Chapter Three My Time

With the weight of 'skin' bearing down on my shoulders, adjusting to this new life was necessary. The skins ceremony was much more that a crazy whirling fashion show. It marked an inevitable change in the rhythm of my life.  It also signalled a change for Tilda, and we were never able to connect and live as we had done again.

 Every morning, as the sun rose, Tilda would come round our encampment, gathering together all the young people. We went down to the stream to wash, and freshen up, drinking in the morning atmosphere with gulps of crystal water.

Drying by the communal fire, Mosako would greet us, as the rising sun. We sat together in a circle imbibing his calm presence. A shared stillness enveloped us; I was never sure how long this part took.  Then Mosako would speak.  First not to us, but to the universe, to the creator, the sustained, the liberator. His words were often mysterious to me, but they seemed to make sense to him.  Mosako was often saying and doing odd things, keeping us on our toes.  You could never feel quite comfortable. He was always open to being questioned, though, his answers were just further questions and that didn't help much.

My new life fell into the order of these early morning sessions, come rain or shine. The warmth of the cooking stones were conveniently situated under a great cliff overhang.  If the wind was in the wrong direction, we got wet, but that was not often.  Even the snow seemed to swirl elsewhere. After our stillness and Mosako's prayers, we then got a story, which was great.  These stories were always the same. We knew they were as ancient as the cliffs about us.  Gradually as we listened, our parents and older members of the community joined us.  They had been preparing food, or sorting out the needs of our few animals.  As a whole community we joined together in song.  This was our music; I have never heard anything like it since.  It felt rich and deep within us.  We were bonded together with nature, and the life sustaining force.  Quite safe, with no worries big enough to intrude.  Tilda then got up from her place beside Mosako, and walked around the group, putting her hands on the head of every child, their parents, aunts and uncles joining her.  Every life in our community was treasured. We all knew it.  Nothing was missed.  Then we had breakfast.

Breakfast was always the same.  Our valley has large clearings, rich in tall grass.  One of the tasks given to the young people was to harvest the seed from the grasses. Great bundles of these ears were stacked to keep dry in the backs of our cave system.  Removing the seed from the husk could have been an impossible task if it wasn't from the miraculous help offered by our neighbours, the wood ants.  Fortuitously, the wood ants were also fond of our local grass, but they were only interested in the husks. Wooden bowls laden with ripe ears of wheat were placed near to a wood ants nest. Two weeks later, the bowls remained, but full of threshed minute grass seeds, ready for milling. Sometimes tiny birds and mice got there first and there was not much to show for all that hard work.

Flour kneeled into dough, soon became bread for our breakfast.  Each family had its own patch of hot rock on which the flat dough was placed, soon bubbling and cooking to perfection.  As we ate bread we were encouraged to remember that our lives are a gift. This gift of food gives life. As we take this life into our bodies, and it becomes part of us, so too we need to feed on the life given to us from the life source.

With the morning teaching also come new responsibilities. All young people of our community had jobs to do.  The jobs were shared on rotation until specific skills were developed.  Young people were involved initially in all the functions of the community for a number of years.  The disciplines I was introduced to were medicine and apothecary, trapping and hunting, building, repairing and forestry, gathering food, expeditions, trading and languages, tool making, craft, pottery and weaving.  Making clothing with furs, ordering the community, care of the elderly and young.  Finally there was a discipline of storytelling.  This was only introduced at the latter years of the training.  At this stage too, we were encouraged to choose a specialism.  All roles appeared to be honoured as equally valid.

As things transpired, I was never able to develop a specialism. I think it might have chosen trading and expeditions, because as it happens, this seems to have been my lot to date.