One day, I went to the restaurant located at the little airport in Greenwood Lake, NJ. I sat at the counter and started talking to the man sitting next to me. I find it easy to talk to people: to ask questions and share what's going on in my life. I think I got better at this sort of thing after living in Georgia. As a northerner, I found it strange, at first, how southerners find it so easy to start telling you stories about the most ordinary things and make it so fascinating. I grew to have an ease with these kinds of conversations, and when I moved back up north, brought it with me.
So, what I remember about my conversation is talking about my meeting the Ramapough Indians and visiting the church many of the clan attends, being gifted a turtle shell by the medicine man and becoming friends with him & his family (my second family), and other experiences I'd been having. The man said to me: "I have something for you. I'm going out to my car & will be right back." He returned in a few minutes with a big bag of goose feathers. "These are for you," he said. He smiled, said goodbye, and I never saw him again.
I sat there thinking: "What am I supposed to do with all these feathers!"
Flash forward to today . . . One of the feathers is on my Leader stick/wand. I made quill pens out of a few of them, and I use them to write with regularly. I learned that among other things, goose medicine includes writing and creating with light, and travel to legendary places.
