Shepard for the Day.16

Final description of a child's life in primordial hunter-gatherer times, when we became human..

Wiyot sisters participating in the
Flower Dance, a coming of age
ceremony recently revived

"At the end of  childhood he comes to some of the most thrilling days of his life.  The transition he faces will be experienced by body and ritual in concert.  The childhood of journeying in a known world, scrutinizing and mimicking natural forms, and always listening has prepared him for a whole new octave in his being. The clock of his body permits it to be done, and the elders of his life will see that he is initiated.  It is a commencement into a world foreshadowed by childhood: home, good, unimaginably rich, sometimes painful with reason, scrutable with care."