As the rallying cry of “Drill, baby, drill” echoes across the nation among proponents of non-renewable fossil fuels, we find ourselves in an era of transformation. I can feel its power deep within my marrow bones; it feels like dying and like a return to the past. I recall the protests against strip mining on Native land in the 1980s, the artists who spoke out, and the song “Shadow of Life,” Kate Wolf wrote about it. If we were to gaze into the Great Smoking Mirror, we would see a reflection of our shadow—a part of ourselves that holds immense potential for spiritual growth and development.
Ancient traditions rooted in holistic thinking can help us to navigate this current impasse. I have learned this in part through Native American spirituality, which teaches us to learn from the past while holding a better vision for the future. A vision that doesn’t involve finger pointing, blaming, shaming, or hating others. Instead, it encourages us to reclaim our personal power by focusing on the solutions we truly desire rather than denying our own strength. Our addiction to energy is an old story, but we have the opportunity to write a new one.
The Great Smoking Mirror reflects the lesson of leaving the myth behind. You are what you decide you are. —Jamie Sams, Sacred Path Cards
My journey began in California in 1985 after I moved from Miami, FL, to Berkeley, CA, to join medical doctor and behavioral scientist Matohikan, in pursuit of Native American spirituality. Matohikan had sent his secretary, Mary Lou, to pick me up at the San Francisco airport, back when you could meet someone at the gate without going through security lines. Mary Lou, whom I had never met before, approached me with a vinyl record in hand and a serious look on her face. She thrust it toward me and said, “If you are going to live and play music in California, then you best learn some Kate Wolf songs.” I set my guitar down and gratefully accepted the LP from her. The title read “Give Yourself to Love.”
Love has made a circle that holds us all inside. Where strangers are as family, and loneliness can’t hide. —Kate Wolf, Give Yourself to Love
In Miami, I was a devoted listener of Michael Stacks’ long-running Folk & Acoustic Music show on WLRN 91.3 FM. Through his program, I became familiar with Kate Wolf’s music, and the title song “Give Yourself to Love” was already in my repertoire. l thanked Mary Lou and assured her that I would be delighted to learn more of Kate Wolf’s songs.
I moved to San Francisco not only to be with Matohikan but also to pursue a career in music. Mom warned me that it would be a hard road to travel and a difficult way to earn a living, and she was right. As a woman trying to “make it” in a male-dominated industry during the 1980s and 1990s, I faced both challenges and rewards. My travels took me down some lonely yet beautiful roads, and along the way, I met many interesting people.
Three years after relocating to California, Matohikan and I moved to Tucson, AZ, where he took a job at Canyon Vista Medical Center while also collaborating with Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona. In Tucson, I met Pamala Ballingham and her husband, Tim. Pamala, a singer-songwriter known for her Earth Mother Lullabies, became a good friend and was also a close friend of Kate Wolf.
Pam has a beautiful voice, and she sang harmony vocals on my Planet We Ride CD. From that experience, we formed a duo called Amber Wind, performing on acoustic and electric guitar, as well as native percussion. We performed at the Creativity and Madness Conference in Santa Fe, for the Menninger Foundation’s Council Grove Conference in Kansas, and at the Mesa Verde Symposium in Colorado, where we had the honor to open for R. Carlos Nakai. Additionally, we participated in the 5th Annual Tucson Folk Festival.
One of the songs we performed was “Shadow of a Life,” which Kate wrote for their mutual friend, the Apache medicine man Phillip Cassadore. Although Kate never released the song, she gave it to Pam, who recorded and included it on her album “Voyage for Dreamers.”
Kate was deeply involved in Native American issues and studied with Doug Boyd (Rolling Thunder), and Pam and Tim Ballingham, who worked with Cross-Cultural Studies, an organization involved with Native American ceremonies.
Rolling Thunder had explained at Council Grove that his training was experiential. He said that the truth cannot be expressed verbally, that it can only be experienced: You have to live it and be part of it and then you might get to know it.” –Doug Boyd, Rolling Thunder
In the same year that I moved to California, Kate and Pam traveled to Big Mountain, also known as Black Mesa, located on the border of the Hopi and Navajo reservations in Northern Arizona. They went there to protest the relocation of Navajo people from their tribal lands, a situation rooted in a heartbreaking history.
A court decision opened Black Mesa to industrial development, and in 1966, the Interior Department granted leases to the Peabody Coal Company, which had already caused devastation in Appalachia. Peabody began strip-mining Black Mesa in 1968, extracting an average of eight million tons of coal per year while emitting more pollutants into the air than both New York and Los Angeles combined. Subsequent legislation in 1974 divided the land, leading to the forced relocation of Navajo families. The discovery of approximately twenty-one billion tons of coal, along with vast reserves of oil, gas, and uranium, on land legally belonging to both the Navajo and Hopi tribes ignited a conflict between them.
The rape of Black Mesa, with its devastation of land, depletion of water resources, and air pollution, aroused a storm of public protest. Kate and Pam felt compelled to lend their voices to the cause. Despite his age and declining health, Phillip Cassadore conducted prayers and ceremonies that week to honor the sacredness of the Mesas and to support the Indigenous people in their fight to remain on their land.
When Amber Wind performed “Shadow of a Life,” Pam would introduce the song by sharing a personal story about what inspired Kate to write it. After the ceremonies concluded, Kate and Pam drove south toward Phoenix that night. Kate would catch a flight back to California, while Pam would continue on to Tucson. Exhausted from days of ceremony, the women pulled over halfway, near the Rim of the Grand Canyon, to sleep in the car.
In the early hours of the dark morning, as they resumed their journey, a great horned owl suddenly flew directly across their path, startling them and nearly hitting the windshield. Instantly, they thought of their ailing friend, Phillip Cassadore. Later, they received the heartbreaking news that Cassadore, the Apache Medicine man whom Kate had met through the Ballinghams, had died that same morning.
From ancient times, the owl has been seen as a spirit messenger. The Apache people consider the Superstition Mountains (Tseh’-Hos-keet) in Arizona to be a sacred place. The words to the song, Shadow of a Life, tell about how the owl represented Phillip’s spirit as he flew from the south, heading north from the Superstition Mountains on his way to join the ancestors. Phillip carried the people’s prayers with him, returning to Great Spirit from which we all come and to whom we all return.
There is an owl, flying from the South,
heading North from the Superstition Mountains.
Like the Shadow of a Life,
fading in the dark surroundings.
While we who travel on the Rim,
seeking love and finding understanding,
go safely on our way, like - the river running in the canyon.
—Kate Wolf, Shadow of a Life
Kate was becoming a pipe carrier of the Miwoks, a Northern California Indian tribe. Her spiritual path gained public recognition in 1983 when she toured the western states to promote the Academy Award-winning film “The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?” This documentary highlighted the devastating effects of U.S. energy policy on the Southwest and the Native Americans living there. Late that year, after the release of her record “Give Yourself to Love,” Kate decided to take a sabbatical, stating, “The road is wearing me down. I feel my health slipping….”
Kate was born in San Francisco, but I never had the chance to meet her. I moved from San Francisco to Palo Alto in April 1986, the same month she was diagnosed with leukemia. She passed away eight months later, on December 10th.
Before Kate died, she compiled a ten-year retrospective album titled, “Gold in California,” which was released in January 1987. That spring, she became the first musician inducted into the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD) Music Hall of Fame. “Gold in California” was also awarded NAIRD’s Best Folk Album of the Year.
Matohikan had offered to do some healing work with Kate while we were still living in the Bay Area. After her passing, her devoted son, Max, kindly sent usq the Kate Wolf Songbook in appreciation of Matohikan’s offer. Max had supported Kate while she was on tour, taking a semester off from college to serve as her driver, tour manager, and record salesman. He continues to manage her legacy through Owl Productions and Owl Records. Many of Kate’s songs were about California, and these became my early companions and introduction to the West Coast. There was something synchronistic about my arrival in California; it marked the beginning of my new life and music career while coinciding with the end of Kate’s.
Indeed, I took her up as a study, learning many of her tunes, which I still include in my repertoire today. It feels good to know that I have played a small part in keeping her music alive, long before artists like EmyLou Harris, Kathy Mattea, and Nancy Griffith recorded her songs. Her legacy has even inspired the creation of an annual festival held at Black Oak Ranch in California, to honor her life and music. In essence, Kate created her own genre of music, and posthumously, her own Kate Wolf Radio Station has been established on Spotify. In the moments when my voice echoes hers, I feel a certain closeness to a woman I will never meet or get to know but who has touched my soul with her magic, just as she has for so many others.
Kate’s songs were haunted with prophetic verse. She dove deep into the mysteries, writing “An Unfinished Life” before knowing she would die young. She had only felt like she was dying on the inside. Her words, music, and unfinished life continue to inspire many songwriters and musicians with their raw and simple honesty. Society has the power to either uplift or destroy an artist, which was a central theme of the Creativity and Madness Conference. There, Amber Wind performed a concert featuring “Miwok Indian Woman,” a song written by Pam and inspired by Kate.
Miwok Indian woman I see you through the blue eyes of a dream
Miwok Indian woman I rest upon your round brown face.
Miwok Indian woman you pry open the tight world of my mind
and release the fresh magic of the food within my soul.
With a prayer that chills the white of my skin
You unfold into the shores of my day,
and recede into an iridescent smile within a dream.
Miwok Indian woman I see you through the blue eyes of a dream.
—Pam Ballingham, excerpt from Miwok Indian Woman, unreleased
Kate’s experiences are not so different from those of many women who navigate the challenges of motherhood, divorce, and careers in a world dominated by men. Perhaps more sensitive to these struggles than most, she managed to emerge without the hard-edged bitterness that is all too common in the music business. Kate sought intimacy through the sharing of her music and encouraged me to seek the same with mine. Those of us who are sensitive often bear the weight of the world’s injustices. My beloved aunt, a sensitive artist in her own right, also died young from leukemia, a fate exposing the rawness of loss. Losing someone to leukemia doesn’t get any closer to the marrow bone.
As the reflection of our shadow continues to emerge, let us not grow bitter or lose heart. We need to ask better questions, such as: Can nature supply our energy needs without causing mass destruction? Can we listen, and are we sober enough to hear the answers conveyed by whispers on the wind instead of relying on talking heads? Can we learn to trust ourselves and write a new story—one in which we Walk in Beauty? I believe we can. I feel it every time I sing, Give Yourself to Love.
Thea’s daughter, Lauren Loiacono, sings Give Yourself to Love accompanied by her father Robert Loiacono, recorded by Thea.
Thea & the GreenMan Live - Shadow of a Life
Of special note:
The Menninger Foundation was an organization with hospitals, clinics, the world’s largest training center for Psychiatrists, and a research department, all concerned with problems and solutions in the area of mental health.
Coal mining has ended on Black Mesa. What happens now? KNAU News Talk - Arizona Public Radio | By Melissa Sevigny. Published November 21, 2022
Thank you for this front-seat history lesson that intertwines music with indigenous rights with land exploitation. How little has changed. Here we are fighting the same issues all over again...
Beautiful Lauren, good to hear your sweet voice!