Blast from the Past #9

...and other random snippets from a rummage sale of images - Aug. 29, 2005

Hey y'all,

Yesterday I promised other random snippets - you know, impressions
and stories that don't fit anywhere, but are good in and of
themselves, but after the Pando story, it just didn't seem to fit.

Anyway here goes:

Hippie Belly Dancers in Shangri-la.

As I said, when I arrived at the Girdwood party in Kennicott,
there was a drumming band playing and belly dancers gyrating.
They seemed discombobulated though. Not all their troupe showed
up and they were crowded amongst the ruins of a copper mine, and
had difficulty getting it together, you know? It was cool and all
that, but they were not in sync, within themselves or with each
other.

Of course, I didn't know that until later, I just thought it was
an amateur group having fun with their friends...

Later as the sun went down, and the "official" festival was over,
the late-night band - Smooth Money Gesture - was setting up their
stage down on the moraine - yes, as in glacier - because they
agreed to be good neighbors and move the party away from the lodge
- a drum circle started at one of the tents.

The festival was on a hill below an old lodge, which probably used
to be part of the copper mine that was in operation in the area
for a short time, and above the terminal moraine of a glacier.
It's embarrassing, but I can't remember the name of it, but as
this glacier cut through a few different valley, it carved so much
silt, that it sat on top of it - three feet of it, so it looked
like the surface of the moon. You could see rolling hills lines
in reddish, yellowish, and grayish hues indicating that this soil
came from different valleys. So that was the view.

The tent where this drum circle started up, was right on the edge
of this moraine that looked like the end of the world - unless
somebody told you, you'd never know there was an ancient glacier
underneath. As two or three people started drumming, I left my
dilapidated tent (I'd forgotten one pole - kind of a crisis when
the tent requires two) to hang out there and sat on the ground,
with everybody else. Before long one of the belly dancers came
out of the tent. Instead of her skimpy top, she was wearing a
light-weight white sweater with a hood, her long reddish brown
hair flowing to her waist. As the music continued, she slowly
started to dance, moving her shoulders and upper back in a wave as
she spread her arms out and her hips joined in. A couple more
people joined the drum circle, beating on plastic buckets, but
strangely enough it worked. After a few more minutes, another
dancer joined the first, and they synchronized beautifully as they
shook their hips when the tempo was
fast and circling their hands and fingers slowly above their
heads when the tempo was slow. Then a third joined them, and
those of us sitting down moved back as they danced in a circle,
kicking up their legs and moving in concert. The fourth that
joined them didn't have the space to dance, so she added to the
beat of the music by shaking bells. The night was cloudy, but
every so often the moon peaked through, illuminating the scene
that was lit between twilight and darkness...Sitting on the
ground, we were at the level of the music, while the dancers
celebrated the life in their bodies above us - backlit by the
night sky and whatever lamps were coming from the heart of camp.
From the ground, they looked like goddesses, once I stood up to
move around, they were ordinary women dancing with their friends.
The spell was broken and I moved on.

It was only twenty minutes, but the magic of that time is forever
etched in my mind.

Something tells me this is a good time to stop...

Feel free to drop me a line, y'all know I love to hear from you
even when I am on my happy trails...

Montgomery