My Private Shaman

Montezuma Valley,
Four Corners

I come up here for the color. Mostly for the sunsets. In the picture above, you’re in Colorado, looking through a false saddle into Arizona, into Navajoland. In the left foreground, barely made out in the darkest blue, are the cliffs of Mesa Verde. To the right, the little toe sticking out is the far southern edge of Sleeping Ute, a disinterred subterranean volcano. More properly, a magma chamber that never broke through to the surface of the earth. The view is southwest, into the Four Corners. The ledge-like feature left of center is an escarpment of the Carrizo Mountains.

Yale Forestall would come to places like this to watch the sun set, to be alone. Sometimes for days at a time, he’d just sit here at the top of a hogback just like this. He’d stay completely still all night, waiting for the sun to rise over the La Plata Mountains over his shoulder. I could never figure out how he got up on this ridge to begin with. He didn’t drive here. And it was miles from the ranch trailer he called home.

He had this thing with words, this uncommon usage. You really had to know him, hang out with him awhile to get at what he was trying to say. And even then sometimes, you could only guess at his meaning. Yale was probably the uncommonest man I ever knew. It was as if he flew into this world through the window of his birth, jetted across it in the black night, then streamed out the far window on the west edge of night, just before dawn, and he was gone before people even knew he’d came.

Few knew him. He didn’t matter in the conventional sense. He didn’t know how to use a computer. Couldn’t do basic math. He would’ve tested in the borderline range in things like IQ. Yet that didn’t mean he wasn’t wise, didn’t mean that he couldn’t see far past what most men saw. Because he wasn’t chasing anything. He didn’t have an agenda or a bone to pick with anybody.  He was guileless, and yet he was beguiled by something. Or he beguiled me. Maybe that was it.

His coming and his going and his passing in between were unremarkable in the way a mystic’s life sometimes is while they live on this earth, only to be discovered after their passing as rare and wise. The world seldom gives people like him much attention while they’re here. They’re not rich, not particular standouts in any way, except in the way they frame things. They see the world, see you and I, without frames. We end up drawn to them because they don’t define us the way we draw limits around ourselves. And that openness allows them to paint everything in a just-born way.

Yale had this other sly gift. You could blink and he’d be across the room. It only happened to me once. The first time he walked into my office, wanting me to defend him in the guardianship case the State of Colorado had instigated against him. He moved in an instant across my office. But he didn’t do it to show off. He never tried to impress people like that. He did it because he wanted to get away from my photocopier. He was afraid it would steal his essence. So, he moved like that. Like a shaman.

I suppose that’s what he was to me: a cowboy shaman, trying to dance with the rest of us while he whispered a message in our ears, one at a time on the dance floor. If only we would have listened.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within