"Hello, my lovely friends! I am so pleased with be speaking with you. I do get lonely out here in my own vastness. Seldom do people drive through capable of conversations such as this, one in which I can connect and join in. Thank you for driving through my lands! Let me take you on a tour of them. I am the portal keeper here. I am the shaman of these lands. I am the land."

As Sierra speaks, I can feel her energy moving into me, embodying me and looking out through my eyes upon her lands. "She's part of me now. For her, it's like a mirror. With my eyes, she sees herself looking out upon herself. We're exchanging energy, and I feel so vast, so much larger than life. I am merging with these Canyonlands. I know how it feels to be Sierra. It is sheer beauty in its vastness, sheer glory in its conception, sheer wonder at the joy of it all! Oh, to be this vast is so very, very fine!"

The Lady of the Land speaks through me: "When these peaks were first conceived, they were beautiful and barren, quite tall and magnificent. Now you see them eroded by sand, water and time. See those deep, dry sandy gashes there in the distance? That's water erosion. This gives away my age, doesn't it? How old am I? Billions of years old and proud of it. I will be here all this time until my destiny is fulfilled. My desires and my reality exist in parallel dimensions. I want to go but I also want to stay. All this time I have been fighting the good fight against the pull of gravity. See it there, what it does! It slowly but surely devastates my beautiful powers - my mountains. I have seen such water here as you cannot even imagine. I was once an ocean.

I support wildlife here, though you can't tell it just by looking." (She says this right before we round a bend and see for the first time thick, green ground cover in clumps, and the small stocky forests of dark green cedar trees against the pinkish-red backdrop of the barren cliffs.) She continues: "I feed many rodents here and keep them shaded. See those ragged peaks up ahead to the right? I am fighting gravity with those peaks with planetary upthrust, but it is to no avail, really. No matter how hard I push up, I am steadily worn down. Sometimes I am a little saddened by this, and so I do enjoy a conversation such as this. My mind is finely attuned to planetary changes and I can feel an ascension coming on. Do you know what planetary ascension means? I do.

Ascension means going further within. How is this possible? Because within is where all the dimensions lie and therein is ascension. My own thoughts about ascension are these. I believe ascension means having the same essential reality, the same sense of denseness, dense matter, but without the big payoff to gravity. Look what gravity costs us. My beautiful powers eroding, eroding away. My mountains growing smaller, smaller. But with ascension, we can become less material, less dense, and still produce the same illusion of materiality. How do I know this?

With my vast consciousness and my way of expressing it, I am in contact with billions of planets where this is happening now. I know billions of lands and portal keepers on those planets who are in the same ascension mode as we are. Synchronicity is present all around, and this gives me hope, for as you look at my powers, my lovely mountains, you see them as majestic and beautiful, but I am a little upset about all this, myself. I see them as slowly eroding away when they don't have to. They can stand beautiful-in-the-ideal by choice, were it not for gravity."

Some time passes, about 45 minutes, and Sierra is silent and so am I. We are enjoying the experience of each other's dimension and reality, and the car is filled with her presence. I feel calm and restful, eternal and pure. My eyes feel different, as she looks through them. My hands and arms work on their own accord, as Sierra drives the car. I give myself, my body and my mind, over to her, unafraid and delighting in the exchange. She takes it all in, the beauty of herself, through the perspective of being me and being human. Admiring her handiwork and her creation, the Canyonlands of Utah, she rides in silence and is satisfied and happy. Then she departs, but before she leaves, she says goodbye and tells us she loves us. "I am Sierra, Lady of the Land. I leave you now. Please come again."

Soon after she leaves, we round a bend to see a big coal mine, and then further up the road appears Salt Lake City. I wonder if Sierra left because she wanted to or because these new developments, the coal mine and the large population area, are blocking her great spirit. Probably, it's just that the energy is different. I like to think so, anyway. I don't want to believe that she is rejected by that huge metropolitan population, where no one is listening, no one is hearing Sierra.

Entranced with Sierra and her dimension, we drove right past the entrance to Arches National Park in Utah without even realizing it. Arches is where, in her spare time, Sierra designs the red mountains into huge portals, doughnuts and needles - her kundalini energy expressing everywhere! It's ok I missed it this time, because I'll see it next time when I return to Sierra! And I will return, Sierra, I promise you. I will return.

Claire Grace Watson, M.S.T., Shield Guide