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And this was his vision in the west....

He sat cross-legged before the fire in the Cave that was the place of
refuge in the West. He was naked to signify his complete helplessness and his submission
to the will of Spirit.

Behind him Mato...the Bear...stood upright, his protector. The fire cast the shadow
of Mato large upon the wall of the cave. The shadow of the man was absorbed within the shadow of the huge bear...
perhaps to teach him that the image of a man is as nothing compared to the power
of Nature. At his side lay Wolf, the teacher.

Wolf would teach him what it was to be a man. He would teach him the way of the
fierce warrior and the way of the gentle father/brother/teacher that Wolf is himself.
Wolf would bring him to knowledge of himself...his own primal self.

There had to first be acknowledgment.

The man had to recognize himself as no more and no less than that...a man.
Courageous but sometimes cowardly.....intelligent but sometimes given to the stupid....wise
yet sometimes throwing wisdom away in favor of foolishness...moral but sometimes violating even his own code.

He saw himself as a creature of Spirit who sometimes gave in to the corporeal.
A man of peace, he had been known to create violence of various kinds and qualities. He liked to think
that he was kind and giving but had to admit that at times he could be unbelievably selfish and self-centered.
He was an intellectual by self-invention but gloried in his cowboy image.

These were the things he acknowledged.

Wolf reminded him that there is a time for all things. Wolf is an implacable hunter.
He kills with efficiency and savagery to feed himself and his pack. When the hunt is over he returns to being
the gentle teacher, the father, the protector who takes joy in his role.

He is also reminded of the teaching of Black Elk...a holy man and a healer who, nevertheless,
took up the arrow and the lance to fight the enemies of his people. Priest/Warrior. Not separable ... not one
or the other. Either one as the occasion demanded. No less holy for being a warrior; no less a warrior for
being holy. Good lessons for a man who had lost his identity and could not find it within the narrow definitions
of the world he had known.

Good lessons.

And in the West he received his Name: Isnala Mani.

In Lakota it means Man Who Walks Alone or simply He Walks Alone. It was fitting, he thought. A right
name for someone who is like a bird with no nest, a lobo without a pack. There had been lovers and
wives and even children and homes and nothing was right about them.

In the end it was all the same...a man alone.

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