After a leisurely early morning enjoying coffee and steel cut oats with hand-picked huckleberries (thank you Marcia) and visiting with Hank a bit, the two of us set off for the next adventure. We took her jeep this time, and after stopping to get water at the local spring, we headed up narrow unpaved road to see the remains of a once thriving mining town high up on the mountain.
The weather was beautiful and unseasonably warm, and being up that high on the mountain and looking at the crumbling mine buildings, I imagined the work that went on there and the hardships faced. Some of the stone and brick buildings remain standing, a tribute to the amazing courage and skill of the pioneers of our nation.
We went to Phillipsburg for lunch, and had a delicious lunch at Sunshine Station.
Then we went to Gem Mountain and spent an interesting couple of hours digging through a bucket of dirt looking for sapphires, and found quite a few.
I decided to spend a little money to have the best ones heat treated. I can expect to get them in 3 to 6 months.
In the evening we went to the drumming circle. Marcia has connected with an amazing group of women. She had tried to convey to me what this is about, but there is nothing like the experience. We went outside the town to Barbara’s house, where she and her husband live in a beautiful house “off the grid” – sustained with solar and wind power, and delicious well water. Their two friendly dogs greeted us and their horses grazed nearby.
I was warmly welcomed by Barbara, who makes drums and has a connection to the earth and to the animals whose skins are used. She told me to choose a drum and I was immediately drawn to one which was made from buffalo skin. She has a brochure which told me that:
The buffalo, Tatanka, is a symbol of abundeance and manifestation. The massive head implies a need to combine our efforts with the divine Creator, and is a symbol of the heavens and the divine. The messge of the buffalo is that both the mundane and the spiritual are necessary for manifesting what we are seeking. Tantaka usually follow the easiest path. When we joint the right action with the right prayers, the path opens and flows easily. The buffalo energy may indicate opportunities to manifest or for you to manifest abundance in some area of your life. Buffalo energy implies that the law of synchronicity is operating in your universe.
We did four rounds of drumming, and during the last one I felt very connected to the other people in the room and to the earth. I heard, very faintly, Native American chanting in the distance. It was an energizing spiritual experience. Afterwards, we stayed around and talked for a while, and a lady named Marlene, obviously intuitive, told me that amazing things were happening in my life. This is an affirmation for me.
And she gave me a tourmaline stone, said “It wants to go with you.” She said it will dispel negative energy around me, that she had been wearing it in a medicine bag.
It was an amazing end to another wonder full day in Montana.
Embracing Uncertainty 