The Accident

Some of the people you meet on the road are really amazing.  I want to tell the story of one woman I met.

She is a White Mountain Apache woman living in Wisconsin/Minnesota.  She seems so motherly and gives off warmth and protection.  Her dark eyes under blond eyebrows show that her mind is whirling and part of her is off in some other world, she seems to be seeing something else, beyond what I am able to see around me.  She is difficult to follow because she seems to be lost in another realm and speaks almost painfully slowly and quietly. 

I sat with her at dinner and she was talking about her work and getting commissioned.

She mentions she was in a terrible motorcycle accident 2 summers ago.  She was biking with friends, some of whom had children serving overseas, and they were going to a memorial site to mourn those lost.  Her front tire lost 25 lbs of pressure rapidly, her cycle began veering side to side and she went down in a ditch, smashing her head against the pavement.  


She was not wearing a helmet.  


She smashed her cheekbone, split open the side of her face and cracked her skull, suffered a brain hemorrhage.

She lay in the hospital about to die.  Surrounded by the surgeon and her family.  One of the tribal counsel members came.  He laid eagle feathers across her body and called her back from the dead.  He told her that it was not her time to die, the Chippewa tribe needed her.  He called on her to live.  He called on her to open her eyes.   She opened her eyes.

Her face bore no scars as she calmly recounted the story.  The tribe needed her.  She is getting commissioned.  She has a duty and mission to serve for her tribe and country.  

So you wear a helmet now, right? I asked wide-eyed

Her dark eyes under blond eye-brows stared back at me and she laughed.