...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 3-9: Skins

In the days that follow, Xayna introduces Bear to the Haida community, and Ghandl regales him with Haida stories. Through Xayna, Bear meets many Haida craftspeople and artists who work in traditional media, carving and painting cedar poles, making cedar bentwood boxes, woven baskets and hats. He observes how these people connect with the Q when they are creating, bringing their own past associations and the experience of other artists into their work, so each piece is not just an individual creation but a celebration of cumulative effort.

Through Ghandl's stories, he learns that the Haida view every living creature as a person wearing a different skin. The stories abound with shape-changers, Raven notoriously so, but many others, not just shamans but seemingly ordinary people. There is a touchingly romantic tale of a young man who falls in love with a girl who has shed her goose skin to bathe in a pond in human form. Later, when their love is no longer enough to overcome her longing for her home in the sky, she dons her goose skin and flies off. While on his quest to find her, the young man wears for a time the skin of a mouse, a salmon, and other creatures before they are reunited.

Xayna has pointed out to Bear how Haida artists often depict an inner person in their animal images, and he understands these artworks and stories to be less depictions and descriptions of literal shape-changing than spiritual metaphors. Even so, it helps explain Xayna's easy acceptance of his own shaman nature.

This Bear was already somehow aware of when he changed from seal to bear in view of Xayna. That she could accept it was due to her nature, not his. Haida depictions carved on totem poles as well as stories told by Ghandl and others convey awareness of a kindred spirit in every animal. This spirit is depicted as human in form to show the kinship. Seeing him shed a sea lion skin to become a bear, and then shed the bear skin to become a man, only confirmed what Xayna knew from childhood. Still, Bear thinks it best to remain in his natural human form, at least until she is thoroughly assured of his manhood.

For his part Bear tells Xayna of the way the team of shamans on Coon Island learned to invoke the Q with the aid of a quantum supercomputer, and how this enabled them to fine-tune the operation of the Sun Dome's complex biofeedback controlled farm system. Steeped in Haida lore though she is, she is worldly enough to be well aware of such technologies, and understands easily what he is telling her.

Through Xayna's example and the similar way other Haida hold to their idea of a common spirituality, Bear becomes increasingly aware that connection to the Q is universal, that it guides all of life, and it is only a sharpened awareness of this that sets the shaman apart. Bear tells Xayna his uncle Drake's version of how the Q works, reinforcing useful traits that develop in related animals. Together they conclude that it is the shaman distinction that separates the Eagle from the Raven in Ghandl's stories. Raven's wisdom is 'foolish' in the sense that it is thoughtless. It is reactive in the way that it is open to the Q and resonates with it in each present moment, helping to guide the artist's hand, the mother's touch. The wisdom of the Eagle, they decide, lies in the shaman ability to evoke the Q intentionally, creating a hypothetical stimulus and probing the Q for whatever resonance it might arouse.

They discuss this with Ghandl, who nods sagely, and then begins to elaborate. "There is nothing new under the sun, they say. This idea is given two interpretations. One says there is precedent for all situations, and therefore the past inevitably informs the present and guides the future.

"The other says the first is only Eagle's view, reflecting the thirst of all life for stability, a hope belied by the undeniable thrust of the evolution of life itself. The truth, they say, lies with the Raven, with those who are open to change and embrace it.

"True shaman wisdom, that of the impeccable warrior, is to amalgamate these views, mindfully distinguishing evolution from devolution, constructive change from destructive change, gain from loss, possible eventual good from truly inevitable bad.

"This requires close attention, broadly and deeply, with full awareness of relationships and their relative importance to the way events will unfold. It also requires willingness to act, both to maintain a desirable level of stability or, when change is inevitable, to guide it toward the most broadly productive outcome."

Bear, as a shaman shapechanger, has already learned one aspect of this well at a very personal level. "Every shape change, even every glamour, distorts the stability of  the Q," he says. "To succeed, it must produce only a small local distortion, one that quickly fades into the background noise of the quantum foam with no long range impact on events. The two factors that favor this success are alternate explanations and inattention to detail. This allows local change without affecting broad stability."

Ghandl smiles approvingly at the astute young man before him. Xayna glows with pride and smiles brightly at her Bear. Ghandl is very aware of his daughter and how she is developing in this relationship as he continues.

"Every life form must pay attention to its surroundings, to avoid danger and seek sustenance. Each life form is limited in its ability to do this. It exerts only a local awareness, within its range of ability to react. Environmental details that are remote or stable and represent little danger merit little attention.

"Environmental events that betoken instability and possible danger receive most of the attention. Observations of these require evaluation and appropriate reaction. The reaction may be simply inaction and further watchfulness, until a threshold requiring action is reached. Flight if there is danger, approach if there is chance of reward.

"The shaman who would share his dream, his vision, then, must be acutely aware of surroundings, choosing to evoke change in the reality of others only when the immediate sphere of influence is manageably small, where little or no notice will be taken outside that sphere. Once the change is accomplished, human nature takes over, possible explanations for altered views are invented, and the most acceptable is generally adopted, regardless of the actuality."