This is the story of how a former bomber pilot, a Lakota guide, and an impossibly large bull elk fused into a vision quest that demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that the mysterious entity we call God is always waiting to meet us half-way. 

Although I’ve written on this topic before, I’m diving deeper as a way of saying to those interested, commit to your own quest and pay attention to what emerges. 

The Heart

In 2007 I was invited by a Lakota to undergo a guided vision quest in New Mexico’s mountains. We carefully hunted the saplings that would serve as four-corners staffs, bundled and tied the prayer flags, and chose a spot in a meadow on the edge of a forest at roughly 9,000 feet in altitude.

The day before the quest was to begin, my guide asked me to visit with a man who, decades earlier, had bombed Vietnamese villages during a war everyone wanted to forget. That experience drove him to seek a different path and across the ensuing years he had become a healer.

In a quiet, darkened room, he ran his hands just an inch or so above my body before stopping above my heart. At last he told me to sit up, turned on the lights, and like any good healer / doctor, gave me his diagnosis.

“You look good. But your heart is sealed shut. You cannot live a complete life or grow until you open your heart.”

I knew his words were true. I’d been running scared my whole life, guarding, as so many of us do, against the teachings of a painful childhood.

The Hummingbird

The next morning my guide and I did a sweat in complete silence. While it may seem odd to sweat out precious bodily liquids before undergoing a fluid-free, food-free vision quest, remember the goal is to empty out so that something more profound might take its place. 

Wordlessly, we traveled to the spot we’d chosen. He handed me his ceremonial Lakota pipe and disappeared back down the mountain. 

I settled into the tall, late-summer grass and almost immediately was visited by a hummingbird that hovered just off my shoulder. I turned my head and briefly gazed into its tiny black eyes before it buzzed off across the meadow. “A good sign,” I remember thinking. It was, but not in the way I imagined. 

The Herd

That evening, as darkness spread across the mountain, a great ruckus arose in the forest on the other side of the meadow. As evidenced by explosive cracks and pops and snaps of tree branches, it was clear something very large and powerful was making its way through that thick pine forest.

Images of bears or mountain lions set my heart hammering. 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 come.

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

If haven’t experienced a thundering elk herd at speed, suffice it to say thundering is a terrific description. The ground shakes.

On they came. Directly toward me. Surely they could see me despite the dark?

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 over my fidelity to a genuine vision quest.

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 same forest from which they’d just emerged.

Aside from the raggedness of my breath and the thudding of my heart, the meadow quieted as the ragweed and dust kicked up by the herd gradually settled over my little oasis. 

I settled back into my circle wondering why the herd had made its way down the mountain only to race back up the meadow. Was it a message and, if so, what was it? 

The Bull

While questers are urged to remain awake as long as possible, at some point deep into the night I drifted off only to be 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 an immense band of the Milky Way above me.

I listened as the herd again made its way down the mountain, literally a repeat performed from the previous evening. Although my sense of isolation and vulnerability was still there, I also felt a bit annoyed. Like, ‘don’t you elk have anything else to do with yourselves?’

Eventually the massacre of tree branches stilled and I squinted hard to see if they’d emerge from the same spot.

Out stepped a single, massive bull. I’d been in New Mexico long enough at this point to have encountered many elk but nothing compared to this specimen. The rack was a masterpiece and I briefly felt a sense of joy that it had escape a hunter’s crosshairs. 

Slowly the bull turned toward my stretch of the meadow and broke into a run. “Oh man,” I thought, “here we go again.”

Dark as it was, this time I did not hesitate to stand, to shout, to wave my arms. Yet on he came.

And once again, I leapt into the air, wildly fanned my arms, shrieked as loud as I could. On it came. How could it not see or hear me?

In what felt like a blink of an eye it was on me, rack lowered, lifting my body high into the air and then slamming me downward. I desperately grabbed at the edges of its rack, doing all in my power to keep the edges from goring me.

Again and again it lifted its head – and me – and slammed downward. I thought my heart would explode from the fear; could smell hot, steaming vegetation on its breath in that cold mountain air; and I was even left curious about a strange funny felt that carpeted its antlers.

Eventually the assault became too much and an antler gored me. Like the ill-fated captain in ‘Jaws,’ I wrapped my arms around the elk’s massive neck, felt the sweat and muscle and thick coat as it repeatedly gored my chest. And then, for the briefest moments, I was eye to eye with the elk, could see the band of stars reflecting back at me, and I knew I was doomed.

Yet, I wasn’t. How was I not dead? Nothing could have survived such a mauling.

Sweating Out

Aside from my gasps, the meadow was quiet. I sat up and gazed up and down the meadow. No sign of the elk.

Drenched with sweat, I searched my chest for signs of blood, wounds, holes. Nothing.

It had been a dream, the most vivid dream of my life. I lay back in the grass, gazed up at the Milky Way. What the hell was that? 

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.

Per agreement, I returned with my guide to the sweat lodge. After a few Lakota prayers, he asked if I was willing to share my experience on the mountain. I spoke of the hummingbird. I spoke of the herd. Then I spoke of the bull. 

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. I was still so wiped out from the experience I had not had time to process it. 

My guide reminded me of my visit to the healer the day before the quest. “What did he tell you?”

“To open my heard,” I said.

“And where did the elk focus?”

My heart, of course. But the words would not come because there in the intense heat and darkness of that sweat lodge I heard the sound of my own sobbing. A sense of overwhelming gratitude and love – for the elk, for the guide and his wife, for everything that had transpired in my life up to that point – overwhelmed me. The pain and the appreciation and the love all came together in one of the most cathartic cries of my life.

Half-Way

The limitations of a label-making mind have, unfortunately, put the idea of ‘God’ into a box. Actually, many boxes. We have humanized God, made It in our likeness rather than the other way around. 

That evening in the sweat lodge God materialized in a way It never had before. It had answered my call, had met me half-way, had said, in a sense, “I know you have suffered, but at least here, for now, you have surrendered to Me, and I, in the form of guide and healer, herd and bull, have responded. Learn from this, keep it with you, and continue on your journey. 

I wish I could say that I did just that. But over the ensuing years, the intense suffering that initially drove so much of that journey abated. I settled back into ‘real life,’ remarried, raised two kids, worked and agitated about the usual human predicaments. 

Today, nearly 20 years later, vestiges of that suffering have reemerged and I recognize the journey is not remotely complete. 

Perhaps the only thing that is different, today, is that there is a sense, no matter how limited or fragile, that there really is an ‘infinite invisible’ that is always there, waiting for this silly, frightened little me to reach out and ask for it to again meet me half-way.