Pop 89: A Wild Surmise
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
“We can never tell anyone about this place,” I say to my friend as we stand in awe under the hill that from far away looked like a mountain. For years now I’ve gazed upon the mountain hill that rises from the bottom of empty Bear Paw Sea. And every time I come upon it I get a feeling of wild surmise.
Wild surmise is that mix of wonder and curiosity and appreciation that comes over a person when faced with something mysterious, most often a natural phenomenon. The feeling is tenuous and yet permanently perspective altering. You want to both rush toward its source, and that the same time you don’t dare get closer in case the spell breaks.
The term comes from a poem by John Keats called “In Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Keats and a friend were reading translations of Homer aloud to each other one night when he suddenly felt a sensation overcome him. “I felt like some watcher of the skies,” he writes, “when a new planet swims into his ken/Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/He stared at the Pacific – and all his men/Looked at each other with a wild surmise”. The men, when silent in their state of awe, were spying land – new land. And though it’s worth noting they planned to conquer the land, at that moment, they were simply creatures experiencing a new reality, like astronauts landing on the moon.
It could be that the mountain-hill, darker than any other hill in the area, is, in fact a sacred place for indigenous people. And that would be another good reason to keep a respectful distance. All I know is, I experienced a familiar yearning that arises in certain places ( the deep south of Saskatchewan being one and the American South being being another). I get an intense sense of intense déjà vu. As if I can almost hear the ancestors comprising the rocks and plants and animals talking to me and shepherding my steps.
I know, I sound like a kook. WooWoo, as one friend calls it. So, I’ll hold up on the mystical stuff. Let’s just say that I revere this mountain-hill. I won’t tell people where it is. They will have to discover it for themselves. And I don’t assume I ever lived on that hill in a past life. I’m not that interested in who or what my soul inhabited before I got here; I have enough on my plate figuring out my soul is up to now.
But I will say that on that day, just four days ago, my friend and I decided to get closer. And that required losing sight of the mountain-hill for a moment while we descended into a small valley. The valley itself was alluring, partly because I am certain no one has visited it in a very long time. Although its worth noting that this park was once private ranchland, you will not find any wayward wheatgrass to mar its ancient beauty.
The day was warm and not at all windy. Sandhill cranes migrated overhead all day long, sounding like a thousand purring baby frogs. You have to look way high up to see them, higher than you would to spot migrating geese, and sometimes they are so high they cannot be spotted, which just made the day more magical as I attributed the crane calls to the hill beckoning us toward it.
When I finally got to the base of the hill two things struck me. First, the hill was not black or even dark brown. It was the colour of dried clay. And though it was steep, it was in no way daunting. In fact, it had a benign, comforting feel. It’s three gentle hills sat above me like three graces, or three grandmas, content and calming. The second thing that struck me was that there was an eagle’s nest on the third hill. How was it I hadn’t noticed it earlier? I asked aloud. It’s huge and unmistakable and yet up until that moment it was invisible to me.
I recall being told once by a visionary that once you become aware of a thing you cannot become unaware. The thing that up until now was invisible is now highly visible and you can never go back to unseeing it again. It could have been Black Elk who first introduced me to this idea. Or it could have a Franciscan monk, or a Jungian poet. It’s a reality for most mystics and dreamers. But for most of us we go through life passing by revelation after revelation, too busy to witness their gift and gentle nudging into another level of awareness.
I sat under the hill for a long time. And then I ventured up it. I wanted to see if there was an eagle in the nest. I made my way up to the top, my friend waited and watched from below. I leaned over and peaked into the nest but could see nothing. Then I made my way to the other peaks. The second was a bit lower but the wind up there was fierce. The third, a little tougher to get to because of a dropping step and narrow corridor, glittered. It was covered in crystals. I wanted to explore but I was being buffeted by a wind like a school yard bully. I had to fall to my knees and scooch down the slope before I toppled over, saying thank-you, thank-you, thank-you all the way down.
We stood for a while before heading back to Val Marie. Every hundred yards or so we looked over our shoulders with a wild surmise to see if the nest was still there. And it was. And, as far as I know, still is. We left an apple and the rest of a roll of cough drops as a thank-you. But we need to get tobacco and sprinkle it all over the place, I told my friend. And whatever we do, we can’t tell anyone.