Primal Awareness: A True Story of Survival, Transformation, and Awakening with the Rarámuri Shamans of Mexico

Preface

The study . . . [of indigenous people] . . . does not reveal a Utopian State in Nature; nor does it make us aware of a perfect society hidden deep in forests. It helps us construct a theoretical model of society which will help us to disentangle what in the present nature of Man is original, and what is artificial.

Jean-Jacques Rouseau,

Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality

There are things we can share with the white man. There are things he can show us. We can have this exchange only if the white man leaves us to learn from ourselves, from the Earth and from the spirits, as we have always done. Otherwise, we will die with our philosophy and white people will starve as they continue to exchange the animals and the trees for things that are manmade.

Augustin Ramos

THIS BOOK WAS BORN IN THE BLACK, liquid darkness of an ancient river cave. During a kayaking expedition in 1983, an underwater tunnel in the center of Mexico’s Rio Urique swallowed me along with most of the raging river that brought me to it. As I entered what I thought would be my watery tomb, I suddenly relaxed into a consciousness that filled me with peace and clarity. When I finally emerged into the light of day, something awakened in me a primal awareness that apparently had been coddled to sleep by my so-called civilized perceptions.

For fourteen years, this awakening led me through a variety of adventures and explorations that eventually added reason to the intuitive insights I gleaned that day on the river, insights that changed my life forever. These illuminations came mostly from experiences with wild horses, trauma victims, Rarámuri Indians, especially a one-hundred-year-old Rarámuri shaman named Augustin Ramos, and academic research. Each served to help unfold a model of how the human mind innately responds to life’s major influences, how it can instinctively judge the merit of these influences, and how our awareness of this process ultimately determines whether or not we are able to live in accord with life’s universal harmony.

The formula I offer to describe this natural way to harmonious living is a simplification. I say this as a warning, for oversimplification and dogma are the twin enemies of creative thought. A model, however, is only problematic if we use it as a substitute for the world of experience rather than as a guide to it. I hope that an awareness of what I refer to as the CAT-FAWN connection will throw us back into ourselves and our inborn connection with all things, preventing our destructive behavior and putting us back on course quickly if we stray too far from an enlightened path.

The concepts represented by the CAT-FAWN connection offer western minds a paradigm for understanding subjective experience, rather than for measuring objective reality. They symbolize the associations that have patterned the thinking styles of many indigenous people, especially Native Americans. I refer not so much to the conclusions of such thinking with which many of us are familiar but to their source. We already know that many primal cultures think differently about life’s interconnections than we generally do. We have not realized, however, that there is a primordial awareness behind such thinking that is a natural heritage for us all.

Whoever has maintained this awareness throughout history, regardless of skin color or religious faith, has managed to do a better job of preventing disharmonious relationships from dominating life and its structures. As a group, primal people have had more success with such management because, for them, harmony is mandatory in all spheres of life as a condition of Nature itself. Native American philosopher Jamake Highwater believes that harmony is the resonance of a kind of sanity that predates psychology.¹ Primal people therefore offer a living model for rediscovering our own innate primal awareness. With this awareness, the wonderful and diverse thinking styles represented within western and primal cultures can collaboratively produce complementary, holistic philosophies that may lead to health and vitality for Earth and its inhabitants.

This book is divided into two parts. The first part tells the true story of how I came to know of the CAT-FAWN connection through my newfound abilities to talk heart-to-heart with wild horses, trauma victims, troubled teenagers, and Rarámuri shamans. The second part presents this mnemonic in detail and explores how and why it represents the process by which we all learn how to live, for better or worse.

The last quotation at the beginning of each chapter is from Augustin Ramos, the shaman with whom I lived in Copper Canyon. I have done my best to accurately translate his statements, but I have paraphrased on occasion where English words fail to capture his meaning.

Royalties from this book go to the Sierra Madre Alliance on behalf of the Rarámuri simarones, North America’s most primal Native Americans, and their vanishing wilderness.

ONE

ADVENTURES AND EXPLORATIONS

Into the Heart

The passage through the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died.

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

There are places that have great power, like the entrance of a cave or the edge of a canyon. If you are there and you concentrate, you might learn to do many things you could not do before.

Augustin Ramos

MY JOURNEY TOWARD PRIMAL AWARENESS began on a cold, rainy day in February 1983. Dave Carr and I were working a twenty-four-hour shift as firefighters in a two-man engine company located atop Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Emergency calls at our station were relatively few, and other firefighters often referred to it as the retirement villa with a view. A quiet assignment suited Dave and me, however. We were not anxious for someone to get hurt or for a house to burn down just so we could have some action. Besides, we got most of our excitement from white-water kayaking.

Four months had passed since we were on a river, and it would be three months longer before the spring runoffs were safe enough to kayak. This contributed to a craving for adventure that was at an all-time high for me, a craving I was never able to satisfy completely. When I got out of the Marine Corps in the early seventies, I tried to sail a small sloop from San Francisco to the Caribbean, but seasickness caused me to quit this otherwise exciting endeavor too soon. I then rode on horseback across the Pacific Crest trail, but unexpected snow put an early end to this effort as well. Now marriage and a full-time job seemed to preclude plans for exploits of such proportions.

On this particularly dreary February day, however, I felt desperate for such a wild undertaking. My marriage was on the rocks, and my job with the fire department was becoming intolerable. Of course, I was the common denominator in both problems, but I was too unaware to recognize this. Instead, I put the cause entirely outside of myself. For example, I blamed my wife for becoming too materialistic and sedentary, not realizing that my extreme and uncompromising expectations were partially responsible for whatever truth there may have been in the allegation.

My fire service problems related to a book I had written exposing the fact that the lack of physical fitness among firefighters was the primary reason the profession was statistically the most hazardous occupation in the United States. Many of my peers thought I was implying they were unfit for their jobs. In fact, they were correct, and I was dispassionate with my criticisms and overly aggressive with my expectations. There was right and wrong, I thought, and I presumed to know which was which, seeing no middle ground in my reasoned conclusions. This self-righteous attitude and my vehement defense of the one logical truth led me into many battles. I fell into a me versus them mentality and had a difficult time knowing whom I could trust. My hot temper and the militaristic impulses I picked up from Marine Corps training during the Vietnam catastrophe did not help matters. Nor did the frustration that seemed to come from the ways that these impulses contradicted my cynicism and antiwar sentiments.

The solution to my problems, I pretended to believe, was escape to some place remote and wild—even dangerous. But where? I no longer had a sailboat, so the ocean was not an option. The weather was too miserable for horse trekking, and I did not have enough funds for an exotic destination. On this particular stormy evening, Dave was repairing his bicycle in the fire station living room, and I was looking through Wild Rivers of North America by Michael Jenkinson. Jenkinson recounted an unsuccessful attempt to paddle down the Rio Urique, which runs through the remote Copper Canyon area of central Mexico. He quit the trip because the water level was too low and the rocky portages were ripping his party’s boats to shreds. Jenkinson recommended March as the best time to try the river, and here we were approaching March and already having more rainfall than had occurred during the year of Jenkinson’s expedition.¹

In spite of its isolation, Copper Canyon was relatively close and inexpensive to reach. We owned inflatable kayaks that could be carried down into the canyon, and we each had accumulated more than a month’s worth of vacation. I had also heard about the amazing cardiovascular endurance of the Tarahumara Indians who lived in this region. The Tarahumara, who call themselves the Rarámuri, commonly ran one-hundred mile races in the steep canyons with relative ease. In addition to my research interests in fitness, I was an endurance runner myself. The combination of an early season kayak trip and a chance to observe the Indian runners seemed perfect. I could not hide my enthusiasm as I told Dave about the idea. Anxious to begin the kayaking season with such an adventure, he agreed to join me.²

After making preparations, Dave and I took a plane to El Paso, a bus to Chihuahua, and then a train to El Divisidero, where a single hotel overlooked Copper Canyon at a place four times wider and two thousand feet deeper than the Grand Canyon. When I first looked at the maze of immense chasms, I wondered if we were being foolhardy and turned to Dave with raised eyebrows. He answered with a shrug of his shoulders. After a serious moment of reflection, we both laughed.

Let’s find us a guide, I suggested.

I don’t think we could find the river otherwise, Dave replied with a note of seriousness back in his voice.

Early the next morning Rarámuri women arrived with wooden dolls, design work, drums, violins, and baskets woven from bear grass and pine needles. From caves and cabins hidden in the recesses of the great canyon, they had walked for many miles to sell these items to the tourists on the train. Luis, the native guide whom the hotel manager located for us, also arrived. He was about five feet tall, perhaps in his midtwenties. With his straw hat, red bandanna, western shirt, blue jeans, and belt, he looked to be a dark-skinned cowboy from Arizona. Not until we noticed his calloused brown feet, splayed out over the traditional Mexican sandals made from leather and automobile tires, did he seem native. We exchanged greetings, designed a makeshift backpack so he could carry some of our load, and started down into the canyon.

Dave Carr and I contemplating our fate the day before hiking down into the canyon.

Our first stop was apparently Luis’s home. It was a small shack, built of stacked rocks with a wood shingle roof that allowed for a large exposed attic space, partially filled with ears of blue, yellow, and red corn. The hut’s small opening was doorless and from inside emerged a woman and two young girls, all wearing full skirts and blouses of colorful cloth. Each wore a patterned scarf on her head. Luis leaned down as his wife spoke in whispers to him. The youngest child riveted her eyes on Dave and me while we waited politely about twenty feet away. Then they disappeared back into the darkness of their house.

We drank from a nearby spring, covered by slabs of rock to keep animals out of it, and continued down the gradual slopes of the ridge until the trail turned into an almost vertical pitch of rock outcroppings and loose stones. Luis stopped, took off his sandals, and proceeded downhill. In spite of the jagged rocks, he showed no sign of discomfort, nor did he grimace at the narrow nylon straps digging into his shoulders under the weight of his pack. Barefooted, he seemed to glide down the cliffs, while we stumbled treacherously in our expensive hiking boots, constantly adjusting our high-tech backpacks to ease the weight of our gear, boats, and paddles. Dave and I could not guess why Luis had taken off his sandals, and we exchanged glances of disbelief.

Me following our barefoot Raramuri guide, Luis, on our way to the Rio Urique.

Luis spoke his native Rarámuri language with a spattering of Spanish. His comments made sense to us only in the context of our surroundings. For example, if he said something while pointing to a spring, we assumed he meant, Here is some water to drink. Of course, he might have told us, The water is poisonous, but we felt content with our interpretations and replied enthusiastically with sign language. By the time we were halfway down the canyon that led to the river, Dave, Luis, and I seemed like old friends.

After stopping for a bite to eat, I gave Luis a small harmonica as a gift. He put it in his pocket without a response. Sharing or korima is such a natural part of Rarámuri life it requires no special expression of emotion. When we were finished eating, Luis took us off the trail and over a rocky ledge, obviously going out of our way. In a short while, he pointed to a huge boulder covered with large patches of orange, green, and yellow lichens. The boulder was surrounded by a variety of plant life, taller and denser than what was common to the area. Like a child telling a secret, Luis motioned for us to tap on the rock.

Dave and I both rapped our knuckles softly on the rock. Although it looked like a rock and felt like a rock, it did not sound like one. Knocking on it caused a sound that in our estimation could only have been created by a large, hollow, metal container. When we expressed our confusion to Luis, he shrugged his shoulders. We were not sure if this meant he had no answer to explain the phenomenon or if he did not know how to describe it to people who could not speak his language. Not until fourteen years later, during my return to the canyon, would I learn the secret behind rocks such as this one—a secret the Rarámuri believe is sacred.

After nearly ten hours of intense hiking, we arrived at the river. It was flowing at about twelve hundred cubic feet per second, a relatively safe flow for our remote situation. Luis watched with intense curiosity as we inflated our yellow kayaks. He obviously could not imagine anyone purposely entering the churning rapids. Luis blew nervously into the harmonica and watched us without interruption until we were ready to launch. We offered the traditional farewell, a gentle touching of one’s first three fingers to the other’s, and said, Aripiche-ba, Rarámuri for until we meet again. Dave and I slid the boats into the water less than fifty feet above the first rapids. After successfully negotiating the first drop, I looked back to see Luis heading up the canyon.

For the remainder of the day, we rejoiced in the thrills of the rapids and in the beauty of the canyon. During flat stretches of water, however, I had the eerie feeling we were being watched. I felt the blood of my Cherokee heritage surge with the awareness that primal people were observing us. That night, as we camped under a canopy of stars, I dreamed that I was one of the Indians watching two white men paddling the river.

The next morning we pushed off from shore as soon as the sun made its way into the canyon. We were elated that the river was high enough to paddle, yet slow enough to navigate safely, allowing us enough time to scout each potentially dangerous drop. We did have to portage over rocks a few times, and during one difficult climb over a maze of rocks, I yelled to Dave over the roar of the rapids that it would be perfect if only we had another foot of water. Within minutes clouds began to form. In an hour rain rapidly turned the sparkling clear water into a maelstrom of brown and white frothy energy. Increasingly, waterfalls cascaded down both sides of the canyon from creeks and crevices, giving a new perspective to the upthrust tilting of the rocks and the great volcanic sheets of vertical frozen lava. The raging river now confirmed Jenkinson’s description. He had written in his journal, In high water, the Urique may be the most violent river in America. During the rainy season, some Urique rapids seem like science fiction.³

The first drop in a series of rapids.

We stopped to put on rain gear. Within minutes the rock we had hauled our boats on was submerged. The increasing flow of the river and the difficulty of the rapids was beginning to exceed our skills. Searching for a place to safely exit the rising water, we rode the white waves into a narrow, mysterious canyon. Before us granite walls soared straight up on either side of the twisting river. Gray mist rose to meet the falling rain and glistened in the broken rays of the sun. Gigantic black, red, and white boulders stretched from one sheer wall to the other. The rocks were so crowded that the river all but disappeared through a labyrinth of cracks and deep tunnels. Jenkinson’s party had painstakingly portaged their boats around this section and wrote of this area, There is no way anyone will ever run this rockfall in any level of water.⁴

After each set of rapids, it was necessary to climb a boulder to scout ahead. Here I am looking for a safe place to exit my boat amidst giant boulders.

Jenkinson’s words proved true. It was my turn to lead, and Dave waited behind until I could reconnoiter. Too cold and anxious to follow our normal procedure of climbing a rock to scout what was ahead, I instead dropped into what appeared to be a quiet pool above the next set of rapids. As soon as I reached the pool, I realized that it merely feigned tranquillity. The whole river was backed up, patiently waiting to empty itself into a drain no more than two feet wide at the base of a huge boulder!

I desperately paddled upstream but kept getting pulled closer and closer to the hole that was swallowing sticks and leaves like a hungry beast. Fatigue soon overtook me, and my boat slammed into the hole, lodging halfway in, up to where the boat was too wide to enter. Perhaps it is not my time to go, I thought. I turned around and placed my hands on the huge rock wall in front of me, trying to balance myself amid the turbulent waves passing under and over the boat. While holding on to the rock wall for several minutes, I searched for ways to escape what I thought would be certain death in the hole.

Strangely, in spite of the chilling rain, the rock warmed my hands. Suddenly, a mysterious calm overcame me. A heightened sense of awareness propelled me into a multidimensional universe. Fear itself became a vibratory sensation that brought forth colors of perception words cannot describe. Confidence filled me. I continued searching for a way to survive, but something was telling me that what was about to happen was important and that I should not fear it.

These feelings pulsed through me like a current of electricity being emitted from the rock. Then I looked up and saw a chance for survival. A piece of driftwood from a previous flood was lodged in a hole in the rock several feet above my head. If I could reach it, I could climb to safety. As I stood to grab the log, however, a violent wave suddenly flipped my boat, and I disappeared into the cold, wet darkness of the hole.

When I went under, there was no doubt in my mind that I would drown, but instinctively I held my breath. The remarkable feeling of calm and peace came over me again. My entire life passed before me in a series of snapshots. With each one, I sent out loving thoughts to the characters and experiences they depicted. I embraced my family and friends. I prayed for Dave’s survival and safe return home. Although my eyes were closed, I sensed a radiant white glow of energy swirling about me. For a moment I thought I heard voices echoing an indescribable musical pattern of harmonies and rhythms. Then, just as I was out of air and about to drink the river into my lungs, the tunnel spit me out into the hazy daylight.

Knowing I had come out on the other side of the rock boulder, I scrambled to grab hold of a jagged rock and pulled myself out of the rising water to avoid being swept downstream. Somehow negotiating the sheer canyon wall, Dave had managed to drag his boat along the river’s edge until he reached the other side of the large rock wall through which the tunnel ran. Without speaking, we climbed to the top of the great boulder. Dave lowered me down so I could reach my boat, which was still stuck at the entrance of the hole. I punctured each pontoon with a pocketknife and Dave pulled me back up to the safety of the ledge. We waited. Finally, the boat and its secured contents passed through the tunnel as I had. Still not saying a word, we patched it, blew it up, and forged downstream in search of a safe haven. Fortunately, around the next bend we came upon a large cave that was cut into a steep, grassy wall to the right of the river. We were more than thankful, for the river was now running at least six thousand cubic feet per second, and it was doubtful we would have survived the next set of rapids.

For three days Dave and I waited for the rains to subside. The cave sparkled with swirls of quartz under the glow of occasional rays of sun streaking through an opening high above us. Each evening the flooding river forced us to climb higher and higher in the cave. When we reached the highest ledge, we looked down. It seemed we were trapped by the water filling the entry.

On the third evening, the rain ended and the river stopped rising, but still trapped, we could not leave our perch. Early the next morning, before the sun’s rays pierced the darkness of the cave, I was awakened by a subtle awareness that we were not alone. I felt a presence looming in the dark recesses behind us. My eyes opened wide and my breath stopped as a large feline creature, barely visible in the luminescent light, walked heavily alongside my sleeping bag. The movements of the animal’s feet tugged gently on my bag. After passing me, it walked past Dave and disappeared around a corner at the end of the ledge. I knew Dave was awake also. I felt his breathless silence.

Whispering I asked, Did you see what I saw? Dave did not reply but reached slowly for his flashlight, scanning the walls with the dimming beam. We began to laugh hysterically.

No one’s going to believe this, Dave said.

What else can happen? I wondered out loud. Our abdominal muscles ached from laughing. We then fell sound asleep, as though the entire event had been a dream.

The next morning revealed the opening that led out of the cave. We examined the rock ledge for tracks but were not skillful enough to know whether the slight indentations in the leaves and twigs meant anything. They were wide enough, however, to support our assumption that our cave-mate was a mountain lion. We would learn later that the cat was probably an onza, a rare subspecies of mountain lion known to roam this part of the Sierra, and one of eighty-five endangered or threatened species surviving in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Our meeting with the creature quickly faded from our thoughts as the reality of our predicament sank in. We were low on food. Although the river was flat and brown, debris raced past the now submerged cave entrance, revealing the strength of the current. Realizing how deep we were in the remote barranca, and not knowing how many more canyons were between us and the train track somewhere above, I thought returning to the river was our only option. I was sure that we would starve or get lost if we tried to climb out.

Dave knew rivers better than I did and disagreed. He told me the river was flat in front of the cave because the rocks were covered, but reminded me that the river had risen nearly twenty-five feet. Dave supposed that downstream the boulders would be as large as others we had encountered and this, he contended, would create large rapids and keeper holes that would trap and circulate us indefinitely. I countered with the obvious dangers of becoming lost in the wilderness.

Let’s walk downstream. I’ll show you, Dave said as he patiently ignored my references to starvation in the mountains.

After an hour or so of strenuous side-hill hiking and climbing, we came to a sharp turn in the river. There, two hundred feet below us, lay Copper Canyon’s version of Niagara Falls. I conceded that we should try to hike out of the canyon, without my usual reluctance to admit I was wrong.

We inched our way through the jungle of the lower canyon until we stumbled on the ancient ruins of an Indian hut. Huge roots, six to twelve inches in diameter, were growing through the stacked rock walls. Trails led from the rock foundation in several directions, and the one we chose brought us to an impasse. We stopped abruptly at a black and gray granite cliff that plunged dramatically down a thousand feet into a ravine. We had traveled half the day, and now we would have to return to the ruins. Backtracking in contemplative silence, I wished someone could show us the way to the railroad line.

By now Dave and I knew we would need a guide if we were to find our way out of the canyon. Strangely, in spite of our remoteness, I felt sure we would find one. Just before nightfall, my hunch came true. Two young Rarámuris appeared from nowhere. One was carrying a dead fawn whose only sign of injury was its bleeding hooves, which had somehow been worn down to raw tissue. (I later learned that it was common for Rarámuri to run deer to death over the steep canyon terrain.)

A kind and mystical Indian showing Dave the way across the creek.

Our eager friendliness and our need for help seemed to assuage their initial suspicions. Making sounds like a train, we expressed our desire to reach the tracks at the top of the barrancas. The young men pointed upward as if they understood and motioned for us to follow them. In a short while the one with the deer stopped and spoke a few words to his friend. He then left us, and the other young man beckoned us to follow him. Before continuing, I reached into my backpack, pulled out a white sweater, and gave it to the young man in gratitude. Without changing his expression, he led the way.

For the remainder of our arduous ascent, the young man, perhaps in his twenties and now wearing my sweater, appeared each