Odyssey of the 8th FIre

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

- Jack Kerouac

Day 118 - Wednesday - October 18, 1995 - Tom called from Oklahoma, and I picked up the phone in my New Hampshire office. He was furious, and he yelled at me through the phone. He said I was disloyal to him and the walk.

According to Tom, my most recent offense was having spoken with Jim Duncan yesterday afternoon. I informed Jim that Brianna had left the Rainbow Walk and returned home to be with her dying grandmother. Because Jim is walking with his wife, Norma, and their five daughters, Brianna's situation disturbed him greatly, and he had obviously said something to Tom about the way he had treated her.

Tom said that my having informed Jim about Brianna and her grandmother was was creating problems for him by underminining his authority. He told me to keep my mouth shut.

Then Tom told me, for the second time since Memphis, that I was fired as walk coordinator, and that I had better cease posting to the internet. He said that as head man of the walk and as director of the Sunbow 5 Foundation, he was ordering that I make no further official announcements about the walk."

"I'm the head man and director of the foundation," he shouted a second time."You have to do what I say."

I held my ground. I told Tom he did not have a majority of votes from the four members of the foundation's board of directors, and thus he could not fire me. I reminded him of the circle tradition and the Seven Fires teachings. I breathed, and I was able to remain calm—tense but calm. Tom fulminated for 10 minutes then slammed the phone down telling me to keep my mouth shut, and not to post a word about the walk to the internet. From my perspective, it was an ugly and difficult phone call. It caused me to worry even more intensely about what was really happening on our Sunbow 5 pilgrimage.

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After speaking with Tom, I went to my mailbox and retrieved the latest edition of Time magazine. Time had a stunning story about global climate change: "In the next half-century," the story read, "scientists fear dramatically altered weather patterns, major shifts of deserts and fertile regions, intensification of tropical storms, and a rise in sea level." All of this, the wrote, would be caused mainly by the expansion of the water in the world's oceans as it warms up."

These statements, based on the consensus of hard science, struck me as a direct echo of all the messages and prophecies shared by Grandfather Commanda and the other spiritual elders at the House of Mica (United Nations) two years ago.

According to Time's in-depth article, the greenhouse effect is being accelerated by the firey, smokey deforestation of the world’s tropical forests. The forests normally add oxygen to the atmosphere, and balance the harmful effects of mass pollution. But as the tropical forests are burned down on an industrial scale, the planet becomes more and more vulnerable.

Time wrote that there is a high likelihood that the planet will continue to experience the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide. Destructive CO2 releases are still increasing, thereby steadily, relentlessly intensifying climate-change as governments, industry, and citizenry continue to ignore the vivid warning signs.

Industry-saturated countries like the United States, Canada, and Mexico (the three nations that constitute Turtle Island) are responsible for most of the planet-destroying pollution, Time reported.

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Read Day 119 -- Odyssey of the 8th Fire