“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

- Dolly Parton

Day 65 - Saturday, August 26, 1995 - Heavy rain began to fall early Saturday morning as a tropical depression made its way across the Southeast. The walkers spent the whole day sheltered in the pavilion outside the United Methodist Church at Cherokee, North Carolina preparing to start the walk up again on Sunday, after a week of rest. Rain fell steadily all through the day, like a monsoon.

"We are ready to go on," Sherry Noser told me when we checked in by phone. "We have finished walking south. We are rested and healed. And we are pretty much settling into each other as a group of human beings even though we do have our difficulties. We are a team now, and that really feels good. Our spirits are up, and we are looking forward to walking again, and to a new direction — the west."

Once the walk starts up again it will cross into Tennessee and make the long trek to Memphis at the Mississippi River, then on to Arkansas, Oklahoma, the panhandle of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and finally California.  We have a long way to go.

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August 1995 saw the emergence of mutant frogs as an issue of public concern. The issue arrived on the public scene when a group of Minnesota schoolchildren found dozens of multilegged and misshapen leopard frogs in a farm wetland, aand wondered whether a toxic environment could be causing the mass mutation.

After the news broke about the children's discovery, reports of misshapen frogs began pouring in from all over. Scientists reported that in some ponds and lakes, the rate of malformations ran high; overall, in Minnesota, Quebec, and Vermont, about 8% of frogs sampled (mainly northern leopard frogs, but also other species) appeared to be afflicted with abnormalities, most often missing or malformed hind limbs.

On the Medicine Wheel teachings that are native and natural to Turtle Island (North America), frog is recognized as among the most sensitive of creatures, and closely related to water and cleansing.

Frogs have thin skins, and they are exquisitely attuned to the health, or sickness, of their environments. They easily absorb any contaminants in the water. They can give early indications of problems that may impact all living creatures.

Frogs are in trouble all around the world. There are more and more reports of deformities. Some species have disappeared, or no longer live in their old habitats. The Sunbow 5 walkers, learning of the great numbers of mutant frogs, included the frog nations and the living waters in their prayers.

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Copyright 2006 by Steven McFadden

Read Day 66 -- Odyssey of the 8th Fire