Interview with Randal Carlson- Mt. Pilot experience with Jim Mckelvey

So Friday we went on a solstice to Pilot Mountain. Did you get to see the shadow the pyramid shadow?

Yes, through the crowd, I was able to see it.

Yeah, And I was tempted to just start like pushing people aside, but then I was afraid some of them would fall off the precipice and that is, yeah, that I didn't have that. I didn't want to be responsible for that. But yeah, I was able to see parts of it through the crowd, right.

Yeah, so that's as far as it goes, and then it comes back for the equinox, and that's where it's a perfect pyramid shadow, just right on an east west axis.

Yeah. So what what was kind of your impression? More?

Is Randall Carlson the human being to being on a sacred mountain like that?

And as a human being? Okay, that's you know, not the you know? Are you? I guess maybe I did. No, that's good.

I like that because yeah, most of the time I am a functional human being exactly most of the time.

The year, but you're also the legendary and yeah, and okay.

So let me put this. I was very impressed. I knew a Pilot Mountain.

I knew of it, but I didn't know much about it until I got your book last year. And then once I got your book and started looking at it, and this is fascinating, right, I need to go see it for myself. So this was my first excursion that I actually was able to see the mountain firsthand.

And I'm very imputing.

I don't you know, I kind of have an explanation of its origin, but I'm not one hundred percent convinced that I really got it, you know, got the whole picture.

I'm sure there's things there that I have not picked up on.

And we know that it was a what was it called the Cherokee They had.

The jomy ok they called it, yeah, yeah, but they meant it's the rocks that the stone faces are the guides. The Europeans picked that up as it's a landmark, and I'm sure I could see a chief or a medicine man saying, oh yeah, it's a great guy, and like the Europeans just going, well, I don't even understand what.

You're talking about here.

It's a stone, you know, But yeah, Yona, I've been in trouble about the man made versus natural For the stone faces and Yona kind of up that and doubled down and said they're alive and they're guardians. Then then they're watching us and they want to make sure we are doing the right things the right way, and they will come out and correct people if they don't.

So they will come out, Yeah, so they will.

They look like other Cherokee, and they will interact with people.

Interesting, and when you do.

A fission quest, if you fast for five days, you can hear them, and then if you fast for seven days, they will come out and talk to you.

Really. Yeah, that's that's the oral history.

And I thought it was really cool the way you started yesterday with the Native America in oral history. And I kind of feel the same way about the about the Harry what was it, Carlton, George Catland, that's it?

Okatland. Yeah, Yeah, very interesting, isn't it.

Yeah?

Because Jonah says that we don't need to learn anything new, we just need to remember, and that he wants to blend the ancient past and the ancient future into the now and that's kind of his mission. When I ran into him, I was really impressed with him. Yeah he uh excuse.

Yeah, he's pretty cool, pretty cool dude.

Yeah, I've got I learned after I moved to Georgia from Minnesota, I learned that my mother's mother's people were from the from North Georgia up in Gilmore County. So we did some research. One of my one of my cousins, did a bunch of research. Found out that there was two families, the Petits and the Durdans, that came down from New Jersey in the early eighteen thirties. Oh wow, and they intermarried with the Cherokee. So I don't know what percentage I would have, It's a very small amount.

Oh wow. So it's an interesting mix.

But yeah, so I've gotten very And I meant to ask Yona about the stories about if I'm pronouncing it right the Nuna high.

Or yeah, I don't pronounce it, none of he is the way I'm not announced it. But that's not correct, that's not correct. We both gave talks at Elon University. I got in. Somebody nominated me for this talk and it's four talks to one hundred and twenty five people. And then I said, you know, I can do the written history and Yona can do the oral history.

Can we do it that way?

And so I kind of snuck him in the back door, I see, and he was he had people in tears, he was so he was doing the drum and the songs and stuff like that.

So excuse me.

So I remember in North Georgia there was a mountain called Blood Mountain and there was a trail that went up to the top of the mountain. That the trail had there was a sign and it was already worn and rickety twenty five years ago, but I can remember very distinctly what it said.

I've got that. I've got a picture of that sign, do you Yeah?

And the reference was to the Nuna he if that's how it's pronounced. Who the Cherokee legend about the people who could travel anywhere, the people who could travel.

Anywhere and live nowhere? Was that part of it too, and lived nowhere? Yep. So you've got a picture of that sign.

Yes, And it's fairly good. So I don't know when it was taken. But oh yeah, huh, it maybe was when it almost looked.

New to me.

Well maybe they replaced it, yeah, because it was worn.

Well, no, I'm I go into the archives. I don't do the digital stuff as much as I go. I get the white gloves on to go through the folders and put the placer.

And all that shit. So oh I used to do it, Yeah, but I still do.

I think you have to because there's a lot of stuff that just hasn't been digitized.

Haven't been digitized.

And then there's the problem with the algorithms. You know, you get into this, you don't only go right instead of I want left end right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's been quite a quite an ordeal. But yeah, yeah, Well I.

Have a whole shelf of research, you know, photo copied research and stuff from the seventies up through the early two thousands, I guess, yeah, fourteen or fifteen foot shelf, all bound chronologically ordered in three ring binders with sheet protectors, so I can pull it off. But you know, I get so much stuff now digitally, right, because I've got some passwords that I use.

In the drives. You have to have and then they degrade.

You got to buy a new one and transfer it and write. Yeah, well, what are you going to do with all that stuff?

You know? Are you going to give it to an archive.

Or yeah, I mean I want to build a school, and yeah, that would be the core, just like Thomas Jefferson bequeathed his library and that was the core foundation of the University of Virginia.

Right, Right.

So I've got four thousand volumes, yeah, mostly which I haven't read, but I know what's in every book. I've probably read the forward introduction to every book I have, so I know what's in it, right. But yeah, and so I would like to endow a library that I build.

Yeah, your stuff on the equinox, it's in the book. I quote you directly on the equinox from the solstice and the way it goes back and forth, and I just thought you explained it so well. And in the new book, I've got the procession of the equinoxes. If you're looking at the you know, the like the shadow for the equinox, and you then you see the background stars shifting a little bit, and that it's like, oh

You've got the minor standstill, the major standstill, and so it oscillates kind of. I'll do it exaggerated minor major, minor major.

And so it's really nine point three years and then it's doubled.

I guess, yeah, you can think of it that way.

Right, Okay, But there's the Now what I've heard from the Wisdom keepers is there's a planting aspect to it, because the just as there's tides in the ocean, there's tides in the in the soil, and so the water coming up, you plant your seed where it'll meet and then sometimes it's further down and sometimes it's closer up.

That's fascinated, But that's lunar farming.

Yeah, regard me whatever you want to call it, right, Yeah, I'd like to play.

Around with that at some point. Yeah, yeah, well that would be one of the things that we would do.

So if you're interested, I put together a pitch deck, which is all the ideas of as we were talking about. I mean, American education is desperately in need some kind of a reboot and.

Where you're thinking instead of just memorizing. Yeah, I like that. Joseph Campbell said that when specialists do things, they're so far into the specialist thing it's very narrow and then like you Cherokee thing, Well what about the Iroquois thing over here? Oh no, I'm just cherokee. And so he always said, I'm a generalist and they hate me because you can tie them up.

Yeah, that's the way I'll say.

Well, you know, I know quite a bit about paleohydrology, but I don't know as much as a full time hydrologistness. I know quite a bit about astronomy and movement to the planets, but probably not as much as an astronomer who just does nothing on that. But I know a whole lot more about paleo hydrology than the astronomer, and I know a whole lot more about astronomy than the hydrologists.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah, So there is an important role for generalists.

Although some of the areas I've really focused in on, and I maybe you know, if I'm doing my own Orn'm getting close to being an authority on some of these ancient deluvial catastrophes.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I read Donnelly when I was eighteen. Yeah, yeah, that Black Matte Lair. I've thought about that my whole life.

Jo Donnelly was a congressman from Minnesota.

And he went into the Library of Congress. Yeah yeah, yeah. My book is down the road from Lewis and Clark's Journal.

I can't believe that.

Yeah, that was my first book and it got accepted in the Library of Congress. Really yeah, just last Wednesday.

Oh oh yeah, recent New York. I heard you talking about that. Yeah, yeah, just amazing.

What were some of the first and early books you read on these kind of if.

We want to Moravian journals? Moravian journals.

They were the Germans that probably like your ancestors, came down the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia and they that went all the way to Atlanta, and then there's branches that go off from that, and they came in seventeen fifty two, there were eight of them, and they started writing a daily journal and they have not stopped, no kidding.

Well?

I was impressed enough that I wanted to follow up and learn more about it, right and come back.

Yeah, it'd be really cool if we got Yona up there with you. He's in Ashville, but in that guy, he drives everywhere. Just I bet he puts one hundred thousand miles on his car every six months.

So you know, there's a Mount Yona in Georgia.

Yeah, probably named after his great great grandfather, Chief Fiona Augusta. Oh, and he was considered, he was the prophet and he's the one who went to the caves in western North Carolina.

So all right, we'll let you go.

You're whipped and you had a big day.

So yeah, well, you know I didn't get to sleep till three am.

Oh my god, man, I got woke up at seven am.

Oh, my gosh, and I don't make it on four hours so much.

No, I don't either. Yeah.

I did six last night and that wasn't enough.

No.

Yeah, and at my age, you know, it's this that Betty Davis thing and getting old isn't for sissies.

No, definitely not.

But did you see Ken from Purple Power, the C sixty guy?

Have you ever gotten into C sixty? I don't think so.

It's really tiny bucket balls. It goes into your mitochondria and cleans them out.

You should talk to him. His name's Ken.

He's in there right now, and he's he's got a business of it, and uh, he's friends with Jay Widner, the film guy. So yeah, actually, let me introduce you to him. You you would benefit from him.