Apache Nation "And if you take a sheep and put it up at the timberline at night when the wind is roaring, that sheep will be panicked half to death and will call and call until the shepherd comes, or comes the wolf." (ZMM)
At the end of a mountain-shadowed dirt road there's a dusty round-a-bout where I park my Jeep. In the middle of the round-a-bout rests a faded blue steel drum with the top blow-torched out to make it functional as a trash receptacle. One side is stove in giving the trash can a crooked appearance. Deep angry-looking scratches on the other side of the drum, rusty with age, announce in a crooked script: APACHE NATION. The drum is empty. The surrounding forest is pristine, not even a crushed beer can mars the environment. It's as if some giant alien vacuum cleaner has sucked every piece of trash off the earth. The forest stands in stark contrast to the towns I've passed to reach this point, squalid little bergs smelling of overflowing cesspools and the burnt french toast odor of fry bread. Spongy-middled trailers with worn out car tires on worn out roofs line graveled streets. Burn piles spew noxious tendrils of smog into the tepid air to mix with the sounds of garbled music and crying babies. Entangled yards, like over-full stomachs, disgorge their bile into the alleyways and streets until littering the whole countryside with vomitous discards of a civilization rotting from inside out. Here though, it's clean... quiet too. Maybe the quiet has something to do with the cleanliness. APACHE NATION. My eyes keep going back to the words scratched into the trash can. Funny. It doesn't say "property of". It just says APACHE NATION. Like a sign waiting to be seen by someone who knows what they're seeing. There's a lot of that here in the mountains. I'm making sure I have everything packed before setting off for a few days in the mountains. Focus, Dan, focus. Two years ago I forgot to bring an extra disposable lighter. I meant to. I had it on my list. I overlooked it. And sure enough, three days in and my pocket lighter ran out of fuel. I always plan redundantly so I had spare wooden matches but still, a slip up like that can be fatal where I'm heading. APACHE NATION. The Apache warriors were some of the fiercest adversaries their enemies ever met. The name means "cruel" in Zuni culture. There are actually six sub-tribes that make up the Apache... the Bedonkohe Apache live in this area of New Mexico. Geromino was a Bedonkohe; he was called Jerome by the Mexicans after he slaughtered dozens of armed troops using only a knife. Legend has it the dying soldiers called out appeals to St. Jerome and the name stuck. Satisfied I'm ready, I start walking. I see cruelty in the land. It's unforgiving. The trail leads uphill through green pines and weather-worn gray granite cliffs. I walk only a few dozen steps and I'm winded. I can't catch my breath. I feel sick. I bend over breathing hard with pounding heart until the moment passes. I'll get used to the altitude but to survive here for any length of time... I don't know. There's no open water; rocky valleys conceal underground streams. I hear it gurgling deep beneath heaped stones. My drinking water comes from melting snow I find on northern slopes even when it's seventy degrees and sunny. Geronimo was a medicine man, not a chief, and the people chose to follow him of their own free will. Those who were with him said he had special insights known as "power" by the Apache... the ability to walk without leaving tracks, the ability to survive injuries that would kill other men, the ability see far away both in time and space. The Apaches were the last of the independent Native American tribes to recognize the United States government as a legitimate body. Geronimo and his little band of warriors were the very last indigenous guerrilla fighters. APACHE NATION. The very name kept would-be settlers out of the Indian Territories for years, but now, the name adorns garbage cans in the middle of a forest no one knows is here. Crooked words scratched on a crooked can. I listen to the wind blow mournfully through the late afternoon trees as shadows gather thicker and more insistent. I unshoulder my pack and unsling my bedroll. The campsite is nearly indiscernible; years ago I'd of walked right past not seeing the signs. It's a good place to stop for the night. I say there's signs here but there's not any signs like we're used to seeing in civilization. Do this. Don't do that. Signs here are more like patterns of value. A person has to understand the value of what they're seeing before they come to realize the patterns lurking there. It's said Geronimo confessed on his death bed that his one regret was surrendering. That's what this land whispers to me... never surrender, never surrender. The days run together easily out here. I never have enough time so I keep coming back, year after year, but I can't tell you why. These mountains scare the hell out of me. The ground is hard, the January mountain winds roar cold, and I can't sleep for more than an hour at a time. There's no proper water to drink - I boil everything. The food stinks and there's not much of it. There's things out here I'd rather not run into on a dark night, things I don't see so much as I hear. Big cats scare me more than bears and worse than both are snakes. Now, when I say "scared" I don't mean I'm shaky-kneed Sally. Out here, deep in the mountains, fear heightens awareness. If a person wanders into these mountains unaware, odds are they won't survive. Sheep. It happens all the time. They tell me that the park rangers require a person to have a permit to go hiking so if they don't come back they can come and find them. In fact, if they caught me out here I could be arrested. I have no permit. They don't see me though. A high mountain mist descends with another night; it creeps in hovering over my campsite. A bright half-moon hopscotches over fast moving cottontail clouds. There's a faint circle around the moon taking up half the sky, portending bad weather. I decide to start back in the morning. I'm three days into the mountains but it'll only take me two to get out; it's all downhill from here. I'd like to spend a couple more days here but I don't like the signs. Snow piles up with a quickness here. I gather wood, kindle a small fire in the depression and huddle close to chase the clamminess. APACHE NATION. The words haunt me tonight. These mountains tell the truth. Every time. Outlaw that he was, Geronimo must have known that too. He might have camped at this very spot and warmed his hands. APACHE NATION. As darkness gathers about me I think about a passage Robert Pirsig writes: "The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself." (ZMM) That seems right. APACHE NATION is a state of mind. It's an attitude. It's not about the mountains yet the mountains have formed traditions cruel and unforgiving, demanding aggressiveness and courage of anyone wanting to survive the difficulties here, the very values the Apaches prize the most. And these rational traditions are carried on by "professors" as such - medicine men. The Apache traditions are every bit as rich as any university only different. It puts intellect in a whole new light. To survive out here... the challenge seems formidable. One of our only advantages against the elements is intellect. And that doesn't mean thinking about metaphysics. It means coming up with ideas to secure food, shelter, and warmth. Out here, intellect means brutal creativity... I am standing on a high cliff. The ground convulses, knocking my legs from under me. I look up at the mountain but it's gone. Instead, I see an enormous pyroclastic cloud roiling its way toward me. I see lightening flashes around the edges of the cloud as the heat mounts and the air crackles around me. I take a breath; my lungs involuntarily spasm as they fill with acrid sulfur fumes. I know I'll be dead in a few seconds. I look down into the valley below, searching for a cave or even a crevice in which to hide. I want to run but the ground is liquefying, giving way beneath me. My feet caught in quicksand I claw at melting rock with blistering fingers trying to gain purchase but I can't move. I can't move. I start out of an inebriated sleep. I wonder if I'm experiencing something that's happening now, has already happened or something that's going to happen. I decide it's all the same anyway so it doesn't really matter. Reason arrives to tell me I'm oxygen-deprived here at eight thousand feet. My brain is working overtime. I sit up still not sure I'm awake but pleased that the shaking is gone and the ground solid. I walk down wind to the food cache, lower it from the tree where it hangs, break off a piece of turkey jerky I bought at a road-side stand, and chew it. It tastes of sea and smoke. It's not a cheese sandwich in Death Valley on Christmas but I suspect it's pretty damned close. The camp fire is out. The moon has set. A pink dawn dapples a craggy horizon, the sky ablaze with stars and raging planets. It's cold; the mountain mist has crystallized onto the brush and trees and the early morning breeze sifts it down to the ground creating just for me the illusion of drunken dancing angels losing their balance and tumbling head over heals as they fall from their perches on pin heads high above, their little white broken wings forming little white patches of snow on the ground below. I kindle a fire to make coffee. Geronimo was sixty some years old when he surrendered but he'd still take your ass and hand it to you on a platter should he have wanted. If you were a white settler and Geronimo came upon your homestead, he'd likely as not cut off your sack, cram it down your throat with the knife hilt, and leave you there to die choking to death on your own genitals. I've read innumerable accounts of Geronimo. He's described as a bitter, savage, brutal man who would stop at nothing to drive off white settlers. He particularly hated Mexican soldiers and showed them no mercy. It's said he rubbed raw garlic on his weapons and struck not to kill so that his Mexican victims died slow deaths from blood poisoning and gangrene. "St. Jerome-O!" Time and again though, it's noted that he never physically harmed women or children. Not once. Yes, they were carried off to become part of the tribe, or to be sold. That was common among the Apache. In fact, Geronimo bought two young white boys from a neighboring tribe and raised them as his own sons. I smell a story there so we'll save that for another time. It took ten years and three thousand men to track Geronimo and his band down; the US government finally shipped him off to a concentration camp back east, cut his hair, and put him to hard labor sawing logs. Later in his life, Victorian high society took great pleasure in parading around with the Noble Savage . He actually rode in a car with a President at his inauguration. Can you imagine? To their credit, the Victorians talked with him and wrote down his words. He explained how he didn't understand the ways of the whites. Apaches had no need of treaties and promises as they believed no one would give false testimony in regards to their own people. He said it seemed to him that the whites needed laws to ensure goodness while the Apache needed goodness to ensure law. Wow. What does that say about us both? He died a prisoner of war far from home. But someone out here still takes the time to haul out the trash and scratch APACHE NATION on empty garbage cans. Like they're daring someone to use it. I never see them. I take that back. I do see others from time to time but take care they don't see me. Out here, I have the advantage - I can hear someone coming from a long way off. I get so winded after walking for five minutes I'm forced to stop, my heart feeling like it might burst right out of my chest. As it quiets, I sit and I listen and the mountains whisper me stories of all the comings and goings. Night again; a cold rain falls; I don't like tents. Years ago I carried one, just in case, but I never seemed to need it. To save weight I carry a tarp now. I stretch one end over a large grey granite standing stone pulling the other end tight to a stake I cut from a fallen tree to construct a crude shelter. These campsites look to be hundreds of years old, maybe thousands. They're not easily seen and they're always round. During my travels here I've seen a good half dozen of these sites scattered over the area. The circles are some twenty five feet wide with perimeter stones of a cream color, rectangular shaped rocks some four feet long and a foot wide, softer looking than granite but harder than sandstone. Sometimes the center is empty; sometimes there are stones in the center of the circle standing some six to ten feet tall. These are made of granite and they are massive. I can't imagine how or why anyone would want to arrange the stones as they have but they've clearly been placed here by someone. I wonder who made these circles. The Apaches? Maybe, but on close inspection the placings of stones look so old (and big, they must weigh a ton a piece) I suspect they too found these sites and understanding their value put them to use, just as I have. A warrior could cook a meal, find warmth and protection here. Cocooned in my sleeping bag with a slip of a fire going in the little dugout pit in front of me, rain dripping just inches away, it feels as though this is more than a camp site. It feels like home. When he was a young man, they came into camp and murdered his wife and three children. His mother too. And the rest of his family. Geronimo returned in time to see the last of the Mexican soldiers bent on genocide riding through the smoke on the horizon. While the warriors were out trading, the whole village had been decimated, ravaged and burned. Old men, women, and children, bludgeoned, bayoneted, beheaded, lodges toppled, even the dogs, slaughtered like pigs. The end of one way of life and the beginning of another. I wake from a muddy dream. The rain falls harder; the wind is picking up. I pull on my rain poncho, exit my shelter, and gather several large stones from a nearby rock slide to weigh down the flapping edges of my tarp. Flashes of lightening dotting the horizon reveal ugly cloud formations. It looks like I'm in for it. The tarp still looks loose. I take several lengths of rope to secure it as best I can. Once I feel good about my shelter, I gather as much firewood as I can to stow under the tarp. This site is close to the trees but not so close as to present a danger should high winds knock down tree limbs. The wind rises, staggers me back into my shelter. This is called the Pinos Altos mountain range... Tall Pines... and those pine trees are bent nearly sideways in the wind. It's gone past a roar to become a cacophony. The storm is moving slow, which bodes ill. I've never heard of tornadoes in January but damn, the way those clouds are swirling overhead... An enormous clap of thunder startles the night, and then another. Wind tears open the makeshift flap on my tarp. While I'm struggling to re-tie it my eyes are drawn skyward. The sky's crying fire - massive cobwebbed networks of jagged lightening run from horizon to horizon, north, south, east, west, jumping cloud to cloud to earth. I've seen a lot of storms but I don't recall ever seeing something like this. Holy Christ on a Stick, what a show! All of a sudden my tarp is gone. Poof. As if God Itself in all Its infinite tomfoolery has flawlessly performed the snatch-a-tablecloth-from-under-the-earth trick only It is using my tarp instead. I find myself laying in a muddy ditch with a piece of yellow braided nylon rope in my hand but nowhere to tie it and nothing to tie it to. Everything I have is drenched in an instant though my poncho keeps me relatively dry underneath. Plus I only wear wool clothing in the mountains... wool doesn't lose its insulating value when it gets wet. Still, this isn't good. A lightning bolt splits a tree not forty feet away. The trunk explodes in sparks. I smell burnt pine and hear tree sap hissing. Jesus Fucking God, I felt the heat from that one! Another bolt hits, then another. I circle around the standing stone trying to put the storm to my back. It doesn't help... it's coming from all directions now. I sit back to stone with my knees pulled up to my chest. Then I pull my poncho tight around my knees. Pine cones and any forest paraphernalia the wind finds hurtles against my body. Something hard hits my face. I touch my cheekbone below my left eye where it hit me. I feel a mouse forming but there's no blood. "They took the whole Apache nation," I sing aloud to myself, "Locked us on this reservation." The height of the storm is upon me. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. "Though I wear a shirt and tie... I'm still part red man deep inside." My body discovers a small crevice in the standing stone I'm leaning against, just big enough to shield me from the side-on assault. With feet planted I push against the rock to keep from being swept up into rapacious winds and cover my face with the plastic poncho hood. My mind shuts down as I meditate on the value of good tents. After what seems like hours the wind lessens, the lightening abates and the rain lets up. My legs numb, I stand, stretch, and walk around until the feeling returns. The sky is brightening with the coming dawn; it's not daylight but at least I can see. I survey the area around the campsite hoping to locate my tarp. I spot it hung up in some nearby ocotillo brush and walk over to retrieve it. The ties are ripped but the tarp is serviceable. When I turn back to camp, something catches my attention... the center stone I've been leaning against has a fire on top of it, a violet colored fire. No. More like an intense velvet glow. At first I think I'm seeing things. I rub the water from my eyes. My hand is glowing the same violet color as the stone. I hold both hands out in front of me and when I bring my thumbs together a faint violet streamer appears between my hands when they're about six inches apart. I look out at the forest. The pines all stand back upright as if nothing has happened. But something is strange. There's a violet fire on the tip of every tree. It's one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen. The very air feels electric. I feel such a sense of elation. I've survived a battle of the elements. But more than that, I'm privileged enough to see something few others have seen. I feel good. I manage to hang the tarp and kindle a fire to dry myself out and get some hot soup brewing. I feel really good but for a niggling thought needling my brain: this storm caught me unprepared. I could have died out here. When the European storm broke on the Apache, they weren't prepared either. The Apache and European cultures differed in deep and profound ways, as best expressed by Geronimo when he spoke to the Victorians. For the Apache, the good, the moral fiber of the tribe, established the law. As Robert Pirsig tells us in ZMM, the ancient Greeks reduced goodness to a sub-species of truth; they encapsulated goodness in the law. And their children, the Europeans, relied on the law to establish the good. Human beings were seen as fundamentally flawed, lacking moral fiber. They had to be told what's good. Law established morality. When the Europeans arrived in the New World they saw the native people as lawless savages. And the Apaches were the worst of the lot... a cruel and aggressive people with seemingly little or no regard for human life. Surviving the rugged lands where they lived demanded such traits. Without knowing the Apache culture, how could the Europeans reconcile the bloodthirsty nature of the Apache with anything good? I keep going back to the stories about Geronimo and how they mention, almost as an afterthought, how he never harmed women and children. It doesn't jibe with the image of a lawless savage. And then I think of the passage in ZMM about Odysseus... "Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Phoenician youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing areté." (ZMM) As the storm grew worse, Geronimo found himself and his people confined to a reservation. Perhaps he sensed the imminent demise of not only his way of life but the very culture of the Apache... the extinction of his people. He did what he did best... he survived. He slaughtered the enemies of his tribe but not the innocent. He never forsook goodness... Areté. All-around excellence. He couldn't. It was the very basis of Apache existence. So, whether hobnobbing with Presidents or cutting the nuts off settlers, Geronimo strove for excellence. He became the most feared person in the Western hemisphere and, later, a revered elder statesman for his people. APACHE NATION still lives. Oh, there's no acreage, no grounds, no buildings, no classes, no teachers, no books, nothing at all to signify that it exists... well, maybe that old trash can at the end of a dirt road deep in the forest. Signs. Take a step and watch the signs, and then take another step. Over time, the mountains unfold their story. Out here, a person's always being tested. And there's only one rule: Failure means death, the ultimate accountability partner. Full morning comes. It's gotten cold. I love these mountains, not just for the good times though. To have seen a storm like that! Snow is coming. Time to go. Thank you for reading, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
