After Kelsey’s graduation and before Memorial Day, I squeezed in a trip to Arkansas to visit my good friend Timido. She had been trying for years to get me to come and visit her. In college, I had sold books door-to-door in Memphis, Tennessee and had spent quite a bit of that time in eastern Arkansas. I could remember no reason for me to be excited about visiting the state again.

However, I had never been to the northwestern part of the state, Fayetteville to be specific. What a surprise!

Thirty years ago, a friend of Timido’s had purchased 300 acres on the side of a mountain in the Ozarks. She had created a women’s community, putting the land in a trust. Timido was a member of the community, and envisioned her friends from the NW would join her someday. I was one of many targets.

I was smitten with the land. It is enchanting, peaceful, and beautiful. I awoke every morning and hiked for miles, exploring the rough roads and trails. I am one of those fortunate people who aren’t affected by bugs, and so despite walking in lush meadows and through forests, the chiggers and ticks stayed away. I was the envy of the other women.

As I prepared to leave to go back to Omaha on my way to South Dakota, I felt a deep longing to stay there in the beauty of the land. It was the first time I had felt that way about a place other than the NW in a very long time. Timido suggested that I consider becoming a member of the landholder’s group. She had arranged for me to meet as many women on the land as possible, but because several were gone, I would have to return if I were going to apply. One of the requirements of becoming a member is to have approval from all of the other members. I told her I would think about it.

On one of my many hikes around the land, I had seen an old shack sitting on a ledge above the road. Exploring what was left of the buildings, I looked out from the rickety deck. The trees had grown up in front of where I stood, but I could see that it was a stunning view. Rolling mountains, a beautiful valley below, and just beyond the road, I saw one of the ponds that had been built on the land. I felt at home and at peace.

On my drive back to Omaha, that piece of land kept calling me. I was so entranced, that I missed my exit and two hours later discovered I had been driving east, not north! That had never happened to me before on my many miles of driving. At first I was very mad at myself. It was already a ten hour drive, and I had just added four hours to it! However, something shifted in me that day. My spirit guides calmed me down, showing me the beauty of what was around me that I wouldn’t have seen if I had not gone the wrong way. They showed me that it was all in my perspective. I could be mad or I could enjoy what I was experiencing. Either way, I was already there and couldn’t change the circumstances. It was my choice to let the lower frequency energy overtake my joy. Or to be in a space of gratitude and self-forgiveness.

I looked around me as I drove through SW Missouri. There were rolling hills, with layers of green, under a beautiful sky with puffy clouds. It was really just about the most idyllic drive I had been on the entire trip. I was taking the back roads, so there was very little traffic. It was extraordinary.

I settled in to drive back to my road when my shamanic mentor, Jan Engels-Smith, called me to ask about some work she needed help with. I have never heard her be frustrated, but, as she said, she was having a hard time being in her joy at that moment. I chuckled, because I had just been in that same space only moments before. I told her what I had just done, and by the time we hung up, we were both laughing. One of Jan’s favorite sayings was “Choose joy in adversity.” Sometimes you just have to be reminded of what you already know.

By the time I reached Nebraska, I had a complete vision of what my house would look like on the land in Arkansas, where each room would be, and even what pictures would adorn the walls. For the next several weeks, I would fall asleep to the image and wake to the dream. I had never experienced anything like it. It felt like I had fallen in love.

I began to look at the possibility of returning to Arkansas to meet all of the women and really decide if that was where I was meant to be. Much of it would depend on how the Memorial Day Weekend shaped up, and if I was still going to be teaching a workshop in Colorado in June.

It’s been awhile since I made a blog post. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say. In fact, this quest became much more than I had ever imagined it would be, an odyssey that took me 13 weeks, 13,400 miles, and through 13 national parks and monuments. Somewhere along the way, as I traveled roads new and familiar, I realized it was a retrospective look at what has shaped me, and at the same time, gave me new perspectives on how to transform and move forward.

So I will go back and reconstruct some of the amazing moments, life-changing experiences, and incredible insights I was so fortunate to have.

When last I posted, I was on my way to visit family. I’ll breeze through some of this, so as not to bore you. However, there are a few things that I’ll share here because they were either shamanic in nature, or have an impact on stories I will share later.

Having had the challenges I had on the first part of my journey, with sickness, finances, and juggling work with travel, I was relieved to arrive at my eldest sister Linda’s in Omaha, Nebraska.

When I was 11, Linda came home from a summer selling books door-to-door after her freshman year in college. She handed me a tape series by Zig Ziglar, called See You At the Top. It was my introduction to personal development information, and I was hooked.

Linda, who became highly successful in sales and recruiting and is now a professional speaker and trainer, has influenced me in so many ways, I’ve lost track. Not only did she introduce me to the world of self-help, she steered me to coaching and to the idea of creating collaborative books by coaches. She has been much more than a sister to me; she’s a mentor, a colleague, and a confidante.

Linda and Reece

I stayed with Linda, her husband Jerry, and son Reece for four days before I moved on to visit Carol, my youngest sister, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa with her husband Brad, and sons Liam and Aiden. Within minutes after walking in the door, Carol looked at me and said, “You look like you need to have a massage. Let me treat you to one.” (I think she had noticed that I couldn’t even stand up straight.) Within minutes, we had an appointment for the next day.

The next morning, as I was preparing to leave for that appointment, Carol’s good friend and next-door neighbor Shelley popped in. She and her husband Brian had finished building their house in the fall, and in February they had awakened to a fire that completely destroyed the interior of the house. Luckily, no one was hurt, but they had to move out for 4 months while the house was rebuilt.

Shelley didn’t know I was in town, so was surprised to see me. We talked for a bit, then I said I had to leave for my massage with Kathy Awtry. She said that she was also seeing Kathy that day, just after me! The universe works in mysterious ways, as you will see.

During my session with Kathy, we talked about my study of shamanism and the healing and energy work I do in depossession and soul retrievals. She was fascinated and full of questions.

A couple of hours after my massage, Shelley called me and had barely said hello when she asked me what I do. After I clarified that she was asking about my shamanic work, she said that after she had explained to Kathy what was going on for her, Kathy had suggested Shelley call me to have me do some work on her and her house.

Apparently, she and Brian, as well as their children, had been seeing a spirit in their house prior to the fire, specifically a woman. Neither had ever had experience with spirits, but they felt strongly that she was somehow involved with the fire. They had also been experiencing behaviors that weren’t typical in their relationship, with lots of anger and frustration, before the fire, as well as after.

Having never had any experience clearing energy for houses or land, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I decided I would approach it the same way I would a person: call in the spirits, do a drumming extraction while journeying, and let the spirits guide me in what to do next.

What an amazing experience! I immediately saw the woman in my mind. She was afraid, but not of me or Brian and Shelley. She was, in fact, trying to help them. It was her abusive husband’s spirit that she was protecting them from. His spirit was also there, elusive, lurking, trying to avoid me and what I was doing. The woman explained that he had not only abused her, but had ended up killing her, dumping her body in the nearby lake, and no one had ever discovered or said anything about her disappearance.

She went on to explain that he was an evil man who had caused a lot of people harm. They had lived on the property, and the image I was shown was of a run-down trailer in a very destitute trailer park on the land Shelley and Brian and Carol and Brad had built their houses on.

The woman had been trying to warn Shelley and Brian that her husband’s spirit was trying to do them harm, that he was the cause of the change in behavior, and that they needed to protect themselves from him. It was not her, but his energy that had started the fire.

After I finished drumming and worked with my spirit helpers to pass their souls to the light, I shared with Shelley what the spirits had shown me. She was flabbergasted. She confirmed everything that I had relayed to her. Brian had grown up in a nearby town, and had told her that there had been a trailer park, that it was a very poor area of town not that many years before, and that there were several not-so-nice men who had lived in the area.

I suggested to her that we do a depossession for her and Brian as well. We did one for her that night, although Brian was out of town.

The next day, Shelley said that the energy in the house was completely different. She hadn’t even wanted to go into the house, but after the work I did, was now completely free of that feeling. When Brian came home a few days later, he confirmed the same for him.

I let them know that when I passed through again on my way to Arkansas, I would give Brian a session, too. They were both relieved to know the cause of their misfortune, and were eager to know more about shamanism and energy work.

The next day, I headed to my hometown, Howard, South Dakota.