Thunderbeings

[watergaze]

I had never realized what had taken place that day until much later in my life when Sam, my teacher, sat listening to my story about that incident. He kind of smiled, settled his cowboy hat, a beat-up old straw hat that had too many smudges of dirt along the brim, and looked directly at me.

"You know, they're called Thunderbeings."

Eagerly, I leaned forward. We were sitting out in the hills of California near a sage patch where we'd just gathered some sage ceremonially, and we were taking a break from the hot Sun overhead. 

"What can you tell me about them?" I prayed he'd open up and tell me something, because rarely would he divulge much of anything. 

Taking a piece of the recently picked, velvet, white and green sage, he stuck a leaf in his mouth and leaned back against a large black lava rock. "Among the Cherokee, if you have Thunderbeing medicine..." Then he just shook his head, his smile widening.

Frustrated, I said, "Sam! What about this medicine?"

"You have it."

"What?"

"The Thunderbeings have chosen you to carry their medicine." He waved his hand vaguely upward toward the white clouds that dotted the pale blue sky. "Usually, if someone tries for this medicine, he/she gets hit by lightning. A lot of people are killed this way. Most don't survive, or if they do, they aren't the same."

"I wasn't hit by lightning."

"No, but you don't always have to be struck. What you were feeling when you were nine was the actual energy that is transferred between the Thunderbeing and Mother Earth. Not many people ever get to experience that. You did. It means you're in tune with them."

I wrapped my arms around my drawn-up knees. "Tell me more."

"The guys I know in Oklahoma who have this medicine... well, they can call a Thunderbieng. And when they do, it knocks them unconscious - maybe for an hour, maybe for a day at a time."

"What happens when they wake up?"

"They have a message or a vision of some kind."

Fascinated, I said, "I've never had that happen."

He chewed thoughtfully on a second sage leaf. "Maybe you don't have to," he murmured.

"But," I searched, looking up at the sky and clouds, "what does Thunderbieng medicine do?"

"What do storms do?"

I groaned, knowing full well Sam was going to play his endless circular game of words with me. By then I was used to it, but that didn't mean I liked it any more than before, because I didn't.  "They nourish Mother Earth. They give water back to her so that all things can continue to live."

"That's a pretty tall order, isn't it?" he said, his eyes narrowing speculatively.

I moved uncomfortably, knowing Sam wanted me to realize the observation I'd made and apply it to myself. "Okay," I began haltingly, "maybe, in some small way, I give back to my relatives?"

"Good. Go on."

"On to what?" I got up, growling, dusting off the seat of my Levi's and giving him a dirty look in the interim.

"What else?" 
There were days when I could take his good-natured prodding but today wasn't one of them. "Dammit, Sam, just tell me okay?"
He gave me a very patient look and a smile.
I felt like hell. I felt embarrassed because I'd lost my temper and he'd never lost his with me. But then, he was twenty years my senior and more mature, I told myself grumpily. Throwing up my arms, I walked around the area beneath the shade of the pin oak where he sat.

"You were in the Navy," Sam began quietly. "You were a weather forecaster for three years. You can't tell me that you don't know something about clouds, how they're made and what they do."

His reminder stung me even more and I glared at him. I sat down opposite him on a smooth reddish-colored rock. "Do you want a lot of scientific gobbledygook?" I demanded tightly.

"No. Just look at it symbolically."

I tried to soothe my shame and embarrassment. Sam didn't deserve my short temper or lack of patience, but then I'd had trouble with both all my life. What was new? Grimly, I forced myself to take an overview of forecasting, of my understanding on a scientific level about clouds and their formation, their intrinsic tie to Mother Earth.

"They," I said waspishly, "transform. The water on the Earth and in the rivers, streams and oceans is lifted invisibly to the sky and the condensation that occurs because of hot and cold factors create the clouds."

"Very good." He smiled a little and stretched out so his shoulders and head were against the rock, as though it were a pillow, and he pushed the cowboy hat forward so that it covered nearly all his face. "What's the key word in all those things you said?"
My mouth twisted at one corner and I tried to patiently sort through my definition.

"Transformation, I guess..."

"Right. So how does that apply to you? To what you do or will do in the future?"
"Transform things?" I guessed, not very sure at all of what Sam was getting at.
"Bingo."