Reflecting back...

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all— by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians— be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

- Wendell Berry,
"Compromise, Hell!", Orion (November/December 2004)

I don't know when I first encountered Wendell Berry's writings but I've become attached to the confident natural moral accuracy of his words. I saw Wendell speak, one time, at the university in Fresno. I took my father, Sig (RIP), and he was skeptical: "we're going to go listen to a farmer who writes poetry?" I could only respond "yup." When Berry's talk was finished my dad hung around and thanked "Mr. Berry" for a quality evening. My dad didn't impress too easily. He was a High School dropout who received his GED as an adult, midway through what I would call a successful business career, but he had a sharp mind and knew people well and had an easy attitude with strangers. He knew me pretty well... We became good friends as I got older and particularly after I had kids, our bonds deepened.

My children were small when Sig died from a stroke in his sleep, brought about by his Alzheimer's. In one of those incredibly quirky co-incidents he died in the same state mental hospital as his father, the Western State Hospital in Tacoma. But that is really a tale for another time because it is a sad one that will take some effort on my part. In fact I need to write about Sig... I've regretted not being able to speak at his funeral. I had never experienced grief like that and it was overwhelming.

The point here is that there are writers who truly have altered my consciousness and conscientiousness. Ideas are far more potent than any drug and let loose in a mind that is inquisitive and comprehending as mine was as a young man in the prime of his twenties, I must lay a lot of the blame for who I am on them. I don't want to make a list because I've too many for one short morning ramble but there are those integral to my telling here. Wendell Berry and Edward Abbey, for sure Gary Snyder... I've appreciated Barry Lopez' wonderful wordsmithing and the excellent One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka is a must for any gardener or fan of natural land use, sustainability... I'll have to do a post on just "nature" writers some day ahead...

I give an incredible amount of credit for my deepening indigenous understanding to the classic Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt. I read this book on a bus in 1976 or so while travelling with the Allan Hancock College Acapella Choir through the Northwest as their photographer. I've read nearly all of Niehardt's work and he remains one of my all time favorites from all genres. It was the native history, books like Maria Sandoz' Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas that struck deep into my core being. I was effected beyond understanding... I couldn't grasp that there were minds that could not recognize another as human. All this reading and sharing of meals and sweatlodges, teepee meetings, drumming and work with tribal folks convinced me that just as individuals have karma so too do nations and societies. I won't go there yet either. I would be remiss not to include Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a book I could never finish reading, too painful for me to finish. Because I'm so dang empathetic I can't handle witnessing much slaughter and across the western frontier of a birthing nation there was plenty of it.

And I was doing all this reading in conjunction with my sociology and anthropology studies in college. I was sucking material up, I subscribed to Akwesasne Notes from the the Hau de no sau nee, the people of the Six Nations and Native Self-Sufficiency put out by Dan Bomberry (Cayuga-Salish) back then, apparently still available (can anyone confirm this?). Through this network of information I read (and thanks to KPFA/Pacifica radio) and listened to folks like Phillip Deere, John Fire Lame Deer, Jake Swamp, Rolling Thunder and of course ultimately to the one I would come to know and share much time with, Grampa Semu.

I also came to love the books of Louis L'Amour, I think the historic west's greatest storyteller, but I discovered Louis at Opal Creek so we aren't quite ready for him yet.

With my reading, the meeting of tribal folks in California, doing sweatlodge with them and brother Marty and Co. I had lain out a future route that would benefit and challenge me as a citizen of the US and as a human being. But paths are tricky, or not, and mine has never been a straight one. Forks and curves and dead-ends and low places where crawling is required, lofty peaks and subtle meadows all have been along the route...

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

of caveats, big trees and etc...

In thinking about this project- the blog and writing about Opal Creek - I felt a need to stop with the writing of my trip to Jawbone and give some background of how I came to be offered this tremendous opportunity. I'm not going to take you back to the womb but as an adult I feel certain steps, actions and encounters prepared the way.

I was in the Air Force from 1970 until 1974. My 4 year tour started and ended in Texas and was instrumental in my maturing. I was very fortunate and avoided VietNam and drew a year's duty in Takhli, Thailand. I was a 23 year old white guy who had never been east of the Mississippi River. I had heard from the older guys in my squadrons who had gone to Thailand that it was worth expending some effort in finding duty there and while stationed in Clovis, NM at Cannon AFB the chance arose and I volunteered. I worked in photo reconnaissance as a lab tech, processing strike film from F-111s. I had been trained in two photo fields; first as a photo equipment repairman and then as a photographer/lab tech. We were a mobile unit, all modular, self contained with generators, air conditioning, even our own water tanks. We could be set up or torn down in about 6 hours. We could process color or black and white film, do printing, copying, had a maintainance shop... except for the occasional whacking of the top of the head ducking thru the low doors of the walkways connecting the trailers it was a sweet set-up.

When I left the states in 1973 it was early March, springtime. When I landed at Takhli RTAFB, Thailand it was summer. It was still March but when the transport plane doors opened it was bright and it was hot. And hot is an understatement. Everything outside was so bright it looked like it was all overexposed by at least one full stop.

I adapted quickly and loved my stay. I made many Thai friends and lived off-base as much as possible. I ate the local food and disdained the chow-hall (except on Sundays, when it was hamburgers and fries...). I loved my fried rice, monkeyball soup and panang curry. To walk the main strip at dusk with the lights coming on, the bands warming up and the street full of people and food vendors... and the delicious aromas... wow. Satays and chik-a-bobs (shish kebab) fresh off the bbq grill... mmm... and top an evening off with some bahmee wan... mmm...

We worked right next to the flightline and many a night's break was spent having a meal and cig on top of the trailers watching the rice bugs under the street lamps and enjoying the quiet without fighter jets blasting their engines coming or going or being tested in the revetments. The sound of incoming F-111's was the sound of work. Pilots would stop in and drop off the film from their bombing runs over Cambodia, we'd process it and every hour or so run the developed rolls down to the de-briefing room where the pilots would score their strikes. Most pilots were nice enough guys - for officers - and only a few were real cowboys. Interesting bunch those pilots.

But I'm digressing. When in Thailand I had an epiphany. It was a very real, palpable experience of connection. So different was that culture from that of hometown USA I experienced an intense empathy and love for the Thai people and their beautiful, hot country. My conscience bloomed and the notion of helping to bomb short, poor, brown people became unacceptable. Though while I was convinced by those older and wiser to not rock the boat, to "enjoy my stay" and simultaneously stay out of trouble, my "career" as an activist had sprouted.

The first hints of my blooming activism appeared while I was attending Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA. I had seen a Native American fella around campus and introduced myself one day. We became good friends and through him I met Grampa Semu Huaute. At the same time my brothers in arms - Marty, Al and Jim - and I had begun doing Sweat Lodges and we were having a blast. Young, healthy and full of ourselves, we accepted the gift in the spirit it was offered and would hike miles into the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest to be able to sweat next to running water and spend time in the hills and woods. We also participated in the protest by the local Chumash of then Cali governor Jerry Brown's plan to locate an LNG port at Point Conception, west of Santa Barbara. To the Chumash and other tribes Pt. Conception is the Western Gate, the point where the souls of the deceased depart for Shimilaqsha, Chumash realm of the dead.

Around 1980 I moved to Fresno and hooked up with Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation. Cathy and Dave Garner had a shoe-string budget, great hearts and a wonderful program with lots of good volunteers helping them and the wildlife out. I raised baby birds, cared for injured adult birds, learned how to feed a dove and a hummingbird... helped the Garners at their place in the country... major props to Dave and Cathy because now, 20+ years later they are still going strong. (well probably not as strong as back then but I won't even get into the "old age" schtick, lets just say they are still active and leave it there soz I don't dig my self a deeper hole with folks I admire as people, friends and as people who make their dreams work for them)

And here, to pause a bit... you can probably see that as my conscience is blooming, the influences around me are becoming very nature oriented. And the nice thing? As a photographer a lot of this is recorded on film and I'm loving the anticipation of digging into my slide files and digitizing many of those images and bringing them online. There is a story to tell here, and as a fellow Oregonian who has shaped my view of the land and whose writing I admire greatly, Barry Lopez says, in his essay Landscape and Narrative:

The power of narrative to nurture and heal, to repair a spirit in disarray, rests on two things: the skillful invocation of unimpeachable sources and a listener's knowledge that no hypocrisy or subterfuge is involved.

I try and avoid the hypocrisy but rest assured there is no subterfuge here.

More in a bit...