Escaping Flatlands

Myself and fifty-three other tourists were shuffled to the back part of the open property belongings to the Pueblo Indians of Taos. We were required to huddle silently and uncomfortably close together. In the background a very large Adobe building with crosses on it was lit bright pink and light orange from the fire’s glow. As soon as uncomfortable whispers started, so did the chanting.
A procession of women all synchronized stood in a row. Their coverings were clay colored and adorned with beaded jewelry of earthy tones such as dark red, blue, brown and white. They began to step synchronized while wailing a chant. Drums were beating so consistently you could feel your knee caps jumping in anticipation of the familiar rhythm.
Then the men came out in precession. The drum’s percussions beat straight through to the earth and then back up through the bottom of my feet, then marched into my lungs. I took a large breath. It was so intense my my fists clenched. I forgot everything.
The men dancing around the fire had full head dresses that protruded out up to three feet. The colors on the clothing were so muted they disappeared under entrancement of bright feathers. Dancers fluctuated between small movements and large sweeping movements so it began to tell a story. The women never skipped a single beat. I listened to these sounds from inside my spine. As my gaze turned upward I at the enormous cloud of smoke hovering in the sky, it happened.
The smoke cleared outward in all directions creating an opening in the middle about four stories above our heads. In the hole of clear sky there were four very large black birds resembling falcons circled above the fire in an exact formation. All of their heads faced inwards, and all of their tails formed the circumference of their rotation. They turned and turned never breaking the circle. The drums went from a clack to a thump. The singing went from wailing to a guttural type of yelling. The dancers went from tumbleweeds blowing haphazardly to the tight power of individual cyclones. The head dresses went from gentle flapping of a soaring stork to the violent thrash of a pouncing eagle. The birds never faltered as they rose to five and even six stories. The crowd grew more tense, more still. All chins were pointed to the sky looking for the ancestors that were being summoned.
Then suddenly, they all vanished. They did not fly away. They did not scatter upwards or outward. The crowd whispered, “They vanished”.