The Indian Wars: Chapter Ten:
"Topawa: Home of the Warriors"
© 2005, 2008 Stu Jenks
"Jesus Horatio Christ!!!"
My windshield’s suddenly peppered with the sound of soft BBs. Bug juice is everywhere. I see a roadside picnic table off Highway 86 and I pull over. As I get out with Windex and paper towels in hand, I now see what I’ve driven through. Dozens of dead and dying bees are all over my windshield and my front grill. I spray the windshield with Windex and wipe the carcasses and bee sludge away.
Killer bees, Africanized Honey Bees, they are. They've been here in Arizona for a few years now. But in my 20 plus years of living and driving in the Sonoran Desert, I've never before driven through a swarm of Killer Bees. After cleaning the windshield, I look south toward the telescopes on Kitt Peak and wonder if this is a good sign or a bad sign or any sign at all.
I tend to be a little superstitious but today I'm more so.
For it's Good Friday and I'm going to the cave where God lives.
Another fifteen minutes on 86 West and I'm in Sells, Arizona, the tribal capital of the Tohono O'Odham Indian Nation. Sells reminds me, in a microcosmic way, of Atlanta in the 1970's when all of the highways in that Southern city seemed to be in a constant state of repair, either being made or unmade. Sells is that way but smaller. OK, a hell of a lot smaller. Not my best analogy. Anyway, I only make it to Downtown Sells about once every couple of years but every time I’ve been here for the past 20, they always seem to be tearing up the streets, putting in new gutters, laying down new pavement, taking the road down to the dirt or replace a sewer line. Today, it's a sewer conduit repair, closing three blocks of downtown with no workers in sight. Actually no one in sight. Then again, it is Good Friday.
Tohono O'Odham religion is an odd and beautiful mix of Christian devotion and Tohono mysticism. The T.O.s go to their local Roman Catholic Church and pray for the forgiveness of their sins, but they are also aware that I'Itoi is not far away, living in a cave just below Baboquevari Peak. I'Itoi, it is said, lead the Tohono O'Odhams into this world from the Underworld, and now resides in his cave just south of here. It is also said that you can enter his cave and visit with I'Itoi, but you must bring a gift. He likes gifts. And if you do not bring a gift, he might make it so you can’t find your way out of his cave.
I have a gift with me today.
I turn left on a tribal road heading south that goes through the little village of Topawa, where the new high school is. Baboquevari High, home of the Warriors, say the sign. A bit past the high school, I take a left onto a long dirt road that goes to a campground and a couple of trail heads. In bumpiness and general rattle production, this dirt road rivals with some of the worst roads I've ever driven on. A jeep trail is better than this road, with its grapefruit sized rocks and its deep washboard texture. Fast or slow, 4 x 4 or sedan, it doesn't matter. You're going to be beat up.
After a half hour, I'm at the old picnic area that sits at the base of the foothills of the Baboquevaris. I'm all alone. Everyone’s at church, I suppose, or dyeing Easter eggs. As I'm parking my truck I notice something white on one of the concrete picnic tables. After shutting down the Pathfinder, I walk over to the table and find two large cow bones; one, part of a femur and the other, a thoracic vertebrate with very long transverse processes. Both are completely bleached white and clean. I pick up the vertebrate and consider taking it to my truck and then reconsider. Maybe after I've come back from I'Itoi's Cave, I'll take the bone, but not before.
The trailhead is exactly where Michael said it would be. I begin my hike up, carrying just a large Nalgene bottle of water and my Kodak Brownie Starflash. And my gift. After hiking on this trail for a few hundred yards, I become quite aware that this is unlike any trail I've ever walked on. No U.S. Park or Forest Service trail here. Those government mountain trails are built with numerous gentle switchbacks so that overweight middle-aged people can hike up a mountain on a Saturday morning and not die of a heart attack. This trail goes pretty much straight up, using the natural contours of the hill to create its shape. There are switchbacks but they are steep and created from necessity not comfort. The path is narrow, one person wide, not two or three, for this isn't a trail for tourists or even hikers. This is a trail created by and for the devout. For those who are seeking an audience with God.
The rains have been heavy this Spring, one by-product being, more Mexican Poppies and other wildflowers are covering the hills and mountain sides than I’ve seen in many a year. Here they are so thick that my shorts quickly become stained with yellow Poppy powder, as I brush through the tall flowers. The Saguaros are plump too, unusual for this time of year. I pop a quick panorama with the Brownie and then continue my hike up this narrow winding path. I wonder how far until the Cave. It really doesn't matter. Be it long or short, I'm going the distance today.
An hour goes by. Then suddenly I notice a primitive stonewall laid neatly near the base of the sheer face of the mountain. The trail splits then comes back in on itself. An old, knurled Mesquite tree hugs the mountain wall, and then I see it. A slit in the mountain. A cut of blackness in the red rock. All the little trails are leading to that slit. I unsling my camera and hang it from a branch of the old Mesquite. I lie my water bottle at its roots. I check my pocket. The gift is there. I walk toward the entrance of the cave, place both my hands on either side of the slit and pull myself inside.
[No one will ever say that boundaries are my middle name. I've been known to interrupt people when they are speaking, and reveal far more about my feelings and thoughts than is appropriate. I tend to be naïve and treat acquaintances as friends, saying much more than I should. But occasional I get a clue. Occasional, I keep my mouth shut. This is one of those times.
Sure, I could tell you about my experience in I'Itoi's cave, about what I saw, heard and felt, about the journey in and the journey out, about I’Itoi, but I won't. As my friend Byron once said, "Be careful not to give away the gold." Plus too often these days, folk believe that the map is the territory, that the tape is the song. Believing that a film of the Gobi Desert gives you the experience of the Gobi Desert, which it doesn't. It gives you an experience of a film about the Gobi Desert, but not the desert itself. Also, for me to describe what it's like in I'Itoi's cave will rob you of your own experience, if and when you go there. From this story, you can figure out how to get here. But I’m not telling what went on in there. You're just going to have to come and see for yourself.
But remember. If you decide to come and visit God, bring a gift. He requires it.]
Afterwards, I sit for a good long while on a large rock near the cave's entrance. I drink some water, have a smoke, and look out onto the wide Baboquevari Valley that stretches out below me. I also look closer at the large boulder I'm sitting on. There are many worn and smooth areas on this rough stone. A lot of people have sat on this boulder. Beyond count. I finish my smoke, field dress the butt, drink a splash more of water and begin to head down the trail.
Even though I have few words for it, I feel changed. Sturdier but somehow lighter, like a hot beam of light has broken me apart in a gentle, healing way. Those words are poetic but no where near adequate. Joseph Campbell once said something to the effect that there are three types of things: Things we can talk about, things we talk about that we really have no words for, but try and express them anyway, and then there are those things we don't even try to talk about, because words are useless and just get in the way. This is one of those times.
I take it slow, coming down the mountain, saying nothing. When I get back to the picnic area, I grab the large bleach-white cow vertebrate with its long transverse processes and stow it in my truck. Seems like the right thing to do. I know just the place for it, at home.
The road out was like the road in, slow, and bumpy, but this time I have Byron Metcalf's new work, "The Shaman's Heart" playing on the truck's CD player. Buffalo skin drums, raven's calls, bear rattles, ambient synthesizer winds. My inner lightness grows. I feel a little sleepy.
I reach the pavement and turn toward Sells. After a few miles, while driving through Topawa, I suddenly notice, of to my right, row upon row of old wooden crosses, brightly light in the now-setting sunlight. It's the Magic Hour, the last hour of light before the Sun sets. When everyone looks like a movie star. I drive pass the graveyard, do a quick Bat-turn and head back toward the cemetery. It reminds me of that old Ansel Adam's shot, "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico". Story goes that Ansel had very little time to take the shot, took only one negative and wondered for days if he had captured the image. I look at the sun. I got about 15 minutes. I best not dally.
At the far eastern end of the cemetery, I notice a old car and two or three T.O.s. It appears they have been tending someone's grave and they look to be walking back to their car. I park far away on the western end of the cemetery, as to not disturb them in their efforts. I grab my Brownie and head toward the first row of crosses I saw from the road. The wind’s blowing hard. The sun’s setting fast.
I spend a couple minutes looking at a few select graves here and there. Old wooden crosses with just a name painted on them. A new granite headstone with a basketball etched in its stone face. I turn and see the gymnasium of Baboquevari High, (the home of the Warriors), not far away, just a bit west of here. I smile and then turn toward the east again and the large field of crosses. The three T.Os are driving away now, trailing a cloud of dust behind them . The sun is going fast, just a few more minutes before it sets behind the Ajo Mountains to the West. I compose a triptych, not taking any shots, just setting it up. I look at the white crosses through the small Kodak viewfinder. It being Good Friday isn't lost on me. As I compose, I can see the dome of Baboquevari Peak and just north of it, I can see a low ridge where God lives, where I'Itoi resides, where he waits for gifts. I smile and breathe in the wind. I see my long shadow in the frame. I decide to leave it in, work it into the composition. I have no choice really, if I'm going to get this good angle. I usually work hard to not have myself in my photographs, but today is different. Really, I’m in all of my photos, aren’t I? Just sometimes you don’t see my body.
The wind's continues to howl. The sun's almost gone. It’s time.
I raise my camera to my eye and pop three exposures to form a triptych. I fire off three more and finish up the roll. I crank the roll of 127 film, watching it pass through the little red circular film counter window in the back of my Brownie. And as I’m giving thanks to this Wonderful Friday, I watch little black and red arrows go by, in that little red window, and then they disappear altogether, leaving only a small circle of reddish black.
