This is the story of how a former bomber pilot, a Lakota guide, and an impossibly large bull elk came together to create a vision quest that proved, at least to me, that something is always with us, waiting for its chance to be heard.

Although I’ve written on this topic before, I’m diving a bit deeper as a way of saying to those interested, commit to your own quest and pay attention to what emerges. Something is always there to meet you on that journey.

The following recounts the story of my third and final vision quest, the one conducted with a Lakota guide in the mountains of New Mexico in 2007.

The Heart

The autumn before (2006), I’d participated in sweat lodges with this man and his wife on their mountain ranch (roughly 9,000 feet above sea level). A year later I took him up on his offer to guide me through a vision quest, Lakota-style.

The day before the quest was to begin, he asked me to visit with a man who, in a previous life, had bombed Vietnamese villages during a war everyone wanted to forget. That experience no doubt drove him to seek a different path and across the ensuing years he had become a renowned healer in the area.

It had been a full year since I’d embarked on my spiritual journey and much had changed, most notably with my physical health. He confirmed as much as he ran his hands an inch or so above my body.

Until he got to my heart. Eyes closed, his hands hovered there for what seem a very long time. Eventually he opened his eyes and said, “All done, you can sit up.” I swung my legs over the edge of the table and looked at him.

“Everything looks good,” he said. “But your heart is completely sealed. You need to tear down those walls if you’re ever going to find real peace.”

The skeptic in me thought, ‘yeah, yeah, I’m only here because I was asked to be.’ Yet his words also rang true, I was scared, I’d always been scared, and my heart felt that fear most of all.

The Hummingbird

The next morning, together with my guide, I ‘sweated’ into the quest, meaning we undertook a silent sweat lodge. My guide issued some Lakota prayers, then took me up to the spot I’d chosen days earlier for the quest (during that time we’d planted four directional poles festooned with flags we’d made, representing the four directions and elements of the earth).

I settled into the grass, he handed me his ceremonial medicine pipe for the duration, and then departed back down the meadow toward the ranch house. It was late-September and the meadow grass was quite tall and bursting with end-of-summer life, the bees and butterflies and other insects racing about before they shut down for the winter.

Almost immediately, a hummingbird materialized directly off my right shoulder. I turned my head and gazed into its tiny eyes. It hovered there for a long moment, seemingly undisturbed (or curious) about my presence, then darted off across the meadow. I took that as a good sign, since hummingbirds are known as harbingers of hope, love, and growth.

It was also my second encounter with a hummingbird. The previous autumn, desperately ill and suicidal, I’d traveled cross-country to those same mountains to spend some time with a healer I’d met a month earlier in the Amazon. Perhaps sensing that the shaman and ayahuasca would not help (they didn’t), he’d invited me to his home, with the assurance he could help. (He did.)

Upon arrival, I was shown to my bedroom. Unbeknownst to me, a hummingbird had followed me up the stairs and into the room. A moment later, my healer friend returned with the tiny bird tucked into his hands. As he released it, he turned to me and said, “Good sign.”

Like me you may still be feeling skeptical. But as I noted in a previous post, when these mysterious little events keep stacking up they become harder to ignore.

The Herd

That evening, as darkness spread across the mountain, I heard a great ruckus in the forest on the other side of the meadow. The noise was very loud and abrasive – lots of pops and cracks and occasional booms, as if something massive was forcing its way through that thick pine forest.

My heart beat harder as images of bears or mountain lions toyed with my imagination. I reminded myself of the words of my guide, who assured me that so long as I remained in my prayer circle no harm would befall me.

Eventually, the source of the noise made its way farther down the mountain before abruptly emerging into the meadow. Despite the growing darkness, the herd of elk was unmistakable. Numbering perhaps a dozen or more, they stood quietly for a moment before turning up-meadow and setting off toward my position.

If you’re never experienced a thundering herd at speed, the ‘thundering’ part is there for a reason. The earth shakes and anything in the herd’s path understandably removes itself.

Except that I couldn’t. I was on a vision quest. I was supposed to remain in place. And I was supposed to be safe so long as I did.

But nearly concealed by the tall grasses and wildflowers and deepening darkness, I stood and frantically waved my arms, first silently (remember, I wasn’t supposed to talk), then with shouts of “Hey! “HEY!” as the fear started to win out.

Bizarrely, mercifully, just 20 feet or so from me, the herd at last turned as one and raced past me before disappearing back into the forest.

Aside from the sound of my heart beating in my ears, the meadow gradually quieted again, the air full of late-summer ragweed and dust.

I settled back into my circle wondering why the herd had made its way down the mountain only to race back up the meadow. It was as if the whole thing had been done for my benefit. Later, I’d see that it was the opening to the main act still to come.

The Bull

While best known for their solitude, fasting from food and water, and minimalism (a blanket at most), vision quests also starve you of sleep. The idea being that the quester becomes so drained of sustenance and energy that God is at last able to sneak in a message.

Nevertheless, many if not most questers will at times succumb to sleep. I did.

The mountain fully bathed in the blackness of night, I was awakened by the same sounds of snapping branches in the forest across from me. Though the night was moonless, the meadow was fully illuminated by the immense stretch of Milky Way above me.

I listened as the herd again made its way down the mountain, all of it a repeat performance of the previous evening.

Except this time, instead of a dozen elk, only one appeared – a massive bull with as impressive an antler rack as I’ve ever seen.

Even from a distance, the starlight illuminated the immense size of the animal and I briefly felt a sense of joy and satisfaction that no hunter had felled so magnificent a specimen.

And then it turned toward me and started to run. “Oh man,” I thought, “here we go again.”

Dark as it was, I did not hesitate to stand, to shout, to wave my arms. On he came.

I leapt into the air, wildly fanned my arms, shrieked as loud as I could – how could it not see me?

In what felt like a blink of an eye, it was on me, rack lowered, driving toward me. I grabbed at its antlers, desperate to prevent the massive thing from goring me. It lifted me into the air, slammed me down into the ground.

It’s said that in moments of extreme danger, time slows to a crawl and we become hyper-aware of our surroundings. That is exactly what happened to me. Even as I fought for my life, I became aware of a peculiar fuzziness adorning the antlers; smelled hot, steaming vegetation on the elk’s breath; felt heat and sweat blanketing its powerful neck; saw the Milky Way reflected back at me in the its deep black eyes.

The fight seemed to last for hours. I was gasping for breath as I fought and fought, kicking and grabbing at whatever I could. But the elk was too large, too strong, and as it gored me again and again and again in the chest, some part of me gave up, surrendered – I was going to die in that nighttime mountain meadow.

With that thought came another: How am I still alive? I could not possibly have survived that much punishment.

And with that, I awoke from a dream that started when I dreamed I awoke from a dream.

I lay there, gasping for air, trembling, my body drenched in sweat, my mind reeling at what had happened. What HAD happened?

The meadow and surrounding forests were utterly quiet. Above me, the very same swatch of Milky Way stretched across the sky. How was that possible? Hadn’t I dreamed that too? What was real?

Suffice it to say, I did not sleep the remainder of that night.

Sweating Out

Logically, a vision quest ends when a vision is had. To me, the nighttime visit by that elk constituted about as powerful a vision as I could imagine. But I hung in there for most of the following day, dehydrated, spent.

When evening came I raised the flag and in short order my guide appeared to take me down the meadow and back to the sweat lodge where I’d ‘sweat out’ from the quest.

After a few Lakota prayers, he asked if I was willing to share my experience on the mountain. I spoke of the hummingbird. He nodded and murmured something in Lakota.

Then I spoke of the elk herd that visited the previous evening. He nodded, then noted that visits from a hummingbird and elk herd were auspicious signs.

Finally, I shared the story of the bull. My heart beat harder as I shared the story, my throat grew dry.

When I was done he sat for a long moment gazing at me before asking, “What did it mean to you?”

I don’t remember my answer other than it simply did not feel right.

My guide reminded me of my visit to the former pilot the day before the quest. “What did he say you needed for this life?”

“For my heart to be opened,” I said.

“And where was the elk goring you?”

With that the full weight of the experience crystallized and I began to weep in the intense heat and intimacy of that sweat lodge.

In Lakota tradition, elk are symbols of strength, courage, beauty and protection. The visit from the bull, as vivid and real as any experience I’ve had, demonstrated just how deep my fears ran and the effort that was going to be required if my heart was to be opened.

It was a reminder, too, that something was there, with me, always, and that so long as I sought its grace and peace and love, it would seek me out as well, albeit in a form I may not initially recognize or fully understand.

Days later, when I returned home, I did some more digging into elk. And I learned something new: that elk antlers are coated in a fuzzy substance called ‘velvet.’

Normally when I’d stumble across something like that, I’d say, ‘who knew?’ But I already did. From a vision.