(Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Photo by jemery.)

I spun through the rest of the day in the Springs quite unnerved by the talking Magpie. I mean, how does a normal business trip hinge on things that are quite fantastic, and beyond the realm of the ordinary?

I had a distinct sense of the oddness as I piloted the Mercury Grand Marquis along the flat land below the rough country of the Front Range, thinking about what I thought the talking bird had said. It seemed like he was conservative in orientation, a post-Republican magpie, as it were, as many of my fellow citizens seem to be.

I was nearly overwhelmed by the critters. There were deer wandering across the parkway down from the hotel. A bunny munched grass on the lawn next to the large ornamental pond. Pigeons, of course, but real ducks and two graceful swans- not black- glided majestically across the dark fresh water just ruffled by the persistent breeze.

I commented on the bounty of critters right around the hotel to Tammy, the buxom Texan at the bar who serves up the morning java.

“That’s nothing,” she said. “If you walk the trail over toward the Garden of the Gods you can run into bear and coyotes. Not the little scrawny ones you might see back East. These are big guys, muscular and not afraid of anything.”

I thanked her and left a nice tip, since that was going to be my last vente Starbucks at that Marriott.

I got my ass in gear after a conference call and a radio interview with a public radio station in Arkansas. My blackberry went off as I was passing the Mule Train Barn of the Al Kaly Mystic Shrine jus east of I-25. The Shriners parade for a great cause, crippled kids, and if an odd hobby, certainly good hearted. Definitely better than the scary clown Shriners with the miniature motor-scooters.

I could not tell if there was a full team of forty dark mules in the run-in next to the well-kept barn. Looking further east, the plains stretched back to the land where there were trees and fields. Not here. This is the rough country that runs into the adamant vertical granite that is the spine of the West.

There was a saying the old-time miners had. This rough country was “Hell on women and horses, just right for men and mules.”

(Mule Riders of the Mystic Shrine, Colorado Springs. Photo Al Kaly Shrine.)

The mule was perfect for this place and the work that was done here. I was going to mosey up to Old Colorado City, up the canyon, and maybe beyond to Manitou Springs later. There were mules aplenty there when the silver was coming out of the hills. The mule was the unsung hero of hard work, exploration and settlement of the American West. Durable, placid in manner, bred for the hard tasks of a rough land.

The durable mule is produced by cross-breeding a female horse to a male donkey. The offspring inherits the best characteristics of both parents, a genetic phenomenon called “hybrid vigor.” The mule lives longer, works harder and eats less than its mother; and is faster, more cooperative and smarter than the jack-ass father.

That is a genetic trait we share, apparently, and I wondered what the mules might think. I would imagine they are more of the union orientation, and inclined to support a progressive agenda. I half-thought about pulling off at the Ft. Carson exit to see if the mystical trance could be re-invoked, summoned on demand, but I had been warned about that.

After I confided my little delusion (revelation?) with the wider wired world I got a stern note about channeling the animal spirits. It came from a pal who is a part-time shaman.

The day-job keeps the bills paid, but the spirit world is the passion. Apparently, in the shamanic belief everything is alive and carries with it power and wisdom.  Power animals are an essential component of shamanic practice.  They are the helping spirit that is supposed to conjure and intensifies the power, and the totem is essential for success in any shamanic venture.

Shamans believe that everyone has power animals, sort of like Harry Potter’s owl. These are real animal spirits that reside with each of us, adding to their power and protecting them from illness, acting similarly to a guardian angel.  Each power animal that you have increases your power so that illnesses or negative energy cannot enter your body.  The spirit also lends you the wisdom of its kind.  A hawk spirit will give you hawk wisdom, and lend you some of the attributes of hawk.

The Lynx, for example, is well known for keen eyesight, divination, movement through time and space and is the keeper of all secrets and mysteries.

The Shaman wrote this: “Do not mess with things you do not understand. Do not underestimate the power of the spirit world, and above all, do not insult the animals by attempting to put human words in their snouts or beaks. Tread very carefully here.”

I wrote back and explained that I was not attempting to channel the birds, or anyone else. It was just real, an ordinary event that edged me closer to the reality of Latin Magical Realism. In that reality, more closely based in our ancestral myth than the Marriott usually is, shamanic elements blended to access a deeper understanding of reality.

“Look for more talking animals in the future,” I wrote back, “but with respect. I am not trying to poke fun at the animals. They make more sense than we do.”

In the case of the talking magpie, for example, I assume neither the bird nor I had enough coffee at the moment of the strange interchange. The magical element of the morning was a normal occurrence, the “real” bourgeois morning sliding smoothly along the “fantastic” in the same stream of thought.

Critic Matthew Strecher defined magic realism that crops up, largely in Latin Literature happening as “…what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something ‘too strange to believe.’

Well, we have come a long way from the days when there was anything too strange. It is all around us these days. Maybe we have become inured to the more magical intersections in our lives and instead are living nearly full time in a mass hallucination.

I decided to take a nice long walk on the trails that lead up to the towering mass of Cheyenne Mountain. It would be interesting to talk to a Coyote and see what her take on all this might be.

According to shaman lore, the manifestations of the Coyote incarnate includes the universal premise that all things are sacred, yet nothing is. That only when all masks have fallen will wisdom be revealed. Stealth is triumph, intelligence and cunning abound. Coyote has the ability to place the North Star.

Not to mention the shape-shifting thing. I guess that is where Tony Hillerman got in trouble trying to channel the Navajo Nation. But like Tony, I am just stuck with what I am, and where you sit is usually where you stand.

But more on that if I run into any interesting spirits today in the rough country uphill.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com