Oh Mount Ashland, Ahl-ke-tah

Cloud catcher, snow holder, water giver.

Provider of perches for eagles, meadowlarks, and hummingbirds,

Giver of soil to the givers of air:

spruce, fir, pine; oak alder, ash; madrone, manzanita, and willow.

Grower of grass for elk and deer.

Home to bear and coyote, mountain lion and bobcat,

fisher and fox, gopher and rattlesnake.

With trout and steelhead in your water,

with butterflies and dragonflies in your air,

with ants and beetles and worms in your earth,

and with compassion in the slow fires that move over you.

How can we know only two names for you?

Mount Ashland, and only one old name – Ahl-ke-tah.

We know this name from Chipmunk, daughter of Morningstar,

via Edward Sapir and John Harrington. (May their spirits all be blessed.)

Oh Ahl-ke-tah, May all the other names for you come back to us.

May the spirits of all the people who honored you be honored,

the Takelma, the Shasta, the Dakubetede, the Klamath.

Oh Mount Ashland, Ahl-ke-tah,

We salute you, we honor you, we respect you, we love you.

We give thanks to you. We give thanks for you --

a Blessing from the Great Mystery.

And we pray that we can bless you today.

Bobcat, April, 2008

“Ahl-ke-tah” is a simple phonetic spelling to help the vowels be said correctly.

The hyphens indicate that all syllables are to be said with equal stress.

For Takelma linguistics, see www.dotycoyote.com/language