Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"The Right Prayer Bundles" (c) 2007

"The Right Prayer Bundles, Bear Butte State Park, South Dakota" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

"Wheel" (c) 2005 Edgar Heap of Birds

"Wheel" (Detail) (c) 2005 Edgar Heap of Birds (Hock E Aye VI), Cheyenne/Arapaho, b. 1954., Porcelain Enamel on Steel, Denver Art Museum.

NAH-KEV-HO-EYEA-ZIM
(Cheyenne meaning: "We are coming home again at last.")

"The Medicine Man" (c) 1907 Edward S. Curtis

"The Medicine Man" (Detail) (c) 1907 Edward S. Curtis, Denver Art Museum

[Appears this was a Lakota named Slow Bull. Curtis wrote, a hundred years ago, "Invocation and supplication enter so much into the life of the Indian, that this picture of the grim old warrior invoking the Mysteries, is most characteristic." Curtis has been criticized for over-romantizing the Indians. You think? Invoking the Mysteries, eh? I think, at the time, he was posing for you, Edward. My guess is he wasn't praying at that particular moment. And obviously, I don't buy it that Indians are intrinsically more spiritual than anyone else. They just pray in a different way. Ain't no better or worse than a Buddhist meditating in a temple, a Catholic praying the rosary, or a Alcoholic saying the Serenity Prayer. Irregardless, he did take some very nice photographs, even if they were mostly fantasies. And I enjoyed taking this image at the Denver Art Museum, knowing that this image sells for a boatload of cash down the street, and given the generosity of the Museum, I was allowed to take the picture for free.]
 

"Indian Gothic" (c) 1983 David P. Bradley

"Indian Gothic After Grant Woods' American Gothic" (c) 1983 David P. Bradley at the Denver Art Museum.

"Jingle Jingle" (c) 1997 Judith Lowry

"Jingle Jingle" (c) 1997 Judith Lowry, Denver Art Museum, Colorado

[A homage to the murdered cousin of the artist. He, the cousin, was killed after he threatened to expose the corruption he found at an Indian casino. And almost needless to say, the painting comments on Indian gambling as a whole.]

"Standing Bear's Tipi" (c) 1884, 2007

"Standing Bear's Tipi" & "Cheyenne Coup Stick" (c) 1884, 1870s & 2007 Stu Jenks, Standing Bear and an unknown Cheyenne, Denver Art Museum

[Many thanks to Michael Doll, for being at his desk when I finally got cellphone coverage after days in Wyoming and in South Dakota without it. Not that it's that big a deal for me to not have the ability to chat and drive, but it was timely when I got the beep on my phone that said 'Yes, you can call now.' I was just south of Laramie, Wyoming. I'd done the math. I could get to the Denver Art Museum, God willing and the creek don't rise, by around 4 p.m. That would give me an hour to see their renowned Native American Art collection. It'd be fast but I could see the highlights, see the tipi I saw 18 years ago, experience an number of other things. I thought I'm not going to stay in Denver overnight to see the Art, for I had to get to the Great Sand Dunes and the San Juan Mountains the next day. This was my only time, my only chance. It's this afternoon or not at all. Michael answered his phone and while we were catching up, he looked up on the Internet to find out what time the Museum closed. If it was 5, I was fine. If it was earlier, I was fucked. He looked, he found, he said..."Says here the Museum closes at 5 p.m."...Hot damn. Thanks Michael for that and a hundred other things.]

[The next few posts, over the next few days, will be of my photographs of the paintings, sculptures and artifacts from the Denver Art Museum. (Oddly enough, you can take pictures in the DAM as long as you don't use a flash and the Art is part of their permanent collection.) Pictured above are Standing Bear's Tipi and a Cheyenne Coup Stick. The big question I had looking at the tipi was "How did they get this? Did they steal it? Did they buy it for pennies from a relative or from him? Did they just find it?" No answers. But it was beautiful and the paintings on the canvas of his recollections of his deeds in war were more moving than most of the Contemporary Art Crap you see these days. And the coup stick wasn't bad either.]

"Leopard Appaloosa, Wyola, Montana, Crow Reservation" © 2007

"Leopard Appaloosa, Wyola, Montana, Crow Reservation" © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

 

       I'm tired of the Interstate. I think I'll drive by the river for a while.

       I get off at Lodge Grass and head south on a little two lane road. Railroad tracks on my right. Little Big Horn River on my left. Sun's about set.

       It's poor here on the Crow Rez but not bad at all. Poor is relative. If you have land along the river, some horses, a nice little house, a good truck and friends and family to love, how poor are you?

       Speaking of Horses, the Crows love their horses. Many of the Northern Plains Indians loved their steeds but nothing like the Crows. They also love their dogs. A matriarchal society, the Crows have a long history of male and female chiefs. Word has it that they even had a trans-gender chief back in the day. Two-Spirit, The Crows called people like that, having male and female spirits inside of them at the same time.

       The Crows were the enemies of many other tribes, the Lakota, and the Northern Cheyenne being a couple. Don't know why but they were picked on a lot by the other Indians. When the U. S. Calvary arrived, many men joined as scouts. Do you blame them? [Possible conversation: Army Man: 'Can you tell us where the Cheyenne are?' Crow Man: 'Why do you want to know?' Army Man: 'Because we want to kill them.' Crow Man: 'They are right over there. Wait a second and I'll go with you.']

       One of the most accurate accounts of what happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn came from a Crow scout named White Man Runs Him [or his other name was White Buffalo That Turns Around. Something tells me the first name was given to him by a Lakota or a Cheyenne.] When Custer ignored his advice, to not attack the throng of Indians by the river, White Buffalo took off his army uniform and put on his tribe gear. When confronted by Custer, he said he wanted to die as an Indian not as a soldier. Custer got pissed and relieved him of duty, and for most of the attack, White Buffalo and three other Crow scouts saw it all from a ridge nearby.

       The Sun has now set. I'm heading south. The sky is lavender. Hope to be in Colorado by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I'll drop by the Denver Museum of Art and check out their Native American Art collection. I remember from 18 years ago, that it was an amazing collection, that was both historically extensive as well as being modernly progressive. Hope they still have it. You never know. Things change.

       I turn left and get on Route 457 heading east. That'll take me back to I-90. Then I see him and his buddies. I pull over immediately onto the grassy shoulder.

       I've never seen a horse like that in all of my life [Later I found out that he was a Leopard Appaloosa] Black spots on White. Amazing.

       I take his picture and then his buddies come over with the What's-You-Doing look. I grab some fresh grass from my side of the fence and feed a couple of his friends. The Appaloosa never does come over to the fence. He keeps his distance, which is OK. But his corral-mates took the grass from my hand and they have themselves a little snack. I rubbed their noses too.

       I talk to them. They say nothing. They just eat the grass and then look to me to give them some more. I smile and oblige them.

"Long Road, Swift Bear & Hawk Man at The Little Bighorn" (c) 2007

"Long Road, Swift Bear & Hawk Man at The Little Bighorn" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

       I'm not having a good time. Actually, I'm kind of pissed off. I'm beginning to wonder if driving hundreds of miles to visit here was such a good idea. But my gut said go, so I went.
       The day began great, with prayer bundles at Bear's Lodge and the drive on Interstate 90 across Wyoming was quite a delight. I love Wyoming now. Didn't know I'd be a Prairie Person but I am. The yellow grasses, the numerous streams and rivers, the antelope here and there and everywhere. And the women I've seen are quite fetching too. Not classically beautiful but a number I've seen have long hair, often blond with bangs, strong noses, and tight jeans with ranch stains on them. Men ain't bad either, rugged, clear eyed men, among the usual pasty suburbanites that you find everywhere in America. And the biggest surprise was I could get NPR all over the state, even in bum-fuck-nowhere, which is 90% of Wyoming. A generally polite people is what I found. (I had a nice exchange with a couple of Mormon missionaries at a McDonalds's in Gillette. Memorable quote: 'So are you a convert and lifelong?" asked the young man confusing me for a LDS. "Neither," I said, " I'm Episcopalian.")
       But there was some sadness as I drove. Antelope were ubiquitous, like pigeons in a park, but there was a noticeable absence of Buffalo. They were the kings of the Prairie, 150 years ago and now they are only ghosts, memories, and the occasional few like at Bear Butte, as remembrances of a time that will never return. Heavy sigh.
       The Big Horn Mountains rose to the west of Sheridan, as I drove on. Part of the Rockies. The Rockies are always good to see. Into the Crow Rez and before you know it, I was driving along the banks of the Little Bighorn River. I knew from my Montana road map that I could probably see part of the Battlefield from I-90 and as I looked up I could see the low prairie ridge, the flats along the river, Pine trees (?), a graveyard, and some government buildings, but it was the river bank that struck me and first pissed me off.
       "You were a fucking idiot, George," I said out loud as I drive the last few miles before I exited the Interstate. "How could you have fucking missed the smoke coming from hundreds and hundreds of Indian campfires? (They say there were close to a thousand lodges there, that day) Were you that god damn arrogant? You fucking idiot. You deserved to get you ass kicked!"
       I exited the Interstate but my anger didn't subside once I enter Little Bighorn National Battlefield. I did see a Prairie Dog town when I entered the park and that cheered me up for a minute but it didn't last. I was surprised that I wasn't sad, just more and more irritate. Pissed off that there is a National Cemetery at Little Bighorn, with only white military dead buried there, many who were not even at the Battle. A white obelisk on a hill marked the places where many of the 7^th Calvary died. (But not really. Farther down to the north was the area when most of the whites died.) Most of the focus at the Park was on Custer, but in recent years, an Indian Memorial had been built, but the sculpture was quite ugly I think and even though the U.S. government had tried to honor all the tribes who fought and died, it felt forced and phony to me. But they tried and I read that the tribes appreciated the attempt. But still. This should be Lakota/Cheyenne holy ground, of a great victory against tyranny, not some sad memorial to an arrogant asshole.
       Now, I'm walking back to my truck after seeing Last Stand Hill, the Indian Memorial, and a few white headstones near the path. There were a couple of red granite headsstones, marking where two Lakotas had died but it wasn't nearly enough. Jesus Fucking Christ! This was the high watermark for the American Indian, their Frederickburg, their great battle victory, days before the American Centennial in 1876, where the tribes kicked ass and took names (and then it all slowly went to shit culminating at the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.) I'm not naïve thinking that the victors don't write the history books but again, this should be a monument to a victory more than a memorial of a defeat. Fuck. I stop and pause. My gut says go to the end of the road. There is something there for you, it says. I sure as fuck hope so. I've taken one photograph and that may be all I take here. I could give a shit. I get in my truck and back out of the Visitors' Center parking lot, trying not to run over the slow obese white people that are in my path.
       According to my Park map, at the end of this road is the place where Reno and Benteen held their ground under siege. (After Custer and his troup had been killed, the tribes tried to kill the rest of the 7^th Calvary under Major Reno and Captain Benteen. Reno had begun his attack up the river but was quickly routed and sent scrambling up to a ridgeline. Lucky for him, Benteen and his men arrived at what is now called Reno Hill just as the scrambling troopers of Benteen got there and that is what saved him and his men from the same fate as Custer. Benteen and Reno were under siege for the rest of the day and all of the next. The fighting was fierce on those two days. The Lakota and Cheyenne left on the third day. some Whites say it was because they heard that more Calvary were coming. Some Indians say that we just left because we were done. We couldn't kill all of them but that was OK. So we left. I choose to believe the latter.) I pass more white headstones where Calvary men had died as I drive south and it just pisses me off more. I want to stop and walk in the prairie grass but that is forbidden by the Park Service. We are in the center of the Crow Indian Reservation but all is see is white people, white crosses, white things.
       The presentation I heard at the Visitors' Center echoes in my head: that Reno was lucky that he didn't get massacred too. That archeological evidence proves that what the Indians have been saying for a 130 years is true, that what Custer did was foolish and not valorous, that he rode right into the heart of the gathering of tribes and unlike other times, when he out-powered and out-manned a village and killed all who were there, this time he was outnumbered by at least four to one, maybe nine to one, and simply had the Karmic Wheel roll very hardly on top of him. What goes around, comes around and it came down with a vengeance on Custer and his crew, on June 25^th, 1876. That throughout the two days of fighting, 258 U.S. Soldiers were killed and that Indian dead may have been as few as 30 or as many as a couple hundred. We all kind know the gist of the story, but the one thing that I learned is that Benteen and Reno's troops came this close to being whipped out too. This close.

As I get farther away from Custer Hill, the less traffic I see. Fewer cars, fewer people. I talk with an Australian man and ask if he has seen any red headstones, those for the Native dead. He said yes, at the end of the road. My mood brightens a bit.
       The road ends many miles from the Visitors' Center. I'm all alone. I'm at Reno Hill. I'm feeling much calmer now. It's around five in the afternoon. I park the Pathfinder, and  grab my Pentax 35 mm with the SFX film and my Canon 30D with its four gig card. Maybe I'll take a few more shots. I'm a long way from any rangers or white folk or anything but grass.
       I walk to the south and as I get to the grass's edge, I see four or five red headstones fifty or so feet away. The grass leading to them is matted down. Seems a lot of people have walked to them. I stop and say a quiet 'O My God'.
       I take off the lens cap of my Canon and I walk to the nearest stone. When I get there I bent down and place my left hand on top of the stone. The granite is polished smooth, with a rounded, not flat top. I see the name Swift Bear. I think of all the bears I've seen and experienced in the last few days. Bear Butte. Bear's Lodge. Now, Swift Bear.
       And then I'm hit by The Loss.
       It's as if the land has come up through me, from my feet, up my legs, into my heart, into my lungs, into my eyes, into my brain, and I feel and see and breathe in the enormity of The Loss.

The Loss of the Buffalo.

The Loss of the Land.

The Loss of the Way of Life.

The Loss of the Indian.

 

Every tribe that is gone, every child dead from smallpox, every woman without a husband, every warrior killed trying to keep his family alive. All of it.

And I drop to the ground, hunker down with my left hand on the grass to steady myself.

And I cry. I wail. I make a lot of sound. I'm surprised by all the sound. I don't stop it.

I do this for a while.

 

       Half-hour later, I'm heading back to the Park entrance. I stop along the way, for no reason, except to postpone my leaving. I'm having a good time now. I see another red headstone, this time for Long Road. A staff with prayer bundles tied around its length rests at the base of the stone. I take its picture. I place a hand on the stone and thank him for the sacrifice he made.
       I see another stone. I don't remember the name. I find the red prayer bundle in my pocket, the one I made at BR-549 Studio before I came on this trip. I hesitate. I'm not an Indian. I'm a White Guy. Is it right that I do this here, give a bundle here? I don't know.
       Then I feel a presence off my left shoulder. And then I hear a voice.
       "Thank You."
       I tied the bundle to a shaft of grass. I leave the lens cap on. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and smile at the setting sun.

"The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon" (c) 1999-2007

“The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon, Arizona” © 1999, 2000, 2004 Stu Jenks; Story revised: June, 2007

    [Had a first this week. First time I ever got a unsolicited, rude, hateful email from a anonymous stranger about my writing and my Art work. Mostly about my writing. The subject line on the incoming email was "How Dare You". She was upset, maybe crazy. She said I had no right to speak for all of the Navajos & Hopis (didn't know I was), that I was clueless (I'll concede that), insulting (don't think so) and had a superiority complex (what the fuck?). And that no 'people' would ever adopt me (now that's just being mean!) She didn't say specifically what it was that I had written which had caused her to go off on me, but that line about not being adoption-worthy gave me a hint at where to look. I'm pretty sure my 'Hoodoos at Coalmine' story triggered this woman to flame me. I know it was a woman, white woman actually. She was naive enough to write me from her work IP and work email, using her real name in the email address. Took me all of a minute to google her and find out she teaches school on the Navajo Reservation. Saw a photo of her and everything.

     I wrote her back a brief 'just writing from what I've read, from what I've heard and from what I've seen' note, but that didn't seem enough. It did bother me what she said, actually angered and hurt me quite a bit, so I did re-read the story I had written and kinda winced. I did use some pretty gross generalizations and words like. 'Navajo are' and 'Hopi are'. I knew I was doing that at the time and I knew all Hopis and Navajos aren't one way or the other. I was just trying to be both funny and informative at the same time. 'Two bigots walk into a bar' is funny. 'Two guys who appear bigoted walk into a bar, but not all guys are bigots' isn't.

     Anyway, I decided to contact an Native American scholar friend of mine and have him read my story. I trust his opinion. Well, he told me upfront, that for people who didn't know me, some parts of my story could be seen as flip and that many Natives from on and off the rez are very sensitive to outsiders' views about them and their cultures. Not news to me really, but I knew what he meant. So I thanked my friend and went to editing the story just a bit.

     I don't feel like I'm caving to criticism, taking out a few lines, rewriting a paragraph or two. The main purpose of "The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon" story is to just show the reader, the End at Dawn of a Spiritual Road Trip to Visit Coalmine Canyon, and to explain how I took the photographs that morning. The thumbnail sketches of the life and history of the Navajo and Hopi people is just to give those who know little about the cultures, some information, some context. And to bring a bit of humor to the text as well.

     So below is the 2007 version of the story. Hope you like it, and if you want to read the original, it'll still be at www.stujenks.com under the Circle Stories section for a while, but I can pretty much guess the below edited version will still piss off the school teacher from the Rez if she happens to read it, and other people too. Well, you know my email address. Flame on, if you must. But to the teacher from up north, a word of advice. Next time, get an anonymous email account from Yahoo and don't use your real name. I ain't going to do anything for I'm a good person, trying to live by spiritual principles, but you might not be so lucky with the next person, if you continue to write unsolicited vitriol to strangers from work. They may drop a dime on you and call the principal at your school. Just a word to the wise.]

     “The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon, Arizona”

     I'm driving cross-eyed, rushing to meet the dawn. The sky is still black. It's 4 a.m. I'm north of Flagstaff on US 89, south of Tuba City, listening to Bruce Cockburn on the boom box that sits in the passenger seat of my 1985 Yellow Nissan King Cab truck. The truck has no power to speak of. Can't get the damn truck to pass emissions. 300,000 miles on the odometer. Third Carburetor. Bugs the hell out of me, but shouldn't complain. It does still get me to places like Coalmine Canyon.
     I've left the high alpines of Flag and have just driven past the Cameron Trading Post. Plenty of gas. Plenty of smokes. Another cup of weird Texaco coffee in me, that fake cappuccino with the flat foam. It's all right I suppose, once you put a splash of real Joe in it. Got plenty of diet soda in the cooler. Getting closer to Tuba now. Transmission hums a bit loud. Nothing wrong, just an old truck.
     Bruce sings "Apartheid in Arizona, slaughter in Brazil. If bullets don't get good PR, there's other ways to kill. Kidnap all the children, put 'em in a foreign system. Bring them up in no man's land where no one really wants them. It's a stolen land. Stolen land."
     The Hopi pretty much escaped the boarding school system from what I’ve been told, but that wasn't the case for the Navajo, whose reservation I just entered back at Cameron. Many Whites took in the Navajo kids or rather took the children, changed their clothes, forbid their language, cut their hair and tried to make them into little white boys and girls. Didn't work at all. Just pissed off the Navajos and left an ever greater divide between the Anglos and the Indians. Still some hurt, anger and sadness exist to this day.
     The Hopi and the Navajo were traditional enemies. Hated each other hundreds of years ago, still some hurt feelings between some of the members of the tribes now. From the Navajo perspective, they immigrated to this area and just wanted to have a little land to live on. From the Hopi perspective, the Navajo were uninvited guests, who attacked them on their mesas, and felt entitled to the land that wasn't theirs.
     Now that’s an oversimplification of things. I know that. Today, many traditional and modern Hopi and Navajo together fight Big Oil and Big Coal, trying to protect their individual and tribal rights and save their lands from exploitation. But people are people and much like some of my Southern brethren who still see Damn Yankee as one word and who still smart when they think about The War Between The States and about Reconstruction, some Navajos still mess with some Hopis out of spite and vica versa.

     Just a few years ago, the Rainbow People were looking for a place to have their annual smoke dope/have sex/act spiritual/eat macrobiotic/and dance till dawn event. A Navajo woman said you could have it on her land. The White Pseudo-Indians were thrilled to have it on Indian land. Only one problem. After hundreds of Rainbowers had arrived and set up camp, the local sheriff informed them that they weren't on Navajo-land but on Hopi-land, and the Hopis rightly wanted them to leave. The White boys and girls left, leaving behind a couple of days of shit in holes they had dug on the Hopi property.
     It’s a complicated thing, this relationship between Hopi, Navajo and White. Some hold on to old resentments. Some forgive and let go. Some go about their business and don’t make no never mind about any of it. Some continue to perpetrate against strangers and kin. People are People, white and native alike.

     "You've been leading me beside strange waters. Streams of beautiful, lights in the night", Cockburn sings on the boombox.
     I'm approaching Tuba on US 160. A line of dark gray to the east. Just a hint of morning. It's coming but not for a while. The red and purple of the Painted Desert mesas aren't visible yet, but soon. Now, the mesas are just deep black humps and lines against a lighter black sky. I drive past a crudely painted sign pointing toward dinosaur tracks, drive past the old Laundromat with red sand in the washing machines, and up the hill entering Tuba. I take a right at the Tuba City Truck Stop, which in any other little town would be a small breakfast cafe with a good sized parking lot to accommodate the semis. The decaying carcass of a Rezzie dog lies off the shoulder at the crossroad. (Some Navajos don’t touch dead things, so many dead dogs and cats just slowly rot and blow away on the Rez.)
     The Hopi village of Moenkopi is off to the right, perched on the cliffs that overlook the cornfields below. No corn now. Too late in the year. The gray to the east is getting bluest. Got to beat feet if I'm going to get to Coalmine before dawn.
     Coalmine Canyon (Coalmine for short) has been a sacred place for me since the mid-1980's, when a friend who used to live in Tuba told me about the place. At the time he asked me to promise not to take just anyone into Coalmine, so if I'm a little vague on directions from here on out, that's why. It's not as if you can't find it on a good AAA Indian Land map, but you'll have to do your own footwork. And be nice to the place, if you go there.
     Coalmine is called that, for part of its exposed strata is a thin vein of coal. You can see parts of the canyon from the paved road if you look left at the right time, but it doesn't jump out at you. Coalmine is actually a number of canyons falling off from a high mesa. Coalmine drops probably a good 800 to 1000 feet to the canyon floor. Its walls are pink, purple and white with a line of black, and the sandstone is so soft, you can easily crush it under foot. I’ve been told that neither traditional Hopi nor Navajo medicine men go to Coalmine Canyon for they believe it is haunted, and it is said that on a Full Moon night, you can see the Ghosts of Coalmine dancing across its pink walls. I've never seen the ghosts but one time years ago, when I hiked deep down into Coalmine, I felt energies of good and evil having a little battle. Maybe I was just too hungry or too tired or I just imagined the whole thing. Maybe. Maybe not. I've definitely felt Dead Places in there at times, and in those places I do not stay long. Whatever they are, the energies are very strong at Coalmine, both positive and negative. I've gone there to pray, to shoot, to grieve, to just sit, and be, for over 20 years.
     This morning I'm going to the eastern part of Coalmine, an area I've only been going to for the past 10 years or so. Trying to find the dirt road down into this section of Coalmine is as much about sensing the road as it is about seeing it, and in the dark, I slow down, way down, and continue to glance to the left. The paved road is straight in front and behind, for probably four miles either way. No traffic. Good. Ah, there it is. I slowly turn and take my old yellow truck onto the one lane track.
     Dirt roads on the Rez are 'subject to closure due to weather conditions' as they say. Translation: if it's been raining or snowing, getting back to grandma's house can be an adventure. The weather is dry this morning, but I do, out of habit, stop, get out, and check the ground. It's good and solid. The earth is a mixture of sand and dirt. More sand, less dirt. I go slowly but not too slow. Too slow and you may get stuck in the loamy soil. My truck is a 2 x 4, not a 4 x 4, so I have to keep my speed up, but not too much, for the shocks are just regular shocks. Plus my truck sounds like a box of rocks as it is. Knock it too much more and new rocks appear in the box. The current creaky rocks drive me nuts, now as it is. Slow but not too slow but not too fast. Try and find the balance amongst the noise. The story of my life.
     The one lane track descends down from the first level of mesa to the next level, but not the bottom of Coalmine. That's way down and miles away. No horses or cows in sight. No living creatures at all which is normal. The cows tend to be on the floor of Coalmine and the horses come and go all around the canyon. I turn off the boom box. The bouncing of the truck tends to make the tape sounds yowwy, and now I must be present, to say the least. The drop off to my right ain't a couple of feet but a couple hundred or so. Slowly bouncing I go down, down.
     I level off at the bottom of this hill, or rather the top of this next part of the mesa. Coalmine Proper is off to the left, still dark but visible as a space in Space, a darker Dark, and off to the east, the color black has more blue in it. The sun is coming. Probably a half hour away. Good. I'm almost there.
     Coalmine is the bottom of an ancient sea, without the water. Actually all of this area, for thousand of square miles, was underwater eons ago. On one of my earlier trips into Coalmine, I was shocked to find prehistoric oyster shells. Breaking them apart, I could smell the faint hint of natural gas. On the high mesas and in the canyon floor of Coalmine, premature quartz crystals are scattered about, along with small black basalt balls created from a distant volcano's eruption, a thousand years ago and about 40 miles to the South. Coalmine is part of the Colorado Plateau which cover parts of four states; Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The Colorado Plateau is one of the greatest places in the world to see sedimentary rocks. And here at Coalmine, its as if the rocks were not fully born, so soft and fragile, so chalky and ever eroding.
     The sun is coming. The black to the East is blue, and the old blue is orange. After only a few more miles, I come to a place to park, that is solid ground. I park and open the door of the Nissan to that dark before the dawn. Grabbing my tripod, my Rollei and my pinhole camera (for later-in-the-day shooting), I walk toward the rim of the canyon. The ground is soft with loom under my feet that makes little clouds as I walk. The baby crystals can be seen sparkling even in this dawn twilight. Careful. Watch your feet, Stu.
     White peninsulas of sandstone jut out into the canyon like the bows of old sailing ships. I step out onto one bow of sandstone to go to a special place, a ways out. I'm careful with my feet, as much as to not disturb the rock, as to not fall 800 feet. I reach my own personal prayer spot and set up my tripod and my camera. Compose the shot. Stop. Wait. Pray.
     Little black Hoodoos, three inches tall grow from the top of the white sandstone formation. (Hoodoos are rock towers that have more on top than on the bottom. Imagine a carrot sticking in the ground, big end up. Bryce Canyon in Utah is known for its 30 foot Hoodoos. Coalmine has some tall Hoodoos but there are not well known, thankfully.) I place the mini-Hoodoos at the bottom of my composition in the ground glass viewfinder of the Rollei. I attach a couple red filters on the Zeiss lens. I'm ready.
     Sun is coming. Lots of orange now but no sun-ball yet. Zippo is in hand. I open the shutter and walk with a purpose to the Hoodoos, paint a flame spiral with the Zippo above the little towers, go back to the Rollei and close the shutter. 15-second exposure tops. I repeat. Sun is almost here. Again the Zippo. Close shutter. Open Shutter. Zippo. Close. Wait.
     Then, like a light switch being flicked on, the Sun rises above the mesa and cuts a bright yellow slice on the far western wall of Coalmine Canyon, perhaps five miles away. Open the shutter. Zippo. Close. Advance film. Open. Zippo. Close. Four exposures. That should do it, I hope. The Sun is probably too hot, visually, for the flame spiral to show now, but the sunlight on Coalmine is glorious to see. I go to the far bow of this ship of stone and  just sit. Breathe and sit. And then sit some more. No photos. Just the Sun, Coalmine and I.
     I have a prayer I wrote for myself years ago, just so I can get centered in the morning. Frankly I forget to say this prayer as much as I remember these days. But on this morning, on the rim of Coalmine Canyon, I don't forget.

     I stand and face the blinding ball of the newly risen Sun
     "To the East, God and Humanness," I say softly.

     I turn 90 degrees and face toward Utah.
     "To the North, Courage and Vulnerability."

     Counterclockwise, I pivot and face the far side of Coalmine Canyon.
     "To the West, Self awareness and Forgiveness."

     One last turn, facing the sandstone bows of other ships.
     "To the South, Feelings and Wisdom."

     Motioning with my right hand high, I say,

     "To the Sky," then bringing my hand down I say,

    "And to the Earth," and lastly I make a circle in the air and say,

     "And to all that is,
     OK, God,
     Let's do it."