And they were talking! They were all conversing in a language some part of his mind understood. They savored the play of light through the leaves; they joked about the silly squirrels, the forest children. The squirrels joked back and scampered off to their endless play. The animals’ language was basic and effortless to understand. The meanings of their calls was like a childhood memory so commonplace that he had never bothered to bring it into focus. Why did he have to come to a dream to learn that he should not just hear the animals but listen to them? This was the most comforting place he had ever been. He wanted to be sure to find it again. A thought came to his dream mind: “Get the name of this place.” He kept walking, hoping to find someone to talk to.
Soon he sensed a little fire. He heard the crackle and saw a bit of smoke. He came to a clearing and found a little old Native American man tending a fire witha stick. He gave it a prod just as Michael’s dream self entered. They made eye contact, and the fire keeper nodded. As if already sensing that he was in the dream and fearing that he might wake, Michael said to himself, “I have to ask him the name of this place.”
He watched awhile, admiring the man’s contentment with his trust, sensing that he knew the question in Michael’s mind. At last, he said, “What do you call this place?”
“You know,” the little man said, with a little smile.
I hate dreams like this, Mike said to himself even as the dream went on. “I did know it, but I couldn’t come up with the words,” he concedes. “It was like that language of the animals.” But the effort of bringing it into focus would wake him up. He had to be told. He had to hear it.
“Look, I want to come back here someday,” he told the fire keeper. “If I don’t know the name of it, I can’t ask directions.”
The little man just smiled as if this was some formality in a game he was used to. “This is the Land of the Elders,” he said, giving the fire another poke.
Of course, Michael started to think. That would figure. It was all so big, and the animals were talking. They had all crossed over and become elders. Elder trees, elder deer, elder turkeys. Then it was over.
For years, Michael couldn’t tell anyone about that dream, because he choked up trying to get the words out. It was that powerful. It’s only been in the last year or two that he can make it through the story.
“You have no idea what it’s like on the other side,” he said to me. I wish I could write that look in his eyes. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
Your Buddy Was Here
When Mad Bear was in the hospital, Mike got a call from one of the other guys who helped look after him. “You better go see Mad Bear. He’s in pretty bad shape.”
When Michael reached his side, the old shaman was about to have surgery for a bleeding ulcer. He had something urgent on his mind that he kept trying to say through the sedation. He could only get a word out: “Call!”
“Call who, Bear?” said Mike. “Who?” He had to shout in Mad Bear’s ear toget anything through. The answer was never different, a mumble and a trailing off after, “Call. . . .”
Mad Bear made it through the surgery, and the operation seemed to be a success. His heart, though, wasn’t strong enough to pull him out of the sedation. It was the anesthesia that killed him. He passed on December 20, 1985.
Michael went in to pick up Mad Bear’s clothing, and Mad Bear’s brother made the funeral arrangements. It was a difficult couple of days, pondering the last word Michael heard from his famous tutor. It’s never been clear to him what this might have been about.
Some time in the depth of the night of December 23, Michael woke out of a sound sleep. Something was in the room with him. He sat up, looked toward the door, and saw in the ambience of a streetlight a full-size, lifelike image of Mad Bear at the doorway. His arms were folded, and he leaned on the frame wearing a jaunty smile. It seemed a younger form, like the fifty-something Mad Bear he had first met. It lasted a good long time for a ghost, five or ten seconds. “I sat straight up in bed,” Michael said. “It was incredible.” He fell back to sleep, pondering it.
About ten the next morning, a call came in from the Cherokee John Pope (1920?–1997), a friend and colleague better known as Bob Dylan’s crony, the famous Rolling Thunder. “Your buddy was here last night,” was how he started.
“He was here, too,” said Mike. “I could see him standing right there. I guess he was making the rounds.”
RT, as they called him, got a real big kick out of that.
The Clipboard Dream
When Michael first visited Mad Bear, he heard so much of value spilling out that he started bringing a little pad with him and writing in it every few minutes. Mad Bear couldn’t have failed to notice, but it was the fourth or fifth such visit before he leaned over and looked at Mike. “What do you keep writing in those pads?”
“I’m hearing a lot of great stuff,” said Mike. “I like to write down what’s really important.”
“Is there something wrong with your brain?” said Mad Bear.
“I don’t think so,” said Mike.
“Then why don’t you use it? What do you think is going to happen if youlose that pad?” After that, Michael learned to rely on his mind and his memory. He has such a strong recollection of so much that his old tutor said to him that it would take a dozen books to get it all out.
