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| The last morning. |
After an easy flight and a long wait I was finally being led to the shuttle that would take me from Phoenix to Flagstaff where I would catch another shuttle the next morning for Lee's Ferry. A man led a small group of us through the airport, away from the company's fleet, and out to the pickup area. There a small white shuttle sat with a familiar looking figure at the back helping someone load their luggage. Big Ed!
Big Ed, the Navajo driver who shuttled us to Lee's Ferry on the first trip, was going to be driving me the whole distance this time. Not me personally, although it certainly felt like that as I sat behind him and we chatted. He hadn't changed that I could see - the thin braid, the bandanna headband, the cheerful happy face. He asked where I was going and what my plans were. I told him and that I remembered him from before and I expected he would be driving me the next day. He confirmed that.
Toward the end of our trip to Flagstaff, Big Ed asked everyone where they wanted to be dropped. One women, sitting alone toward the back, said she was going to the Courtyard Marriott, which was my destination. I looked back and asked if she was headed for the Canyon. She was. At the next stop I went back and sat next to her.
There is no good explanation for what followed. So it can only be a miracle.
We went to dinner that night, traded stories, laughed, talked about the adventure ahead of us. She had questions. I had answers, and stories from my first trip. Shelly, short for Michelle. A California city girl. Young enough to be my daughter. Starting over at midlife after raising and teaching four children, now in their twenties. Tender heart. Adventurer soul. Courageous spirit.
We sat together on the shuttle to Lee's Ferry the next morning, chose gear next to each other, packed together and got in the raft together, talking the whole time. When we stopped for camp that first night, we decided to share a tent and a campsite. We rode together the next day. And so it went for the rest of the trip. An easy companionship that simply existed without either of us discussing or deciding. We took pride in our ability to pitch and break down our tent quickly and efficiently. We developed routines, again without actually deciding on them. People thought we were mother and daughter traveling together, and then shared in our state of wonder at our actual relationship.
At the end of the trip, after the long bumpy school bus ride from the river at Diamond Creek to the reservation at Peach Springs, we pulled into a lot where a now-familiar white shuttle waited to take us back to Flagstaff. There was Big Ed, standing with his big smile and bigger presence. I was so happy to see him that I surprised us both by hugging him.
At the rest stop halfway to Flagstaff as Shelly and I were chatting outside the shuttle, Big Ed came up to us. He was holding the medicine bag I'd seen hanging from the rearview mirror of the shuttle. He said he'd been thinking of the two of us the whole time we'd been gone, wondering how we were doing. He wanted to share stones with us that held medicine, that he'd been given and carried in that bag. He told Shelly she had seemed so sad at the beginning, but that she looked different now. He reached into the small painted leather bag, and a small group of stones and crystals followed his hand out.
Shelly received hers first. A round polished stone of black and white. Beautiful and smooth and compelling. The veins of black creating pictures that changed with every glance. A stone of stories and hope and promise.
There was a stunning clear crystal in Big Ed's hand that my eye was drawn to, and I almost reached for it. But he handed me a completely different stone. This one looked very much like a small finger, reddish, slightly rough, rounded at one end, with a slight indentation at the other. It's hard to tell if it was shaped by man or the forces that shaped the Canyon we'd just left behind. It looks like it could have been a tool, or a bead that just needed a hole to complete. Or it could just be a small symmetrical miracle of weather and water.
Big Ed said we should carry the stones with us, and hold them when we needed to be reminded of the gifts of the Canyon.
At first I was disappointed. Shelly's stone seemed better, prettier. Big Ed's words were for her. He offered no special words of wisdom or insight for me. What message was I supposed to take from that?
The message is the mystery. I have a stone that is more question than answer. He didn't have words for me because this isn't the time for answers or outer wisdom. It's a time of deeper questions, inner wisdom. My stone reminds me that while there is a part of me always looking for the one answer to all the questions, true perfection is at its core imperfect.
Shelly and I rode together with the same shuttle company to the airport the next morning. No Big Ed this time, but he was there with us regardless. I expect he'll always be a part of our friendship, as he'll always be a significant part of my relationship with the Canyon and the River.
