Hidden Spirit

Chapter 2: Wolves-4

The group was still seated on the logs around the campfire when Nate and Morgan arrived at the clearing. The men walked over and joined them. Allister and Jonathon were seated on the ground in front of Justin.

“Hey,” the tour guide said. “I was just going to tell the boys about Ojibwe spirit quests and animal guides.”

Morgan was immediately attentive. He and Nate sat down.

“As I was saying, when native boys are about your age, they go on a spirit quest. The quest involves several days, usually four, of isolation, fasting, prayer, and dreaming in order to contact a guardian spirit, most often an animal, to provide aid and protection. If he finds a guardian spirit and he keeps in contact with it through prayer and gifts, it will stay with him his whole life and give him guidance and protect him.

It is believed that during the quest a boy becomes a man. When he returns from his quest he will take a new, more adult role in the tribe and a new grown-up name. Like if his boy’s name was Small Fox before his quest, his adult name might be Running Fox or Brave Fox.”

The boys asked what their names might be if they ever went on a quest.

“That depends. On the quest you may meet your animal spirit guide. Often the name you choose comes from which animal is your guide.”

The boys then decided Allister would be Flying Eagle and Jonathon would be Leaping Deer.

The conversation turned to other things, but Justin’s tale of spirit quests and guides stayed with Morgan.

Eventually, everyone drifted off to bed. Morgan and Nate lay next to each other in sleeping bags. “If we were here alone it’d be fun to try sleeping in the same bag,” Nate said as he held Morgan’s hand.

Morgan nodded.

“Uh…” Nate half sat up and looked around. “Looks like everyone’s asleep. Wanna try it?”

Morgan laughed softly and shook his head. “No!”

“Well, okay, but if you get attacked during the night…”

“Good night, Nate,” Morgan said, smiling at his boyfriend in the darkness.

“Well, okay, good night. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Nate leaned toward Morgan and kissed him.

Morgan lay on his back and stared up at the starry sky. He went over the things that had been happening since he and Nate had come to Canada. He thought mostly of what had just occurred when he was on the beach—seeing the wolf.

He looked over toward the fire. Justin was still there, taking the first watch. Morgan looked over at Nate. He was already asleep. Morgan crept out of his sleeping bag and walked to the fire.

“Hey,” Justin said, when Morgan came up and sat beside him. “Having trouble sleeping?”

“Yeah, some.”

Morgan hesitated and then continued. “Could you tell me more about this spirit guide thing? Is it real?”

“First Nation people believe it is.”

“How does it work? Finding a guide, I mean?”

“Well, I’m no expert but I’ve read some on it, and last year we had an Ojibwe kid on the staff. He was the one who first told me about it. He told me you don’t choose a spirit guide. The spirit chooses you, and they decide when they will reveal themselves to you, become your guardian, guide, and protector.”

Morgan thought of the wolf and how it seemed to have just suddenly appeared on the beach. “What do these guides do?” he asked.

“Benny—that was the Ojibwe kid’s name—Benny said there are a couple kinds of guides. A life guide remains a part of you throughout your life. A messenger guide comes quickly into your life and then leaves once a message is understood. Benny said the time a guide stays depends on you figuring out and accepting the message. The message may deal with something ordinary in your life, or it may be a wakeup call for something important that you should do. Sometimes the animal messenger will come during an unusual event and make a powerful statement, and others come on the wind as a whisper.”

Morgan considered this. Was the wolf on the beach a spirit guide? And if so, was it a life guide or a messenger? If a messenger, then what was the message he’d brought?

Justin was going on. “A journey guide appears at the fork in the road of your life. Like when you have to make a decision to follow a certain path in life, the journey guide is there to guide you along the way. Unlike a messenger guide who comes and leaves pretty quick, the journey guide stays with you until the current cycle in your life has changed.”

This made sense to Morgan. He and Nate had finished college, and their lives were about to change. Morgan had welcomed this trip because it had put off making any decision about what direction his life would take. He wasn’t ready to commit to the options Nate had offered him. Now they were on the last leg of that journey. Soon it would be time to make such a decision. If indeed Morgan had met a spirit guide tonight, what was his message and where was he leading? But why would a spirit guide come to him? He wasn’t an Ojibwe. His parents were of European descent.

“Can anyone have a spirit guide, or do you have to be an Indian?” Morgan asked.

Justin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone who had this experience. Benny didn’t say if he’d made a quest or had a guide. The only quests I know of were in the books I read, and they were all written by First Nation guys.”

When Justin finished, Morgan sat in silence and stared into the fire. After a while, Morgan bade Justin good-night and went back to where Nate was sleeping. He got back into his sleeping bag and lay down next to him. Nate was a good man. Would a life with him be such a bad choice? He reached out and lay a hand on the shoulder of his sleeping boyfriend. From a distance he heard a wolf howl.