There I was biking south bound, fleeing military conscription from a cold Northern European country..

Every day was an awesome blessing.. full of jewels.

At one point, I found myself staying at a centre for shamanism in the French Dordogne.. A new experience for me, having previously not really had much contact with this method of.. discovery.

I was spending my time with people that regularly would voyage into a foreign shamanic landscape, in order to ask their power animal for guidance, and I wanted to be there too.

So I participated in a couple of sessions meant to entice a shamanic journey, but try as I may, nothing ever happened. Staying frustratingly rooted in my body, I figured that I was obviously not ready to journey yet, though the whole theme had me truly fascinated.

One lady there, Kate, Journeyed for me.. her intention was to meet my power animal, and ask a simple question..

Strange.. as I sit here recalling this, from all of roughly a decade ago, I believe that my question had been for guidance, as I was lost.. Strange that is, because I am still lost. hah! Not really so strange after all, for who of us isn't? (lost).

well, Kate met my power animals, and I was told to keep them secret, or not talk about them, but as I am attempting to stop keeping secrets, I can reveal here that they were a Unicorn and a Dragon.. I don't recall the significance of either, nor do I really recall the answer to my dilemma of where to head.. Other than that all would become clear. And I still wait.. For Divine clarity.

Well.. I am dilly-dallying things, and need to get to the owl.

There was one this one guy there.. His name was Dan, he was Dutch, and there with his partner, boyfriend, whose name has slipped from my mind.. Anyhow, Dan had this collection of bones and feathers from various different animals. He used them for shamanic rituals, and knew what animal species each item came from.

His collection, he felt, was quite complete, excepting that he was missing owl bones. A fact he desired to remedy.

One morning, over breakfast, he told me that during the night he had had a vivid dream.. a vision of a wall. a drystone wall, next to an old broken down wooden gate, and behind it there was a dead tree... Underneath the tree, lay some dry bones of a onetime owl.

He was very convinced that the vision was of an actual site not too distant from the farm we were staying at. So convinced was he, that he decided that later we would go out and look for it.

This area of France is full of old crumbling drystone walls, in fact one of the things I had been working on while I was there, was rebuilding their dry stone wall around the vegetable patch. It was a fascinating 3dimensional project for me. I remember that when I started, the first meter or so that I finished, looked like it wouldn't stay up for too long, but when I had finished the garden, the end of the wall, looked positively everlasting (in a temporary sort of way)..

But, I'm digressing again.

Later that day, myself, Dan and Kate got into Kate's car, and pulled out of the farm.

At the first crossroads (bare in mind this all took place on small infrequently used country lanes, and during the next hour or so, I think we only passed one tractor, is all.. no other cars).. So where was I?

Yes.. On reaching the cross roads, at the exit of the farm, Kate stopped the car, Dan took out his rattle, shut his eyes, and rattled..

Using this technique with the rattle, he was apparently able to put himself in a brief shamanic state, from whence he could receive guidance to aid him on his quest.

A short rattle.. a short pause, and Dan opened his eyes and said "right".. (as opposed to "left"), and Kate turned right.. 100 meters down the road, and there was a dirt road leading to the left.. Kate stopped, Dan rattled, and after a brief moment, said "straight on".

I was pretty excited about the whole thing, would we really find a stone wall, old gate, and dead tree? And if we did, would it have owl bones under it? We all had our eyes pealed, looking for anything that would fit the description Dan had furnished us with.

I think we left Merquey-Haut (where we were living - near Montvalent in the Dordogne, France), sometime toward late afternoon.. this was the soonest that we could arrange to get out..

The disadvantage of the timing, was the rapidly approaching dusk. We had been out maybe half an hour or so, still sticking to the country lanes as Dan rattled and guided us at each new junction. The sun was ready to set, which would make our quest pretty difficult.

Kate turned on her headlamps, and we continued our journey.

Suddenly, an owl swooped down in front of the car. Kate had to slam her brakes on to avoid hitting it. Dan smiled, and told us it was a sign we were very close.. For a full minute, the owl stood glaring into the headlamps of the car. It was pretty spooky, in an exciting sort of way. Then she turned around and flew off into the darkness..

We were all pretty keyed at this point, fully alert, panning the landscape outside the windows, convinced that somewhere near us there would be an old dry wall, gate, tree, bones..

Further junctions, further rattles, and more guidance. We turned up this dirt track, and this is difficult to believe, and I wouldn't do so easily myself, had I not been a witness.. But the same thing happened. An owl swooped from nowhere, and landed meters in front of the car. Fortunately Kate was not driving fast, otherwise she would have been unable to avoid colliding with it. Just meters in front of the stopped car, the owl stood unblinking glaring wide eyed at us.

This is where I have to disappoint you all, as I have no real good ending to this story.. once the owl had flown off into the dark again, we moved on slowly, but we soon realised that our journey would probably be in vain. Darkness had fallen completely, there were no street lights nor a helpful moon filled sky, and anything outside of the cars headlamps was pretty much out of sight.

We decided to turn back and try again in the morning.

I had already decided though, that the following morning was to release me back into the world on my bike.

Morning came, I packed up my tent from the field, and said goodbyes, and for the first time on my bike, I headed south bare foot. (Although I had been barefoot whenever I had the chance, I had been using shoes while biking, so this was a turning point for me in terms of hardening my feet, and being shoeless.).

Sorry.. I never did find out if Dan got his owl bones..