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News Article from The Press-Enterprise
www.pe.com |
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10:59 PM PST on Thursday, November 25, 2004
By DOUGLAS QUAN / The Press-Enterprise
Surprised weather forecasters chalked up the weekend snowstorm to a freak of nature.
But some mountain residents wondered this week whether other forces might have played a role.
Was the storm the work of an American Indian shaman? |
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"They're saying maybe it's true," said Dan McKernan, spokesman for the Big Bear Lake Resort Association, who said he spoke to several area residents after the storm hit.
On Nov. 15, less than a week before the storm clouds coalesced, a group of about 30 people gathered at the Presbyterian Conference Center in Big Bear Lake to participate in a 6,000-year-old sacred medicine wheel ceremony.
Leading the ceremony was 54-year-old Bennie LeBeau, a Shoshone shaman of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fort Washakie, Wyo.
LeBeau said he was moved to action after participating in a seminar in September highlighting the forest drought and bark-beetle problem.
The group danced to the beat of LeBeau's hand-held drum and his chants. Similar ceremonies were held at seven other locations, each 220 miles away from Big Bear Lake, which served as the hub.
Reached this week by phone, LeBeau said he was not surprised to wake up Sunday morning to the snowstorm.
"It was a beautiful white blanket of sacredness," said LeBeau. "It was amazing, astounding, I was happy to see it."
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service, who admitted they were caught off-guard by the storm, said the strong weekend rain dragged cold air down and, thus, the freezing level was lower than expected.
LeBeau took a different view.
The earth's energy flows have been disrupted by war, mining and overdevelopment, he said. The rituals of the ceremony - the dancing, chanting and prayers - can restore those energy flows.
At a celebration in Big Bear Lake the night before the storm, LeBeau predicted that it would snow the next day, said Radha Khalsa, 51, a Web site designer from Baldwin Lake who also witnessed the ceremony.
"I thought, 'Bennie, c'mon, don't stretch it. Don't put yourself out on the line.'" When she and her husband woke up the next morning, "we were laughing for about 10 minutes," Khalsa said.
Gene Martin, lake manager for the Big Bear Municipal Water District, said the lake was 16 feet below full the day before the storm. He said he doesn't expect the lake level to rise by more than a foot as a result of the 1.1 inches of precipitation that fell, "but every little bit helps."
Asked whether he thought the ceremony and the storm were connected, he answered: "Whatever works. I don't disbelieve. Maybe they've got something."
This isn't LeBeau's first success story, according to his supporters.
In May, LeBeau led a similar ceremony near the Grand Teton National Park. The aim of that ceremony was to calm the volcanic and seismic activity at neighboring Yellowstone National Park.
Jake Lowenstern, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said the region has been "fairly quiet" this summer and fall compared to 2003.
"I don't know if it's out of the ordinary or if it's a good thing. You need to take a long-term perspective," he said. "One could argue that consistent small earthquakes could be nature's way of keeping the plumbing operating."
But Valerie Nunez-Tredway, an American Indian from Rancho Cucamonga who participated in both ceremonies, said she's convinced of LeBeau's abilities to heal Mother Earth.
"The possibilities of anything happening with these ceremonies is something I've experienced," she said by phone.
LeBeau said people unfamiliar with the ceremony often misunderstand what is going on. "They see it as voodoo, black magic - it's real. It's teaching knowledge of how the earth works," he said. |
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