The Epic, pt. II

April 18-May 23, 2013

                        This could become a ritual. These “epic” cross-country jaunts to and from my dear Sequoias. Road-trips that may very well define my decade of the ‘40s’. Hard to feel my age amidst the pure freedom and joy that is roaming alone without a real schedule, seldom even looking at the time or date. This time it was east to west. Back to the divinity of the ancient Sequoia groves, away from the shallowness of the immature concrete jungles. After a spectacular two-month long South American saunter, I could only stay ten days in the NYC before hitting the road once again to go cross-country. I find that nowadays I take my Big Apple in very small slices! Bus ride to DC, quick drive across Virginia and West Virginia (very pretty land them Virginias) and it was on with a full-on family gathering in Louisville, Kentucky. Once on the roadways of this great land, one needs at least a full month to do ‘The Epic’ properly - it’s odd when even a few free weeks of rambling along feels rushed. I visited several remarkable places where I could have stayed two or three weeks alone. Once again, coast to coast in several symbolic snippits.

            1. Familia. I meant to write this last Autumn. But life in the city seemed to stop my pen for a spell. So here goes… “Uncle Jefe.” It has a real nice ring to it. I’ve realized in the past year that I have a great responsibility that I neither asked for nor expected, but one that I now welcome and cherish with the most open of open arms. When your siblings start bringing new souls into this old world, you now have the sacred duty of being someone important for these new souls. Truth be told, until about five years hence, I never much cared for hanging around small children! Until I met the four that have some of the same blood as I. It is remarkable how quickly it changes, whether you joyfully embrace it or not is the only choice you have in the matter. Suddenly I find myself quite comfortable in the role of the silly uncle with the big beard and funny sounding foreign languages and wild travel stories… laughing, playing, reading, teaching, and generally bonding with these tiny personalities developing in front of your very eyes. Ancient biological instincts kick in; it really doesn’t take any manuals to figure it out.

            Being a tio or tia is the easiest connection one will ever have with small children – all of the fun, and little of the headache! I’ll take that deal. These massively important early moments pass in the life of someone, and you are right there with the opportunity to contribute something genuinely good, something that could profoundly influence his or her little journey on this Earth. As often as possible, you are right there to witness all of that magic. So your plans begin to focus around the next time you will be able to be right there. This isn’t just some requisite holiday get together with the distant familia anymore. It is indeed a sacred duty…

            2. Reclaiming Language and History Immersion. Looking at a map of the US of A, as I often do, it was easy to plot a most spectacular route for The Epic II. I had to go the northern route across the Great Plains towards Portland, OR where I would take the intense Wilderness First Responder course in preparation for my second Summer in the Sierras and my Forest Ranger gig. Setting it all up proper by the wonderful visits with familia and dear old amigos in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and good ole Ioway, I then headed right into the heart of the Great Plains – South Dakota and Wyoming, best referred to as “Lakota Land.” Thankfully and finally, these holy places are beginning to regain their rightful place names. Language has power. If I can assist in this massively important task by these little written ramblings that I’m trying to filter and edit properly these days, I will be content.
            Makho Sika = The Badlands. Paha Sapa/He Sapa = Black Hills. Mato Tipila = Bear Lodge (Devil’s Tower). Chankpe Opi Wakpala = Wounded Knee. I spent about three days wandering this beautiful landscape, feeling a very ancient presence within this sacred land. Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, and other First Nation’s people visited and still visit Paha Sapa and Mato Tipila for visions, for ceremonies, and for family/tribal gatherings. I have learned that one should leave tobacco when you visit these places, as a gift for the spirits that dwell there, for the land itself, as well as for those who most horrifically lost their lives there. So I did.

            If you study US history, this part of the country is awash with chapter after chapter of remarkable events, both great and tragic. It is a land so very alive with these memories that one’s senses must be numbed beyond repair to not feel any of it when you enter. A couple of thoughts came to me as I slowly meandered from what are now called ‘The Badlands’ down to ‘Pine Ridge’ and ‘Wounded Knee’ over into ‘The Black Hills’ up through ‘Spearfish Canyon’ and finally over to ‘Devil’s Tower’ and across the majestic ‘Powder River’ country:
            a) It is truly a blessing to see and feel these places. By whatever route we arrived, we all are very lucky to live in such a beautiful, beautiful land. And by ‘land’ I mean The Land, not the flag.

            b) Mount Rushmore is a truly pathetic attempt at ‘culture’, or worse, ‘art’. What kind of a shallow people would dare to do this upon the most sacred spot of The People whose land they stole through violence, greed, and deceit?

            c) There are many variations of the creation story, but one goes something like this: the huge, hungry Bear had chased the Seven Sisters to the enormous rock where they climbed as high as they could to escape. Trying to get to the girls, the great bear scratched and clawed the massive stone, scraping down all the sides and leaving piles of rock below. To escape, the seven sisters finally leapt into the sky and can now be seen in the night sky as The Pleiades, forever being chased by Ursa Major – The Great Bear, and passing overhead every night. Thus was created the spectacular Mato Tipila – Bear Lodge (some white guy decided to misname it ‘Devil’s Tower’). The remains of the giant rock are still visible today and have been used for centuries for ceremonial gatherings and summer camps. Many holy people are said to be buried in the area.

            So… you know, seven sisters leaping into the sky to flee from a hungry bear is clearly a much better way to tell a creation story than some scientific mumbo-jumbo about rocks and lava, que no?

            d) As I drove, I could imagine herds of millions of Tatanka, or Bison, thundering over the rolling hills of the Powder River country. It was as if I could hear the roar echoing through time. It must have been a truly awesome spectacle. God damn you, Buffalo Bill… and all the rest who slaughtered so many of them in the name of imperial conquest.

            e) The only thing ugly about Wyoming are its god-awful politicians. ‘Majestic’ was the word that came to mind as I drove through the state towards my long overdue first encounter with mighty Yellowstone National Park. How could a place so, indeed, majestic produce a soul so ugly as Dick Cheney, for example? Talk about a case study in the American epidemic of disconnection from the Earth and the beauty surrounding us…

            f) Every American needs to visit the Wounded Knee massacre site on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and ask a prayer of forgiveness to the First Nations of this land – not for 1890, but for right now. The War for America did not end there on that shameful December morning as our fake history books claim. It is still going on, with the latest chapters being written at this very moment – IE, if we allow the Tar Sands Keystone XL pipeline to be built across Native land, destroying yet more Indian communities, then we are just as guilty as the disgraceful US commanders and soldiers who carried out that heinous war crime 123 years ago, are we not?

            3. Land Rights. Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht. ‘Thunder Rolling Through the Mountains.’ I would like to know the full story of how the man we came to know as Chief Joseph got that magnificent name. I have long been in awe of the epic flight undertaken by Joseph and the Nez Perce, or Nee-Me-Poo, people from the Wallowa Valley in now Oregon, through now Idaho, into the newly created Yellowstone National Park in now Wyoming, and to within 40 miles of Sitting Bull’s camp and freedom across the border in Canada. Something always told me that I would be enchanted by the place that was described with such glowing adjectives in every recorded account.

I was not disappointed.

            Coming in from the east after a spectacular drive through Hell’s Canyon and the Snake River country on the Idaho/Oregon border, I passed through lush green hills, alongside streams, over a large ridge and into a wide open valley floor, where suddenly a snow-capped range of postcard-like mountains appeared. The Wallowas stood before me, emanating a warm welcome. Below them, the small little town of Joseph is filled with statues, memorabilia, and memories of that 1877 war. I took the road south, went by the cemetery, paid my respects to Old Chief Joseph, or Tuekakas, and soon was at the edge of the lake…  if there was a Swiss Alps in the USA, this would be it. Absolutely stunning; breathtaking. You would have had to chase me out of here with a full army of crazed US soldiers as well. I would have never voluntarily left a home as glorious as this valley.

            Those marvelous mountain and valley vistas got me thinking. After seeing so many of these divine places and learning the heartbreaking stories of how they have been stolen one after the other from their original inhabitants, I found myself angry again and asking the same old question again. The same question that many others have asked many times before me: What right do the people who live here today have to this land?! Yes, I mean today, right now? How could anyone of us in a nation supposedly based on freedom and liberty and all those other empty words accept that the communities which had lived in these places for thousands of years were violently driven out one after the other without even a whisper of justice? I have read story after story of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht taking every possible initiative to avoid war and maintain peace with these white invaders. His kindness and patience was legendary. All this during a time when people who can only be considered criminals were illegally immigrating (oh, the irony) into the valley and blatantly taking land and setting up houses, farms, ranches – right in front of the Nez Perce. This was during a time when Indians were murdered by those invaders and still Joseph tried to keep the peace with these violent people. He kindly asked them to simply leave his land. At one point, he even agreed to share his land in an effort to avoid war, and to even move onto the nearby reservation at Ft. Lapwai. Yet in the end, after an imagined panic swept over the illegal white settlers of the area, the government still sent in an army to chase this peace-loving man and his people out of this breathtaking valley; eventually he would “fight no more forever” and we know the rest. I recommend everybody read an account of the events leading up to that epic flight. Alvin Josephy’s “The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest” is the standard historical document regarding this era. Though I’m not sure what “Opening…” in the title means, something akin to “destroying”, perhaps?

            After learning the full story, my underlying question about Indian-European relations is this: did it really ever make a difference if you were a “hostile” and rose up to violently resist the invasion to the death, or if you were a “friendly” and chose not to fight, but attempted to accommodate the invasion as much as possible? Ask Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull how the former approach worked out. Both murdered. Ask the Cherokee or the Nez Perce how the latter approach worked out. Both forced on what amounted to death marches. In the face of a violent imperial invasion disguised as “settling the land”, what form of resistance can possibly be effective?

            So… my eternal doubt remains: from a purely legal standpoint (not to mention moral), how in God’s name could those who illegally moved into these lands have any sort of legitimate claim to them? Right now? Today? Yes, that hard-working farmer down in the valley. Yes, that old rancher up in the hills. Yes, that nice family in town by the lake. Us. Most of who are good, decent people, yes. So how to reconcile this with the fact that many of us are also descendants of those who murdered and cheated and deceived and brutalized and disgraced the Nee-Me-Poo… the Lakota… the Haudenosaunee… the Diné… the Pequots… hell, all the First Nations across this beautiful land? Trace any wealth or property back enough generations and you will not like what you find (any wonder so few of us here study history?) If you come from wealth I challenge you to dig into your family history. Under what farcical concept of law does this sort of outright theft make any sense whatsoever? Unless we admit that we are indeed a nation of brutal, violent conquest, bereft of our own rule of law, then what possible legal right do we, as a nation, have to this land we call “ours”?

            I recently learned that today, even after all the broken treaties and deceitful bargaining, something like 1/3 of all land in the US of A cannot possibly be legally claimed by anyone other that Native people. Ponder that.

            It is uncomfortable. Particularly so for those in denial of the real history of this land. So I challenge you to honestly ask yourself that question, and then try to go about business as usual. Ever again. To quote a very smart friend of mine, that extreme discomfort and unease you feel; that sensation that something is very, very wrong here is the voice of The Land desperately trying to speak to you.

            4. Sequoia Sempervirens. Glorious, glorious sunrise in Northern California, revealing the old growth Coastal Redwood giants I have so longed to meet… Sequoia-esque! After my intense 10-day crash course in all things Wilderness First Aid (hit me up when you dislocate your shoulder in the backcountry!) up in Portland, OR (city inside a forest!), I had been meandering down the Oregon and California coastline stopping as often as the final two days of The Epic would allow. Arriving at night in the Jedadiah Smith Redwood State Park allowed the next morning to be so spectacular – waking up to ancient Redwoods towering over you.

            I spent the whole day sauntering down the coast, from park to park of the long Redwoods National and State Parks area. Some of these majestic beings are as large as grandpa Sequoia further south. An evening stroll through a final magnificent grove as the sun slowly faded across the Pacific Coast capped off a final magnificent stop on this second magnificent cross-country saunter. Perhaps only now am I finally seeing this land that I have lived on for these short 40 years. Because I find that I am in awe of it most of the time these days. Particularly when in the blessed Sierra Nevada, a few hours to the south, home to the blessed cousins of these blessed Coastal Redwoods. Inyo. The place that may have finally begun to teach me to “think like a mountain”, to quote brother Aldo Leopold.
            ¡Ya vuelvo, abuelito! Gracias.