The Dalai Lama in Sun Valley

When His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrapped up his visit here, he made an interesting observation about jet-setters. He said that it’s remarkable that paper-rich people in our society pay handsomely to travel thousands of miles for meeting and celebrating with strangers, seeking spiritual enlightenment in faraway lands; yet we do not invest free time to cross the streets to get to know our own neighbors.

Continuing correspondance with Idaho Spirit Seekers

Our writing club is still on sabbatical, but as I mentioned earlier, trying to open something up for your investigation team up here in Hailey is still high on my list.

I think that the Angel Factor Inn on Third Avenue in Hailey recently changed their name to The Old Ellsworth Estate – or something like that. I noticed that they have a website now, but I have not perused it yet. The last that I heard, the former owner of the Ellsworth Estate, Maurice Ellsworth, is still alive and well. He’s a largely amicable man, giant in stature and in community standing. He’s around ninety years old, lives on Carey Lake, beside some natural hot springs; the drinking of which he attributes to his good health and longevity. Anyhow, I have heard from a few normally reliable sources about some unusual events they have witnessed at his old place. Some of these seem to border on the paranormal.

I cannot remember who currently runs the Inn, but will try to find out soon.

I wanted to tell you a little more about the leader of our writing club, Mr. Tony Evans. Boise Weekly will soon be publishing an interesting article of his about Ezra Pound. Tony recently telephone-interviewed Mr. Pound’s grandson, who lives in a castle in Italy. (He tried to get the paper to foot the bill for him to travel there in person, but they didn’t quite go for it) His article will touch on how Ezra Pound desired to change the monetary system in our country, along with a number of other interesting tidbits. Anyhow, as I’ve been writing this here, I started wondering if perhaps Ezra’s birthplace in Hailey –which is only three blocks away from the Ellsworth Estate – might be another place for your group to pursue an investigation. Currently the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities owns the historical house and often runs special community events out of it.

It’s a darn cool house.

Questioning Special Abilities

Some answers for Idaho Spirit Seekers

Idaho Spriit Seekers. That's an interesting question that you pose and I’m in the process of trying to determine some answers. My first inclination is to say that interesting uncanny experiences and I have frequently intersected with each other, but it has been only recently that I’ve become capable of recognizing this.

For instance, when I was seven years old, back in Arlington Forest, Virginia, we went out as a group of eleven, trick-or-treating for Halloween. Midway through our autumnal adventure, we came upon a house that had jellybeans in a jar and if you could guess the correct amount, then you would win a special prize. Nobody guessed the amount, which was thirty, but the next year the same people pulled out the same jar onto their screen porch. I immediately knew it was again 30 and so yelled out the magic number. Back then, I remember thinking that it was strange no one else in the group, including the homeowners, who I intensely stared at for some sort of clue or wink to their easy joke, could remember that the thirty in the jar was the same as the previous year.

~

I seemed to be gifted from an early age with an ability to wildly pull information from wide ranges and then somehow quickly bolt them together for an interpretation woven into some impossibly farfetched tale, yet which still seemed to hold some element of truth. This facility ratcheted further, after a head injury I experienced a few years ago, which I will elaborate on here shortly.

~

The first time I ever got a hold of a computer, the following tale discovered itself through me:

http://realjobinmhz.blogspot.com/2007/05/tall-tissaw-thanksgiving-tale.html and was given as a magic 30^th birthday tribute for my two-meter tall childhood friend, Tiss. Here, Tiss is pictured sitting on a Giant’s chair in the front yard of Hailey’s old Ezra Pound house.

Somehow, I always knew that I would come to Idaho too. My first attempt in ’83 failed, when I sold my cherished ancient coin collection to cobble together money for the intended trip. At the last minute, after dropping off some Jimi Hendrix albums at a friend’s for safekeeping, I reflected deeply inside and figured it was not enough cash, nor were my skills yet well developed enough to try to make it out here on my own. So, for the better part of the next decade, I worked as a meter reader for a water company, which presented me with plenty of time and space for healthy contemplation. Then in early ‘93, a friend and I migrated out here together.

Soonafter, I fell into a part-time delivery job at the paper, which I worked alongside an abundance of other jobs along the way to gaining a broader life perspective. One of the more interesting jobs was nighttime irrigation, at the Warm Spring Golf Course, where it felt as though I was being paid to become better attuned with nature, working on the edge of the wilderness every evening, til after midnight. Here I remember gaining some sort of predilection towards knowing whom I would next see on the highway or shortly run into, during the day. Part of me said; that living in a small valley could certainly explain for this, but then it started happening much too often to be considered mere coincidence. I remember expressing this to the girl who I was chasing after at the time. She had been working as a meter reader here in Idaho and I asked her if she felt similar connections, regarding more clarity in premonitions of people who she might run into, and if so, did she attribute that capability to having a job better spiritually connected with the great outdoors? She, too, believed that there was a positive ring of truth to this.

One bright summer morning, in the mid-1990’s, while on the windy back-way return from delivering news wraps over to Silver Creek Convenience store, some powerful rhyming phrases began to surface from within and without. I started scribbling down these tantalizing predictions and turned them into a poem called “Local Auguries” I felt it was an item interesting enough to show to the editor. She said that she enjoyed it, when she handed it back after a few weeks. However, it was not yet meant for publication.

Idaho Auguries (1995)

Adapted from the Spirit of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence

For every light, which flicketh on, another salmon cease to spawn,
The hunter without spiritual prayer, teaches his young great despair,
Fisherman never giving thanks; discards plastic on river banks,
Each piece dropped by river oak, a rainbow doth fade and choke,

One who has stopped reading books, is out poaching royal Chinooks,
He who harms creatures with no need, shall nevr know love of woman indeed,
She who hurts a little sage hen, shall not become true love of man,
An animal knows when you fear it, and can read the good your spirit,

Humans not built apart from nature, but tangled now with Techno-future,
Can we learn living side by side, with sunny spots complexed in pride?
One could read tracks to a day, until ego seemed to shade his way,
Her stickers urged “Visualize World Peace!” yet friendship with her neighbor ceased,

Save the lion, wolf and bear, but what about the kids you care?
High schools parking lot’s a mess, projecting acts of generation next,
Each delay of children’s center, a young lad loses a valuable mentor,
Drinking and speeding up and down, such hobbies paint your face a clown,

Son’s military service brings law and order,

Wild man discovers new psychic borders,
Every hungry truck engine left while idling,

A Persian Gulf soldier drowns in oil fighting,

A day spent within forced mechanical shields,

Distances one’s touch from beauties fields,
each radioactive bomb a dud,

Gain we anew one field of spud,
Each spilled barrel of in-toxic-crated waste,

A song filled meadow churns slow to paste,


Following a daily ritual too close, whittles mans marrow into the ghost,
Too much time on highway lately? Pirsig’s advice: think laterally,
The crooked road you’ll find much more, the cup of time fulfilled will pour,
With Faster, Hurry! Go! Go! Go! You might just zip, past desir'd show,

Airport paves a runway long, cooks gridlock in a country song,
Each tailgate to a bumper, forces a body to become a jumper,
Too much fame, So much luck, into Private Idaho you duck,
Inner city pressure forced you here, wolverine medicine revealed over beer,

Hamp man dressed down, furtively glancing; try soft deceit for excellent dancing,
Social help lacking amidst this wealth, we’re forty-ninth in mental health,
Each resort by glamour lighted, another criminal is invited,
With synthetic chemicals excessive high, dark questionable characters draw a nigh,

A pot of gold will drive some crazy; our morals line becomes quite hazy,
My last letter to Dad & mother, “Valley’s brimmed with small potatoes smashing gainst one another,”
Each new shelter built on field, mountain lion blazes new trail to yield,
Tree roots cut with sewage hookup, Great horned cloak above is shook up,

A house that’s built with intent of wrath, Man himself loses access path,
A truth that’s told with ill intent beats any lie you can invent,
Should I do a good job replacing this grate? Hey, it’s a low liability State!
Many friendly waves not acknowledged; snared upon wrong books in college?

Shiny idea gems from the mind were taken, when the Indian’s land was forsaken,
Not returning to swim in lake and ocean, begins to bring gesture without motion,
Fearless leaders guide the human race, but look how quick their aged face,
Think ye the mental storm hard to handle, try finding an honest man with one candle,
Purify yourself often in Gaia forest; help marriage of Earth & Man not be divorced.

~ ~ ~

Another related event of interest occurred in 2004, while I was rushing to winterize my tumble down shack, before going on a trip back east. I was pulling the tarp over my yard tent, when suddenly I felt a piercing pain and warm fluid flowing from the left side of my head. Turns out that a tree branch, which I had sharply pruned to affix a suet feeder better, had now sharply pierced into my skull, via my left ear. Being alone, I grabbed two towels, pressed them against my head, and left the concerned dog inside. I knew from a previous head injury on the other side, that blood rushing out at such a high rate was normal, so somehow kept enough cool to drive to the emergency room.

In the suet feeder from this tree’s branches, I discovered only weeks before that a black bird had sadly become trapped within the feeder and perished. I felt that this was too much of a bad omen to tell my housemate, so intentionally neglected to mention it. Now here I was, painfully experiencing the portent from that powerful omen.

The head injury instantly forced me to slow down. Several other circumstances converged around the same time and suddenly I found myself writing all of the time, hardly able to contain the flow.

On Tuesday, May 31, 2005 I witnessed an owl injured by a storytelling of crows. Although there was much rush involved in this day following a 3 day weekend, I had learned to slow down enough in important situations like these, to gain some observations and (as previously mentioned in this thread) wrote what I saw.

I worked on this tale for a long while, but determined that it was probably too over-the-top for the newspaper, and figured I would never submit it. However, I soon conferred with a shaman-priest in South America over the telephone, during a special trance state session he provided, where his translator stated, “the owl was a gift.” Reflecting on this eventually changed my mind about not submitting it. One reason I did not want to put it forward, was that I believed this could put me in bad karma with the local police, joking in such a way about the TSA in our small community. Then, precisely when that particular paper was going to press, a TSA agent was arrested, suspected in a child enticement case, giving my commentary its needed credence.

However, when I tried to point this out to a few friends, going as far as diagramming it out, nobody could see the connection! There were several other instances where items I had forecast came to be spot on, but I tired of trying to explain it. One time I even blurted out in bright sunlight in front of several colleagues that I predicted a small plane would land at the closed for construction Hailey Airport, but that nobody would be hurt. Several weeks later, this came to happen in much the manner I mentioned. However, I’m uncertain as to whether anybody was paying attention to what I had said.

Soonafter, I found a book on animal totems and when I got to the end, there was a request by the author for readers to relay the authors any interesting animal stories we might have. I conveyed the owl encounter, which led me into a long correspondence between two well-established authors. The woman is a highly regarded astrologist and kindly read my chart. This is the type of stuff; I scoffed at for thirty years, but now totally buy.

Another thing that happened after running the owl story in the newspaper, is that I felt it was time to share a closely regarding secret with my best friend in Hailey. The secret is about a severe cloaked trauma I experienced in 1978 and have only relayed a portion of it to a handful of friends. Some day soon, I may discover myself writing about what happened in full detail, but that time is not yet arisen. Anyhow, I went on for about two hours telling my friend about my stigmatized experience. It was very cathartic and released a tremendous amount of energy. Around 2 a.m., after we shared the story, we stepped outside and witnessed a full boar aurora borealis twinkling high in the sky. We drove up Indian Creek to a spot where we had watched two wolverines playfully dancing together on our way back from the movies one night. We continued gazing at the remarkable illumination for an eternally memorable spell. It seemed as if they were there especially for us, as no other cars were about.

~

Marie, I suppose this has been an especially long answer to your simple question. Again, thanks for asking it! When you have the opportunity, I would be interested in learning more about what you do with Idaho Spirit Seekers and how you first came to be involved with this interesting pursuit. Tonight I think I will take another gander at your website and that may fulfill some of my curiosity, but if there’s more you would like to share than what I may find on your website, I would be interested in hearing it.

I think it’s great what your Idaho Spirit Seekers is seeking to do and would like to give you additional feedback, once I learn more.

Best regards,

Jim Banholzer