This is a photo of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in northern Wyoming. Its official name, The Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark, was bestowed upon it by the Federal government in 2011, but it’s much older and more significant than that; this wheel dates back 1,500 years. Medicine Mountain is a spiritual and ceremonial area that has been used by more than a dozen indigenous tribes for upwards of 7,000 years. Some would argue that it’s older than that.
There are few structures in the U.S. that exude human capacity the way that Medicine Wheel does.
We have our share of skyscrapers, cathedrals, universities, banks, manufacturing plants, and government buildings. Each creation required some form of brutal domination; the exertion of political influence, the pocketing of capital, an old-fashioned arm twisting of centralized forces. Structures like these — Odes to Capitalism — seem to grow in direct proportion to their ability to subjugate others. We mostly notice them for their scale; how big they look in comparison to the structures around them. They are revered because they dominate.
Medicine Wheel would make a lousy skyline. It has almost no silhouette at all; it’s a circle of small limestone boulders 80 feet in diameter with 28 rock “spokes” that radiate from a central cairn. The circumference contains five small horseshoe-shaped piles, with a 6th just outside of the circle itself. Although there are 150 Medicine Wheels around the Northern Plains, this one is the largest, best preserved, and the oldest. They all set the stage for ritual in the same way: they’re divided into four sections representing seasons, the cardinal directions, the four sacred medicines, and the four interconnected aspects of life — physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. It is there that participants engage in an act of embodiment; the rites performed within this simple geometry allow for a connection to the physical and spiritual universe. Try doing that in a bank.
To an outsider, Medicine Wheel is a bunch of rocks perched at the top of the Bighorn Mountains, about 12 miles south of the Montana border. It’s 9,642 feet high and one and half miles by foot off of a steep mountain pass. It’s treeless, windy, and feels conspicuously lacking in oxygen. So, it doesn’t get many outsiders.
The first time I saw the Bighorn Medicine Wheel was in another lifetime. It was (almost) accidental. Dave and I were driving to California from Chicago, where we had just gotten married. Our tiny Honda Civic (a manual), was loaded with the few things we had in our lives; we were on our way to the Tetons in western Wyoming where we would spend three whole days on our honeymoon. Then, on to Palo Alto. Grad school. Adulthood. And all that.
Our little car was fighting the good fight. But it needed a break. The turnoff to Medicine Wheel was unremarkable on a mountain pass filled with remarkable sights. But we parked and started hiking towards something — out of sheer curiosity. Google wouldn’t be invented until the next year (in the building next to Dave’s at school). So in those ancient, pre-tech times, we were on our own. Or so we thought.
This unassuming circle contains innumerable stories of lives — those brought to it over thousands of years — but it also represents the circle of life itself. The region’s tribes believed that life flowed in this way. There is birth and death, but — as with the seasons — life continues on and on, spirits living forever — first on earth, then in the spirit realm. Equally as important in this circularity are knowledge (the personal power that we possess) and self-awareness (the integration of our multiple internal selves). At this “hoop,” guidance is sought from Mother Earth and Father Sky. Lives are contemplated; community is celebrated — living and dead together. And so it goes around and around.
The architectural elegance of this site is apparent, even to an outsider; but the profound thrum of connection to deeper human understanding is what I experienced that day, and carried with me down the 10% grade of the mountain pass, and all the way to Palo Alto where our new lives took root. But my course was not circular, it was erratic. At some point, my memory of Medicine Wheel faded. A lifetime would go by before I’d stumble on it again.
We’ve come to think of rituals as ways to take care of our skin, or to get a good night’s sleep. But, as a culture, where do we go to reflect? To process pain? Are there physical spaces we share where we can reflect both individually and together? I can easily list scores of places where we go to escape en masse, or sit, passively, absorbing lessons soggy with metaphor. “Here’s How…” you can cope with basic life, etc. To me, it’s all as forgettable as a TED Talk — big on promises, low on results.
The power of Medicine Wheel is that it asks very little of its visitors: which part of the circle are you on? But it also asks everything: who else is here with you? In our cultural myopia, we can only see the first question. And we are eons away from addressing the second. When it comes to human capacity, we show our strength by winning the pissing match (see: Trump Tower), not by allowing ourselves to feel. And certainly not by acknowledging the feelings of others.
My personal approach to processing pain is to drive out to a favorite Jersey cultural destination, Route 10 (see: jughandles). I stroll through Marshall’s for some therapeutic sport shopping, then I drive two parking lots over and eat pad thai in my car from the excellent Malaysian restaurant. It’s not much of a ritual. But lacking an alternative, it’s the best I’ve got at sea level. And I can definitely recommend the pad thai.
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.
Vine Deloria, Jr., Oglala Lakota
Two summers ago, Dave and I managed to stumble on Medicine Wheel again. Probably not accidentally. This time, we were puttering along in a crappy rental car after visiting our son who was working at a dude ranch a few hours away. It was the first time we had taken a road trip by ourselves in more than 20 years. As soon as we saw the unsuspecting turnoff, we remembered it. We parked and started hiking — this time, we knew exactly where we were going.
It hadn’t changed, but we had.
The clarity of Medicine Wheel’s power — its human capacity — was far more apparent now that we were carrying the heavy realities of our adult lives to it; the litany of sadness, the people we had lost, the fears and anxieties that had occurred in the interim years. But also the joys. The lives we had created, the lives we had touched; the people who sustain us. All of it was there, at once, on that ferociously windy mountain top.
This is a bundle of flowers tied up in long grass. I left it on the perimeter of the hoop for my parents who died long ago, and who I still miss terribly. I didn’t really know what I was doing by leaving it, but it felt right to me. Looking around, many others had done the same; they embodied their thoughts in the form of scraps of cloth and ribbons. Prayers, hopes, and messages to others who were all there with them on that circle. And always will be.
I try to carry that windy site in my mind — especially as it becomes harder and harder to drown my sorrows in pad thai. I know that I’ll return to Medicine Wheel one day, when I’m farther along on this circle. I’ll still be an outsider, but I hope I’ll be someone who is still capable of experiencing some amount of its force. In the mean time, I take stock in one thing: the inscription on our wedding rings. It’s the last line of a poem written my husband when we first met. “We have closed a circle.” And so it goes, around and around.
Thanks for reading, sweet people. If 2,000 Words brings you some joy, let me know! xox
Nailed the ending!
Wheels within wheels... very nice.