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Sacred Sites: The Nestucca River Valley
Winding through Oregon's Coast Range Mountains is an almost forgotten stretch of highway that follows the course of the Nestucca River. Even though it's been designated as a National Scenic Byway, few locals know that it exists. About half of the road is a paved two-lane highway that winds through mountains and passed seasonal waterfalls, the other a one-lane dirt road that carves its way through the wilderness.
A one lane mountain roads winds up the Nestucca River Valley.
In the middle of this highway, where pavement turns to dirt, is a stretch of river bordering an abandoned rock quarry. It's here, on the banks of the river and in the quarry itself, where I explored much of my shamanic training and where I performed many of my early rituals.
The Nestucca River.
The area is saturated with magick. Numerous people (including mundane deer hunters who were employed at a company owned by a friend of mine) have seen other worldly beings in the area and have had experiences that they can't explain. Natural deposits of quartz crystals can be found throughout the site and I've taken Sparrow and Bear up to the place to look for crystals on more than one occasion.
Natural deposits of quartz crystals are found throughout the area.
Back in the early 1990's, I found myself studying shamanism under the guidance of a Native American woman by the name of Nukah. Rather than teaching me the ways of her People, she gave me the concepts and theories and sent me out into the wilderness to find my own way and discover my own path.
It was this training that formed much of the approach to teaching that I use today.
While studying with Nukah, it became time for me to undertake a vision quest - a solitary journey into the wild where a combination of ritual, dance, chanting, fasting, and sleep deprivation trigger a deep and almost continual trance state. I chose a ledge high above the abandoned quarry as the site of my rite.
The abandoned quarry where the ledge is located.
Looking down onto the valley below, the hills, river, and quarry formed a circle with my tiny ledge on rim of the area. The ledge was tiny, just big enough for a small campfire and room for me to chant and dance as lone as I stayed close to the circle of stones. (A small tree now grows in almost the precise spot where my campfire was located.)
The small ledge where I undertook my vision quest.
As I began to dance and chant, fog rolled in off the nearby Pacific Ocean, first filling the valley's below me and then completely engulfing the site. I stood in a white chamber, completely cut off from the rest of reality, my tiny fire illuminating the walls of mist around me.
A single clear corridor formed, stretching directly from my campfire to the moon overhead.
At the end of my rite, I had been shown how to interact with the spirit world and was given my shamanic working name, Two Crows. In the lore of my teacher, Nukah, Crow is the keeper of spiritual law. One eye sees the spirit world, the other the physical plane. Cocking his head, he'll look at a situation first through one eye, then the other, not acting until he finds the balance between the two.
There is also a bit of divination used when counting crows that begins, "One is for sorrow, two is for mirth, three is a wedding, for is a birth." The appearance of two crows, or in my case, Two Crows, is considered to be a sign that joyfulness is present - and anyone who knows me is also aware that I'm constantly smiling and have a very over-active sense of humor.
The area is also filled with the fae and myself and numerous students have had encounters with the faire folke in the area. Mushrooms are a traditional sign that the fae are near and, much like the fae themselves, mushrooms are almost invisible at first glance and then slowly begin appearing everywhere you look in the area.
Mushrooms are traditionally considered a sign that the fae are near.
Some time later, when building my first altar, I came up to the Nestucca River, a short distance from the quarry, and gathered large river boulders for the altar's base. The cross piece of the altar was a huge piece of wood from a broken tree in the middle of the faerie grove.
The Nestucca River where I gathered the stones for my first altar.
That day was almost as memorable as my vision quest. I stood calf-deep in the river, rain falling around me, playing a wooden Tibetan flute until the spirit of the river awoke and I could ask it for permission to take the stones for my altar. I offered it a gift of music and a bouquet of wildflowers that I had picked earlier that day. The spirit of the river manifested so clearly that it was almost physically present and granted my request and the stones that I took home with me that day formed the perfect base for my altar.