The
For six months, through an entire Michigan winter, I wished the snow gone, begged the crocuses to bloom, and cursed the endless parade of slate colored days, forever desperate to hitch the trailer and head back to the rugged Selway, that mountainous wilderness stabbed through the heart of Idaho with its forever bending trail hugging his ‘river of tears”.
Summer! The Selway cooks warm and drives Cutthroat toward deep holes, insufferable heat shoves Rainbows beneath log jams, Coho line up two by two under cut banks. They laze there waiting for me.
I drive across the Plains, my truck guzzling gas like a Boeing 747. I cross the Mississippi, check it off: then the Missouri, Big Horn, Yellowstone, Gallatin, Madison and Beaverhead—chalk them all off, turn onto US 12 west of Missoula, stop west of Lola and take a soak in Jeremy Johnson’s wilderness hot springs, hike back to the car, belt up and coast down the Lochsa to the Selway confluence.
Turn
right and I am home. Hear the birds sing: “Daddy is rich, living is easy,
and Mommy is good looking.” I join the chorus, light of heart, full of
mirth, restored to good health, and where I want to be—rolling over gravel, the sun splashing across emerald waters, showering gold
sparks. I crank down the window,
hear the lower falls; hear dirt and stones crunch under warm tires, the hum of
the highway gone, gone forever.
The road ends. The trail begins. I tighten the straps and walk. A thousand years of footfalls have pounded the trace hard and deep. I hike with friends all around: Grizzly, Whitetail, Wolverine, Coyote and Raven. They watch from the trees. A brace of Brants explode from a spillway and wing the river south.
What a good place—a good man’s home. I think of him now, as I wander through hallowed halls under pointy mountains, my nostrils sipping fragrant pine, my eyes welling with wind blown tears. I remember him and the memories hurt. His voice roars of excesses, of all those heinous crimes that haunt this place. I want the truth. I want to hear it from him:
"I believe much trouble and
blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how
the Indian sees things. The white man has more words…but it does not require
many words to seek the truth."
A
single glance reveals how the mountain pine beetles have taken a bigger bite
from the canopy. Lodgepoles stand half stripped and suffering, others lay nude
and dead. Climate Change pushed the parasite north into my field of dreams—
hear them crunch—so much food, so little time.
I
boot beat higher, below me a beaver swims with a log, paddling against the
current, looking more like a gnat than a mammal—a civil engineer coursing a
feeder stream to his place of work. Destroying, building, beaver work. Beavers
and beetles: “… staying alive, staying alive…”
“…We
were like deer. They were like grizzly bears…We were content to let things
remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the
rivers and mountains…”
All
of it behind me: stinky asphalt, the news, television, all those human beings
and their human things, and all those who pull the strings.
I
immerse myself in wilderness. No plan, just inching to exist, without frills. I
left all that back at the strip mall with the gifts of bug eyed beasts and
dollar digging strip miners: The progeny of those who stole the land with
Winchesters and ropes.
"Our
fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws
were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should
never be the first to break a bargain; that is was a disgrace to tell a lie;
that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take
another his property without paying for it."
I
speak to myself, “No person owns this; this belongs to everyone.”
"All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people,
and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the
rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be contented
when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases."
From concrete wilderness to mountainous paradise, I reach the end of my rainbow, and waste no time. I fill my head and remember: I fathered a child, gave her a push start and she soared beyond my imagination. I spent my life with a funny, beautiful, intelligent, loving woman. I have lived heaven on earth, so spread my ashes above this river of tears.
"We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears
everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a
spirit home according to his deserts; If he has been a good man, he will have a
good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home."
I
confess, I should have done more. I could have been more vocal. I could have
marched.
"Good words cannot give me back my children. Good words will not give
my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my
people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves."
Below me a great fish swirls, sips a fly, and I am reminded of Nature’s way: unforgiving, fragile, of lost homes and broken hearts and wandering souls—and those seeking redemption.
"I
am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember
all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking
by men who had no right to talk."
The
Selway stirs: a wolf pack hunts in my heart, a coyote howls between my ears. My
boots sting the trail. I bound un-tethered and unwise. I need wisdom, teach me.
"If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect him to grow fat? If you
pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth, and compel him to stay there, he will
not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper."
Below a great boulder divides the river, a Pleistocene wedge splits the stream, and water bulges there, swirling around the intrusion, forming a matched pair of seams that feeds a huge eddy bubbling behind. I slip off my pack, piece together my fly rod and descend.
"Good words do not last long unless they amount to
something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country,
now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave.”
I
scramble through Equisetum, Bear Grass, and Alder, treading the sacred ground of
the American holocaust, returned to the place of the crime, cleansing myself and
remembering, always remembering.
"I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. Hear
me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now
stands, I will fight no more forever."
I step into the Selway and wade toward the fish, a ghostly Cutthroat patrolling
the seam, eyeing the bubbles for an appetizer: tapas of mosquito, dim sum of
caddis, hors de oeuvre of grasshopper. I offer caddis Tartar. He refuses, turns
tail, rolls to the far side, and bellies next to his sister. I try again,
without success. I mutter excuses: the sun, too high; the water, too clear; the
trout, too smart, the caddis a poor choice—all that and I am not Indian. I am
an intruder here. The trout says as much, and the cold wind drops down from the
mountain and seconds the motion.
I
return to the camper, my manufactured home, from my manufactured world. I pull
off my Gore-Tex boots, slip out of my SPF 30 clothes, and snuggle in my Hollofil
bag. My rifle rests in the corner, next to the locked door. I am human, fragile
and paranoid—people died here, for no reason. Beyond my metal cacoon a wolf
whimpers, a lion purrs, and a heartbroken voice sleeps quietly in the trees.
Authors
Notes: Chief Joseph, known to the
people as Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain) was
baptized Joseph in 1838 he died in
1909 and is buried in
He
and his people, the Nez Perce, eluded the US Army engaging in what historians
call the most brilliant military retreat in American history. Even the
unsympathetic General William Tecumseh Sherman could not help but be impressed
with the 1,400 mile march, stating that "the Indians throughout displayed a
courage and skill that elicited universal praise... [they] fought with almost
scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field
fortifications." Of the initial
band of about 700, only 200 were warriors. They fought 2,000
DIRECTIONS:
The
NATURE
NOTES: Birders discover in abundance: Bald Eagles, Grouse, Heron, Osprey, Owls
and Wild Turkey. Fly Fishers cast for Bull Trout, Rainbow, Steelhead, Chinook,
Coho, Mountain Whitefish, and West Coast Cutthroat. Photographers stalk the
slopes for Bighorn Sheep, Black Bear, Cougar, Elk, Fisher, Gray Wolf, Lynx,
Moose, Mountain goat, Mule deer, Whitetail, Otter Skunk and Wolverine.
Avoid June and the first half of July as canoe thumpers and kayaks terrorize the Chief and his water.
NEXT
ESSAY: THE MALE FLAW OR BACK TO THE FIRST
ESSAY
Chief
Joseph
