Eagle woman takes me to the airport

Boulder-Denver, Colorado

"You have plenty of seats to choose from. It's just you and me," says the cheery female driver of the big green bus that comes to take me from my hotel near Boulder Creek to the Denver airport.
    I sit upfront, and conversation starts right away.
    "Were you in Boulder for work?" she asks.
    I laugh. "You could say that. But my work is so much fun I don't think of it as work in the ordinary sense."
    "What kind of work do you do?"
    "I teach people how to dream, and how to use their dreams to lead better lives."
    "Wow! That sounds like a great job." She adds, after a moment's thought, "I have a dream that's been with me for years. I don't know what it means but it keeps coming back into my mind. It always makes me feel happy. Do you want to hear it?"
    "A happy dream? Sure."
    "In my dream, I was up in the mountains. Everything felt crisp and clear, wonderful. I sat down on a rock next to a stream, the way ladies used to sit side-saddle. I looked down in the water. The creek was so clear. I saw two eggs on the creek bed, and I knew they were eagle eggs. As I watched, the eagles started to hatch. Two fluffy little eaglets came out. They were still underwater, but they were fine."
     "How did you feel?"
     "I felt happy. I felt blessed. I felt I had received a secret, and a blessing."
     "Indigenous people who have kept their traditions of dreaming would probably say that you had received an invitation to receive the power of the eagle. If it were my dream, I would want to bring the qualities of the eagle - keen vision, the ability to fly high and see life situations from other angles and higher perspectives - into my life. I would think that the power of eagle is hatching within me."
     "That's good. I am Navajo, and I watch out for bald eagles. Last week I had one flying right next to the bus. The passengers were amazed. They said they had never seen an eagle that close.
     "My aunt is traditional Navajo. She told me she was out tending sheep and she found an eagle feather on her path. It was standing straight up in the ground. She spoke words of prayer over it. She took it home and now it's part of her power."
     "A dream of power is a rare and wonderful thing," I observed. "It can come to us in the night or in the day, and it does not require analysis or interpretation. It asks to be cherished, and recalled, and to lend its energy to our lives and sometimes to be shared with others." I told her how my life has been guided by encounters with the red-tailed hawk, in the natural world and in visionary reality.
     She pointed out a solitary tree in the landscape. There were two bald eagles up in the high branches. "I always check that tree. If the eagles are there, I know things are going well on that day."
     When we arrived at the airport, I asked her Navajo name. She told me, and then gave me its meaning. "Happy person." Happy indeed.