"Dream Walker" Figurative Bronze Sculpture by Edd Hayes Bronze Sculptor

On a cold, moonless night, the crisp stillness is shattered by the distant haunting call of an owl. As if answering, a lone coyote barks three times, then lets go with a long, lonesome howl.

Farther away, a large group of coyotes responds in a harmony of wildness and for a few moments, the woods are filled with an untuned symphony of yelps, barks and howls. Then, silence again.

An uneasy chill moves over her and she clutches the heavy buffalo robe tighter around her. She's risen from her bed and has stepped from the warmth of her lodge into a snow-covered wilderness.

As she carefully and deliberately steps through the newly-fallen snow, it crunches softly under her bare feet. Even though she can feel the snow compressing beneath her feet, she feels no cold.

Just then, the silence is broken again. Once more, a call from an owl, only much louder this time. He is very close.

Startled, she turns and see the owl perched like a ghost on a pole in front of a lodge. It is the lodge of her grandfather. As she slowly moves toward this ghostly presence, he turns and looks at her with an all-knowing stare. Unsure, she reaches out to him as he disappears.

At dawn, she awakens. Sunlight dances down through the faint smoke rising up from the still-smoldering lodge fire. She lies comfortably in her warm bed of soft buffalo robes and deer skins. And, as she watches the smoke drifting up through the shafts of light, she starts to remember.

Shadowy thoughts at first, running though her mind. Fleeting images, mysterious, yet familiar. Memories of sights and sounds that seem so real, yet unreal, meaningful or meaningless.

A dream, perhaps. . . . .

Edd Hayes