Jack, Part Seven--I Love You More

Well, to make a billions-of-years-long story somewhat shorter, the dissatisfaction spread quickly and was soon an epidemic. Left and right, the animals were forgetting their gifts and instead focusing on the things they couldn’t do or that others could do better than they could.
Manitou, even though He was Manitou, had His feelings hurt. He was feeling the sting of the ungrateful animals’ complaints. He decided to take drastic measures to remind the animals of all they had been given.
Now, if you’ll remember, this story takes place at a time when the world was the perfect place—there were no blizzards, no tornados, no hurricanes, no droughts, no extreme weather of any sort. In fact, every day was 76 and sunny and every night was clear and in the fifties. Manitou decided that what might be called for was a little adversity—thinking that might make the animals pull together and forget their jealousies and their differences.
So he changed the winds just a little and tilted the axis of the planet so that as it circled the sun there were some pretty noticeable changes in the weather month by month. In this part of the world the days began to get shorter, the leaves of the trees began to receive less sunlight and soon changed color and fell off . The animals began to spend more and more of their energy just keeping warm. And they began to get worried.
But instead of bringing them closer together, their difficulties only made them fight and argue more. Things were getting bad.
Heavy cold fluffy particles began to fall from the sky. It was beautiful, but none of the animals were able to appreciate just how beautiful because they were all too busy shivering and trying to stay warm and alive.
They had to do something fast or they were in real danger of losing this world. So the crow, who was the wisest of all the animals, and the only one who had not yet given in to dissatisfaction, began flying from animal to animal, calling them together for a meeting. And because the crow was the one animal that had not joined in the arguing and petty jealousies, the other animals listened to his call and gathered where and when he said they should.
Of course it helped that Crow had the most musical, melodious voice of any of the animals in Manitou’s creation. When the other animals heard him call, they could hardly refuse. And even in the dimmed light of the intensifying storm the rainbow-colored feathers of the crow stood out vibrantly like a beacon, and the animals followed him to a large clearing in a field not far from here—near the rocks we call Sleeping Giant.
In the course of their meeting it became clear that all of the animals had some grievance or another with just about every other animal. The only one they all still seemed to trust was the crow. So they chose him to fly up to Manitou in Sky Country to apologize and see if He would change things back to the way they were. You see, by this time the animals had realized that it was probably their own arguing and complaining about what they didn’t have that had led Manitou to change the world so drastically. And they knew the first thing they had to do was apologize for being so ungrateful.
Crow agreed that he would bring their message to Manitou and also ask Him if He would consider bringing back the sun and the warmth and the green life all around. It was hard going for crow as he flew up through the gathering storm. His wings became coated with snow and ice and at times he almost gave up hope. But he continued on, knowing that all the animals were depending on him. Eventually, he made it out the top of the clouds and there, up above the Earth, the sun was still shining.
Off in the distance crow could see Manitou sitting beneath his Oak tree. Something about the way He sat Crow could tell He was grumpy. Right away crow flew over to Manitou and landed on the branch just above His head. Manitou said, “Hello crow. What brings you here, my colorful, fine-voiced friend?” Crow sang from his heart and his voice had never sounded more like the music of the Universe than it did that day, during that conversation with Manitou.
Manitou listened. When crow was done, Manitou explained why He had brought the cold and snow to the Earth. It was a lesson to the animals that they should remember all of the many gifts they have gotten and not wish for something that could not be. Crow asked Manitou if He would change the world back to the way it was and Manitou said that He could not. Instead, He explained that once in every trip around the sun there would be a time of cold and darkness and hunger, but that it would always give way to light and life and plenty.
He told crow to bring this message to the animals. Crow said he would and as he lifted his feet from the branch to fly back down through the storm, Manitou was moved by crow’s beauty and his steadfastness and He said, “Crow. Wait. Before you go back to Earth, take this branch you have been perched upon, fly over to the sun and dip the branch in the flames, and then quickly fly back down to the animals gathered in the field. I will make it so that they will know what to do when they see you. Tell them that this is my gift to them to help them through the cold times. It, too, should be a reminder to be thankful for the things you have.”
Crow did as Manitou said and took the branch over to the sun, dipped the end in the flames, and then wheeled through the sky and back down into the storm with the wood burning as he flew. Once he entered the storm clouds it grew darker and colder and crow had a hard time holding onto the branch with his beak. The flames and smoke were choking and blinding him.
At last he come out through the bottom of the clouds and when he did he saw the animals gathered in the field below. They right away worked together to gather pine needles, birch bark, twigs and branches. Others of them cleared a place in the slowly accumulating snow. A pile was made and then crow, just before passing out from exhaustion, dropped the flaming branch onto the pile and it quickly flared up, creating a beautiful, warm fire for all the animals to circle around.
After some long moments during which the animals were terrified that crow might be dead, he slowly opened his eyes. Right away the animals asked crow, “What did Manitou say? What happened? Where did you get this warmth and light?” Crow tried to answer, but all that came out was a scratchy ‘CCAAAAAWWWWWW” Next the animals asked crow about his feathers and when he looked at himself in the firelight he could see that his rainbow feathers had all turned black—singed by the fire and dirtied by the smoke of the branch.

Jack, Part Six--I Love You More

“Well, for one thing it is nocturnal. It is a mammal, but it can fly by stretching out its extra skin like a flying squirrel. It also has a special kind of gland in its rear end that glows like a firefly when it is happy or excited. I wanted to be like Manitou and think about every detail before I created it in the real world. It lives only in oak trees and it feeds on acorns in the fall and winter and on biting and stinging insects in the spring and summer. It gets the chemicals it needs to glow from the acorns and the mosquitoes it eats. The other thing it does is it makes a sort of whistling sound as it glides through the dark. The sound and the light scare the heck out of larger predators like foxes and coyotes.’
“Now that I would pay to see,” said Nana, truly impressed.
“I was thinking that I would try it and then once I had it totally made I would open my eyes slowly and see if it worked. I had it done—I had it pictured in my head, but when I opened my eyes, nothing happened.”
Nana did not believe in magic and she certainly did not believe Jack had the power to create new species, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you sure nothing happened? Because if something did happen, it wouldn’t be here in this room. It would be out in the woods. Right?”
“That’s right,” said Jack, hope rising in his voice.
“Why don’t you go to sleep now…I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”
“No. Really. I am awake. Tell me more, Nana,” pleaded Jack.
“Alright. Now where were we? Oh, that’s right. Each felt blessed to have everything it needed to survive. Well, these creatures pretty quickly settled into their places in the web. Each did its job and its job was simply to live its life as best it could. None took more than they needed and all remembered every moment that they had been given some very valuable gifts by Manitou.
“Millions of years passed in this way with the earth seeming like one large, living being from Manitou’s point of view under His oak tree up in Sky Country. Life there had a rhythm and a flow that were like infinitely interesting music to Manitou.
“And then one day, one small thing changed. No one is sure exactly how that one day was different from all the billions of others that had come and gone, but somehow it was. On this one day, when everything changed, Manitou found His attention wandered for just a moment. There He was, looking down at the way the Himalayas cast a shadow 1000 miles long across India and Pakistan and into Afghanistan, when something caught His attention elsewhere in the universe. He turned for a moment and in that moment one osprey flying over one small lake not very far from here had a new thought—a thought never thought before by any creature in all of creation.

Jack, Part Five--I Love You More

“A long time ago, there were no humans here on this land we call North America.” As Nana spoke she very quickly got a faraway look in her eye and an almost-musical tone to her voice. Jack found the look on her face a little disconcerting, so he focused his eyes on the cone of light and the dancing snowflakes. The ballet of flakes combined with Nana’s resonant voice to put Jack in a spell and he didn’t move---hardly even blinked—for the entire length of her story.
“In fact, a long time ago there were no creatures at all in North America or anywhere else on the Earth or in the seas. Manitou, the Creator, was alone up in Sky Country and for a long time, He enjoyed just looking at the play of sunlight and shadows, dark and light, as the Earth rotated and revolved through the Heavens. There was land and there was water and after much experimentation, Manitou decided he liked a 25/75 split between the two best.
“Manitou had been around forever, so to Him millions of years were like a day to you and me. But then, one day, Manitou was watching the shadow of night make its way across the face of the Earth and He realized He wanted more. He didn’t know exactly WHAT He wanted; He just knew He wanted MORE. He found a spot beneath His favorite oak tree, made Himself comfortable, and fairly soon—just a few thousand years later—He drifted off. And He began to dream.
“Now, you know how in a dream weird things can happen yet they don’t seem weird to you at all until you wake up and look back at them?” The tone Nana used for this question somehow yanked Jack right out of his spell and made him realize she really was expecting an answer to her question.
“Yeah—I once had a dream that I had a horse, only the horse had wheels instead of legs and it rolled instead of ran,” said Jack.
“Exactly!” said Nana, “That is exactly what I mean.” Quickly her voice changed back to the story voice and Jack understood that he was free to disengage his mind once again and just be in the story she was telling.
“Well, what Manitou dreamed about was a planet very much like Earth, only it was covered with all sorts of interesting things. Some of them were tall and green and stiff. Some were soft and low to the ground and they Had colorful parts facing the sun. Some could actually move from place to place. It was such an incredible dream that when Manitou awoke, He decided to make much of it come true.
“He liked the idea of things that could live on Earth. Earth felt more alive to him when it was home to so much creativity. So, He set about making all the plants and animals and bacteria and virus and fungi and everything else that lives in or on or under the Earth..
“And as I said, Manitou is patient. He certainly took his time. For each living thing, Manitou sat under His oak and he gave His full attention to picturing every detail of a life before He would give it a name and bring it to life outside of His head and on the Earth. Each life had His full focus and the benefit of His boundless imagination. Manitou thought about how each creature would need to take in nourishment, would need to protect itself, would need to meet others of its kind, and would need to produce more creatures like it.
“ And to meet each of these needs He gave each life a set of gifts. These gifts came from Manitou and they were given free of charge. The only thing Manitou asked was that each creature be aware of the gifts and use them the way He had intended. After a billion years of our time, Manitou felt like He was just about done. He was running out of ideas.
“As Manitou put the finishing touches on a creature, He would close His eyes, picture the creature whole in His mind, see where it lived and imagine it in its place in the web of creation he was weaving on the Earth, and then slowly open His eyes again. And as He did so, that creature would appear on the Earth. Not just one of that creature, but an entire population of them. They would be there, newborn and blinking in the sun if they were daytime animals, or peering around them in the dark if they were nocturnal, feeling nothing but joy at their situations.
“Each felt blessed to have everything it needed to survive. Are you still awake, Jack?” Nana asked, because Jack’s eyes were closed and his breathing had become pretty deep and regular.
Jack peeled his eyes open slowly. “I’m awake, Nana.”
“Okay. You just started to look pretty comfortable, that’s all.”
Jack answered, “I was trying it myself.”
“Trying what,” asked Nana, though she had a pretty good idea what Jack had been doing in that head of his.
“Trying to do what Manitou did. Trying to think of a new animal and give it everything it needs.”
“What did your new animal look like?” asked Nana, truly curious.