Ichiwakisha and the Wind Mountain - or - adventures of the unfinished

I went back the farm for a very brief visit and there was snow up to my knees and I took a walk by myself in snowshoes through the field and over the creek and up the mountain and when I got to the top of the hill there was a forest and no matter where I stood I was in perfect proximity between the trees. I could have been one of them I stood so still as the sun knelt behind us. I ran over streams and fresh snow, stuck my hand in icy water. There was only the sound of my shoes and the snow under the weight of them, just beginning to form a fine crust.

At night I was up to my chin in cloud. As the fog fell around my feet I looked up at the hyper-real starry sky. Tears don't freeze as one might imagine. It is so good to know that the farm is as unchanging as it is changing, that I can come back after letting New York do something to me, change me in whatever direction, and everything will be just as I left it, but whiter. Clad in snow.

Here is the beginning (or middle) of the story I wrote for Kia, our six-year-old farm neighbor, and one of the wisest people I know. Ichiwakisha is her Native American name: Wild Mountain Girl. The story is unfinished – I am letting her take the reins. But what do YOU think happens next?


Ichiwakisha climbed her mountain in a deerskin dress.

It was not easy. She slipped on the ice and the ice slid into the water and the water sunk and sprang far below her and she looked down to see the ripples she had made in the moonlight. All day she worked on her metal cube, folding her wind-strong fingers around it until her skin was raw, smoothing out the edges. The winter hit her hard, but she ran her wind-strong hands over it, too, soothing it like an angered child and she took care of it even in its absence. Below, below even the valley, were the people and the myriad creatures Ichiwakisha's quest would save, though she was too far in the mountain forest to hear their calls.

That night, the moon made water ice and the let the snow melt and fall at once.

In her dreams Ichiwakisha had seen how both her worlds, mountain and man, could coexist and so she placed her man-made metal cube at the tip-top of the mountain and in it the moon reflected all of Ichiwakisha's worlds and dreams and all the spirits in her and in the mountain her water-strong feet fell upon. And as she turned to leave, her long, gold hair spiraled with the wind and caught the moon and in it too the moon showed what came before, and after, though she would never know this.