Letter: The Yellow Dog Plains -- Truly a Sacred Site

Posted June 22, 2011, on Stand for the Land

I have had the opportunity to visit many sacred sites in both North America and abroad in my lifetime. I have been touched and blessed at the Black Hills and the Badlands, the Great Smokey Mountains, the sacred sites in the Dolly Sods Wilderness and the petroglyphs of West Virginia, the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, Gonandagan, Cross Village, Ojibwa Island, Taos, the Canadian Rockies, Vancouver Island, Sainte Anne de Beaupré, Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall, Lourdes, Cashel, Newgrange.

What struck me most, however, about the Yellow Dog Plains is that it "spoke back."

My friend Beth and I spent a gorgeous night at a friend’s winter cabin in late July 2007. You could not hear a sound, the area is that remote. However, during the night, I did hear sounds. My mind could not comprehend what I was hearing. It did not sound like a car passing by on the road in the distance; nor did it sound like the wind whispering through the pines.

It was a soothing, but mysterious, sound.

The next afternoon, while travelling home, it occurred to me what that sound was. It was the sound of the Spirit of the Yellow Dog Plains.

And that is why I continue the fight to protect the Plains.

Margaret Comfort, Michigamme