EARLY MORNING VISION
“The Window”
It was just before daybreak when I first heard her speak. “Come,” she said, “follow me.” I obeyed and effortlessly entered a misty world followed by an art gallery steeped in the scents of canvas, paint, and turpentine. The walls held paintings of haunting mountain landscapes with unfamiliar peaks and valleys. I turned from the paintings and looked with the eyes of a child through the gallery windows, where blue and lavender snow-capped peaks reached above a valley floor and into an azure sky. A brook undulated across a grassy meadow. An evocative flute melody floated toward me. A mountain breeze caressed my face while the earthy scent of damp moss and willows stirred a longing in me.
“Follow me,” the woman whispered again. And she and I, unseen presence and sleeping dreamer, traveled as one through time and space into a weather-beaten, white clapboard house. The floorboards under my bare feet moaned with foreboding, as did dilapidated white walls, warped shelves, and crooked counters. (Even though dreaming, I told myself to memorize every detail.) When I saw there were no signs of life, a chill took hold of every cell in my body. Over there was a window, its four panes rippled with age. A stack of food-encrusted blue willow plates sat precariously on the edge of a counter in front of it. “Greed,” I said to myself, eyeing the plates. “An unstoppable, gluttonous appetite.” Beyond the window I saw nothingness, a bleak, bare, wintery nothingness that stretched to infinity. My heart lurched. “Watch,” the woman said, her voice overriding my urge to turn away.
I do not know how long I watched before they appeared. Smokey forms emerged from the void; men, women, and children huddled under ragged shawls and blankets. Their hunched shoulders carried their broken spirits.
More figures emerged. And then more. I closed my eyes. “Watch,” the presence said firmly. I forced myself to keep looking. Beyond the people, I saw layers of blue and lavender mountains, the same colors as in the gallery, but not the same mountains I had seen earlier. I did not recognize them. I was drawn to them, and even felt homesick for them. Who are these people? I thought. What do they want? I did not know. Where are they from? Again, I did not know.
Suddenly, I understood: They were American Indians on a godforsaken reservation. The woman spoke firmly into my right ear. “Write my story,” the presence said. And then … disappeared into the mist leading the others from my sleeping dream.
I jolted wide awake, my heart pounding. Then I lay in the darkness and trembled, the dream had upset me that much. As hard as I tried, I could not get back to sleep. I reached for my glasses and put them on. The clock on my husband’s nightstand read 4:00 a.m. I lay my head back on the pillow, to try and regain my composure, but, like a slideshow, the images of my dream replayed themselves over and over. I needed to get up and write down this vision. Everything was important. I knew who the woman was. She was Chipeta. A member of the Tabeguache Ute Nation.
The house was still as I slipped into the kitchen. I put coffee on and while it brewed began to journal in haste. I wrote as fast as I could, trying to recall every detail of my dream. I filled page after page with words and rough sketches of what I had observed. Twelve pages later, I put my pen down and closed my journal. I stood up and stretched. I poured myself a hot cup of coffee and walked over to the patio door. I stared eastward, past rows of houses in our Denver neighborhood. Opening the door, I stepped out onto our deck and into the darkness. All was quiet and serene.
Shivering, I set my cup down on the railing and pulled my robe around me. The air was chilly and damp, and the morning stars still shone in the April sky. The dream hung heavily in my mind and heart. Why me? I wondered. I am a white woman. I know little about Chipeta and her Ute tribe. Who am I to embark on such a project?