"Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."
- Black Elk
Day 190 - Friday, December 29, 1995 - The walkers moved base camp today to the Fairhaven RV (recreational vehicle) park in Aquila, Arizona.
With room to spread out, they set up tents in a big circle in the desert – as many as 20 tents forming an impressive, embracing circle.
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RV Park - A pack of RVs, home to the Snowbirds, neighbors to the recently established Sunbow 5 base camp. |
Aguila is a small unincorporated community in the desert, located on U.S. 60 approximately 20 miles west of Wickenburg in Maricopa County. The principal economic activities in this rural community are cantaloupe farming and the RV park.
The RV park is populated primarily by “snowbirds.” The term snowbirds describes people from the Northeast or Midwestern U.S., or Canada, who spend winter in warmer locales such as Arizona, or New Mexico. They travel south during the winter in their RVs and then head back north in spring.
While there is no snow in Aquila just now, it is cold this December week, especially at night when the temperatures dip well below freezing.
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Tim Buress has been living in Japan for the last several years. He returned to the U.S.A. before Thanksgiving, and then joined our Sunbow 5 Walk for the Earth.
I talked with Tim about his experience. He said "Japan was not a good place for me, because of pollution and the way of life there, very different. There are mountains all the way around Tokyo, but you see them maybe once or twice a month. Pollution gets in the way. You just don’t see the mountains. That bothered me.
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Smog obscures the view - in Tokyo, Japan. (photo by Majestyk, courtesy of flckr.com |
"I wasn’t aware of the Sunbow walk when I started to leave Japan," Tim said, "but just as I was preparing to leave I got a copy of the Whole Earth Review. On the back was a picture of a sunbow and a little blurb about the world wide web site. So I checked that, and suddenly it clicked!
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Back cover - from the Fall, 1995 edition of Whole Earth Review. |
"Coming to the the way I did, I didn’t have any pre-conceived notions of what was going on. I knew it was a walk and I knew what states it was going through, but I never had any contact with Native American spirituality or anything like that before. So that's all been brand new for me, and it’s been a real eye opener!
"This is my re-introduction to America, walking across the Southwest ...When I was coming back everybody told me I should be prepared for this tremendous culture shock. All these things I was going to miss. But I’ve been perfectly happy. I have been since the first day I arrived.
"Like I said – it’s my re-introduction to America any many ways to the earth and nature. It’s just been one new thing after another."
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A December sunbow - Whirling Rainbow over the snow. (Photo by InkonMylar courtesy of flckr.com) |
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Copyright 2006 by Steven McFadden