At Skan, the Native American summer camp I went to, along with tracking animals and making up music videos to 80’s pop songs, we were all given our own power animal and spirit name. My animal was the chipmunk, and my name was Many Colors Woman. I had a shield with my poorly painted rainbow on it, that I carried with me and eventually hung above the toilet in my parent’s bathroom. When Black Snake Woman gave me my power animal, I felt expansive. I had a wild part of myself and I was more than myself; I was an animal. I was cute and I was running freely everywhere. I began seeing chipmunks as signs that something awesome was going to happen. I became giddy at the sight of that little stripe and relieved when it wasn't a boring old squirrel. I remember seeing one crushed on the side of Interstate 91, getting teary eyed, and saying a little prayer. I hoped it wasn't a sign that something bad was going to happen to me or my family.
I was 7 or 8 and I was falling in love with the earth, and what the dirt and creatures brought out in me. I had moved from New Jersey a couple of years earlier and was still very much an urban kid. I was frightened by my friend’s horse, disinterested in skiing or hiking, and preferred to stay inside, play Mash, and experiment. I think I started going to Skan the same year my step-dad started weaving invisible spiderwebs around the perimeter of my bedroom, to keep away the bad dreams that were waking me up at night. Every evening I would lay in bed, and he would intricately mime a protective web, sometimes listing all of the things it would keep out, and sometimes just quietly and methodically moving around the room. The old floorboards would creak and moan as he reached into high corners and around bookshelves and mirrors. He was thorough and the spiderweb was brilliant. Surely, part of his motivation was to get me to sleep through the night, so I would no longer crowd their newly wed bed. I think he also saw that nothing else was working, that I was scared, and that he needed to get creative. This nightly weaving sparked my obsession with rituals, calmed my fears, taught me that belief is powerful and real, and that my step-dad and I were capable of trusting and loving one another.
Every morning in the teepee, we had to go around the circle and chant something in the voice of our power animal to the same tune as everyone else. We had hand drums to keep the beat, and there was sage burning, and we were wearing all white, and it was early in the morning. I remember getting nervous every time it came close to my turn, because all I could think of was, “I am a chipmunk, I am a chipmunk, searching the trees for nuts.” I always wanted to sing something more creative, more rhythmic, but I couldn’t really think of anything. I sat mesmerized as Oak Tree sang about his growth, and Otter sang about something that only Beaver understood.
We were all little rag-tag animals full of spirit, prowling the woods, rubbing sticks together to make fire, wearing headbands and feathers, drawing pictures of scat, and praying to the four directions.
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