(Saturday, July 18, 2015)
I returned yesterday from a weeklong photoshoot at a vacation rental home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The 6,000 square foot adobe was built into the side of a bare stone mountain, with an infinity pool overlooking the valley. A small courtyard on the lowest level housed a large bronze sculpture by Craig Dan Goseyun, the Apache artist who created the 20-foot high sculpture on Museum Hill in Santa Fe called “Apache Mountain Spirit.”
The Paradise Valley sculpture is called “Invocation” and is also a Mountain Spirit. Whenever I head out on a long trip, the tarot card I draw the morning of departure is usually from the major arcana. This time I drew “World Dancer.”
Mountain Spirits are also called Crown Dancers or “gaan.” Four Apache dancers “become” these sacred beings, accompanied by a Clown/Trickster. They dance at night, bringing the spiritual world into physical manifestation.
http://nativeskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/apache-mountain-spirit-dancers.html
Two hummingbirds hover in the dancer’s headdress. One morning when I was drinking my coffee at poolside, a hummingbird buzzed in from the lower edge of the yard and levitated over the turquoise water for several minutes, giving me a thorough inspection.
Hummingbird is associated with the Ghost Dance, which invokes the return of the animals and the end of the whites. Hummingbird feathers open the heart and have been used for a millennium in love charms. Sweetness, joy, beauty.
All of the valuable art in the house was from Santa Fe, and many of the books. I felt homesick, but not for Minneapolis.