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ong ago, the ancient Indians did in fact occupy the shores of Lake Skegemog and roamed the hills and valleys of Kalkaska County. |
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| My family came to own the Jack Leatherby property at Lake Skegemog in 1963, which he homesteaded in the 1860’s. Since that time I too have been privileged to find evidence of the ancients. In my book, Gold in the Mornin’ Sun (The thoughts and observations of a country boy) I relate a number of things about early pioneer history in the Skegemog area as told to me by Jack Leatherby’s grandson Jess Letherby, who I knew over a thirty year period. Some of his stories he told came from his grandfather and other old timers he knew as a boy, many of them were of the Indians. A remnant of the ancients still existed in the area during the pioneer settlements of the mid 1800’s. |
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| Over the years, I have pieced together a picture in my mind of the ancients and their village. I believe to know the actual site of the village which is located on private acreage, but for obvious reasons will not reveal it to the general public. |
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| It is one thing to find the actual objects which the ancients left behind and it is quite another to encounter those people in your dreams. For years I could not bring myself to believe such a thing was possible. But many unexplained things began to play upon my mind as I encountered one coincidence after another in such succession as I could no longer think of it in such terms. It became more than coincidence, it became a synchronicity that fit together perfectly with one event verifying another. I had to modify my thinking and open my mind to take account of what I could not explain or prove in a scientific manner. |
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I began to recall my grandmother when I was a boy and the fact that she seemed to somehow be tuned into a dimension beyond what most people could understand. She was a bit too straight laced for my thinking at the time. She was a very meticulous and devoted Christian lady from the “old school”, but she had an uncanny ability to see beyond the space in which she lived. I recalled the time, as told by my grandfather when she woke him from his sleep one night to announce that my father (I was yet to be born) had just been in a wreck and the family model T was upside down in a ditch. She had seen it in a dream. She insisted he wake the neighbor and take his car to the scene of the wreck. She told him exactly where it was
and when they arrived, there was my dad, who had fallen asleep behind the wheel, laying on the ground semi-conscious. Over and over throughout the many years of her life, she would relate such things to family and friends and you could always bank on the accuracy of her visions.
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| This was the same grandmother as she lay on her death bed looked up and told us she could see her father and siblings waiting in their spiritual bodies on the other side for her to arrive in paradise. Her descriptions of the scene were very vivid and matter of fact. |
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Photo of the author at his boyhood farm with his sister in the front and grandmother at top left with mother in the middle and great grandmother on the right. Notice the frame of the wind mill in the background from which water was carried into the house one bucket full at a time. Modern conveniences came a few years later. (Great grandmother had been a young lady at the time of the American civil war and I vividly recall her talking about those times when I was young.) |
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The only unique experience in this regard I’d had when I was young was the time when I was eight years old and had my appendix taken out. I remember being on the operating table when suddenly, I was up above my body looking down upon it and the doctor and nurses, who were working on me. I never told anyone about that and just sort of put it some place in the back of my mind. |
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| I was too busy for many years to give such things much thought, but then one night that all changed when I had a dream. I was startled and awoke in a sweat and near panic. That very day two of my friends and business partners were flying in their small plane to Carson City, Nevada where we hoped to establish a small factory to make wind generators. What I saw very vividly in my sleep was their yellow Cessna crashing into the ground at Lovelock Nevada, killing them both. The first thing I did was look at the clock as I got up and stumbled around the bedroom, it was 2:00 AM, later I returned to bed. |
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| The next morning, I received a phone call with the news that Bob Kalnbach and Rolland Colson were killed the past night as their plane crashed in Lovelock Nevada, at 11:00 PM pacific time which was 2:00 AM eastern time. |
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| “WOW” Shades of grandma!!! I was stunned. A new phase of my life was beginning and I’d need to pay attention to it |
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This was the background that set the stage for my sojourn with the young Ottawa brave that one day might be no more than a myth to many who would read of my account of the young Chief Kalkaska. |
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| But, for me he is a very real character in the world of my dreams, from the land of the ages |
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A public domain sketch of early Native Americans at a site they consider sacred, where the remains of their ancestors rest high on a hill overlooking refreshing waters |
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The young brave knew that someday his body would release its hold on him and he would be free to travel back to the place where day does not pass into night and the colors of all that are beautiful do not fade and the living soul of the mortal body does not die. |
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| Epilogue |
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he he mysteries of life are many to be sure. As modern people we seem to be so involved in everyday living we fail to look deeper and appreciatively into the blessings that abound with that miracle. |
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| Even in suffering and tragedy there are positive lessons for us to learn if we do not look upon such things as defeat, but as opportunities to grow, for we are here to receive what we need.. |
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| Since the days of my youth when I had the out of body experience during surgery to remove my appendix, I had slowly come to realize my real self was contained deep within me and was not my physical body. My increasing contact with this most basic thing of which I am, has given me a whole new outlook upon life and its unending sequences. In addition to my dream connection to the subliminal world beyond the realm of my consciousness, I have also experienced a link to that dominion in a one time sojourn while I was wide awake |
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| It had happened early one day as I was enjoying my usual morning cup of green tea. I was in my log cabin with my feet propped up near the wood stove listening to the crackling fire when I could suddenly feel the presence of what may have been a spiritual being close by. It was not intimidating in any way and I felt a sense of peace and instinctively knew I was not in a situation that was alarming or harmful. I expect most people would ignore such a feeling or get up and turn on the radio. Perhaps most would never get such an opportunity because the TV would have already been blaring out its morning propaganda to prevent such a thing from even occurring. |
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However, my reaction was one of immediately getting up and walking outside to savor the presence I felt beneath the open sky and the rising sun. As I focused my eyes easterly toward the clouds above the hillside, my thoughts were of a future time when perhaps I’d have a better understanding of what I was now feeling. Then, I turned and walked back into the cabin where I was again met with the overwhelming urge to return outside. |
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This time I made way down below the cabin to the west and near a pond to sit down upon a log. Facing away from the morning sun and in the shade, I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to clear of any thoughts or concerns. Almost at once there was a bright light in place of the darkness behind my eye lids and I plainly heard a voice within the protective light that I was immersed in, saying: |
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“Seek not the future, for it has been predetermined from your past and is finding completion within your present for your discernment and growth”. |
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| Allowing that to sink in, moments later I heard: |
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| “You shall judge yourself to learn your needs. Truth becomes paramount through error. Continue in the practice of that which is genuine”. |
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| What had really happened, I can not fully explain. This was something that most would not tell anyone about and I have shared it with only a couple of other people. But, so be it… I can only relate here what was a genuine experience and what others think, can not change that. Perhaps this was an encounter with a benevolent angel of light or simply a conscious contact with my subconscious mind on a level above a dream experience. But, whatever it was, it was another of those incredible things that all of us perhaps, can
have access to, on a soul level, if we so endeavor. |
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| Birth and death are both part of the same great experience. It is not over when the body returns to the elements of the raw earth, it is only a return to the beginning from which our earthly sojourn has found completion. As the soul returns to the Source, it crosses through the mist and fog which has clouded our spiritual memories while we were here, to once again find its familiar home. If we were to easily recall our prior spiritual existence while dwelling upon the earth, we would have a preconceived viewpoint from which we would have a difficult time to grow in new ways by being pre- disposed to the previous, limiting new enlightenment to be found by our new experiences. |
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| Science has no way to prove or disprove matters of the soul, just as I have no way to do so either. But if science can find the way to unify Einstein’s relativity theory with quantum string theory, then we’d have a theory that is all inclusive, which would allow us “to read themind of God”, as Einstein once wrote. In my life it has not been a matter of blind faith, but of personal experience and impartial observation that has given me a glimpse across the space of time that seems to separate us from that other dimension. |
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| We all have it within ourselves to make that connection if we so desire. Our thoughts have great potential and are the sparkplugs which can bring the ethereal vapors to ignition. But to entertain doubt is to shadow success. So care must be exercised in thinking, as it is the process that precedes the state of being. |
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| Spending time in the pristine quiet of the wilderness to allow the solitude to cultivate an attitude of being in touch with the ebb and flow of earth’s daily and seasonal rhythms is a debarkation point to harmonize body and soul. It is in
such a setting that we can observe the evidence of the creative powers of the Great Spirit. |
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Realizing as the ancients did, that we are a part of a greater whole gives insight into the many latent talents we possess and have never made use of or in fact may never have been aware of. |
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| It’s amazing what hidden abilities we all have. |
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| The secrets and mysteries of life can only be released to the conscious mind by searching deep… and that process begins in the subconscious which is the seat of the soul. |
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| The world of our dreams is the meeting place of both… |
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the dust shall return to the earth as it was |
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. |
Ecclesiastes 12:7 |
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