he was watching. It was a familiar voice, clearly iconic. It was Leon Shenandoah, majestic and mighty from his seasoning in the other world.
At the end of each scene, the active image froze into stillness like the commercial breaks of the old-time TV show, and Leon’s voice said urgently, “You got that? You got that?” Before Michael could answer, the next teaching scene started, and the voice went formal again. His dream mind tried so hard to take it all in. He knew what an honor this dream was and how precious these ceremonies were. He marveled; he cried in his sleep.
At the last, Leon’s voice came in, addressing Michael alone. “Don’t ever forget those ceremonies. There’s a time to come when you won’t have to see them done anymore, when others can take over for you. But you have to work until then. Don’t ever forget them.”
The feeling hit him deeply. When Michael woke up, this dream was as powerful as any he had ever had. It was one more confirmation of the course he had taken in the world, possibly why he would consent to help this book be written.
THE LAND OF THE ELDERS
Many Native American societies believe that some dreams are messages from the spirit realm. Often when an old-time Iroquois or Algonquin had a dream that felt exceptional, he or she consulted the medicine people in search of an explanation. Some dreams were so strong and direct that they had to be obeyed. Some were so impactful that the whole community had to be enlisted in a ceremony made to re-enact them and “close them out.”
A Dream Story
In 2005, Michael had a dream that he calls “really interesting.” It opened with him walking in a natural environment that became a redwood forest like those of California. He looked up and realized with a sense of awe that he couldn’t see the tops of the trees.
He started to explore the forest. Before long, he sensed that things other than trees were above him. He reached overhead, felt something soft and furry, and looked up to find the belly of a deer, big enough to loom like an arch. Reaching up to its snowy underside was like touching the lintel of a doorframe.
There were other animals, tame and trusting as the trees, and proportionally as big. There were turkeys whose bellies he could barely touch. They walked over him like he was a low bush. He had been among them for minutes. Why had he not noticed them before? It was as though the awareness of them faded in, as if they were only visible from well within the forest. They had been blurry forms at first. It was as if the ability to see them was something that had to
