Acrylic on Canvas

The child looked up from the pool of water swirling in the crick to watch the foliage as it seemed to shimmer and form into a shape and the just as quickly shimmer into a new shape. The shape of a woman emerged as if it were made out of the foliage itself. Yes, it was definitely a woman moving toward her.

It was the Ancient One and she came back many times over the years to sit and talk about things both large and small. But over time the girl could only hear a whisper of her voice in the babbling water and even later only at the edge of the ocean where she longed for the gentle voice and wise words of the Ancient One. The woman she became forgot the water song but the child she was never did.

The young woman became a Forest Ranger and it came to be that she worked in the Red River Gorge. One day as she patrolled the banks of the rushing water, she came upon hundreds of eagle feathers strewn across the forest floor. The feathers shuttered in the wind that lifted them up and then let them fall. Her heart beat like a drum in her chest and the power swirled around her. She gathered this sacred gift with trepidation, knowing it was illegal for a white girl to do so, but fearing more the consequences of spurning this powerful gift.

In secret she wove the feathers with a stitch and a prayer into a mandala. Each small action taking her further into a crime that threatened to destroy her career, yet with each stitch a note of the water song returned to her. In secret, she danced with the mandala a new rhythm. Where would this lead her?