I Become a Shaman

We dug at the foundation holes steadily until they were finished—then we built some quick concrete forms and placed some bolt templates on top where they belonged and mixed and poured concrete in the easy-to-reach holes and the whole work day we were surrounded by the most beautiful and fragrant high slopes of the huge dormant volcano Mount Lassen.

What a great place to work!

I even liked sniffing the breeze when the wind came down from The Sulfur Works––one of the noxious steaming hot springs a short distance up the valley from the old Lassen Chalet.

In just a few weeks we had all the foundations ready for installing the towers.

The towers, heavy steel columns pre-manufactured to fit the foundation bolts and numbered for the different heights required by the mountain slope, were delivered by truck to the Lassen Chalet parking lot. Those on the upper slopes’ were going to be hoisted into place with the aid of a helicopter.

Concrete for the hard to reach foundation holes was also going to be poured from a big bucket thing dangling from a cable attached to the helicopter.

And there’s a little peculiar personal story connected with the helicopter that I will put in here––just don’t make too much of it, OK?

The boss asked us laborers to appear extra early one morning because the helicopter was going to fly in that evening, land in the parking lot and be ready to tote and fetch the concrete and the towers in the morning.

This sky-lift thing was a very tricky and dangerous operation and all of us were curious and excited about it.

I, of course, as a P&S Expert (Pick and Shovel) was not even a little involved in the helicopter part of the program. My job was going to be to carry a hand-held “stop” sign up the park highway above the parking lot to stop any cars from coming down when the helicopter was busy picking up materials in the parking lot.

Monkey simple.

When I arrived early in the morning, they handed me my stop sign—but there was a problem. The helicopter could not fly because a very thick fog had dropped into the valley—standing in the parking lot was like standing in the middle of a wet, dark cloud.

Freddy the foreman  came over to me and said: “Tom, we’re in trouble. This fog makes it impossible to fly and that chopper is costing us about a thousand dollars a minute just sitting in the parking lot. I know you’re into mysterious Indian things, could you maybe do a sun dance or something and get rid of the fog?”

He was serious, so I told him I would give it a try.

I put down the stop sign and bummed a cigarette and some matches from one of the smokers—since I was going to try what I imagined might be like an old Indian ceremony and for that I needed some tobacco––then I climbed through the fog up the mountainside to the top tower’s empty foundation hole.

I am not an Indian and I don’t know any sun or rain dances, but what the heck, yeah? Give it a try. I HAD read about ceremonies and deep down had a feeling that they should work…

So I reached the top tower’s foundation hole all by myself way up above the Chalet parking lot in the silent cold fog.

The big empty hole had a sheet of black plastic down inside it ready for concrete to be dumped in.

I knew from reading the Old Indian stuff that to help the ceremony work the shaman (ME! Cowa-bunga!) should make some sort of sacrifice. I hadn’t intended to make any magic that morning so I didn’t have much of anything to sacrifice, but I was wearing a sort of good luck charm a friend had given me on a plain chain around my neck––a little gold medallion memento from Hawaii with the state seal and motto on it. (“The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness”)

What the heck, right?

  

I placed the “sacrifice” under a fold in the black plastic sheet, lit the cigarette and blew smoke in the four directions and asked the weather gods or whatever was in charge of the fog to bring out the sun so the chopper could fly. Then I scrambled back down the mountain to the parking lot and—you may not believe this—but when I got to the tarmac, the fog was lifting and the helicopter was revving up to fly.

When the big boss—who didn’t know that the foreman had sent me on a sun-dance “mission”––saw me, he shouted: “Hey slacker! You’re getting paid to work! Get your sign and get up that road and get busy!”

The foreman looked sort of funny at me but didn’t tell anyone about our conversation and that was how I became a very beginner, but successful, shaman on Mount Lassen.

 

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