they give your soul wings.
—Caitlin Kittredge
Wind Walker
I met Jim Crow through a colleague of mine who once used him to help an aboriginal female patient conquer her depression.
Jim’s a fiftyish Mohawk Indian with long grey-streaked hair tied back in a ponytail. He’s a shaman and local guru, when he’s not performing his duties as medicine man and healer.
Generally he’s out minding his traps, usually dressed in a red or blue lumberjack shirt and jeans, but today he’s helping me.
Oh, did I mention? He’s got a crow following him around. I’m not talking about a pet crow—but a wild crow. He thinks it’s either a spirit guide, or one of his ancestors.
I’m in charge of psychiatry at the Brant District hospital and I’m spending my day off combing the woods at Rattlesnake Point looking for a lost eight-year old autistic boy.
I invited Jim along because of his tracking skills, but also because he knows the way of Nature in a way that’s almost prescient.
“Hey Doc—we need to stop.”
“Do you hear something?”
“Naw—I lost sight of Wind Walker.”
Wind Walker is Jim’s totem. I think he channels the wisdom of the Great Spirit to him. He explained it to me once on a camping trip, but I was less open to his wisdom then, than I am now.
But being around Jim has taught me to respect his ways.
We hear a faint cawing off in the distance and Jim points to the top of a two hundred foot high ridge. “He’s up there.”
“I don’t see a thing.”
“You don’t need to see his shape, Doc—Wind Walker's telling me where the boy is.”
I look at the cliff in dismay. “How the hell are we going to get up there?”
Jim pulls some rope and climbing gear from his backpack. “I guess we gotta climb,” he smiles, huge white teeth gleaming.
He relishes this—but me? —Two feet off the ground and I get vertigo.
“Don’t worry, Doc,” he reassures, “ you’ll be tethered to me, in case you fall.”
Gee thanks Jim. I already feel reassured. Not!
We start to climb the limestone cliff face and Jim is already well into a practiced rhythm.
After about ten minutes, I need a rest. We sit on a small ledge and Jim passes me a bottle of water.
“At the top of this cliff the vistas are beautiful, Doc.”
“How the hell did an autistic kid get all the way up here?” I ask.
“He walked.”
“Walked? You mean we could have taken a trail and hiked up there?”
Jim looks at me like I’m a moron. “Sure Doc—we coulda done that—but it would’ve wasted about an hour. We’re going the direct route—you know—as the crow flies?”
At that moment, as if on cue, Wind Walker circles above us and caws down at Jim, who waves back.
“Don’t tell me that bird is talking to you.”
“Okay. I won’t—but we have to hurry cause it’s gonna rain soon.”
I look up at puffy white cumulus clouds and the blazing hot sun.
“Okay, if you say so,” I reply dubiously.
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I ask, perplexed.
“I didn’t say it was gonna rain Doc—Wind Walker told me—but you said…”
I interrupt. “I know what I said.” Sigh. “How much longer until we reach the top?”
“For me? Ten minutes. For you—half an hour.”
“How is this faster than walking?” I grump.
“Do the Math Doc—it’s at least twenty minutes faster—unless we jogged up the trail.
He eyes my paunch—“but then, you’d have to be in really good shape.”
I put up my hand to stop him. “Lead on Macduff.”
A half hour later, I’m lying flat on my back at the top of the cliff wondering if I’m going to recover my breath.
Jim’s walking around, frowning and looking puzzled.
“What’s wrong?” I gasp.
“I don’t see no footprints Doc—and no sign of the kid.”
“Maybe your totem was wrong.”
He smiles. “That never happens, Doc. The kid’s here—I just don’t know where, yet.”
The crow swoops down and circles off to our left. Jim approaches the cliff edge and gives a soft whistle.
“Oh, boy! Trouble.”
Using my elbow I manage to sit up and get onto my knees. I crawl forward and look over the edge.
About ten feet down there’s a tiny outcrop and the boy’s lying there.
Jim shakes his head. “He mustn’t have seen the edge and slipped down the cliff side.”
“I hope he didn’t fall directly,” I say, staring at the limestone ledge below.
“Naw, he didn’t,” Jim says confidently, “see the scuff lines where he slid and the broken branches of the scrub pine? He probably slid backwards and tried to grab hold of bushes on the way down.”
“He’s not moving,” I remind him.
“No—he’s not. I better go down and check him out.”
He ties the rope around a nearby tree trunk and begins walking down backwards, leaning out from the cliff wall.
In moments, he’s down on the ledge and nursing the boy.
“He’s all right, Doc—just groggy from the fall. I’ll give him water—you follow me down.”
I grab hold of the rope and mostly slide down backwards, hanging on for dear life. When my feet touch bottom, I drop the rope and sink to the ground.
“You okay, Doc?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. How’s little Edward doing?”
Jim smiles. “Eddie boy’s doin’ fine, but he’s sprained his ankle. He can’t walk on it.”
“Okay, I’ll call for help.”
I flip open the cell and can’t get a signal. We’re too close to the cliff face—I should have called when I was still up above.
I turn to tell Jim and a sudden red flash of lightning strikes a tree near the top of the cliff. I almost jump off the ledge.
“Here comes that rain I’m not supposed to tell you about Doc.”
I roll my eyes. “What are we going to do?”
He points back at a recess in the cliff face. “We’re going to squeeze in there and light a fire to keep little Eddie here from going into shock.”
I run around as fast as I can gathering twigs and branches and dry roots and Jim carries the boy back to the recess and covers him with his lumberjack shirt.
I bring back three armfuls of branches before huge drops pelt the ledge, splattering on the rock like flattened black cherries.
“Whew! It’s really going to come down.”
Jim eyes me balefully.
“All right,” I concede, “You were right.”
“Not me, Doc.”
“Okay,” I sigh, “Wind Walker—your totem—your spirit guide.”
He smiles genially. “You gotta match?”
My jaw drops. “No, I don’t have a match—I don’t smoke. Great—just great!”
He shrugs. “Don’t worry, Doc—I can still make a fire—I just wanted to do it the easy way.”
He picks up a black piece of rock and begins striking it against another stone. Dull red sparks shoot out. In minutes, he’s got a blaze going.
We sit there, Jim cradling Eddie’s head in his lap, and we watch the fire.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“We wait till the storm’s over, Doc.”
Unfortunately, the storm shows no sign of being over and little Eddie’s ankle is throbbing.
“Damn! I wish I brought my medical satchel with me.”
Jim gets an awed look on his face. “You got one of them black doctor bags? I always wanted to look inside one of them.”
“Of course I have one of them—I’m a doctor, after all.”
“No, you’re a psychiatrist—you counsel people—just like me.”
I’m too tired to argue.
“Hand me my back pack, Doc.”
“You mean your doctor’s satchel?” I deadpan.
He smiles good-naturedly. “Hey, you can call it that if you want.”
He opens the satchel and takes out a baggy full of a familiar-looking substance and a clay pipe.
“Hey, is that what I think it is?”
“It’s medical marijuana, Doc—I gotta certificate from the government here that says I can use it.”
Of course he does—why am I not surprised?
He stuffs the pipe and dreamily begins smoking—after a few drags, he passes the pipe to me.
“Hey—I can’t use this stuff.”
“It’s bad mojo to refuse a peace pipe, Doc—I thought you psychiatrists always did the politically correct thing.”
I sigh and relent. With Jim I’m finding, resistance is futile.
We sit and smoke and watch the fire—listen to the thunder, watch the rain—sit and smoke. Before long, I’ve nodded off, into a London of fog and green grass.
We’re flying. Wind Walker is beside us and Jim has Eddie tucked under one arm and me under the other.
We’re circling in free flight, high above the valley and the patchwork fields below. I can see the highway winding like a ribbon, cutting across the escarpment. I can feel the wind beneath us, bumping us gently like a billowing wave.
Down, down we spiral and the earth turns until I get dizzy and shut my eyes. When I open them again, an emergency ward nurse is staring at me.
“Doctor Wallace—are you all right?”
My ears are buzzing and my eyesight’s blurry. I feel shaky and disoriented.
“How did I get here?” I ask.
“You were brought in by that gentleman over there.” She points to Jim Crow sitting in a chair just outside the room.
“What about the boy?”
“Edward’s fine—just a sprained ankle and some cuts and bruises. You were all very lucky to get here in this storm.”
I lean back on the pillow and stare up at the ceiling. I have no idea what’s going on.
“Your friend wants to talk with you—are you up to it?”
I nod and she leaves. Jim comes in and pulls up a chair beside the gurney.
“How ya doin’ Doc? Feelin’ okay?”
“What the hell happened up there Jim?”
He grows somber. “Crow’s the guardian of magic and the healing circle, Doc—he’s also the master of illusion and a shape shifter.”
“Fine, fine,” I say impatiently, “ but how did we get off that cliff face?”
“Like I said Doc, whenever Crow’s around, magic is near. You experienced a change of consciousness—we shifted into his realm.”
“His realm?”
“Yeah Doc—the home of the wind and the sky.”
“But how did we get out of that mess, Jim?” I insist.
“You know, Doc, there’s an old Navajo saying—there’s a way out of every dark mist—over a rainbow trail. We rode that rainbow till it bent down and dropped us right here in the hospital parking lot.”
“That’s nice, Jim. You really believe that?”
“Sure, don’t you?”
“No.”
“But you’re here aren’t you?”
I wave my hand—give up fighting. I surrender—to Jim, the Navajos—to Wind Walker and the Crow totem.
Jim often talks of that day up there on Rattlesnake Point and when he does, he laughs and says we were brought home on the wings of the wind.
The damnable thing about it—I have this phantom memory of coming down and circling in for a final approach.
Funny thing isn’t it—how the mind plays tricks on you?