A long time ago, there was a young teenager named Mozes Nanibush. He was being raised by his grandmother and his clan called him Bear. But because he was such a sweet, gentle young man, his grandmother called him Springtime. He was a great athlete and made great marks at school. But he was also a dreamer and quite the romantic.
One winter it was especially hard and everything stayed frozen for longer than usual. Mozes was very worried and his grandmother got sick with a cold. This had happened before and his grandmother had told him to get his bow and arrow and shoot up into the sky to the Bringer of Winter. It had worked then and so, when Orion was high in the sky and very visible, he took his bow and arrow and laid down to find the stars that made Orion... but he fell asleep.
While asleep, he had a dream about walking along a frozen river for days and days until he came to a log cabin. He peeked in the smokey window and saw an old man who was grizzled with white long hair and lots of wrinkles. The old man saw him and had him come in.
When he entered, he immediately smelled sweetgrass and red willow burning. As he entered, the old man said he had been waiting for him.
They smoked the pipe, offering it to the four directions, in a counter-clockwise direction which Nanibush had never seen done before. He began his story:
He told of a white bear, the keeper of winter. And he told of another old man who had been a great hunter but the people were afraid of him. The people knew when he breathed on the waters, they froze. He cannot be defeated and cold and winter comes as long as he is breathing. Which, of course, was that very old man’s story that he told with icy blue eyes staring at the young man. After telling of this, he asked the young man, still in the dream, of course, to tell him one of his stories.
Nanibush told his own story as a story. But he told of the young man (himself) as someone who could walk on the land and have Spring come. And his story ended there and, because it was so cold in the hut that he said he would go out and get some wood for a nice big fire to warm things up.
When he came in, he left spring wherever he had walked. And, when he entered the hut again he asked the old man if he had noticed. He had and the old man said they should expect another visitor.
Then the old man began to cry great tears. As the fire began to blaze, the old man began to disappear and, instead of being in a cabin, he was now in a wigwam. He had changed clothes into wearing old time clothes and suddenly a cold hand touched his shoulder and a great voice announced that he had come. The visitor was not a good spirit. He was angry. He challenged the boy to a duel for defying him and causing Spring. During the great furious fight, the boy was knocked unconscious. While he was unconscious, his grandmother came to him and told him to live and fight on because the people needed him to live.
He rose and continued fighting the visitor until a great fog came over them. The boy, younger, was able to defeat the visitor and the visitor limped off back to whence he came. As he left he called back that, since the young man was such a good young man, the Great Spirit had empowered him to conquer winter and would give him a sack full of all kinds of seeds to plant so they would bloom in his Spring. But, he called back to warn him that he would not always be able to have Spring, that Winter would come and try try again for eternity.
And, there, the dream ended and Mozes woke to it being Springtime. Yellow flowers were blooming all over. They were new to him and they looked like dancing moccasins in the Spring Breeze. The sun was higher and warmer as he walked back home to tell his Grandmother his awesome dream.
The Lady’s slippers are some of the first flowers to bloom each sp[ring, crawling up through rotten patches of ice and snow. They are the promise of warmer weather coming. Oh, I need Lady’s slippers.
©Carol Desjarlais 2.12.23
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