Heading Back to Arizona for the Holidays

Pink and I are packing up today, hoping to hit the road in the morning, Saturday.  I will be returning to the Canyon after Christmas, but Pink hasn't decided what she is going to do, stay at home or come back with me.  When I get back, I will no longer be up here on the snowy prairie but  down in the Canyon embraced in her arms.

I still have court records to search in the two Prairie court houses in Grangeville and Nez Perce, but I have plenty of data to sort through for the month of December before I am ready to give organized search terms to the Court Recorders.  They have to request the actual courtroom transcripts from an archive in Boise.  I will send them the search parameters before I leave Arizona, so the records will be here when I get back.  Court cases are tremendous sources for a historian.  Because the transcripts are taken down word for word you can write in dialogue, moving from past tense to a present tense voice which enlivens any story.  There is a great story about Peter Licker shooting Fabian Laizer over a dispute concerning Fabian's housekeeper in "A Brief History of the Flying B Ranch", an article I wrote back in 2000.

Moon rise over the Canyon

Being back down in the Canyon will be warmer, sheltered and even mystical.  I'm looking forward to a few months of intimacy with the subject of my prose.  Wallace Stegner wrote, "No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments." Then he went on and added, "Fictions serve as well as facts."*  I will make sure my readers know what are fictions, what are facts and most important what are myths, but to capture the spirit of a place, Stegner is right, the story of place is more than just facts.  

Cali insisting I scratch behind her ears.

Well, it is time to pack up my computer and prairie office, head down to the Canyon to bring Cali back to Redneck Joe and  spend one last night in the bosom of Lawyer's Canyon before we head to the Valley of the Sun for a brown Christmas, where every December day is just another perfect day.





* Wallace Stegner, The Sense of Place, Random House, 1992.

Joseph of Lawyer Canyon

My younger brother Joe lives in Lawyer Canyon.  He is famous for his dumpster diving escapades, his dedication to frugality, and he posted this on Facebook the other day.  I thought it should be shared here on the blog.

 

"I had just one day to deer hunt using my special mule deer buck tag, and today was the day [Nov. 21st]. I was going to use the tag on the first buck I saw, so I could get back to work to meet some guests arriving that evening.  I saw a buck at about 7:30 AM and got in position for the shot at 10:00 am. I shot the deer and it rolls quite some distance down the hill into a steep, brushy draw.  As I am dragging it through the thorns, over rocks and past steep side hills, I spied what I thought was an old bottle, but what it turned out to be was a big, un-opened bottle of Coors Lite.  I took a break to drink the beer (my first one in ages) with two pieces of cold pizza Bethany gave me yesterday. Cold beer and pizza in a thorn thicket in the middle of nowhere.  I would have far preferred a DQ Blizzard, but even I am not that blessed in my finding and scavenging skills."

 

 

Lewis & Clark's Visit to Lawyer Canyon

On May 10th, 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition rode down the Suzie Creek ridge into Lawyer Canyon.  The expedition came to reclaim horses Twisted Hair and Broken Arm cared for over the winter, while the expedition had gone down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia in dugout canoes to the Pacific.  They camped in the Canyon for three days before going to a month-long camp in Kamiah, while they waited for the snow to melt atop the Bitterroots.

Lewis wrote in his journal that Broken Arm's lodge sounded like a nail factory, a sound familiar to him because Jefferson had a nail factory at Monticello. The sound came from women grinding Camas root with pestle and mortar.

The Indians raised an American flag on a pole beyond the lodge, and set a special tipi for Lewis and Clark's use.  The flag had been presented to Twisted Hair the previous fall.  Here in the canyon near the spring, they held an official council with the headmen delineating the United States desire for peace and trade.  They asked the Indians to make peace with neighboring bands to facilitate trade.  The Nez Perce said peace might be made with the Shoshone, but no one could have peace with the Blackfeet.

The Hunt

 I have hunted animals all my life.  I come from a place where the standard fall greeting in the cafe is, "Get your deer yet."  Here in Idaho it's "elk."  Even so, I admire vegetarians.  They may have some moral ground to despise the hunt.  I have always thought, "People who eat meat should be required to kill, clean and prepare their meal at least once, so they know the price that is paid for their meal."  Going to the store (where no animals are hurt) to buy your hamburger, is not only ludicrous, it's really just hiring a contract killer.  The town slaughter house across the field from my boyhood home was an active and ugly place.  Nevertheless, I prefer to be intimately acquainted with who I eat, which is the norm in an agrarian society.  Bessy gave milk and eventually her life to those she loved.

I have only been out hunting deer a couple times so far this fall.  The first time out, the mountains glowed with softness and the flicker of light off forest colors, making them vibrant, enchanted me anew. 

Warm sun peaking through a dark canopy, rays of sunlight stretching down to highlight tufts of lime green mosses, light glistening off yellow leaves dancing in the breeze, a red squirrel scolding me for intruding into his realm: this for me is the hunt.

Much younger, I chose a bow rather than a rifle.  It allowed me to play with deer I chose not to kill; the closeness an arrow requires brings you into the big brown eyes of the animals' domain.

Redneck Joe's Mule Florence. 
(Everyone else that day rode horses.)

This day I climbed, only 1500 feet up from the Selway river, about 3000 foot elevation.  The snow didn't begin until past 4000 that day.  In Arizona we call the phenomenon Sky Islands, traveling from desert to tundra by climbing Mount Graham.  In these mountains it is seasons you travel up through.

Joseph had clients to take up to the top of Glover Ridge that day, but he had Florence to take him up, not that he doesn't relish the opportunity to look like he is effortlessly striding up a mountain side for the sheer pleasure.  I mosey up mountains.  "Slow and steady, steady and slow, that's the way, we always go," to quote Goofy telling Donald how to travel.

Whether on horseback, muleback or moseying up from a Bitterroot river, any day in this, the largest expanse of forest in the lower forty-eight states, is a good day.  I didn't see any deer, so my 30.06 rifle was just extra weight.  I stopped hunting with a bow years ago.  It's just too much work.

Looking back down to the Selway River.

I have been away from the forest too long this time.  Being granted a Sabbatical ought not be a gift, but a requirement for people who stand day after day in front of the hope of our world, expected to dispense something of value: an idea, a formula, an enlightening story, the beginning of a skill, a dream.

Everyone can remember being changed, appreciated, accepted, motivated, or just helped along the way by a teacher, a mentor, and if you're are really fortunate, a sage.  But for a teacher to do that, be that person, they must have something to say, something to share, something to give.  Full containers need to be emptied, and empty containers need to be filled.

Harold, a man Maricopa Colleges and especially MCC owes much to, once mentored me saying, "Sabbaticals should be mandatory.  One semester, every seven years, you should be required to take one."  I suppose that is what God had in mind with "Shabbat." The seventh day; the seventh year, fallow for the fields; the Year of Jubilee, every slave free every debt canceled: these are commands, times set aside for Him, Holy days of obligation, consecrated.  It's an old idea.

Last week, maybe longer ago, time is losing some of its grip on me, Joseph and I went up to the highest hill of the Camas Prairie, called Craig Mountain; he to hunt Mule Dear out of the trees and over the edge into the Salmon and Snake drainage, me to stay atop looking in the forest for Whitetails.  This place is vertical.  Joseph decided not to shoot a pretty nice buck; it was too far up to carry it back to the Jeep.  He did video tape him with his does to show me.  I moseyed around the top, not going too far from a trail, not too far down so I would be able to climb back up, safe places.  It looked a lot different than hunting uphill from the Selway.

Atop Craig Mountain

I saw Mule Deer does hopping around.  Unlike the remote seclusion of the Bitterroots, here other hunters  abounded.  I visited a couple camps.  I fell down in the brush, shook snow out from my neck, retrieved my hat from brushy fingers and again, carried a gun for little purpose.  I actually got to terrify my younger brother driving down Craig's hill on the 7 and 8% curvy grade sliding back and forth at 10 miles an hour.  I tried 13, not smart.  It was a good day and a scary night.

I have been stuck in front of a keyboard for at least a week now.  I haven't even gone outside for days.  I finished my first attempt, at a first draft, (which means I have only edited it three times) of a chapter for the book I am writing for this time of Shabbat.  The 20 pages are still too academic, the voice too scholarly, but I am closer to finding Lawyer Canyon's voice.  I know I won't find her voice sitting in front of a computer though.  I can only practice here at capturing it.  This week, I will walk her Canyon and listen.

I might even take a nap in her bosom.  The one thing this Sabbatical has brought graphically to my attention, I'm getting a little slower.  I think mosey is my top speed.

Allen Slickpoo tells a Story

For many years now I have used Allen Slickpoo's story telling to entertain and enlighten my classes  and shore up writings.  I met Allen in 1993, my senior year at the University of Texas, doing research for an undergraduate Honors thesis entitled "Words of Prophecy in the Story of the Nez Perce".  My history professor, Chris Miller, advised me to look up Allen Slickpoo when I got up to Kamiah, ID.  Someone at a store in Kamiah directed me to the tribal health clinic  to ask Mary Tall Bull, Allen's daughter, where I could find him.  Mary told me he was at home in the gray house with the red doors on Nez Perce Lane. 

When I found a house with red doors, a man sat outside watching children playing.  I got out of my pickup, proceed up the walk and said, "I'm looking for Allen Slickpoo.  Mary Tall Bull said I could find him up here on Nez Perce Lane."

"Nez Perce Lane or Nez Perce Drive?" the man asked looking confused but with a sly sparkle behind his apparent confusion.  

Taken aback, I looked at the man; I looked at the red Doors.  "You're Mr. Slickpoo, aren't you."

He smiled, nodded and welcomed me to his home.  I knew very little then about the Nez Perce people, only what I had read in my professor's book, Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau.  Al put up with my ignorance, invited me into his gray house and spent the day with me answering my questions and enlightening me on his years as tribal historian. 

His graciousness that day made it one of the most captivating days of my life.  I owe him much for his warm welcome, his writings and his stories.  Here is a story of his I found this past week:

Coyote Breaks The Fish Dam At Celilo

Once Coyote was walking up the river on a hot day and decided to cool himself in the water.  He swam down the swift river until he came to the waterfall where the Wasco people lived.  Five maidens had dwelt there from ancient times.  This was the place where the great dam kept the fish from going up the river.

While he was looking at the great waterfall, Coyote saw a maiden.  Quickly he went back upstream and said, “I’m going to look like a little baby, floating down the river on a raft in a cradle board, all laced up.”  As Coyote was drifting down the river, he cried, “Awaa, awaa.”  The maidens, hearing this quickly swam over, thinking that a baby might be drowning.

The eldest maiden caught it first and said, “Oh, what a cute baby.”  But the youngest maiden said, “That is no baby.  That is Coyote.”  The others answered, “Stop saying that.  You will hurt the baby’s feelings.” Coyote put out his bottom lip as if he were going to cry.

The maidens took the baby home and cared for it and fed it.  He grew very fast.  When he was crawling around one day, he spilled some water on purpose.  “Oh Mothers,” he said, “Will you get me some more water?”

The youngest sister said, “Why don’t you make him go get it by himself?  The river is nearby.”  So the maidens told Coyote to get the water himself.

He began to crawl toward the river, but when he was out of sight, he jumped up and began to run.  The oldest sister turned around and said, “He is out of sight already.  He can certainly move fast.”

“That is because he is Coyote,” the youngest said.

(Drawing from Nez Perce National Historic Park)

 When Coyote reached the river, he swam to the fish dam and tore it down, pulling out the stones so that all the water rushed free.  Then he crawled up on the rocks and shouted gleefully, “Mothers, your fish dam has been broken!”

The sisters ran down and saw it was true.  The youngest maiden said, “I told you he was Coyote.”

Coyote said, “You have kept all the people from having salmon for a long time by stopping them from going upstream.  Now the people will be happy because they will get salmon.  The salmon will now be able to go upriver and spawn.

Allen Slickpoo Sr. (Idaho Public Television Photo)

 This is how Celilo Falls came to be, where the Wasco people are today.  As a result of Coyote tearing down the fish dam, salmon are now able to come up river to spawn on the upper reaches of the Great Columbia River and its tributaries.

Allen Slickpoo Sr. (Nez Perce)

Fishing at Celilo Falls (Nez Perce National Historic Park)