I returned home two weeks ago from my road trip to the Dakotas, and I’m still reeling from my time amid the heart of the prairies and sacred, indigenous monuments of the Great Plains. I love traveling, because if you are willing and present, the experiences you have are bound to alter your awareness of place, the land, shifting local culture, and your own personal narrative.
This journey was initiated as an invitation from the ancestral land spirits of Westhope, ND - an invitation to simply be with the land. My Grandpa Gary grew up as a boy on farm property there, which he eventually sold some years before he passed on. But when I was young, I remember listening to him discuss what it’s like to own land that someone else managed and farmed. It felt sort of…detached. To be honest, owning land at all is a weird, strange, detached sort of concept to me now. Especially as a white person on land from which my ancestors did not originate.
By point of addressing my own conflicted feelings about the very concept of land, and to whom it belongs, I set out to really give a good look at a great, and much battled over part of the so-called United States. The Great Plains is rich with fraught history, a collective cognitive dissonance resounds among many white residents and tourists, a selective re-membering of this land as a pioneering, settler haven. But I also met a good deal of native pride in local culture, language, spiritual traditions, and sacred monuments. I was especially moved by visiting Bear Butte in South Dakota, and Bear Lodge in Wyoming the following day. I don’t know that I would have visited Bear Butte had I not been invited by a native person to do so. It wouldn’t have felt right to simply play tourist on sacred land.
I am appreciative of the invitation to visit these sacred spaces, so I could offer the land and spirits contained therein, my gratitude. With the spirit of that intent, I took in my surroundings more slowly and deliberately. Taking my time to walk with purposeful observance, I fell in love with a particular variety of Artemisia (Artemisia ludoviciana), known commonly as Western Mugwort, but which is also know to my mentor, Shayne Case, as Sacred Prairie Sage. It has a slightly velvety, silver texture on both the upper and under sides of the leaves, and smells like a blend of mugwort, wormwood and sage. I first met her in North Dakota, on the land of the Spirit Lake Reservation. The leaves were waving to me in the breeze, from plentiful pale green stands, encircling a small brush of trees. It was in abundance everywhere I went throughout the state. I loved sitting with it, and being comforted by it’s fragrant, cooling force.
In perfect synchronicity, one of my most beloved plant allies, Common Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) - native to Europe and Eastern Asia - was the plant that I chose to carry with me from my home garden apothecary as a land offering, and a smoking companion on this journey. Mostly dried flowers, and some leaves, I had begun leaving some of it at each place of significance that I visited in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. So in many places, I was offering cousin to cousin: Common Mugwort to Western Mugwort. Smoke Common Mugwort if you would like to enhance lucid dreamwork, and induce general relaxation.
I include these stories about the mugwort I met, and the mugwort I know deeply, because the goddess, Artemis, and Bear have a history together, and because Artemis is the scientific namesake of mugworts and wormwoods alike: Artemisia. There were at least two varieties of wormwood I spotted growing along the Bear Butte trail…a possible origin of the name Artemis is ark-temnis, meaning bear sanctuary. And bear mythology is strong in cultures throughout the Northern Hemisphere, where Ursa Major, Great Bear, can be seen in the night sky. Listen to The Emerald podcast’s episode on Great Bear to learn more, and be enchanted. I didn’t meet any living bears on my travels, but I was met plentifully with the spirit of Bear.
The lichen that live on Bear Lodge (photographed above) in Western Wyoming are thought to be the oldest living organisms in relationship to this sacred geological monument. Their existence is what makes the tower glow with a greenish hue. So I thought, why not converse with the oldest living, divine, material beings before me. You know, see what they had to share…this is what they wish for us to remember:
We are the ancient ones. Treat us with respect. There is ancient power within you. Treat yourself with respect. Honor our collective journey with an offering of gratitude for our meeting. We formed to remind you (the humans) that there will always be further to climb. Climb as far as you can reach each day. To strive is to learn how to find new expressions of safety and power, in connection with all things. Learn to stand with potent power in stillness, reverence, and grace. And so it is. And is. And is. And is. Amen.
And so it is for now.
