I thought I’d go a slightly different direction in my substack today. It’s my first audio recording of a story —-and it isn’t a story I have told very often. But it is a story that has been circling around me. Perhaps because I too live in the country of stones, where stories once were born. And perhaps because I too will be venturing away, soon, soon, to journey towards the mountains of Colorado, to catch new stories.
Or quite possibly, because it is good to remember, that some stories come from deep listening, and from stones. And from having been fed.
Because some people have received their stories from earth, water, fire and air. I wish I were so lucky, to have had my first stories seeded into me from the place where I was native to earth.
But I’m a mash-up of many different cultural backgrounds through my ancestral dna. I know some of my ancestral fairytale stories, and of course, the religious stories that my more recent ancestors simmered in. But I do not have a knowing of the stories of place, the long long long ago story echoes of the first peoples native to my ancestral knowing.
So I have to slow down, and hunker down, and sit patiently like a lizard, on the red stones. The stones that have constellations of crystals sparkling upon them. The stones that are the color of sunsets and firebirds.
I share with you, in honor of these origin stories, the stone people stories, the story of the Seneca people: How Stories came.
I hope you enjoy it. I hope it will inspire you to go out listening to the stones, or the trees, or the wind. For the stories -the long long long ago stories. Perhaps it will also inspire you to feed the story of place, or the spirit of story.
Much love,
Stasha
The Origin of Stories