I walk the floor and talk to myself.  Living alone and in the woods I get away with this.  The deer don’t mind, nor the coyotes.  In this way I sift to the bottom of my beliefs, those smooth pebbles I trust. 

I saw an angel when I was ten.  In the woods twice I have distinctly seen creatures not described in any book.  The medicine plants have been put to the test more than once, so in my bones I know their power.  Sometimes I am psychic, though usually I prefer to describe this as acutely perceptive.  In dreams I am visited by amazing spirits that teach me more than I can hold.  Over and over the spirits tell me that what is highest in the universe loves me.  Sometimes I feel this reality, and sometimes I don’t. 

At night I walk into the woods and wonder how I know when the coyote is waiting and when she won’t be here until later.  One night there is a growl and I smile – it isn’t the coyote, but I know who it is.  She doesn’t mean any harm, only to tell me where she is. 

In the mountains, I feel eyes on my back.  “There is no one here except me,” I tell myself.  Nevertheless, I turn and there is the mountain’s peak revealed between trees.  “Yes, I see you, too,” I say.  The wind picks up and for no reason other than the beauty of the earth, I cry. 

None of these are experiences of the mind.  All of them are the knowledge of the heart,  knowing that is beyond what the brain can name.  

Still it is a comfort to walk the floor, to find these proofs, these gifts of the spirit.  With them I find my ground.  “This is where I stand,” I say.  

I am pleased to announce my book, The North Road, is the winner of the TISBA (The Indie Spiritual Book Award) Award in the Fiction Category.

This book almost wrote itself, though it was written many years after learning the stories and medicine that are the primary threads through the book.  Some of the content I learned standing in the rimrock of the southwest while a woman told me about the stolen children.  As she and I looked across the desert from the village, I could see the children, feel the heartbreak.  But there was something else as well - I could see that the children were still alive; I could see their individual faces.
Other portions of The North Road include medicine I was taught when I was young, some I learned while living in the desert, some in the mountains.  But the story of the second sanctuary?  The children, who I had held in my heart for so long, began to speak.  Fortunately, I let them.  
Medicine is mysterious and magical.  We are surrounded by help.  Often it arrives unexpectedly, like this award.  In truth, I do not feel so much like the author of these books.  I feel visited by spirit.