As she drove toward her destination, her wild adventure, Sunny thought about that dream she'd been having, almost every night - well, actually, every morning during that time when she was almost awake, but not quite.  Yeah, and when what had to be a dream seemed so real she could smell and taste and feel what was going on but couldn't move at all.  The visions were about a raven and a coyote, laughing and dancing together, gleefully, as if they were celebrating something.  Coyote would interrupt their shennigans now and then and poke his nose right into Sunny's face, his whiskers tickling her face.  He'd look her right in the eyes, deeply,  as if he wanted her to understand something.  But Sunny couldn't hear the message.   She'd just lie there in her bed, paralyzed.  That dream had served as the impetis to jump out of her mundane life and take off to parts unknown, without explanations, even to herself!   The truth, she knew, was that she'd taken off without a backward glance until right this minute, as she faced this lonesome road that seemed to dig a dotted line to nowhere. 

The choice of moving to her new job on this remote piece of the plains was a disjointed, unorganized, spur-of-the-moment inspiration, a need to get out of her messy existence, to find out what else was out there. It also served as one of her famous geographical cures, as her dad liked to call them. The advertisement for a teaching position on an Indian reservation seemed written just for Sunny. Soap opera romance with a twist of the eccentricity for which she was so well known! She could see her noble self teaching kids and working with parents who came from her idealized perception of an honored and respected ancestry. Actually, she'd decided that the kids and their parents would end up teaching her. Because, at this juncture of her life, Sunny could make the move, she left the great Northwest with a few articles of clothing, boxes of books, her fancy stereo, numerous tapes and photo albums stuffed into her little green car.

As she drove toward her destination, her wild adventure, Sunny thought about that dream she'd been having, almost every night - well, actually, every morning during that time when she was almost awake, but not quite.  Yeah, and when what had to be a dream seemed so real she could smell and taste and feel what was going on but couldn't move at all.  The visions were about a raven and a coyote, laughing and dancing together, gleefully, as if they were celebrating something.  Coyote would interrupt their shennigans now and then and poke his nose right into Sunny's face, his whiskers tickling her face.  He'd look her right in the eyes, deeply,  as if he wanted her to understand something.  But Sunny couldn't hear the message.   She'd just lie there in her bed, paralyzed.  That dream had served as the impetis to jump out of her mundane life and take off to parts unknown, without explanations, even to herself!   The truth, she knew, was that she'd taken off without a backward glance until right this minute, as she faced this lonesome road that seemed to dig a dotted line to nowhere. 

The choice of moving to her new job on this remote piece of the plains was a disjointed, unorganized, spur-of-the-moment inspiration, a need to get out of her messy existence, to find out what else was out there. It also served as one of her famous geographical cures, as her dad liked to call them. The advertisement for a teaching position on an Indian reservation seemed written just for Sunny. Soap opera romance with a twist of the eccentricity for which she was so well known! She could see her noble self teaching kids and working with parents who came from her idealized perception of an honored and respected ancestry. Actually, she'd decided that the kids and their parents would end up teaching her. Because, at this juncture of her life, Sunny could make the move, she left the great Northwest with a few articles of clothing, boxes of books, her fancy stereo, numerous tapes and photo albums stuffed into her little green car.

Montana became a drive for miles and miles and miles and miles on a narrow band of ribbon road with August's blue sky a bubble over her, catching every point of her peripheral vision.  The lush, richly scented mountains of the Northwest were behind her.  Sunny wondered about the little white crosses randomly spaced along the highway.  And what, she wondered, was the significance of the little piles of round rocks placed between low slopes on the sides of the road?  When she stopped for a stretch on the road close to her destination, Sunny knew she was somewhere different, alien.  Her goal!  The quiet here was astounding.  Sound seemed to be swallowed by the prairie and the sky.

Sunny breathed in the hot, clean air, scented with sagebrush. She felt confident about what she was doing.  She was in love with the idea of Indians: First Nation status, the symbology of the circle and the square, the fourness of earth's being, the nasal, not quite yelling of Indian music, the romance of the wide spaces of the plains.  She acknowledged that most of her knowledge about Native Americans had been acquired mostly from reading and some listening. Their plight as a people caught at her imagination, empathetic nature and sense of justice.  And her rebellious kid was part Indian; maybe this move would help her to better understand her disconnection from Stormy.  Sunny just knew she was heading in the right direction. She reasoned that finding something larger than herself to love was a great strategy for learning to accept and care more about her own life.

She'd had very little time to learn about her new job and the people she'd be serving before she left home and, surprisingly, the school, upon accepting her as a teacher, did not offer any resources. The public library provided cursory descriptions only. She learned that a Congressional act that set aside the land for the reservation had placed members of two completely different tribes together. Some historical records seemed to indicate that the two groups, from very different language and cultural and social backgrounds, had been placed by the government in a sometimes uneasy alliance. Over time, a number of people of Chippewa ancestry, so-called landless Indians, had also settled on the reserve. The central point of the reservation, where the hospital and tribal agency were, was about 35 miles from the school where she'd be working. Along with the K-8 and high school in the village where she'd be teaching, there was also a Catholic mission school for elementary age children. 

Sunny had not spent much time living in the country, and the land here, predominately prairie, brought images of big ranches and cowboys on ponies singing pretty yippee-kai-oh tunes. She chuckled to herself, realizing that she was most likely going to be on the other side of that equation, with maybe tipis or long houses like in the northwest and Indians on painted steeds yelping Hai-Yai-Yai. She felt ready to face the challenges.  That coyote she'd seen on the side of the road, she decided, was a symbol of good luck, of her wise decision.

At the entrace to the village, in the hot August dusk, Sunny was presented with the black silouette of a long-haired rider on a quick pony, trotting over blue-black hills under a brooding red sky. She fell instantly in love with this place. 

The drive down the dusty road that introduced the village was kind of shabby and littered with beer cans and discarded junk; that surprised Sunny because she had believed the stories about Indians' respect for the land. Oh, well, this wasn't suburbia, after all.  She passed through a gate attached to a tall chain link fence that circled what she mistakenly believed to be the "village" but which turned out to be a teachers' compound, designed, she later learned, to keep the people of the village out. There were no signs to guide her. A large, one-story reddish-brown building with very few windows crouched in the dry grass; it looked like a cross between a sophisticated barn and an untidy factory building. Dusty trailers and little duplex apartments facing the larger structure were a quiet study in hidden agendas.

A huge woman, easily weighing over 300 pounds, walked slowly into Sunny's vision. She squinted at the little car through black-rimmed glasses. A limp hank of oily, dirty-blond hair had been braided and carefully placed in a circle around the back of her tiny head. She wore a faded, flowered Hawaiian Muumuu. Her Texan accent twanged a "Can I Help you?" query as Sunny's car slowed to a stop. Sunny explained who she was.  The 'twang' already knew: Sunny's overflowing VW had apparently given her away.

"Put your things inside that 'lil ole red duplex over there, " she instructed with a labored wheeze. "And then you'll come on over to the trailer across from your place for dinner. You can meet the gang."

She handed Sunny a key. A taller male version of the wife emerged from the last duplex in the row. He called out a cheerful welcome as Mrs. Hazer made introductions, struggling to pronounce Sunny's flowery French last name and indicating that she should call them by their titled last names. That was Sunny's first hint that her professional life was about to get a lot more formal than she'd been accustomed to. Her co-teachers and administrators at home had been best friends; they'd have laughed heartily at the idea of calling fellow workers by anything but first names.

"Oh, well," Sunny thought, "they seem pretty friendly. This will be okay." But she was uneasy. This place was a bit more alien than she had bargained for. And she hadn't even met an Indian yet! Maybe, like her Indian friends back home, they'd be less uptight. She was really looking forward to meeting some of them at the dinner.

The apartment was small but serviceable; her few belongs looked a bit lost on the expanse of clean, linoleum floor. There was a large window looking out at the high chain link fence that marked the teacher's compound and the prairie beyond. Sunny set up her stereo first, knowing that music would sooth her growing sense of unrest. Then she headed for the trailer across the way. 

She was late. Everyone had started eating. The Texan accents multiplied; apparently Mister and Mz. Hazer were not alone. A cute, very blonde couple sang out a twangy welcome; a soft-spoken woman, whose attention seemed fixed on a blond bearded, science-looking type, uttered a cultured southern hello; and a tall, understated cowboy who looked like Roy Rogers, sitting next to a large, attractive artsy-looking lady, saluted in her direction as Sunny entered the room. All whites.  No Indians. Huh.

Mz. H, whose name Sunny had abbreviated in her mind as a means of dealing with the fact that she had to call her a titled version, handled the introductions, including names and subjects taught. She handed Sunny a plate of food and instructed her to sit somewhere so that the "show" could begin. They had records to play. Sunny was relieved; she wouldn't have to entertain anyone and would be given a chance to scope out these people who would share her first year as a teacher in their school. Mz. H slid the first record out of its jacket that pictured a smiling artist Sunny didn't recognize. The crowded room became silent as a comedian started his patter. It turned out that the "show" would consist of a stand-up comic telling racist jokes about African-Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asians and, yes, even Indians.

At first, Sunny thought she was just tired, over-reacting to or misunderstanding the punch lines, and she tried to smile along with the enthusiastic guffaws of her fellow audience members. Finally, it was just too obvious that this was truly the most prejudiced, stereotyped stupidity she'd heard in a long time. She stopped smiling, got up and quietly announced that she was tired from her long trip and need to get some rest. Understanding smiles and quickly uttered, soft goodbyes floated behind her as she stumbled out the door and down the steps, hunching her shoulders and stepping gingerly through the dry grass, reaching for the screen door of her new home. 

Her first thought once she reached the relative safely of her little duplex was to pack her stuff and get the hell out of this insanity. What had she been thinking? Why hadn't she listened to best friends who had questioned the wisdom of her just picking up and taking off for this isolated place with so little information? She felt the desperation of a frantic animal trying to chew her way out of a very poor decision. She felt stupid and angry with herself. She longed for her sister, Ginger's, voice. She'd listen if she could and let Sunny figure out what she needed to do next. No phone. Of course. She was on her own here.

Music was Sunny's medicine.  It would help.  She put on her Moody Blues Days of Future Passed tape, found a pen and her old black journal, and crawled into the corner of the couch, cuddling into the familiarity of her sleeping bag. The Moody Blues sang to her as she wrote and listened.

"Minds are subject to what should be done / Problem solved, time cannot be won. / One hour a day, one hour a night, / She's trying to be , ooh, / Home, in full flight."

Analyze. That's what she had to do. She knew she hadn't thought this whole thing all the way through, but her instincts had been, she was absolutely certain, noble and correct in direction. She'd done her homework, paid her dues, after all. She knew that her experience at the alternative school where she'd taught with some of the most idealistic, bright and talented educators in the country would be a treasure in this remote place. She had gifts to disseminate: The ability to make people believe in their personal power; a generous and caring nature; a sharp mind, tons of creativity and a deep love of and appreciation for learning; a warm personality and a talent for finding fun in even the darkest corners.

"I'm just beginning to see, / Now I'm on my way. / It doesn't matter to me. / Chasing the clouds away."

No. That's wasn't the whole circle. She wasn't all that wonderful. What was true was that she'd wanted to impress friends who'd questioned her impulse to take off to parts unknown with her free-spirit and sense of adventure. She'd show them how she could fly away - from the city, the system (especially the educational one), and the drudgery of sameness in their lives. Oh, how they'd envy her creative craziness.

"Evening has earned its placetoday, / I'm tired of working away. / Working, living, it brings, / Only way to have those things." 


Well, no, that wasn't all of it, either. Ginger's doctor had pushed Sunny into admitting that, yes, she had probably been somewhat responsible for keeping her sister from falling into the abyss of her mental illness. Saint Sunny. She'd been Ginger's interpreter for the world - their parents, relatives, teachers, and friends for much of their lives - and, in exchange, they'd formed a tightly twisted but safe little island where Sunny fed on her sister's dependence and she relied on Sunny's  protection from dealing with her pain. When Sunny had jokingly suggested to Ginger's doctor that maybe the best way for the patient to find some kind of cure would be for Sunny to get the hell out of her life, there had been a long silence in the room, with no assurance that another one of her famous geographical cures might not actually result in the recovery of some semblance of normalcy in Ginger's life. Not much nobility there.

"Live all you people, / You can't see where you're at, / It doesn't really matter, / So it can't be bad." 

And what about her kid, Stormy? Where did she fit into this puzzle? Sunny loved her more than life - easily as intensely as she did Ginger. But it was possible that Stormy, too, was being controlled to distraction by her doting little momma. She'd certainly been acting out - with boyfriend, Jess, and the obsession with music to the exclusion of everything else, especially school, and with those strong, heated arguments about every possible idea or value or belief Sunny held dear. It was clear that they needed a longer break from one another than the few days or weeks more and more frequently provided by friends. This job could, in a crazy kind of way, provide that. Stormy'd be safe and secure in Idaho with James and his parents; his mother was delighted to have a daughter to love. And, who knew? Maybe she'd connect to the idea that her mom was closer to the place of her Canadian Indian father's people; maybe she'd see that Sunny was offering her the gift of her ancestry, and she would end up coming "home" to her mother, where she belonged.  Sunny listened to the soaring, swooping voices in the darkness.

"Shadows on the ground, / Never make a sound, / Fading away in the sunset. / Night has no become day for everyone."


Under all these pressures from the stark realities of Sunny's world, though, was a deep driving need to go her own way for just a while, to find out if there was within her an explorer, an adventurer, a traveler who could live independently, making decisions just for her, without having to decide how those she loved would be affected. Her heart had told her to do this crazy thing, and now here she was - in the middle of nowhere - whining.

"Nights in white satin, never reaching the end, / Letters I've written, never meaning to send. / Beauty I'd always missed, with these eyes before, / Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore." 


A big, dark car appeared on the dirt road outside the chain link fence as Sunny wrote in her journal. (It glided by; she wrote the word glide in slithery letters across the page.) Surprisingly, even in this great silence, she could not hear its motor, could not see the occupants, and could not get a sense of its direction. She tried to remain clear about her vision and goals as she watched the car disappear into the night. She tried not to feel lonely. She desperately wanted to be right about her decision to leave the security, the safety of home, but she was, she acknowledged, fighting serious misgivings.

Finally, Sunny slept without dreaming.

The silence woke her up the next morning. Her ears felt rested and clear. She stretched out in her sleeping bag and peered at the unmoving prairie that stood outside the picture window. She had come to no final conclusion: Go home? Stay? Maybe she'd see what the day would bring and follow the flow to its right-feeling conclusion. She got up, dressed, left things packed, and walked to the kitchen door leading out to the compound. Her neighbor, Gray was his name, she thought, was hosing down the side of his trailer.

"Hey, Sunny! Up early, huh?"

"Yeah," she replied, "it's so quiet here, I got spooked out of my dreams!" She laughed at herself.

Gray looked puzzled. "Ahhh. Huh. Well. We're going for a hike this morning - about eleven or so. Why don't you come with us? See some of the country around here. We've got a picnic all ready."

"Hmmm," Sunny hesitated, thinking as fast as she could, "that sounds tempting. Ummm, well, yeah, I'll see you around eleven."

"Great!" Greg said, and he threw an O at her with thumb and forefinger. 

They had a terrific day. The hike was just challenging enough; the country was breathtaking beyond description; and because of the challenge of the walk, Sunny's new colleagues didn't talk much with one another. She had time to think, and breathe. She found a way to decide to stay, although she wasn't sure about how she'd deal with the situation yet. The deed was done; she was here; and this wasn't the time to break and run. The truth was that she simply wasn't ready to admit she'd made an ass of herself. As her mom had always been fond of saying to her reckless daughter, "You've made your bed; now lie in it."