Trail Of The Hawk
The Second Book of the Crystal Mission trilogy: Following the Crystal Mission I returned to New Zealand and then served as ships doctor on the MV Gondwana for one more expedition in the southern summer of 1991-1992 to take out the Greenpeace Antarctic base after five years of occupation. The campaign had been incredibly successful with the signing of an oil and minerals moratorium for the next 50 years - it wasn’t a ‘World Park’ as the campaign was focused upon - and in 2021 we are more than half way through the 50 years - but it was a major success for conservationists.
During the Crystal Mission I became a guide and helper on several 'Wendy Brown Adventures' to Arizona, and on these journeys witnessed a connection happening between the Maori people of New Zealand/Aotearoa and the Hopi people of Arizona. In the Trail of the Hawk I was drawn into another Wendy Brown Adventure guiding 16 kiwis to the red rocks of Arizona and the Hopi mesas, after which an amazing journey occurred in which a Maori elder by the name of Maru Stirling, with Barry Brailsford, a historian and author of many books including Song of Waitaha, took pounamu – south island nephrite jade ‘greenstones’ on an 8000mile circle of Native American tribes… The photo on the back of the original paperback edition of TOTH was taken by the Native American member of the party, Choctaw guide Alan Leon, at the Valley of Fire, Nevada.
The five explorers together made up a hand of 4 Kiwi fingers and 1 Choctaw thumb, and what an incredible adventure it turned out to be! Alan Leon turned out to be the perfect guide, knowing most of the places to which the greenstones called to go, as Maru tuned into the stones and listened to their stories, while Barry wrote down the clues for each stone in the form of a riddle, which then became the clues for the destination of each stone. Alan was very close to the red earth of Turtle Island – he would be a travelling companion and guide in the next adventure to Mexico also.
An incredible 8000-mile circle is the ‘long trail’ at the heart of TOTH, but much research into the ancient history of Aotearoa and the Maori tribes and their wakas – travelling canoes – occurred during the writing of this story, which as usual with books before their time, was rubbished by academic historians. Barry Brailsford went on after this journey to write a massive library of books which are referenced in the updated 2021 pdf edition of TOTH. Also, in 2021 contact was re-established with Barry Brailsford, whose work was also attacked by establishment academics and certain Maori elders and representatives also. It was very good to get the real story behind all these controversial events and include them as extensive hyperlinked footnotes at the end of the 2021 pdf edition.
An enormous presence in TOTH was a Maori-Waitaha tohunga by the name of Macki Ruka, whose presence was rather enigmatic in the original edition of the book in 1998, as I did not feel free to expose some of the secrets I was privy to. Macki has since passed on and in 2021 I felt I had permission to fill in more details of this amazing and interesting shaman, and to reveal some of his teachings and stories – also in the form of hyperlinked notes at the back of the book. The updated version was then read by Barry Brailsford and again updated with some of his comments making it a pretty solidly researched book into the ways and words of an indigenous Maori history keeper and tohunga, from whence the greenstones on this journey came…
From the Back Cover
A sequel to Crystal Mission, Trail of the Hawk is a fascinating 8000-mile trip by four New Zealanders and a Choctaw Indian guide around the American Indian nations. On a deeper level it is an exploration into the history of Aotearoa, and a sacred journey of initiation into the shamanic realms where the hawks by the roadside became messengers on the currents and tides of Tawhirimatea, the atua of the Wind.