COYOTE

Have you noticed? The animals are coming back. I mean the wild animals. Coming back to populated areas. Do they know something we don’t? A shift in the balance of the planet, a coming population crash among the humans, grown like lemmings beyond the carrying capacity of the environment? Do the wild animals sense an opening for their own resurgence? Moose on Main Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. Backyard bears in Bethany, Connecticut. Mountain Lion in Westchester, New York. Wild turkey, once rare as hen’s teeth, now commonplace in open fields all over New England. And coyote, clever coyote, sly coyote, the ghost dog, has moved from the woods and fields to the suburbs to urban areas. You might see him slinking by at dawn or dusk. The consummate opportunist, he will tear open your trash bag or pounce on your puppy. And if you listen carefully in the night, you might hear his song, solitary or in chorus, mournful or triumphant as the spirit moves him. But the coyote in the courtyard is common coyote, biological coyote, younger brother coyote.

This site is about Coyote. Older Brother Coyote, Old Man Coyote, The Shape-Shifter. The Trickster. The Holy Buffoon. Lecher. Thief. Glutton. The Executor of Creation from the Dawn of Time in Native American stories. Mythic Coyote in the Modern World. As the wild animals have come back to live among us, so too has Coyote. Having once had a primal connection to the origin of the human race, he is drawn to acquaint himself with modern humans and the world they have made. He desires to experience all things, as he is a creature of strong appetite and insatiable curiosity.

Trickster figures such as Coyote are present in all peoples’ mythologies. Native Americans also recognize Raven and Rabbit in that role. The Norse had Loki, the Gaelic peoples have Fairies and Leprechauns, the Arabs their Jinn. There is much information on this topic from an academic and folkloric point of view. But I am an artist, not a cultural anthropologist. I was intellectually aware of the Coyote tales of Native American mythology. Then Coyote came to me. And the product of that encounter, Coyote’s Dream, is what I wish to share with you.