SKY: 4.11.2013

A dear friend once taught me how to give offerings of tobacco, and thus how to transmit my prayers and thanks to all corners of the earth--north, south, east, and west--and to the heavens--to the Great Mystery, to my ancestors, to Mother Earth and to Father Sky. Today I think particularly of Father Sky, but I can't detach the Mother's relationship to him, try as I might to focus only on him. For it is there quarrelling and love that I live between, their everyday movements that influence my experiences in this life.

Here is one such experience:

During the warmer months in Brattleboro, nestled in the Connecticut River Valley, there is often a mist that clings there, possessing different qualities with each new visit. Sometimes the droplets of mist are large and clear to see. Sometimes they are miniscule to the eye but nonetheless possessing clear substance when collected together. Some nights the mist is so fine that it merely brushes over your cheeks, rather than settling upon them. There is a hint of moisture, but it is fleeting, insubstantial.

I cherish this mist in its myriad forms. Grey days are imbued with a smell of life, the air thick with the breath of plants and trees, new air pouring down the river valley.

My clearest memories of this mist are at night while biking down certain streets criss-crossed with overhanging branches. With no traffic before or behind me, I have slowed to a crawling pace, enough to keep steady and moving. Some branches on these streets hang just below a streetlight, their leaves shedding a glow, and this glow possessing gradations of light and dark greens. And within these luminous streams, between the canopy and the pavement, hangs the mist, swirling and tumbling--as hot steam does, dancing above freshly poured coffee. At this sight, my feet will come down on either side to keep me from toppling as my bike's slow crawl ceases.

The sky trapped in the valleys of the earth. I have only ever known them in relation to one another. They have many more tales than I can tell.

- James Branagan