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| Photo: Wolfgang Staudt |
I was having one of those days when you 'know' you're exactly where you're supposed to be...
After I dropped my wife, Jenny, off to do a Reiki healing on her mom (a miracle in itself), I went for a hike to rejuvenate. I went to a local park that I‘d seen on a map of the area, not realizing it was a campground rather than a hiking area. My logical mind thought about getting back in the car and looking elsewhere, but I felt that Spirit had other plans for me.
I wandered past dirty picnic tables and through the faint trails between the connector roads and empty site lots. It was still off-season, and what few campers there were at that time eyed me suspiciously - why would anyone be wandering around here anyway? I imagined that theft happened pretty often here, it being so close to town. You could hear the expressway - it wasn't exactly a wildlife area, unless you count the empty bottles and chip bags, signs of the previous night's parties.
Listening to my intuitive promptings about where to go, it appeared after a while that I was being left feather hints (Wolf often leaves them for me as sacred path signs). I got to what seemed an unlikely spot in the middle of a trail. Squirrel! I'd been thinking of getting my cashews out anyway... but he left. Funny, you'd think he'd be used to handouts from campers (yeah, I know, I shouldn't feed the wildlife). Ok, that squirrel was gone, but I could see another one just ahead, sitting on a stump, busily eating, watching me from a distance (but pretending not to notice me, I thought). Looking around, it wasn't exactly picturesque. This spot didn't really have a view at all, but it did have a log to sit on (imitate Squirrel, I wondered? After all, he was eating his lunch). I'm supposed to have my lunch here? I sat down and opened up my bag. Then I saw a mound of feather fluff (a kill site), and I knew I was supposed to be there.
As I was just about done, I could see a man walking down the trail towards me. Ordinarily, I'd have been at least a little surprised, but I can't say that I was today. Earlier, I'd seen what I'd describe as a 'serviceable' camper parked just outside the park boundary - people living on the fringes, I thought, perhaps not wanting (or able) to pay even the off-season fee. If I wouldn’t have stopped for lunch (thanks, Squirrel!), I’d have missed the upcoming encounter altogether. He walked with a stick he'd picked up. He was a thin wisp of a man. If you were to ask me to imagine a hermit... He seemed a little surprised that I was being friendly to him.
"I was hoping this was a park with hiking trails", I said, after exchanging some quick pleasantries.
He gave me directions to an out-of-the-way area, tucked between a sports field and - again - the highway. It didn't sound like anything you'd find on a guide-map. I headed that way anyway, since it was in the direction of my car, thinking that I could at least look polite about following his directions (even if I did decide to drive off). And on my way there, I saw a rabbit. Rabbit is about fear, but he's also about changing directions. As I got to the car, Rabbit came out of the bushes I'd seen him disappear into a second ago, and he continued down the road towards a sports field (in the direction the man had suggested). "Looked like rain", he'd said. I figured it as a good sign; I picked up the hat and raincoat I'd left in the back seat and followed my furry little buddy.
I found the trails all right. It turned out that they were behind a school. Hmmm... I was going to learn something today, wasn't I? Again, it wasn't exactly what you'd call 'pristine wilderness.' There were burned out stumps where kids had been playing with matches, for instance, and an old mattress - a make-out mattress(?) I didn't want to know. With how I'm describing things, don't think for a second that I didn't appreciate the nature that was there. I wholeheartedly believe that even though kids came there for other reasons altogether, nature gives herself to heal them, unconditionally.
The path ahead of me finally started to look a little more promising/picturesque. So why was Spirit urging me to go right? That way would take me to the top of a small ridge that was blocking the sound of traffic from the roadway (the busy traffic to and from the ferry terminal, no less). Ordinarily, I wouldn't have been there at all, headed towards that noise, on a nature walk especially. "But what's that little bright blue thing, part-way up?" I wondered. When I got to it, it turned out to be just a piece of cast away plastic. Thinking on the significance of it though, "...blue does symbolize clarity."
It wasn't really a trail that I was on at all; it was more like bushwhacking. Once at the top of the ridge though, I did feel as though I was in ‘the right spot‘. I looked around, thinking that perhaps Spirit was leading me to an animal sighting. Who would it be, I thought, and why would they be here, of all places? After all, the highway was right there, and I could imagine the activities of kids scaring pretty much everything off during the school-week. Mind you, cougars had to hide somewhere, and there had been the rare sightings around the city after all. Could I even hope for something as exciting as that here? I looked around, and then I looked up...
...and then I looked down. There was a nondescript piece of crumpled fabric at my feet. I considered it for a second. I thought that perhaps my 'mission' was to intuit who might have left it (not that I'd ever done that before), but then I considered that it didn't really matter... "I think I'm here to receive".
I grabbed a fold and tugged it up from the ground. The forest had started to reclaim it; it must have been there for some time. It looked like a throw rug, or a wall hanging maybe, but I couldn't quite make out the design (at first). "It used to be quite colorful once," I thought. It didn't take me long - likely because of my experience discerning images in my portraiture work - before I made out the lighthouse. I spread it out a little better, took this photo, and accentuated it's image when I got home:
As I rounded the corner before mum's house, I already had the feeling that I'd be arriving too early. I looked in through the front window - Jenny was still working on her. I walked towards the shops, thinking I'd perhaps pick up a present for Jenny.
I noticed "The Haunted Bookshop", and went in (as Spirit knew I would), curious as to whether I'd pick something up - a 'presence', perhaps? (Sorry about the bad pun, but I really couldn't help myself.) Usually, I'm not one for used book stores, but - considering the day I'd been having - I was at this point assuming I was fated to go in.
I looked around aimlessly until I noticed that I was in front of the 'art' section. I didn't see anything that interested me. I considered a stack of magazines. I closed my eyes and pulled one out. It was on colour mixing - a little dated, and not necessarily anything I didn't already know. I thought that perhaps coming in was just about killing time after all, and headed for the door.
Before I tell you what happened next, I'll tell you (for those of you who don't know) that Jenny and I had been working at manifesting a move to Edinburgh (and working at keeping the faith on it actually happening …considering that we’d been picking bottles off the beach for food around this time, it didn‘t seem in any way ‘realistic‘). I turned right into a shelf of books about Scotland! There were two right in front of my face that I couldn't ignore if I tried: one had a large graphic of the Scottish Thistle on its cover, and the other... a lighthouse being built! "The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson" by Bella Bathurst.
Besides delivering messages, Pigeon medicine is also about returning home... I'd never been there before, but I couldn't help it at that moment... Scotland. felt. like. home.
There are people who would read my story from which you'd hear the words 'coincidence', perhaps 'crazy' even, but you know what? I'm really happy, and I'm pretty damn sure I'm on the right path. You want answers? Look inside, and open your eyes.
All the Love you can handle, and then some
David J. (Mac)Nagy
As I mentioned, I originally wrote this in May of 2010 (as “Pigeon Medicine - This is why I call it a LifeDream“). Remembering my time on the beach back then, it all seemed so unlikely, but as of today, I’ll have been in Scotland for 6 incredible months!
In honour of all the signs on your life path,
Big Medicine Love to you,
~ Black Feather
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