This quotation captures for me the essence of The Journey Of The Waters. It caught my attention as our group gathered to capture "the before" snapshot of our arrival at Albuquerque International Airport. The quotation was posted below a large sculpture of a strange birdman at the moment preceding flight. It became the bookends that supported an experience which connected me to another realm, another time and another way of being.

Quite easily, The Journey Of The Waters became the most deeply experienced event of my life. It was journeys within journeys as we exchanged warmth for snow, bauxite-red earth and gray sagebrush for evergreen stands and quaking aspens, modern Southwestern cities for cowboy mining towns, and carved hills for snow-capped peaks.

The Journey Of The Waters was special primarily because it was a sacred journey which took me out of contemporary time and events, put me in touch with my heart and allowed my intuition to flourish. Water, the realm of the feminine and the receptive, was the vehicle for deep insights and panoramic reviews of past thoughts and deeds. In this medium, embraced by musical scores of ancient chants, vocal rocks, time-tested rituals and ceremonies, I came to many sacred realizations.

I am deeply grateful to Oh Shinnáh Fast Wolf for requesting permission of the Tinéh (Apache) Nation for non-native peoples to make The Journey Of The Waters. I feel the best way to honor her action is to take the necessary actions in my life so that the experience does not become another picture book adventure which has no correlation to my everyday life.

Assisting Oh Shinnáh on The Journey Of The Waters were Deep Arrow Woman and Bright Owl, who I recognize as teachers from the heart, gifted in panchromatic weaves. Observing the ways in which they threaded the needle, selected the appropriate colored strands and created astonishingly beautiful word tapestries, was exciting. Their teachings were penetrating and incisive.

As I reflect on the many months since I embarked on the Journey, I know that the experiences I had were incorporated into my being. They are in the tissues and mitochondria of my cells. I know this because of the nature of my response to life. Things I had difficulty accomplishing I can now do. Emotions such as fear, which kept me crippled and indecisive, have been replaced by the thrust to act and to accomplish.

The Journey Of The Waters established an omnipresent template from which I enter the rest of my life. Often the recurrent images of being immersed in the native healing waters, ingesting the vibrations of Changing Woman and being imbued by the love of creation, infuse me with feelings of grandeur, purpose and hope. For me The Journey was and is, to this very moment, a virginal and seminal experience.

Denise Ellis is an herbal educator and nutritional consultant, poet and mother of three. She is known as Dancing Flower in The Deep Arrow Lodge of Apprentices. She is a mentor and instructor at Moonfire's School of Women's Ways, serves on the Council of Women Advisory Board for Moonfire Meeting House and is training to facilitate "A Circle of Women."