The enchantment of Where the Crow Lights

"With a fresh theatrical approach, a majestic tree parts the curtain open to this mural concept. The oak canopy fills the old Chautauqua dome, and like an insistent hatchling, it pierces out into the world. As the building facade unfurls, it reveals a woodland hamlet called Where the Crow Lights, a Shasta Village that's been here since time immemorial.

Ashland is an epicenter of renewal; physical and spiritual. There’s a ‘sense of enchantment’ drawing many of us here, including mystics and healers. 

Yet since long ago, it's been a sacred pilgrimage site for Native Americans, a wellspring where distant gathering tribes share good medicine, and weapons are left behind.

Ancestors have been tending these gardens for uncounted thousands of years. Inseparable from nature, they’ve listened to the land as a part of their own body and soul. Many still do. They regard trees and animals as equals. Salmon dances and salmon songs. Irrigating, burning, cultivating; renewing the world as the world. They became one with the great oak canopy (universe), and in their wake, left a land of enchantment.

If we listen closely to our land ancestors, we can repair and reclaim the world - and ourselves. Is that sense of enchantment here a distant forest voice calling us back home, reminding us that we are nature? As the camas grows back into the glens, so do we, nurturing and being nurtured. "

-  John Pugh