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There were a number of anecdotes that I could have chosen from my personal life relating to the healing qualities of the natural world for body, mind, and spirit. Experiences and lessons learned through interaction with the natural world have provided a blueprint for my life and given me some of the most life-affirming, self-defining events I have ever experienced. The story that I relate below combines the dramatic power of myth with a natural, wild landscape and some bewildering mysteries of life itself, all drawing together to help heal broken emotions and deep-seated pain.

I was working as a security guard at a technology component plant when I received my first storytelling gig. The invitation came from a spin-off collaboration between local Sierra Club chapter members and a community center that operated within the Robert Taylor Homes Housing Project in Chicago. The outing would bring about twenty eleven to thirteen year old boys and girls into the woods for a weekend of hiking, camping, and bonfires. While my invitation was officially as a storyteller to share Native American myth and folklore, the organizers seemed more enthusiastic about having an extra chaperone on hand than the telling of tales.

Working security is the ideal job for a student. Out of an eight-hour shift the workload will usually max at about three, leaving ample time for reading, writing, and research. For the three weeks before the outing I prepared by bogging myself into a mammoth amount of research on Native American tribes and mythology, deciding at first that the stories I would share would center on the tribes that were indigenous to the area where we would be staying. That approach was put aside, however, when I came across my first trickster myth involving Coyote. Reflecting on my audience, I decided that if these kids were anything like me at thirteen, then there would be no character more appealing than the accidental creator Coyote and his penchant for mischief.

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"There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk around the whole world till we come back to the same place ..."

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