THE MYSTERIOUS SIGN: In my wilderness guiding years, spanning decades and thousands of miles of ‘canoe country,’ we would sometimes come across the famous, red-tinged rock paintings of the North. Pictographs. The red color due to the ferous oxide compound used to make them. The paintings are always haunting and mysterious, their creation dating back hundreds, even thousands of years, often before the time of current indigenous peoples of these lands.
Some pictures are easy to decipher—a deer, a moose, a bear, an eagle or mythical thunderbird, the mischievous Mammaygwessy. But some are more elusive. One icon found in the North, but also in the desert southwest, and in ancient pictographs and petroglyphs from around the world, is the spiral. It is a simple yet iconic figure, and its widespread use indicates a meaning deeply rooted in the human psyche. Archaeologists and anthropologists argue about it yet today. Astronomy, perhaps, the cycles of the moon and stars, the changing of the seasons. But one explanation I have read, and that I intuited early on as I sat and stared at an ancient rock art gallery, is this.
The spiral is circular, yes, but it is not a simple circle. It revolves around a center but opens endlessly outward. Endlessly. Into the world, into the universe. Just like life. Human life. In the center of that spiral is you. Me. The point at which we began, the essential nature in the heart of us. It is important throughout life to acknowledge that still point, that center. That “I am here.” To lose it is to lose ourselves. And like the moon and stars and the seasons, and natural versions of the spiral from snail shells to galaxies, we circle round it, always tied to that gravitational center. These circlings are predictable, and repetitive, and understanding them is a great part of what has always been thought of as ‘wisdom.’ But even as we experience the great circle, we move outward into the unfolding of life, the events of our lives, the unpredictable and unknowable. The spiral. the ever-returning, ever opening spiral… of Life.
I think it is important to remember such things today. An unpredictable time. A frightening time. An unexpected time. It is important to acknowledge all of that, and each of us must navigate it to the best of our ability. But as we do, we must also keep track of our center. Of who we really are. Of the timeless wisdom in which nothing is ever completely new, but part of an endless circling pattern, in which we can still find the familiar. The true. The unchanging. In which our footsteps make sense. We begin at that center, and it is always a part of us, even as each footstep takes us on our life journey, never exactly the same as before, never exactly the same as someone else’s footsteps, or spiral.
An ancient admonition from indigenous and traditional peoples… walk in balance. It is always a challenge. And in some times it is harder than in others. This is such a time. But as we walk our life-path, navigate our spiral, keeping track of our center, we know that others have walked similar paths before us. Others have walked through challenging times before us.
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