For this blog, I am going to discuss 'spiritual aspects' of the film that James, Roberto, Zack, Mayan, Ben, and I made. The real weird spiritual stuff happened after we filmed at Mayan's sorority house. At this point James, Roberto, Zack and I decided to visit Specs just off campus and fill our bellies with the phenomenal bozeman bar food before we started our trek up.....The Mountain....(DUN DUN DUN)...When the check arrived, we thought it would be a good idea to leave an offering at the top of the mountain. The four of us grabbed some particularly greasy waffle fries, wrapped them up in a napkin and headed towards The M. As we exited Jame's vehicle, all of the snot in our noses froze (just to give you an idea as to how cold it was ;)). There was also a fresh dusting of snow which added to the beauty of the mountain. I remember once we had ascended the first couple hundred yards, Roberto joked that we should have brought some blood to signify a sacrifice. Everyone chuckled to themselves and continued on...but this joke came back to me when we returned to the car after our journey...I'll get to that later. Just before we reached the top of the mountain, we took a 'water break' and admired the valley. Since it was a such a gorgeous bright blue, cloudless day, the snow seemed to mirror its sparkle in the sky. Meaning the four of us kept seeing sparkles every where we looked. I know we mentioned it in the video but I'm sure it was impossible to see what we were seeing. When we finally ascended the mountain, we decided it would be an appropriate time to leave our offerings. One of us filmed as the three of us laid our fries in the snow. We formed a cross and Zack sprinkled some holy water on the offering. We then took our napkins and lit them all on fire. Once the flame caught we placed the napkins on the fries and marveled as is burned. As soon as the flame went out, the four of us look up and see this MONSTER sized mule deer emerge from the surrounding trees. I have lived in Bozeman my entire life and would safely say I have hiked the M probably 30 times and not once have I seen a deer that big in that area. I'm also a hunter and have never witnessed a deer this size. It had at least four antlers on each side and had a very graceful trot. We tried to capture this on film but we were only able to film the rear end. The camera was put down and we were literally in awe as to what we saw. Its been mentioned in class, but we decided to refer to this instance as our 'spirit animal'. We began our hike back down the mountain when Roberto and James brought it to our attention that the film we captured of the deer was symbolic to the Bible. Them saying this did not spark my recollection...but in Exodus, Moses is summoned by God and is instructed to complete a task of ascending a mountain. Once this has been accomplished, Moses reports that he caught a glimpse of 'God's rear end'. HOW COINCIDENTAL!! This is exactly what our movie capture....the rear end of deer. There is no question to me that this animal is symbolic represents something so much greater. Probably something we as human beings cannot even begin to comprehend. We spent the rest of our descent jogging down the mountain (mostly to stay warm) but we made it to the parking lot in no time. When we walked to Jame's truck, we noticed something peculiar about 15 feet away from the end of the truck. Can you guess? It was the remains of (probably a deer) carcass. There was a large amount of blood while the bones and hide were placed separately under a tree. We all looked at the blood and thought about Roberto's joking statement about bringing a blood as a sacrifice.
This adventure has stuck with me for some time. I like to think of myself as a spiritualist rather than a believer...but this project symbolized something greater to me. Today in class, Dr. Sexson was discussing how Jacob in the Slave, on his death bed says he feels he is a mirror image of the biblical version of 'Jacob'. The theme of this is that life is a series of reoccurring stories. To me, this journey included a lot of similar tales instances that have occurred in the Bible. The deer's ass/God's rear end, ascending mountains, leaving offerings for God, and blood sacrifices. I will remember this spiritual journey/ class project for a long time.
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