Author: frankisemptiness

April 29th, 2018

Hans called us a little over a week ago. He called to let Karin and myself know that he and his fiancee, Gabby, were expecting a baby. I think that both Karin and I were expecting that they would at some point be expecting, so this announcement wasn’t entirely a surprise.

Hans told us in usual monotone that Gabby’s test was positive. Then he said,

“This wasn’t planned.”

My immediate response was, “You weren’t either.”  The answer was a verbal shrug.

Hans was born thirty-one years ago. He came into the world in March of 1987, at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Hans decided to show up four weeks early. He was a breach baby, and he had a cesarean birth. I was in the operating room with Karin. There was a screen across her midsection, so that she couldn’t watch the surgery being performed. I watched, and that made me kind of woozy. I wasn’t very good at comforting Karin. I remember them playing Madonna’s “Material Girl” in the room. Karin’s doctor was named Bruce Lee (seriously).

Hans spent several days in an incubator, until his liver was functioning adequately. Karin cried when she found out that she couldn’t take him home to nurse him. I cringed every time the nurse to a few drops of blood from the heel of his tiny to a test sample.

I had no health insurance when Hans was born. I had started a new job and it would have been another month before I had coverage. Somehow Karin and I paid for Hans’ medical bills. The fees cleaned out our savings.

Hans was weak for quite a while. Hans had two inguinal hernias, that needed to be repaired when he was older and stronger. They were in fact repaired, but that happened maybe a year later in Germany when one of them was suddenly strangulated. Another emergency.

I would like to say that Hans’ life settled down after that. That would be a lie. As I look back on it, Hans’ life has been a series of close calls. He had something that appeared to be a seizure while he was in middle school. After an endless array of tests, the doctors never really could determine what happened to him. I was strict and over-protective with him. Hans jokes now that, after growing up with me, Army boot camp was a letdown for him. He was a very quiet and restless adolescent. He found his solace in video games, usually violent ones. He loved dogs. He still loves them, and they love him.

Hans became adventurous once he reached adulthood. He moved to Texas. He tried to find work down there just as the recession of 2008 struck the economy. He joined the Army in 2009 for a variety of reasons. He went to war. He came back very comfortable with risk-taking. He bought a crotch rocket and he went skydiving. I suspect he was already comfortable with risks prior to going to Iraq, but he lost all fear during his deployment. For a while Hans was homeless and jobless. He has been slowly rebuilding his life since then. It’s been a scary process.

Now he is soon to be a husband and father. Is he ready? Of course not. I wasn’t ready. I have never met anybody who was ready. As I look at my career as a family man, I see long list of fuck ups, occasionally interrupted by moments of clarity and compassion. I’ve done a lot of damage, and maybe a bit of good. I tried to do things right, but it usually doesn’t feel like I did.

Hans has his issues. He knows what they are. So does Gabby. He also has his strengths. Hans is brave and loyal to a fault. He is intelligent and honorable. He is capable of a fierce and self-sacrificing sort of love. He will do the best he can.

We will help him. We will help Gabby. We will help their child.

 

 

 

 

April 25th, 2018

“Nuk nu’waat!”

That was one of Bobby’s favorite phrases. It roughly translates to: “It’s done!” Chief Bobby would use those words to end a circle ceremony. Up until Bobby said, “Nuk nu’waat”, members of the circle could speak their minds (at least in theory). After Bobby said that phrase, nobody was allowed to make any further comments. Bobby told us that it was important for us, as a group, to follow this protocol. Otherwise, he said, “We will not look strong.”

“Nuk nu’waat” encapsulates Bobby’s style of leadership. He ran everything. He was The Man. For the most part, I was okay with that. Bobby could do whatever he wanted to do. I was just along for the ride (or walk). I have spent most of my life being in charge of something, so I was good with somebody else handling everything. I slipped back into my old Army mode, and just waited for somebody to tell me what to do. I didn’t need to know all the details of the operation, and Bobby certainly had no intention of discussing them with me.

This “walk” was very different from other walks I have done. By rights, it should been called “The Longest Drive”, because that is what we mostly did. This journey was also different in other ways. I remember with previous walks that, at the end of the day, we would all gather together and discuss the events of the day, and talk about what we might change or do better. That never happened on the Longest Walk. We might gather up in a circle at the day’s end, but it was usually only Bobby that spoke. The rest of us were there mostly to listen.

Bobby often made plans and then changed them, sometimes without telling other people about the changes. For instance, on the day before Easter Sunday, Bobby had told us that we were going to attend the Christian religious services on the rez the next morning to talk to the congregations about the walk. We were sleeping at the Lodgepole High School that night. We got up early and hung around the high school until noon on Easter, but we never went to any of the church services. Why? I don’t know. Nobody knew. Apparently, Bobby decided that he didn’t want to attend the services, so none of us did. Instead we went to the Easter egg hunt in the afternoon. That was actually fun. The kids were madly running around in a field full of snow and horse manure to find eggs that would win them bicycles. There was also a rumor that two of the eggs contained $100 bills. That motivated people.

As I mentioned earlier, I was usually fine going with the flow. As long as somebody had some kind of a plan, I was willing to follow. I was satisfied to observe and learn from others. Then things got weird.

We drove in a snowstorm from Billing, Montana south into Wyoming. The plan, as I understood it, was for us drive all day and then camp out some place near Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The roads sucked. Everything was snow-covered and slick. Our gypsy caravan crawled along I-25. The trailer that Tony was pulling behind the F-250 had an unfortunate tendency to fishtail in the wind and the snow. Gilbert burned a little sage and cedar in our car, in the vain hope that it would keep on rolling.

Bobby and Chief Kindness pulled into a rest stop just inside the northern boundary of Wyoming. The rest of us followed them into the stop. We gathered around their camper. Bobby brought out an object wrapped in a scarlet cloth. It was a chanupa, a peace pipe. We stood in the wind and the weather to listen to Bobby. The following is not an exact quote of what he said, but it is close.

Bobby told us all, “We are not going to Pine Ridge. We are going further to Illinois. We have to keep this quiet. I don’t want anybody posting our whereabouts on Facebook. If you can’t stay off Facebook, then you can be left off at the bus station in Casper. This is for your own safety. Anybody want out?”

Nobody wanted out. Bobby lit up the chanupa and we passed it around the circle. We all took a hit, and then we moved on.

Bobby never told us where we were going in Illinois. We were all just following him. It was a journey of three days. We drove through freezing rain and snow. The Nissan died in western Nebraska, and we abandoned it there. We slept in rest areas and redneck truck stops. After the Nissan quit, I was seriously considering going with the bus stop idea. Bobby convinced me to keep riding along. I’m glad that he did that.

I don’t like secrecy. I never have. I grew up in a family where everything was a deep, dark secret. I didn’t mind so much that our group of walkers was driving across the country on an open-ended road trip. It did bother me that we seemed to be hiding from someone, and that Bobby seemed to be hiding things from the rest of us. The talk about this change in plan being for our “own safety” made me very uneasy. I felt like I had joined a cult.

When we arrived at Greg’s place in southern Illinois, everyone rested and relaxed. It was a wonderful place to be. However, the secrecy continued. Bobby never told us how long we would be staying with Greg, or where we we were going afterward. Everybody just kind of shrugged and hung out, waiting for Bobby to make some kind of decision.

The obvious question would be: “Why didn’t I just ask bobby what was going on?” That is hard to explain. Part of it goes back to my time in the Service, when I got used to not asking questions. Also, at least for me, it was difficult to feel relaxed around Bobby. I felt a distance between us. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just there.

I went home from the campsite in Illinois. I had a medical issue, and my wife drove seven hours to get me. I’m not sure that I would have stayed with the group even if I had remained healthy. The dynamics in the group itself did not seem healthy.

Bobby was admirable in many ways. He was extremely dedicated. He truly cared about the people in the group. When I was in the Army, there was a saying: “Mission first, men always.” Bobby exemplified that. I am convinced that he cared about me, as a person. I still care about him.

I never discovered if Bobby’s style of leadership was typical for a Native American, or if  it was just how Bobby rolled. Maybe that is how a chief runs his tribe. Maybe Bobby’s way of handling things was normal. Maybe that is how it had to be. I don’t know. All I know is that, because of the secrecy, I eventually stopped trusting him.

After Karin brought me home and I had the medical problem checked out, I looked on Facebook to see where the Longest Walk was. They had gone from Illinois directly to Washington, D.C.  The show was over.

Nuk nu’waat.

 

 

 

 

April 24th, 2018

I asked Gilbert, “So, what is the big deal with an eagle feather?”

“What do you mean?” he asked me with a quizzical look on his face.

I shot an anxious glance at the low oil light that was glaring red on the dashboard, and then I refocused and said, “Well, for instance, Bobby has an eagle feather staff, and it is really important to him. Why?”

Gilbert took a drag on his cigarette and thought for a moment. He courteously blew the smoke out of the car window. Then he replied,

“Eagles fly closest to our Father, the Sun. Because of that they are sacred. That makes their feathers sacred.”

Gilbert actively looked for eagles while I was driving with him. He was also excited about seeing hawks. These birds were almost magical for him. While we drove through Wyoming and Nebraska, Gilbert would get excited if he saw a hawk anywhere nearby.

“Oh, look! Did you you see that hawk?!”

I would look up from the snow-covered road, and quietly say, “No.”

Gilbert would go on, “It was flying up so high! It was beautiful!”

I checked the engine temperature on the nearly-dead Nissan, and said, “Yeah, cool.”

At one point on the journey across Nebraska, we all stopped on the shoulder of the freeway because Bobby thought he saw an eagle carcass lying on the grassy median. He had to investigate.

There were so many things that I will never understand.

Another time, I asked Gilbert about the different herbs that the Native Americans use as medicines: sweet grass, tobacco, sage, and cedar. I wanted to know what they do, and why the Indians use them. I already had a lot of experience with sage. They used that for smudging, and they used a lot of it. It seemed like nearly everybody smoked, so tobacco was also frequently burned. The sweet grass and the cedar were more exotic, and I didn’t know how or why they were utilized. For instance, in the 2005 Nissan with the 214K miles on it, the portion of the dashboard nearest to the windshield was covered with sage, cedar, and sweet grass. Why?

Gilbert gave me answer that was short and insufficient. He told me,

“Sage attracts good energy and cleanses people and things from bad energy. Sweet grass attracts all energy, so it should only be burned when sage is being burned. Cedar is used as a blessing. Tobacco is used as an offering. When we harvest bits of cedar from a tree, then we offer tobacco to the spirits of that tree.”

When the Nissan finally gave up the ghost, and we blew the engine out at some desolate truck stop fifteen miles west of North Platte, our people emptied the derelict vehicle of everything of value. I remember Bobby saying in frustration,

“Just leave the sage in there! It didn’t work!”

I’m still confused.

While we were camping out on Greg’s property in Illinois, Bobby had Gilbert braid long blades of sweet grass. Gilbert burned sage as he carefully wove the strands of grass together. He told me that he needed to be in constant prayer as he braided the sweet grass.

At the same place, Bobby took out his eagle staff to repair it. He asked me to help. Somebody had attached colored fringes to ends of the eagle feathers using a nasty sort of glue. Bobby and I tried to remove the material and the glue without damaging the feathers. That proved to be impossible. Despite our painstaking care, we still tore away bits of the original feathers. Every tiny bit of feather that was stripped away was also a bit of Bobby’s heart that was torn apart. The staff had been given to Bobby by Dennis Banks. It was a parting gift from Bobby’s friend and mentor. The feathers were not just feathers.

Bobby has his own private shrine. There are things on it that I can’t recognize. I know that he has a buffalo skull as part of the altar. Why? I have no idea. He never talked about it.

Feathers, sage, a buffalo skull… what do all these things mean?

I don’t know, and I will probably never know. Even if the Indians explained it all to me, I still wouldn’t know. Each of these physical objects has a meaning that is multi-layered. The meaning goes deeper than words can go.

As a Catholic, I go to Mass and I receive Communion. How would I adequately explain the value of standing in line to get a cracker and a sip of wine? I wouldn’t be able to explain the experience. Some things cannot be learned vicariously.

I can only understand the value of burning sage by burning sage.

 

 

April 23rd, 2018

Mission Canyon is a hidden jewel. It lies near the southern boundary of the Fort Belknap reservation, just a couple miles from the town of Hays. Mission Canyon is like a tiny version of the Grand Canyon, with sandstone cliffs of various colors at various levels. The cliffs contain numerous small caves, and the valley is full of pines and birch trees. Near the entrance to the canyon a person can find a natural stone bridge. A dirt road winds through the canyon. When I saw it, it was a river of slick, yellow mud.

I got the tour of Mission Canyon in the front seat of a police car. No, I wasn’t driving. Brad, the tribal cop, was giving me a ride. He told me about finding shark teeth (fossils) in the canyon. The canyon is ancient, and sacred. Brad smoked cigarettes and nursed an energy drink as we slowly navigated the curves on the narrow road. It was snowing heavily at the time. Other vehicles were also on the road, showing the canyon to the other members of the Longest Walk. Occasionally, we came across relatively flat portions of the canyon, places where there were picnic areas or sites for Indian ceremonies.

We stopped to turn around at one such place. There was a car sitting there with a busted front end and a windshield cracked into a spider web. Brad looked at the car and said,

“They’re tweaking in there. I know it. Look how they slump down into their seats.”

Brad didn’t try to bust them. It wasn’t a good time for it. Maybe at that point there wouldn’t have been enough evidence. I don’t know. I’m sure he will have other opportunities to nail them, whoever they are.

Brad and I talked. He pointed out that many of the picnic sites were run down or vandalized. Brad lamented the fact that the new generation on the rez didn’t seem to care. They just wanted to get fucked up.

I liked Brad. He was an Iraqi War vet, and he reminded me a lot of our son, Hans. I am certain that they would have gotten on well. Brad’s stories from Iraq were almost identical to the stories that I heard from Hans, even though they had been there at different times. It relieved me in a way that they said similar things. That meant to me that Hans was speaking the truth. But it also scared me, because the stories were so violent and so intense, and these tales were told in such a matter-of-fact way.

Brad told me that interdiction of drugs didn’t work so well. The people who were using would leave just before the cops showed up. Brad estimated that the police stopped maybe 10% of the drugs coming on to the rez. That’s not a good statistic.  The War on Drugs is not winning.

My compadres on the Longest Walk usually told people that the answer to the opioid epidemic on the reservations was for the Indians to recover their roots. If they only relearned their languages and their customs and their values, it would all go away.

I wonder.

Last Tuesday, two weeks after my return from the Walk, I went for coffee with Ken, my friend from the synagogue. As we sat in the Fuel Cafe, I described in detail my journey with the Longest Walk to Ken. He said that it sounded like a Jack Kerouac novel. Actually, it does sound like that.

In any case, I mentioned to Ken that one of the recurring themes from my travels with the Native Americans was the desire to return to the old ways. There was this strong belief among the Indians I met that, if only they could recover their original identity, they could solve all of their problems.

I asked Ken about how they can do this, and still function in the world that surrounds them.

He smiled and said, “They should ask an Orthodox Jew about it.”

Oh, so true.

The Jews have been struggling to maintain their identity and their culture for two millennia. They have some experience with this sort of thing. It is a difficult thing for a people to remain true to themselves, and still be able to survive in a world that actively opposes them. There are odd parallels between the Jews and the Native Americans. Both peoples have experienced genocide. Both peoples have tried to assimilate, and found that they simply are not allowed to do so. Both peoples are intensely tribal. They do not always welcome newcomers.

I met a young Indian named Gilbert. He traveled with us on the Walk. He was from the Sacramento area of California. Gilbert was wise for his age, maybe wise for any age. Anyway, I told him about my experiences at the synagogue. I told him (and this is true) that it took me probably seven years just to be accepted at the Shul as myself. It took years for people at the synagogue to completely trust me. Gilbert seemed surprised by that. The fact is that it would probably take me just as long to be fully accepted among the Indians. I’m not sure that Gilbert would have believed that. My gut tells me that it would be true.

I digress. My question to the Native Americans is: “Is it even possible to go back to the old ways?” I mean this seriously. With the boarding schools and the other encroachments of the white men, is it realistic to think that the ways of the ancestors ever be recovered? To a large extent, languages have been lost, rituals have been lost, basic identities have been lost. Other cultures have tried this route and failed. Italians are not able to become Romans. Black Americans cannot become Africans. My wife is from Germany, but our children will never be truly or completely German. We cannot turn back the clock, much less the calendar.

Would it help for the indigenous peoples to return to their roots? It might be very helpful. However, they will never again be who they were. They may recover some of their past, but they will always be a hybrid, something new. This new thing may turn out to be something wonderful, but it will not be what went before. That is not possible.

I admire and respect the traditions and values of the Native Americans. These people have much to teach the rest of the world. For better or worse, these people. like the Jews, need to adapt to the outside world. It is not a good nor bad. It is just a fact.

 

 

 

 

April 13th, 2018

We were at Greg’s place in the woods for R & R. One person in the group read Greg’s books on herbs and native plants. One guy wove sweet grass braids as he prayed. One person fasted alone in a shack. One walker composed songs in the loft of the cabin. Somebody sat and watched the turtles sunbathe on a log in Greg’s pond. I wandered the gravel farm roads. Most of them were flooded out at some point, and I watched the sun sparkle on water that barely covered the drowned corn stalks in the fields.

Most of us didn’t know where we were until we got there. Even after arriving, I wasn’t quite sure where exactly Greg’s land was. The site has a soothing energy. It is a place where healing can occur. The land whispers “welcome” to those who go there.

I thought a lot about my redneck, combat vet son while I was sitting around the tepee. Greg is the commander of a militia. To be precise, he is in charge of the Wetzel Brigade of Rogers’ Rangers. Greg has numerous photos of the brigade on the walls of his cabin. They go shooting and have camps. They study the traditional skills of the hunter and trapper. Most of the members seem to active or retired veterans. I thought to myself that Hans, my son, would feel right at home here. I felt that Hans would easily connect with Greg, and that Hans’ PTSD could be alleviated in these woods.

I talked to Greg about Hans. I told him that Hans had fought in Iraq, and that he had come back damaged in spirit. I described Hans’ current struggles.

Greg gave me a serious look and said, “I would be honored to meet that young man.”

I texted Hans about Greg. I told Hans that he should really get to know Greg.

Hans texted back, “Why?”

I found that question to be totally like my son, and completely exasperating.

I wrote and said, “Because the man is totally cool.”

That didn’t seem to impress Hans too much. So, I explained more about what Greg does and how he lives. That aroused Hans’ interest at least a little bit. I told him that Greg would be honored to meet him.

Hans texted back, “Why does he want to meet me?”

I replied, “Because you are a combat vet and a patriot.”

Hans texted back, “I’m just a good old boy.”

I texted him and said, “You are all of those things.”

Greg gave me a copy of the invitation he sent out to the brigade members concerning their next camp that is coming up in a few weeks. I mailed that copy to Hans. I told him that I know he probably can’t make the trip to that event, but he could always come to see Greg some other time.

I don’t know what Hans will do, if anything. It is usually counter-productive when I give him advice. I mostly wanted Hans to know that Greg wants to meet him. I think that means something to my son. It’s kind of a belated recognition of what he has done in his life. That alone may be good for him.

It still feels strange that I wound up at Greg’s place. I thanked Bobby for convincing me to come there with the other walkers. Maybe the only reason I went that far was to tell my son about that cabin in the woods, and about the man who lives in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 14th, 2018

I was standing around talking to Greg and Susie one morning. Greg was having one of his better days. He was up and about, and his eyes were merry. I started talking about my wife, Karin. I told Greg and Susie that I had given Karin a spinning wheel as an engagement ring. They thought that was cool. Then I told them that Karin still uses the wheel to spin wool into yarn. I mentioned that she dyes her own wool, using native plants (e.g. goldenrod for a bright yellow color).

Greg nodded and said, “Well, it sounds like you found yourself a woman who ain’t lost her medicine.”

I assumed by that comment he meant that Karin still held to the old, traditional ways. He definitely meant that as a compliment. I took it as such, and later I told Karin what he had said to me.

Greg went on, “Does your wife ever use blood root? Would she want any? We got plenty around here.”

I had no idea. I told him that I would ask her about it. I texted Karin and she replied,

“YES! THANK GREG FOR ME!”

I let Greg know and he said, “Well, we’ll go out later and dig some up for your good wife. We can dry it next to the wood stove, and then mail it all to her.”

That afternoon Susie, Greg, and I went out to the woods. We didn’t need to go far. Greg wore a camouflage jacket and a cap with military insignia and a feather. Greg brought along a hatchet, a bolt action rifle, and his chihuahua, Chico. Greg actually has two dogs. Besides Chico, he as an old Great Pyrenees named McGregor. McGregor is big and blond, and he can take care of himself. Chico is a bit more vulnerable.

Greg told me, “I take a gun with me whenever I go out with Chico. We got packs of coyotes around these parts. Mcgregor, now he shook off a couple of them with no problem, but Chico is too small. So, I pack a gun just in case those coyotes want to cause some mischief.”

We all went among the trees, and Greg picked out the blood root for me to dig up. Blood root makes for a bright red dye. I have never seen any of that plant in Wisconsin, but then I have never looked for it either. The ground was soft and wet, so it was easy to dig. They had had heavy rains prior to our arrival, and much of the land was flooded. The woods were like swamps and the cornfields were shallow lakes. The Little Wabash River wasn’t so little any more.

We picked a bag full of the root, and we placed it on newspaper near the stove to dry. That took a couple days. In the meantime, I had time to talk with Greg. He told me stories. He has been very active with protecting sacred Indian burial grounds from being desecrated. He has occasionally had to use force to keep out grave robbers. Greg is part Cherokee, and he has deep connection with his family history, and with Indian history overall. He has helped to re-bury the remains of Native Americans whose graves have been disturbed. He sees it as his duty to help his ancestors to continue their spirit journey. He is passionate about it.

He also told me a tale that had to do with an abandoned church, devil worshipers, and armor-piercing ammunition. That’s a story for another essay.

I mailed the blood root to Karin. Then I had a medical problem, and I had to ask Karin to drive seven hours south to bring me back home. She got to Greg’s land in the evening. Greg helped her to find the place. It’s hard to locate with just a GPS. We all had supper together, and Karin spent the night with me in Greg’s cabin. Greg insisted that we come into his bedroom in the morning to say goodbye to him.

After Karin and I had breakfast with Tony and Tyler, we went to visit Greg. He was lying in his bed. I thanked him for his hospitality and his generosity. I told him that I hoped that I could repay him someday. Greg looked at me and said,

“It don’t work like that, Brother. We’re family now. This is your home, just like it is my home. Whenever you all want to come visit, you’re welcome. That tepee is always open. This here land has always been a refuge. People from the tribes out west, they come here as a halfway point, when they have to argue with those folks in Washington about treaty rights. You don’t need to do nothing for me, Brother.”

I bent down and hugged Greg. He hugged me too. He pulled himself upright with a rope that he has tied to the wooden ceiling rafters. He told Karin,

“If y’all need some more of that blood root, you just holler. We got us plenty of that.”

He asked Susie to give us one of his business cards, so we could contact him.

Karin gave Greg a hug and a smile.

We left him in his bed, and Karin took me home.

 

 

 

 

 

April 12th, 2018

Greg speaks like a Southern Man (my apologies to Neil Young). He talks like Sam Elliott did in The Big Lebowski. Officially, Greg lives in the North. The nether portion of Illinois between the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers is supposed to be Yankee country, but it ain’t. That lowest portion of the State of Illinois is actually the northernmost outpost of Dixie. If you don’t believe me, go there, and talk to the locals. It is a land of thick woods, flat farm fields, and and murky, brown rivers. It is as down home as Kentucky or Tennessee. In fact, the land where Greg lives is closer to those two places than it is to Chicago.

We arrived at Greg’s home after three days of hard driving from Billings, Montana. When I first met Greg, I asked to him about his Navy Seal flag that was flapping in the breeze.

“So, are you a SEAL?”

He did not immediately speak. We shook hands. Greg was wearing a denim jacket with patches from the American Indian Movement. His long, grey hair flowed out from behind his AIM cap. Greg also had a flag from AIM flying on his property, along with the Stars and Stripes.

Greg told me, “No Sir, I can’t say that I am. However, I have done some shooting with those Navy snipers. Fine young men. All of them. I am proud to have made their acquaintance. Were you a SEAL?”

“No, I was in the Army for a long time. I just flew helicopters.”

“In ‘Nam?”

“No, I was too young for that. I was mostly in West Germany during the Cold War.”

Greg nodded and said, “Well, thank you for your service. You done some good work for your country.”

I shrugged and replied, “I didn’t do much of anything.”

Greg laughed and looked at the other walkers in our group, “You can tell that he was in the service. He says that he didn’t do much!”

Greg owns several acres of woodland. He has his cabin and a tepee on his property. He opened up everything to our small group. We had the run of the place. I slept in the tepee for two nights. Gilbert slept in there with me during the first night at Greg’s place. Gilbert is a Native American from northern California. He made the comment, “This is a magical place.”

Gilbert was right. With the wood fire burning in the center of the tepee, it really was magical. The light from the flickering flames danced on the upper part of the tepee. The  smoke snaked upward and eventually found the hole in the top. I was warm as I fell asleep listening to the crackling of the fire. I awoke when it was cold and silent and dark. The fire had gone out.

Greg is in pain all of the time. He tries to hide it, but he doesn’t hide it very well. I am surprised that the man can even walk. Greg has stenosis in his spine. He leans forward when he stands. He was usually lying in bed when we were staying with him. He sweats and turns red when the pain is severe. He refuses to take opioids. At most, he will eat some wild lettuce as a painkiller. Greg has a couple ladies come to his house to clean and help him out, because he is often an invalid. Susie is his close friend, and she spends more time with Greg than most other people. They have known each other forever. She cries when he’s hurting.

Greg wanted to join the Marines way back in 1970 or ’71. He had a lot of options back then. He could have joined the Marines or he could have had a full football scholarship at a university. Instead, he worked with some heavy construction machinery and damn near lost his right leg. That ended his possibilities with football and with the military.

Greg’s cabin tells a story for anybody with the patience to look around. The original, Abe-Lincoln-style cabin was Greg’s home for thirty-five years. It was without electricity or running water. Greg raised his two daughters in that cabin. Eventually, Greg’s health problems forced him to update, and he built an addition that included modern kitchen, a real bathroom, and electric lights. Even so, Greg’s walls tell a story. He has many images of military events, of Native American heroes, and of his daughters. He has many pictures of his girls. He loves them dearly. There are also animal skins and flintlock rifles on his walls. He has many books; mostly about Indians, or about living in the wild, or military actions, or stories of the Wild West. The cabin is heated by a wood stove created specifically for Greg by one of his friends. There is a bison skull in his bedroom. along with a number of antique, but effective weapons. Greg’s house is Greg. He and this cabin are one.

One evening I sat in Greg’s bedroom with him for a while. He was in severe pain, and he was alone. Gilbert had cooked a good meal for Greg. I just brought it in to him. Greg didn’t touch the food. We talked for a bit. Greg was lonely. All invalids are lonely. He was grateful for food, but he was mostly hungry for company. Out of respect, we tended to leave him alone. That was probably a mistake. The man hungers for the human touch, for the human spirit. It is a bitter punishment for him to be in bed. Greg belongs under a blue sky. He cannot live long under a roof, even if the roof is of his own making.

I felt intense sadness when I was with Greg. I told him,

“I am sorry that you are suffering so much.”

He replied, “I thank you for those words. They mean a lot to me. I am better off than most people.”

Bobby came into the bedroom. He sang old, native songs. They made Greg feel better. It mattered.

I said good night to Greg. I truly love the man.

I went to bed and I wept.

 

 

April 4th,2018

This walk is harder than I had thought it would be. It is not physically demanding (not yet, anyway), but it is emotionally draining for me. I am by nature an introvert, so I have to force myself to interact with others. I generally find the experience interesting and rewarding, but it takes a lot out of me. I can only be with people for so long, and then I have to pull back and regroup. I need to think and pray and write, in order to process the events.

The walk is particularly stressful because nearly everything is alien to me. We have been going to places that I never knew existed. I am meeting people who are decidedly strange to me. The schedule is very flexible. There is a sort of chaos that underlies the whole enterprise. The composition of the group changes frequently. I have control over almost nothing. Every day brings new surprises.

This situation is in some ways attractive to me. I am never bored. I learning new things constantly. I am often challenged by the words and actions of the other walkers. I have seen things of marvelous beauty. I have been treated with love and respect. I have received unexpected generosity.

The hardest thing for me is to connect with the other walkers. Each of us has a unique background. Sometimes it feels like we have nothing in common. I have already had a confrontation with one individual. That situation is not yet resolved. I still don’t know my place in the group. This may be partially due to the fact that everything is so fluid. I am always wondering what I am supposed to do next.

I am trying to be open to whatever happens. I am trying to make decisions with my intuition, and not overanalyze the situation. This often uncomfortable for me. I struggle  with it.

 

April 3rd, 2018

Howard reminded me of my father’s uncle. Uncle John was a big man, and always had a ready smile and a infectious laugh. My dad’s uncle always seemed to be up to some mischief. When I was boy, I could never tell if Uncle John was laughing at us or at himself.

Howard was like that too. He ran the sweat lodge at Fort Belknap. Howard had an interesting set up. The lodge itself was inside of a wooden garage. The fire for heating the stones was outside, but everything else was in the building. Somebody told us that this was the only sweat that operated even when it was sixty degrees below zero outside.

Howard sat and talked to us while we waited for the rocks to heat up. They were heating eighty stones, twenty rocks for each round of the sweat. Howard liked to talk. He was good at it, and I liked to listen to him.

Howard was a simple man, earthy and wise. He spoke of many things, all of them connected with the sweat. He told us,

“Now when you pray, you don’t ask for material things; you know, like a car or winning the lottery.. That’s not right. That just attracts the bad spirits. Pray for your families. Pray for the earth. You will get the material things anyway. The Creator will give them to you. He knows what you all need.”

He took a drag on his cigarette, and went on,

“Sure, I’m smoking now, but it’s not just because I like that. It’s part of my prayer, for me and for you. When you smoke during the sweat, blow the smoke up, like that.” He blew a puff of smoke up toward the roof of the garage. “Let that tobacco be your prayer. Let the smoke rise to the Creator and the spirits, like that.”

Howard kept talking.

“We use our medicines during the sweat: the sage, the cedar, the sweet grass, and the tobacco. We call on the fire spirits to heat our stones. Those stones are the oldest living things on Mother Earth. They were here long before we were ever thought of. We use the water, the water that keeps all things alive, like that. The Creator, He cries for us, his children. The raindrops are his tears for us, because we are so pitiful like that.”

“That Christianity, that almost destroyed us. They tried to destroy our customs and our medicine. They talk about Satan, whatever that is. If I want to see the devil, I can just look at you or me! We all do bad things. We don’t need a devil for that!”

Howard laughed, and said, “I got nothing against those Christians. They got their Easter today. At least the little kids get an egg hunt!”

“I don’t care what color anybody is. Everybody is welcome in the sweat: black, yellow, white, red, green. We even had priests come to the sweat! They got something from it too! Anybody can sweat with us.”

“The important thing is the prayer. We have to pray for our families, for our babies, for the ones not even born yet. We have to pray for the earth like that. We have to pray for ourselves. Don’t forget to pray for ourselves! We need prayer too!”

“Pray to the laughter spirit. We need to joke and laugh. We need to cry too. Some people say that we shouldn’t cry during the sweat, like that. We can cry. The spirits help us to cry. Our ancestors are with us to help us. Cry if you want. Enjoy the sweat.”

“I don’t control’ the sweat. I don’t control’ nothing in there. The spirits, they are in control. Whatever happens is from the spirits. People say that I run a hot sweat. The spirits decide how hot it gets in there. They decide how hot we need to be. I don’t control that”.

“We have four rounds, one for each direction, one for each color: yellow, black, red, and white. We call on those spirits. We call on our ancestors. We call on the Creator.”

The sweat took three hours. We all sat in the dark. Howard ran a hot sweat. The steam coming off of the rocks burned my face and shoulders. It was hard to breath. It was hard to pray out loud. People sang traditional songs. The stones glowed in the dark. We burned sage and tobacco and sweet grass and cedar. We prayed.

The following morning we had a pipe ceremony. Tuffy led the ritual. He had us all sit around the buffalo skin. He burned the sweet grass. He prayed in his language, and then in English. Tuffy told us a story:

“When I was a boy, I went to the mission church here in Hays. One Sunday morning, I saw my grandma sitting in her chair. She told me that she wasn’t going to church no more. She said that the priests in the Church had been lying to her for all these years. She tried to raise her kids as Catholics. They didn’t turn out good. They drank. The ways of the priests were no good. I stopped being Catholic then. I was sixteen. I went back to our old ways.”

Other people in the circle talked about the Church. They had nothing good to say. They talked about the old boarding schools, where little kids were forcibly removed from their families and brainwashed. The children in these schools forgot their language, their customs, and their values. Some of them were beaten and abused in the church-run schools.

I am not ashamed to be a Catholic. I am ashamed of things that my Church has done.

Tuffy lit the pipe and we passed it around the circle three times. We prayed. We spoke from our hearts.

We said goodbye to the people at Fort Belknap.

 

April 2nd, 2018

This morning I looked out of the front doors of the Hays/ Lodgepole High School on the Fort Belknap reservation. I had just roused myself from my sleeping on the floor of the gymnasium. Theme was a light snow falling on our vehicles in the parking lot. The forecast called for two to four inches of snow to fall. I thought that maybe we wouldn’t get that much.

I went back to the gym to pack up my belongings. All school gymnasiums are the same: a basketball court with scoreboards, motivational posters, and flags proclaiming victories of ages past. Gyms all have the same smell: stale sweat and industrial cleaners. There were two unusual pictures on the wall. Each large banner showed an image of a former basketball hero, and each banner displayed the young man’s birth date and the day of his death. The two athletes were local boys who had died way too early. I wondered what had happened to them.

We needed to drive from Hays to Billings, a distance of about 160 miles. Normally, this journey would only take three hours. We expected it to take longer with the snowfall. We were right. It did take longer, a lot longer.

We had a total of four vehicles. Ferdinand and Kid rode in the VW microbus. Chief and Bobby rode in Bobby’s camper. Tony and Tyler drove the F250 with the travel trailer hooked on to the back. Jeremiah and I were in the Nissan. Jeremiah was driving.

We did well for the first few miles, then Jeremiah realized that the Nissan wasn’t accelerating worth a shit. This was troublesome to us, especially since the radiator had just been replaced, and perhaps we had engine problems. The car had 213,000 miles on it and a flickering check engine light. Eventually, we decided that the Nissan simply did not handle well on snow-covered roads. The tires really didn’t have the necessary amount of tread for winter driving, and we were doing exactly that.

We had to drive up to higher elevations in the mountains. The weather became evil. The snow was falling sideways, and accumulating into small drifts on the road. Our progress slowed to a crawl.

Jeremiah asked me, “Is this a blizzard?”

I told him, “Yes, it is.”

Visibility was reduced to almost zero. Trucks roared past us, and sprayed the car with snow. The windshield wiper iced up, and ceased to remove the snow. It sucked. The outside temperature was only fifteen degrees, and we were buffeted by high winds. This was clearly not a good road for a breakdown. Obviously, no road is a good road for getting stranded, but this was a potentially lethal stretch of highway.

We flipped through radio channels. We listened to a country station for a while. Then that faded out. Jeremiah searched for a few minutes, and all he could find was a Christian broadcast. Somebody was explaining that viruses were originally a good part of God’s creation, but then they became malevolent after the Fall. Jeremiah and I chose to drive without the radio.

We followed Tony and Tyler. Jeremiah carefully watched for their brake lights. We came close to rear-ending them a couple times. The road was icy in places, and the travel trailer occasionally fish-tailed. That got everybody’s attention.

We had walkie talkies in our vehicles. Tyler came up with the idea of guessing song titles from their lyrics. That game kept Tyler, Tony, Jeremiah, and me busy for at least an hour. We gave each other hints, and in the process learned more about contemporary music.

About twenty-five miles away from Billings, we saw the aftermath of an accident. Somebody rolled their car. They couldn’t keep it shiny side up. The thing was resting upside down when we passed it. Not good at all.

It took us almost six hours to get to Billings. Jeremiah and Tony were exhausted from driving. I was tired, and I was just a passenger. Here it was, the day after Easter, and we had spent the day driving through a blizzard. I love Montana.