With our hearts turned homeward, we made it into Missouri where we found the living waters flowing, the glory of the setting sun and fossils by the handfuls reminding us that we are very very very old indeed. We built our final altar we made our final prayers. Aloud we prayed to our ancestors and our great great grandchildren. “Feel us! We are MorningStar and WalkingFire. We are your great great grand mothers. We were here. We leave you our strength. Our wisdom. Our great sa

You will see here all I could find to make an altar on this section of the path...broken glass with the living stones on top. A symbol of the rising strength and pure heart of the Cherokee. On behalf of all the Earths’ people, are these prayers made this day by WalkingFire and me.

We sleep with the night sounds and stars over head and rise with the morning song birds. Each night we do the queens jewel and run our feet with soul blossom radiance. We ask the state of our souls many times throughout the day. Altering along we go. Singing the native sings before the altars we bow it raise our hands to the skies. No words left. Now stories. New stories being made. The dust of the paths are on our moccasins and I try to close my eyes and feel the wimyn with

Below you shall see our forward steps into Tennessee. The altars. The prayers. The veggie wraps. Sleeping on the earth. Eating on the earth. Making our way across this great country of ours. Sometimes with the window down and singing along with the music that birthed out of this region whose trail of tears does not only belong to the Cherokee...

The next two days have been emotional. I can barely write. The written history is soul disturbing. I meet living people along the way at our camps. Camp hosts. Good people. Ignorant people. People who still believe that christianizing and civilizing the Cherokee was a gift. I travel on. I gather stones. I make more stone altars. I make my prayers before them. To honor what has been lost. To honor what has been preserved. Grateful for my tribe. I honor what has been preserved.

We rise early. It is cold and there is a light mist over the mother mountain. Two nights ago we were standing on Standing Indian Mountain. We walk up to the ancient stone wall to listen more. We place ourselves on the high standing stones positioned in the curves of the stone walls. We stand like high priestesses and imagine the ancestors who also stood here and the maidens, mothers and crones who climbed the mother mountain to climb upon these mighty stones. This great wall