It isn’t a clean pull from tail to nose like the WildMan on youtube. He is a roadkill babe and his guts spill into the duff once I get that far. Sweat mixing with intestines mixing with earth, we persist to the tip of his tail.
The deed is far from finished. I rest on the deck sensing for the spirit body of my new mink friend. He feels different now, a bit shivery. I can relate. I invite him into my lap.
The place where sensation and imagination meet Spirit- a vast and highly colonized territory in these parts. A hint of it’s vastness lies in the question- where does sensation end and imagination begin? Colonialism puts a rigid frame on what is ‘real’ which, intentionally, over the course of generations, limits our ability to trust or make sense of our senses. When we can’t trust or make sense of our own senses and human centric violence prevails, it seems prudent to focus on surviving that. Tunnel vision. Human Violence. Trauma Spiral. Loss of Sensation. Limited Connection. Many of our families got cut off from our animal, plant and elemental guides by surviving colonialism.
In the week before I found him, I got very clear that I needed contact with a protector spirit for the approaching pilgrimage with the Abuelas in Italy. Mink are fierce and their connection to colonization in the Americas runs deep. The lust for animal skins was one of the reasons Europeans flocked to the Americas. Our ancestry is linked by this migration.
Desire can run away with us- imagining how to incorporate the exquisite beauty and prosperity of skins and feathers into our lives. Patience and deep listening to an animal’s spirit builds alliance and connects us with their ways. The process of receiving this guidance is personal and rewarding, teaching the deeper mysteries of reciprocity. It brings forward the question of why they came to us. How can we assist with this animal’s spiritual calling? Once the message for how to serve the relationship is received, the deed is not done. Tending to the fleshiness of the gift remains an ongoing dedication.
Medicine, like flesh, does not like to wait. Mine is yet another story of how animals come in and rearrange the life. Perhaps an assurance in the form of sacrifice is needed to make it clear that you are ready to be with the medicine they carry. I was moving out of California that day but instead spent the next eight hours dripping sweat, learning by doing…
When I drove over his limp body, without really seeing who he was, I got the message- That’s a mink. I stayed the course… I am leaving today. I don’t have time to mess around… but the call for attention continued. I convinced myself he was a squirrel and turned around to at least move him off the road.
Tobacco in hand, I see that this is no squirrel. Cars wiz over him and I pray they will not squish him. I introduce myself, offer some tobacco and ask permission to move him out of the road. Mink are not common in northern California and to find one in the heat of summer who is carrying only the smell of the hunt is rare magic.
We arrive home and I feel the mink spirit romping through the house with me, a curious friend, checking out every corner, vibrant. I call my buddy who works a lot with deer. He doesn’t exactly know how to skin a mink but says I can work on it over there. Burly youtube hunters seem to be the best advice I can get.
Fingers between muscle and fur. The first cut is too deep. I immediately see the mess I am in as I force my fingers behind the calf bone. Layers of quad cling to skin. I switch sides and make a shallower cut. This time the skin pulls away clean. I won’t make this sound easier than it is. The difficulty does not come from working with death or blood or odor. I actually quite like the smell of mink and the intricacy of guts. It comes from the sheer physical force I need from my thumbs to separate skin from muscle. It is the electric pulse of not knowing how hard I can pull before he tears. It is working the bloody edge of the unknown.
A twinge of panic and fervor oscillates. Familiar. Erotic. Birthy. The fleshy promise of rotten failure or sweet success.
When we lose the ability to sense our more than human allies, it is a sure sign that we have lost access to sensing our own bodies as well. ‘As within, so without’, a concept that is rooted in a plethora of ancestral cultures, shares exquisite complexity in four words. Working with the mink put me in a journey state that brought me back to my birth, reminded me of my own strength, looked like my moon time and expanded my senses. It was a huge turn on to better understand the limits of flesh and the psychic gifts keep coming.
In this time of huge transition, I am riding the edge of excitement and fear. A few days ago I was going deep into the rabbit hole of ‘what if it doesn’t work out’ and decided to consult the water. I dunked in the creek and came up letting Spirit know that I was feeling scared. At that moment, about twenty feet away, a mink’s head popped out of the water. She poked around on the bank and bounced away. Tears of joy were pulled from my eyes and I was immediately uplifted. There is no way to accurately sum up this experience with words, so I will leave you to your own conclusions.
Gratitude and awe remain.
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Learn more about Origin, the upcoming pilgrimage with the Abuelas in Italy. We invite you to join us in Sicily 9/9-16 and Rome 9/20-23. In Sicily we will grow our sensual connection with the elements and learn to wield eros in ways that honor the origin of life. This will be in preparation for the work in Rome where we will hold a vigil and caminata sagrada in prayer for all the children to be liberated from sex trafficking and child pornography. Many communities throughout the Americas will join and walk in a synchronized prayer at the height of the equinox. Reach out to find out how to participate from your home territory. We will also enter into a day long study of the ancestral sacred places in Rome now covered by churches and hold chicha circles.
Intimate connection with the more than human world brings a potency that heals the distortion in our sexuality created by colonialism- distortion that guides us to disconnect from the pleasures of our beautiful, erotic Earth.