Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"From Lively to Sin Vacas" (c) 2008

"From Lively to Sin Vacas" © May 2008 Stu Jenks

    [Images from top to bottom: "The Last Chair, Lively, Virginia", "The Flowering Oaks, Lively, Virginia, "Ancient Oak, Lively, Virginia", "Harriman, Tennessee", "Minnie Pearl's Hat, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee", "Mary at the Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas", "The Very Large Array, New Mexico", "Panoramic Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas", & "Cattle and The VLA"]

        We had just had a perfectly nice little box lunch at an Interstate rest stop in the Valley of Virginia. No harsh words. No crazy comments. No imagined slights from us. Then, as my mother was getting a scarf out of the car, preparing to walk over and get back into the Penske truck, she said to me.
    "You know, after Pamela was born I had a miscarriage and I fought to have another child, so remember that, the next time you get upset with me!"
    I shrugged my shoulders, gave Annie a crooked smile with a slight shake of the head and walked my elderly mother back to the truck.
    And this was Day Two of what turned out to be a week-long journey, driving my mother and her things to an independent living place, near my home in Tucson, Arizona.

    I thought it would be fun, driving Miss Daisy across the country. It was anything but. When Annie arrived, ten days before we were going to leave for Arizona, she was prepared to do a lot of work, packing my mother up. What she didn't know was that in the months leading up to the move, Mom hadn't done a thing. When I arrived three days before we departed Virginia, Annie had done an amazing job, in spite of everything.
    Even though I had been to The River to visit at Christmas, I had no idea how much my mother had begun to fade. She started out the day as a woman in her eighties and ended the day as a six-year-old child. When friends would ask me, on the phone, how my mother was, I would say she was 'petulant'.
    But my mother’s old, and it's not her fault that she has become more of a spoiled brat. She has always been this way. But now, she was ruder, more insulting, and more manipulative that I've ever seen her. She’s never been one to apologize or try and walk in anyone else's shoes, but now it was all or nothing, black or white, good or bad, with no gray in between. And the All was All Her. We either loved her or hated her, and she wasn't shy to say anything now. [Like she ever was.] And even though it was never her intent to be hurtful, that didn't mean it didn't hurt. [Whether a truck runs over you by accident or on purpose, you've still been run over by a truck.] Add to that the entitlement issues in her DNA and the occasional histrionic tears and you've got a nightmare for Annie and I.

    Miraculously, we got the 26-foot Penske truck on the road on Friday Afternoon, with Mother and Annie following in Mom's Buick Le Sabre. We made it as far as Charlottesville, Virginia that night.
    Besides the little adventure caused by me getting the truck stuck in the parking lot of the motel, (I embedded the rear end into the pavement while trying to go up a little hill. Had to get a tow truck to wince it free), the first day's drive was uneventful and rather pleasant for me. For me. Not for Annie. For Annie had Mom in the car with her, for hours. After Day One, Annie and I traded off my mother. Day Two, Mom rode with me. Day Three, she rode with Annie, etc. That way, we each had every other day without the presence of my mother.
    When Mom doesn’t get her way, either she is wrong, you are wrong, or all of us are wrong. There is no simple difference of opinion in my mother's world. If you disagree with her, you hate her. If you are angry at some behavior of hers, you hate her. If you ask for something that she doesn't want to give, you hate her. I wish I could say this was new, but it isn't. It's just more so.
    Also, Mary puts people into two groups, those she considers family and those she doesn't. If you are considered family, then you are obligated to do what ever she asks. You are her servant, her peasant, her slave. And if you refuse, politely or no, she gets mad and either insults you or tries to shame you into doing what she wants. Again, not new. Just more desperate and pitiful these days. (Then again, my mother’s ancestors did own slaves and she was raised by black servants. Perhaps I expect too much.)

    The manipulations and criticism started long before we left Lively, Virginia.
    By the time we reached Tennessee, Mom was saying she wanted to go back home to Virginia or go to Raleigh and live with my sister, Pamela. (Not an option, now or ever.)

         
    In Nashville, she thought she was in Richmond, Virginia. Truly. She thought we were on Broad Street, seconds after we had left the Ryman. Thought the Mosque was just up ahead. ‘What the fuck,’ I silently mouthed to Annie in the rear view mirror, as we drove back to the Interstate.

    In Arkansas, she tried to jump out of the car. We affectionately call it The Arkansas Incident. We were driving slow and it was at night, so no one got hurt.
    By Oklahoma, we couldn't stand to even think of eating dinner with my mother. We prepared food for her to eat and brought it to her room at sundown, and then Annie and I went out and had our own dinner.
    I took some pictures of Mom at the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas that turned out to be somewhat iconic. Thanks God for that.

    By Santa Rosa, New Mexico, she was weeping in the hallway of the motel, saying we were abandoning her.
    The Very Large Array was fun for Annie and I, and we even had one lighthearted moment with Mom. The sustained winds were 40 miles per hour that day and as we were walking Mother to the Visitors Center, one of us on each arm so she wouldn't blow away, Mary said, with a bit of wonder in her voice,
    "Son, you are really taking me on an adventure."
    We all three laughed. The one and only time that would happen in 2500 miles.

    I could say more. I probably should have said less. Bottom Line: Mary is all settled in at Sin Vacas, an upscale retirement village, where all the street names are in Spanish for nutty things. ('Street Without Sin', 'Street Without Denial', 'Street Without Danger'. Mom lives on Calle Sin Envidia: 'Street Without Envy'. And Rancho Sin Vacas, the gated community where the elderly village is, means Ranch Without Cows.) She’s making some new friends and going to church. She's slowly learning how to get to the bank and to the grocery store. And she’s even saying thank you to me when I come up to help connect the computer or put together a lamp (Even though I know her 'thank yous' really mean 'please don't leave me all alone'.)
   
    Mom and I don't really get along. Haven't really for years. I tolerate her and she probably tolerates me too.   
    But one piece of advice or rather a warning to all.
    Don't say to me "You're being such a good son."
    I'm not. And if you say it to my face, I’m probably going to get pissed off.
    I didn't move Mom because I'm being a good son. I did it because Mom begged me to move her to Arizona, and that we had few options left, for Mary can't really take care of herself anymore without help.
    I told Mom a number of times, that I really didn’t think it was a really good idea to leave 100 friends in Virginia behind, to live near her son and her 92-year-old sister and her son's ex-girlfriend in Arizona. But we have a saying in my family: "Mary does whatever Mary wants to do." Her so-called friends in Virginia, most of them rich, white, arrogant fucks, call Mom ‘a force of nature.’ They are not complementing her.
    No, I'm not a good son.
    I'm not doing this because I want to, or that I even think it's the right thing for her to live in Tucson, but our choice are limited now.
    Retirement places in Virginia are much more expensive there than in Arizona.
    My sister Pamela lives in Raleigh, in the Old Home Place, but she is fighting cancer and is really in no condition to be around Mom, in a number of ways.
    It's by default that I'm doing this, have done this.
    I'm not a good son.
    I'm just the person who’s doing what needs to be done.
    That's all.
    If I had my way, Mary would be living in Virginia somewhere.
    But you rarely gets your way if you are with my mother.
    It's Mom's way or the highway, pretty much.
    Even though she would deny that.

    “Your hair is so beautiful,” she says.   
    “You’re as handsome as your father was,” she says.
    Mom is over the top with her compliments now. I’m repairing a chest-of-drawers in her new apartment. She’s following me around.
    She may be a bit sun-downy these days. She may be her normal Narcissistic self, but she isn’t stupid. She knows she fucked up. She knows Annie and I are pretty tired of her shit.
    Phase One is done: Mary and her stuff have been moved across the country.
    Phase Two is mostly done: Unpacking Mary’s shit and getting her settled in.
    Now, on to Phase Three: Maintaining Mom in Tucson.
    Once-a-week visits and occasional chats on the phone is the plan. My plan. Her plan would be for me to be at her beck and call, 24 / 7 / 365. That ain’t going to happen.

    The view from her balcony is fabulous. City lights in the distance at night. An arroyo filled with birds and their songs during the day. I close my eyes and hear the quails’ sing. I feel sad. Mom doesn’t even notice the beauty right in front of her. I open the sliding glass door and reenter her apartment. She yells something at me from the bedroom. I can’t hear what she is saying. I don’t really care.

"Harriman, Tennessee" (c) 2008

"Harriman, Tennessee" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
[An homage to a Blake Hines' photograph]

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007

"Stu's New Mexican Fun Facts" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Images: "Doubting Thomas, St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe, New Mexico" & "Plastic Medicine Wheel, Carrizozo, New Mexico"]

1)        Went to Taos. Well, drove through Taos really. Stopped at The Pueblo briefly and paid money for admission and for each of my two cameras that I brought into the village. White people gawking at Red people. Was bizarre to say the least. Took a couple shots of the old graveyard and split. While driving out of Taos, I listened to National Public Radio. They were having their semi-annual fund-raising campaign. (Had actually been listening to the fund-raising on NPR for my whole trip, through Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Colorado. Wyoming had the best music. Montana had the most pleasant DJs. Nebraska had the kindest voices. Made sense.) I noticed something different, here in Taos, from the other stations I heard thus far. Lots of dead air. Then giggling afterwards. Then people talking and they didn’t make much sense. Hmmm. I think they need to put down the spleef in Taos, or monitor their medication a bit more closely.

2)        Had a plan to see the Sante Fe Plaza and visit St. Francis Cathedral again. It had been twenty years since I was last in Sante Fe. Back in the day, you could see the Cathedral from a distance and get your bearing quite easily. Not now. Luxury hotels, taller or as tall as the church, surrounded the Plaza. I had to actually ask someone where the Cathedral was. Had a delightful time inside of St. Francis, though. I prayed, I shot, I just look around, I prayed some more. Hadn’t changed much in twenty years and still felt like the sanctuary that it is. I thought of sticking around for dinner in Santa Fe but I didn’t. I wasn’t wearing the right clothes for a nice meal there, nor did I feel like I belonged. Saw a huge smiling bronze pig out front of a fancy gallery. Grinning, from jowl to jowl. The North Carolinian in me just sees that as a silly way to spend money.

3)        Went to a 12 Step meeting in a bad part of Albuquerque, just at sunset. Good people, bad neighborhood. Felt like I’d been to church twice that day.   

4)        Spent the night in an anonymous motel in Socorro. Had good coffee the next morning at a café just off the town square. Every town in America has a café now, that has good coffee, fresh baked goods and a friendly staff. And they ain't Starbucks. Gives me hope for America.

5)        Drove by the Trinity Atomic Bomb Site. Again, didn’t really drive by it for I quickly realized I wasn’t supposed to be on that government road and hastily turned around, but it was just over that hill. Just being close still gave me the willies. The world changed forever over there, on July 16th, 1945 at 5:29 in the morning.            

6)        Midmorning, I went hiking into the Valley of Fire, a place of recent lava flows, only 1000 years old or so. Didn’t hike far. Just a ways in, played the mandolin for a while and took in the sharp blackness that is the Malpais. The wind blew cool and the acoustics were flat in a pleasant way.

7)        Just south of Carrizozo, I saw some amazing clouds that looked like huge jellyfish flying in the sky. I took their picture but it didn’t translate at all. Sometimes you just have to be there. While walking along the road looking at those clouds, I found an old hubcap among the sage. The paint had peeled away from much of it, yet the cheap chrome still adhered to the center of the plastic wheel. I took a picture, then picked up the hubcap. I saw an object I could make with this wheel and with a few bits of colorful cloth. I dusted it off and took it back to the truck. (It now leans against a leg of my small dining room table. All cleaned up and waiting for the time I tie some cotton to it, but right now I just like looking at it on the floor as I leave my kitchen. Maybe after the New Year, I’ll fiddle with it.)

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

      

[On the border of New Mexico and Colorado, the little town of Conejons has two gas stations and a small grocery store. Bought gas at one of the stations. The women-proprietor offered to pump my gas. Very nice of her. We talked for a while and I learned that Conejons is Rabbit in Spanish. Paid for the gas and then drove across the street and took this shot of the twin water tanks. Remember seeing her watching me as I took this picture. A bit of a puzzled look was on her face, wondering, I suppose, why I found them so interesting. I was struck (and still am) by the unintentional irony of the paintings on the tanks. One tank holds a portrait of Indian life, a smiling Native couple, with tranquil buffalo roaming among the teepees. The right side tank displays an Anglo farming family, with a child, and a spade, and a procession of priests trekking across the prairie. The Natives are long gone from this part of Colorado, either killed, starved, diseased, or exiled. No reservations near by. The Cheyenne and others are just a memory now, illustrated in black and white, and a bit of green, on the side of a water tank. In spite of the sad and odd imagery, Conejons seemed to be a nice little town. Glad I bought gas there. Then again, I didn't stay long enough to find out its dark secrets or its quiet kindnesses.]

 

"The Right Prayer Bundles" (c) 2007

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

"Sundance, Wyoming" (c) 2007

"Sundance, Wyoming" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

"The Life of Sweet Medicine" (c) 2007

"The Life of Sweet Medicine" © 2007 Stu Jenks & the Strange Owl Family

 

Below is an account of the life of Sweet Medicine. A plaque at the base of the mountain mentioned that Bear Butte (called Noavosse, the Good Mountain by the Cheyenne) was where the Cheyenne holy man and folk hero came to get the bundle of the Four Arrows, the Four Commandments and also left with a moral code. Sort of like Moses going to Mount Sinai. (Fun Archaeological Fact: The Cheyenne are believed to initially have been an Algonquin-related tribe in what is now New York and New England. Then they moved to modern day Minnesota and finally to the Northwest Great Plains.) I couldn't find much on what was the specific moral code that Sweet Medicine brought down but his story is very interesting. Tales of miracles, and immaculate conceptions and immortality. Sort of like a cross between Buddha, Moses and Jesus, but not. Dramatically shows the universality of the Hero Story that is told among all people.

My heart really goes out to the Cheyenne in particular. History shows pretty clearly that numerous times, many Cheyenne chiefs and holy men petitioned the Federal Government during the time of the Indian Wars, to stop all of the bloodshed and killing. Just let us have some land, some places to hunt and we'll leave the white man alone and you, us. Other tribal leaders and people like some of the Apaches and Lakotas fought to the end. Nothing wrong with that. But I identify more with the Cheyenne, personally. I think I would have tried to negotiate a lasting peace, rather than keep on fighting. But hell if I know. I'm a white 20th Century Man from the suburbs. Time and again, the U.S. Army ignored their overtures and simply killed them, men, women, children. I know it was a long time ago, but it still breaks my heart.

Finally, here are some more of my Bear Butte shots. You may have noticed in the last post, that I wasn't very specific about what and who was prayed for, by me, on top of that peak. Some things need to stay private. In a future post, you'll also find that true of my experience at the holy ground of Devil's Tower. I'll show but I won't tell too much. However at Little Big Horn, they will be an exception.

 

The Life and Death of Sweet Medicine

(Told by members of the Strange Owl family on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Montana, 1967, recorded by Richard Erdoes) 

A long time ago the people had no laws, no rules of behavior- they hardly knew enough to survive. And they did shameful things out of ignorance, because they didn't understand how to live.

There was one man among them who had a natural sense of what was right. He and his wife were good, hard- working people, a family to be proud of. They knew how to feel ashamed, and this feeling kept them from doing wrong.

Their only child was a daughter, beautiful and modest, who had reached the age when girls begin to think about husbands and making a family. One night a man's voice spoke to her in a dream. "You are handsome and strong, modest and young. Therefore Sweet Root will visit you."

Dismissing it as just a dream, the girl went cheerfully about her chores the next day. On the following night, however, she heard the voice again: "Sweet Root is coming- woman's medicine which makes a mother's milk flow. Sweet Root is coming as a man comes courting."

The girl puzzled over the words when she awoke, but in the end shrugged her shoulders. People can't control their dreams, she thought, and the idea of a visit from a medicine root didn't make any sense.

On the third night the dream recurred, and this time it was so real that a figure seemed to be standing beside the buffalo robe she slept on. He was talking to her, telling her: "Sweet Root is coming; he is very near. Soon he will be with you."

On the fourth night she heard the same voice and saw the same figure. Disturbed, she told her mother about it the next morning. "There must be something in it," she said. "It's so real and the voice is so much like a man's voice."

"No, its just a dream," her mother said. "It doesn't mean anything."

But from that time on, the girl felt different. Something was stirring, growing within her, and after a few months, her condition became obvious: she was going to have a baby. She told her parents that no man had touched her, and they believed her. But others would not be likely to, and the girl hid her condition. When she felt the birth pangs coming on, she went out into the prairie far from the camp and built herself a brush shelter. Doing everything herself, she gave birth to a baby boy. She dried the baby, wrapped him in soft moss, and left him there in the wickiup, for in her village a baby without a father would be scorned and treated badly. Praying that someone would find him, she went sadly home to her parents.

At about the same time, an old woman was out searching the prairie for wild turnips, which she dug up with an animal's shoulder blade. She heard crying, and following the sound, came to the wickiup. She was overjoyed to find the baby, as she had never had one of her own. All around the brush shelter grew the sweet root which makes a mother's milk flow; so she named the boy Sweet Medicine. She took him home to her shabby tipi even though she had nothing to offer him but love.

In the tipi next to the old woman's lived a young mother who was nursing a small child, and she agreed to nurse Sweet Medicine also. He grew faster and learned faster than ordinary children and was weaned in no time. When he was only ten years old, he had already grown-up wisdom and hunting skill far in advance of his age. But because he had no family and lived at the edge of the camp in a poor tipi, no one paid any attention to Sweet Medicine's exceptional powers.

That year there was a drought, very little game, and much hunger in the village. "Grandmother," he told her, "find me an old buffalo hide- any dried out, chewed up scrap with holes in it will do."

The woman searched among the refuse piles and found a wrinkled, brittle piece that the starving dogs had been chewing on. When she brought it to Sweet Medicine, he told her, "Take this to the stream outside the camp, wash it in the flowing water, make it pliable, and scrape it clean." After she had done this Sweet Medicine took a willow wand and bent it into a hoop, which he colored with sacred red earth paint. He cut the buffalo hide into one long string and wove it back and forth over the hoop, making a kind of net with an opening in the center. Then he cut four wild cherry sticks, sharpened them to a point, and hardened them in the hearth fire.

The next morning he said: "Grandmother, come with me. We're going to play the hoop-and-stick game." He took the hoop and the cherry-wood sticks and walked into the middle of the camp circle. "Grandmother, roll this hoop for me," he said. She rolled the hoop along the ground and Sweet Medicine hurled his pointed sticks through the center of it, hitting the right spot every time. Soon a lot of people, men and women, boys and girls, came to watch the strange new game.

Then Sweet Medicine cried: "Grandmother, let me hit it once more and make the hoop turn into a fat buffalo calf!"

Again he threw his stick like a dart, again the stick went through the center of the hoop, and as it did so the hoop turned into a fat, yellow buffalo calf. The stick had pierced its heart, and the calf fell down dead. "Now you people will have plenty to eat," said Sweet Medicine. "Come and butcher this calf."

The people gathered and roasted chunks of tender calf meat over their fires. And no matter how many pieces of flesh they cut from the calf's body, it was never picked clean. However much they ate, there was always more. So the people had their fill, and that was the end of the famine. It was also the first hoop-and-stick game played among the Cheyenne. This sacred game has much power attached to it, and it is still being played.

A boy's first kill is an important happening in his life, something he will always remember. After killing his first buffalo a boy will be honored by his father, who may hold a feast for him and give him a man's name. There would be no such feast for Sweet Medicine; all the same, he was very happy when he killed a fat, yellow calf on his first hunt. He was skinning and butchering it when he was approached by an elderly man, a chief too old to do much hunting, but still harsh and commanding. "This is just the kind of hide I have been looking for," said the chief. "I will take it."

"You can't have a boy's first hide," said Sweet Medicine. "Surely you must know this. But you are welcome to half of the meat, because I honor old age."

The chief took the meat but grabbed the hide too, and began to walk off with it. Sweet Medicine took hold of one end, and they started a tug-of-war. The chief used his riding whip on Sweet Medicine, shouting: "How dare a poor nothing boy defy a chief?" As he whipped Sweet Medicine again and again across the face, the boy's fighting spirit was aroused. He grabbed a big buffalo leg bone and hit the old man over the head.

Some say Sweet Medicine killed that chief, others say the old man just fell down stunned. But in the village the people were angry that a mere boy had dared to fight the old chief. Some said, "Lets whip him," others said, "Lets kill him."

After he had returned to the old woman's lodge, Sweet Medicine sensed what was going on. He said: "Grandmother, some young men of the warrior societies will come here to kill me for having stood up for myself." He thanked her for her kindness to him and then fled from the village. Later when the young warriors came, they were so angry to find the boy gone that they pulled down the lodge and set fire to it.

The following morning someone saw Sweet Medicine, dressed as a Fox warrior, standing on a hill overlooking the village. His enemies set out in pursuit, but he was always just out of their reach and they finally retired exhausted. The next morning he appeared as an Elk warrior, carrying a crooked coupstick wrapped in otter skin. Again, they tried to catch him and kill him, and again he evaded them. They resumed their futile chase on the third morning, when he wore the red face paint and feathers of a Red Shield warrior, and on the fourth, when he dressed like a Dog soldier and shook a small red rattle tied with buffalo hair at his pursuers. On the fifth day he appeared in the full regalia of a Cheyenne chief. That made the village warriors angrier than ever, but they still couldn't catch him, and after that they saw him no more.

Wandering alone over the prairie, the boy heard a voice calling, leading him to a beautiful dark-forested land of many hills. Standing apart from the others was a single mountain shaped like a huge tipi: the sacred mountain called Bear Butte.

Sweet Medicine found a secret opening which has since been closed (or perhaps is visible to him alone) and entered the mountain. It was hollow inside like a tipi, forming a sacred lodge filled with people who looked like ordinary men and women, but were really powerful spirits.

"Grandson, come in, we have been expecting you," the holy people said, and when Sweet Medicine took his seat, they began teaching him the Cheyenne way to live so that he could return to the people and give them this knowledge.

First of all, the spirits gave him the sacred four arrows, saying, "This is the great gift we are handing you. With these wonderful arrows, the tribe will prosper. Two arrows are for war and two are for hunting. But there is much, much more to the four arrows. They have great powers. They contain rules by which men ought to live."

The spirit people taught Sweet Medicine how to pray to the arrows, how to keep them, how to renew them. They taught him the wise laws of the forty-four chiefs. They taught him how to set up rules for the warrior societies. They taught him how women should be honored. They taught him the many useful things by which people could live, survive, and prosper, things that people had not yet learned at that time. Finally they taught him how to make a special tipi in which the sacred arrows were to be kept. Sweet Medicine listened respectfully and learned well, and finally an old spirit man burned incense of sweet grass to purify both Sweet Medicine and the sacred arrow bundle. Then the Cheyenne boy put the holy bundle on his back and began the long journey home to his people.

During his absence there had been a famine in the land. The buffalo had gone into hiding, for they were angry that the people did not know how to live and were behaving badly. When Sweet Medicine arrived at the village, he found a group of tired and listless children, their ribs sticking out, who were playing with little buffalo figures they had made out of mud. Sweet Medicine immediately changed the figures into large chunks of juicy buffalo meat and fat. "Now there's enough for you to eat," he told the young ones, "with plenty left over for your parents and grandparents. Take the meat, fat, and tongues into the village, and tell two good young hunters to come out in the morning to meet me."

Though the children carried the message and two young hunters went out and looked everywhere for Sweet Medicine the next day, all they saw was a big eagle circling above them. They tried again on the second and third days with no success, but on the fourth morning they found Sweet Medicine standing on top of a hill overlooking the village. He told the two: "I have come bringing a wonderful gift from the Creator which the spirits inside the great medicine mountain have sent you. Tell the people to set up a big lodge in the center of the camp circle. Cover its floor with sage, and purify it with burning sweet grass. Tell everyone to go inside the tipi and stay there, no one must see me approaching."

When at last all was made ready, Sweet Medicine walked slowly toward the village and four times called out: "People of the Cheyenne, with a great power I am approaching. Be joyful. The sacred arrows I am bringing." He entered the tipi with the sacred arrow bundle and said: "You have not yet learned the right way to live. That is why the Ones above were angry and the buffalo went into hiding." The two young hunters lit the fire, and Sweet Medicine filled a deer-bone pipe with sacred tobacco. All night through, he taught the people what the spirits inside the holy mountain had taught him. These teachings established the way of the Tsistsistas, the true Cheyenne nation. Toward the morning, Sweet Medicine sang four sacred songs. After each song he smoked the pipe, and its holy breath ascended through the smoke hole up into the sky, up to the great mystery.

 

At daybreak, as the sun rose and the people emerged from the sacred arrow lodge, they found the prairie around them covered with buffalo. The spirits were no longer angry. The famine was over.

For many nights to come, Sweet Medicine instructed the people in the sacred laws. He lived among the Cheyenne for a long time and made them into a proud tribe respected throughout the plains.

Four lives the Creator had given him, but even Sweet Medicine was not immortal. Only the rocks and the mountains are forever. When he grew old and feeble and felt that the end of his appointed time was near, he directed the people to carry him to a place near the sacred Bear Butte. There they made a small hut for him out of cottonwood branches and cedar lodge poles covered with bark and leaves. They spread its floor with sage, flat cedar leaves, and fragrant grass. It was a good lodge to die in, and when they placed him before it, he addressed the people for the last time:

"I have seen in my mind that some time after I am dead...and may the time be long...light-skinned bearded men will arrive with sticks spitting fire. They will conquer the land and drive you before them. They will kill the animals who give you their flesh that you may live, and they will bring strange animals for you to ride and eat. They will introduce war and evil, strange sickness and death. They will try and make you forget Maheo, the Creator, and the things I have taught you, and will impose their own alien, evil ways. They will take your land little by little, until there is nothing left for you. I do not like to tell you this, but you must know. You must be strong when that bad time comes, you men, and particularly you women, because much depends on you, because you are the perpetuators of life and if you weaken, the Cheyenne will cease to be. Now I have said all there is to say.

Then Sweet Medicine went into his hut to die.

 

 

"Bullock Hotel, Deadwood, South Dakota" (c) 2007

"Bullock Hotel, Deadwood, South Dakota" © 2007 Stu Jenks

            David Milch's HBO Series "Deadwood" is easily my favorite show to ever be on TV. I own all three seasons on DVD and just this last weekend I watched a few hours of Season Two while waiting for the windshield repairman to arrive. I think I drove through the town of Deadwood in 1982 but I can't be sure. I sort of remember Lead, its sister city, that just up the hill but not Deadwood.
            I wasn't completely blindsided to the changes in Deadwood. I'd checked out their town's website and it looked a bit touristy. But as Gregory Bateson once said, 'The map is not the territory,' nor is a website the place either.
            I drove up the road to Deadwood at sunset, Dylan playing in the CD changer, a big smile of my face. Wounded Knee had been very moving, saw some prairie dogs in the Badlands on the way, and finally, the skies had cleared and I was seeing sunshine for the first time all day. I was very excited.
I entered town and quickly saw that Deadwood was just Tombstone on Steroids. (Tombstone is a two-bit tourist trap an hour plus south of Tucson. It's got its cheesy gunfight, got its Chinese souvenirs, got it tourist bars disguised as dives.) Or like a Bisbee that did not die. (Bisbee, Arizona is a cooper mining town, south of Tombstone, that died in the 1920's, was reborn in the 1960's as a hippie artist enclave and is now trying for another Renaissance, another rebirth, that never seem to take.) Someone has sunk a shitload of money into Deadwood you could tell. There's gambling but I quickly found out that it's just chicken shit gambling: Video Poker and Slots. No table games. No craps. No roulette. Nothing real. At least Ely, Nevada had blackjack and craps in its old hotel. A new Holiday Inn had taken up a whole corner of old downtown, and the fake knickknacks were ubiquitous.
            I drove around the block and settled on staying at the Bullock Hotel, a recent reasonably authentic restoration of Seth's old place. Seems that it was a dive hotel until being gutted and overhauled 10 years ago. I got to admit, for $70, the room was quite nice. Thick red pile carpet that you don't see in the vast majority of hotels and motels. A comfy bed and a nice bath too.
            After I'd settled in I decide to go for a walk around town. After a quick recon of the faux Western bars on Main Street, I took a hike up the hill to see Bill Hickok and Jane Cannery's graves. It was a steep climb but it felt good. The sun had just set and it was getting dark fast. Little gingerbread houses lined my way up the hill. Looked that a cemetery visit cost real money during the day but not now. It was too dark to read the stones and I didn't have my flashlight with me and there was no Moon. Would love to have found Seth Bullock's or Sol Star's grave but I settled for Jane's and that was just fine. Whitetail Deer ate dinner among the stones. A family of four, Mom, Dad and two young kids walked by. Very quiet on top of that hill. I found Bill's and Jane's graves quickly, big sign announced where they were. Too much fuss, Bill would say but Jane would liked that Bill got all of that attention. Since I cuss a lot, I left a penny at Jane's grave. I walked down the hill another way, thinking I should turn in soon, for I have an early appointment at Bear Butte. That is the real reason I drove two days north, after all. Deadwood was just a bonus and a place to stay the night.
            I stopped at the bar in Bullock's, before turning in, and filled up on free Buffalo Wings and Diet Coke. A middle aged white couple behind me turned their noses up at the wings. I had about 10 of them. It was just that couple, the bartender and I, on that Sunday night. I tipped the barkeep a few bucks for the freebies. Just seemed like the right thing to do, this being Deadwood and all. I finished my Coke, then when upstairs, watched some TV and went to sleep. And for the first time since I left Tucson, I felt lonely.
            [Postscript: After Bear Butte on Monday, I drove back through Deadwood for two reasons: One, I promised Annie I get her a glass and Two, other than the Interstate, the only way back to Wyoming was pretty much through Deadwood. I did a bit more driving around the neighborhood and rediscovered Lead, South Dakota (pronounced Leed). Lead is just upstream of Deadwood, a couple three miles I suppose. But in between is George Hearst's Homestake Mine, the mining property that was primary to the storyline in Season Three of HBO's Deadwood. George Hearst was a bad man. A very bad man. The mine was the deepest mine in all of the United States, and it was very profitable for a very long time. It just closed for good in 2002. Lead isn't a tourist town, just a western mining community with workingmen's homes, the coffee shops I longed for down the hill, a real grocery and a church or two. Lead is the real thing. Deadwood today is simply an electrified fake, to entertain overweight white folk in Ford Expeditions and biker wannabees partying in Sturgis. Then again, the tradition lives on of, helping fools part with their money in Deadwood. Hookers are replaced with tight slots, and I bet the whiskey is just as watered down in 2007 as it was in 1877. For some reason, that makes me very happy.]

 

 

"Raining at Wounded Knee" (c) 2007

"Raining at Wounded Knee" © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

       Never been to Nebraska before. Northwest Nebraska is a pretty place. Rivers, some hills, and acres and acres of farmland. Saw a field of Sunflowers, ready for harvest, that wasn't just acres-big, but sections-large. No yellow petals but hundred of thousands of seed-heads stretching to the western horizon. Very impressive. I saw a cattle ranch named Stuart's, advertising 'Bulls and Females'. I laughed loud, thinking that's what I'll call my next CD, 'Stuart's Bulls and Females'. I stopped and shot an image of a long-closed service station that had the pattern of a Star Quilt painted on two of its doors. That was in the small town of Crawford, Nebraska. People going and coming from church. Sunday in October in rural Nebraska. I liked what I saw of the state. But I was sad too, for Buffalo where once all over these plains, back in the day. Not now, though. I could feel the ghosts of those Buffalos everywhere. The cattle and the crops don't fill the void with me at all. (And that feeling of No Buffalo was with me for a whole week, while I drove through South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.)

             Had breakfast in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Eat an Everything Omelet and drank some weak coffee. Then back on the road and drove in the snow for a while. Snow turned to drizzle, then back to snow. Good tires and 4 x 4 if I needed it. No worries.

       Made the decision to hit Wounded Knee before Deadwood, hence the drive into Nebraska.

       Crossed into South Dakota and into Pine Ridge Reservation. I've heard talk of the abject poverty of Pine Ridge for decades. Mile after mile passed, little town after little town and I'm not that shocked. Lots of government housing, some rusted cars, plenty of open prairie and many low ridges with Pine trees snaking across them. It's poor but it doesn't feel destitute, nor hopeless. No different than Navajo town of Tuba City or the Tohono O'Odham town of Sells in Arizona. I felt like home, their home. They have been here for way over a hundred years. Sometimes, I wonder if all the hoopla doesn't come from an Urban East Coast prejudice, of middle class and rick folk who don't ever drive through the working class neighborhoods of their own hometowns, and only see poor and working class people when they are on vacation while making their tours of Indian Reservations in the West.

       The rain is steady but light. The sky's gray but the clouds are high, leaving lots of space overhead. Big sky even when it rains.

       I find the crossroads of Wounded Knew but am confused. My map is ambiguous. I see a Pine Ridge Lakota policeman in his SUV, parked near me. He begins to drive away, but I flag him down.

       "Excuse me. Can you tell me where the Memorial is?"

       He is a young cop, with a soul patch on his chin. He smiles and pointed toward what looks like a church on a hill, just a couple hundred yards away.

       "It's over there," he says.

       "Over there?"

       "Yep," he says.

       "Thanks. By the way, how's your day?" I say.

       "Long,"

       "Well, I hope it ends soon."

       "Me too."

       "Well, have a good day, officer."

       "You too." He has a light in his eyes, everyone is home. No fear and bluster like Officer Ercole D'Ercole in Trinidad, Colorado last night. Another story, but I bet Ercole D'Ercole still get teased about his name, even though he is  a officer of the law.

       I get back in my truck and the Lakota Policeman drives away. I look at my map. I look at where the cop pointed. Doesn't seem right. Looks like just a church, not a memorial to one of the worst Indian Massacre in history. I look at the map again. Maybe down that road. I put the truck in gear and leave the crossroads.
       After five miles of driving on a very well maintained but very muddy reservation road, I begin to have doubt about what I'm doing and begin to have less doubts about what the cop was telling me. I turn around.

       I get back to where I began, where I talked with the cop and I find a rough two-lane track that heads up the hill toward the church. As soon as I crest the hill, I realize that it's not a church but a cemetery. The cop was right. Well, I guess he would be. He does live here you know. Jeez. I shake my head. So much for listening to others.

       It's still misting. An old white couple's walking between the stones in the cemetery. A black marble obelisk with all the names killed on that Winter day stands near the middle of the graveyard. Stones and crosses, new and ancient are here and there. It's the town of Wounded Knee's graveyard now it seems. I nod my head. I take some shots, and look for a place to leave a prayer bundle of my own (Tony, a Navajo friend, instructed me on how to make a prayer bundle. I have a number of individual ones and three short strings of prayer bundles with me. Mostly I've made the bundles for Bear Butte tomorrow, but I have plenty of extras.)

       I thought I'd feel sadder but I don't. I just feel cold. I just think about the Lakotas living here today, hoping that they don't hold onto too much resentment about what was done to them a hundred plus years ago. I know some of my Southern brethren are still pissed off about The War Between The States, and it doesn't seem to do them any good. I know I have some old resentments that I still carry, and they just seems to cloud my view of the Path I'm on.

       No, I'm just hoping for the Lakotas, and for all of us really, Red, White, Yellow, Black and Brown, that we just be ourselves, know ourselves and be the best we can be. Advice mostly for myself, that for any unknown Indians near by. But I still pray for a lifting of resentment and an atmosphere of forgiveness for all of us. Just kind of how I'm built these days.

      I get back in the truck, and head down the muddy two track to the wet two lane and drive North. I hope to get to Deadwood by dark.

 

 

"Bowling In Walsenburg" (c) 2007

"Bowling in Walsenburg, Colorado" © 2007 Stu Jenks

       "Beautiful weather, isn't it," says the cheerful old obese woman.
       "Yes it is," I say, smiling back to her.
       While we're both buy gas, we exchange pleasantries. I'm guessing she lives here. I'm just passing through on my way up north. It's about 8 p.m. The over-weight sweetheart walks to the convenient store. I finish pumping my gas, pull away from the pumps, and park the truck 20 feet away. A couple dogs bark at me from a backyard to my left. The air is cool and crisp but not too cold.
       Walsenburg is a small town on I-25. South of everything, north of not much. A town that was probably a farm railroad stop back in the day. Now, it's a town that gets much of its money from the Interstate as well as from the ranch and the farm. Walsenburg holds a special place in my heart, for this was the first small western town I stopped in, on my first quest out west in 1977.
       I first hitchhiked from North Carolina to visit friends of friends in Austin, but got stuck outside of town. Stood all day on a two lane, but no one picked me up. Took a bus then to Walsenburg and after I arrived, I called an old college friend at Adams State in Alamosa, from the bus stop. I asked if he could put me up for a couple of days, if you could come get me. I still remember that phone call. I was a stoner flake back then. Hadn't even bothered to call ahead, to see if Bob was busy or in town. Just assumed it was OK. Lucky for me he was home. Bob laughed when he heard my voice and when I asked for a ride to Alamosa, a hour away, he said, sure, we'll be over as soon as he can.

"But let me call you back in 5 minutes," he said. "I need to check to see if the mountain pass is closed."
       Closed, I thought. A light drissle was coming down in Walsenberg.
       "Closed? What do you mean, Bob?" 
       "There may be snow on the pass. We might not be able to get through to pick you up."
       "Oh."
       It was August. I was floored. I had no idea.
       Welcome to the West, Stu.
       I was a baby, back then. 23 going on 50.
       Now, I'm not. I'm sweetly naïve in some ways, but I ain't nobody's fool anymore. Or at least I tell myself that. No large molecules of THC running through my veins either, but I still have Nicotine in them. My eyes are brighter and clearer and have been for years. I do get angry at the greed and selfishness of America in the 21^st Century, but I still know that what really matters, regardless of who's President or what others do, is the kindness, compassion and love that one person give to another, one person at a time, one day at a time. Like the short exchange I just has with that pudgy old woman. She greeted me first with kindness. I easily returned it. It does make for a better world, when we smile or laugh with each other or simply acknowledge the strangers around us with a grin.
        One dog's still barking to my left but the second one has lost interest in me. I then see my first artsy shot of the trip (even though I've already shot 40 snapshots driving through Arizona and New Mexico today.) That bowling alley over there. Looks to be five- or ten-laner. That sign's wonderful. Can see lots of activity inside. It's a hopping place on a Saturday night. Good clean fun, in a small western town.
       I pop a half dozen shots, and look at the back of the D30. Yea. This'll make a nice first image of my trip, a trip down memory lane, but also to brand new places too. A journey through my Western past into my Western Now.
       I stow my camera, start the truck and head back to the Interstate. All is well.

 

"TTT" (c) 2007

"TTT" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[If I hadn't of thrown a belt on the Pathfinder, I won't have stopped at the TTT Truckstop and taken this shot. Bad belt. Good shot.]

"In The Mustang Rain" (c) 2007

"In the Mustang Rain" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

       [Images: "Spiral in the Mustang Rain", "Agaves in the Mustang Rain"]

       It was a Male Rain at my apartment earlier today: buckets from the sky, bright lightning, flickering power in my apartment, yellow-tan sand and water in the motorways. Here though, it's a Female Rain: gently falling,  my glasses clean and clear under the bill of my Krispy Kreme hat, bare legs barely getting wet from the mist.

       It's late in the afternoon. Been reading the last Harry Potter book. Hard to leave the house because of that, but I have to, for the Mustangs called me. Well, 'Called' is a little overly dramatic. Closer to say, I could see The Biscuit and The Mustangs in my mind's eye and those images wouldn't go away. I know what that means. I won't be happy until I surrender to a trip. So I did and here we are. Plus I really long for a short hike up some stout hills.

       No cattle on the range today. Saw a couple cattlemen though just a few minutes ago, as I turned onto the muddy dirt road that leads into the Mustangs. They were out with a small tractor and a blade, smoothing out one of the tracks that crosses the range. Land isn't theirs. Land isn't mine. Land belong to the State of Arizona. They lease. I come for free. Guessing they don't really need to be out in the rain, with a blade this afternoon. Roads ain't that bad. I bet they just wanted to get out of the house and play in the mud.

       I park sooner that I normally do. The track is very muddy after all. Maybe the cattlemen are doing the Good Lord's work. I park and walk the rest of the way in. Having a 4 x 4  truck doesn't mean I don't get stuck. Just means I can get stuck farther away from things.

       The rain is a delight. It's the monsoon season in Southeastern Arizona, one of the best kept secrets in Tourista-Land. Everyone around the country sees 115 degrees in Phoenix on The Today Show, not knowing that just two to three hours south of The Surface of The Sun, is a region of a lot more rain, a lot less heat, and a lot gentler people. Only tell your best friends now.

 The bushwhack up is easier that I thought. The rain has pushed down the tall grass. The footing is sturdy and true. The drip, drip, drip of the Female Rain doesn't impede me but rather helps pull me up the hill. I stop along the way to shoot a spiral or two in the conglomerate rock. There are a lot of spirals here, made from the merging of different molten rock. They look like fossils but they appears to be quartz mixed with basalt. (Then again, fossils are mineralized organic material, and this land was underwater eons ago. Could be prehistoric snail shells or something like them.)

       I drew a spiral in the mud back behind me, near a corral, a half hour ago. Didn't take its picture. Was more of a prayer, a reminder that the journey always goes on. Never stops. Even in death. The end of my mud-spiral flew out and open toward the North. The rock spiral glistening at my feet does that too, yet better than mine. That's fine. It's not about me, really, my quest for Art and Beauty. It's about something timeless and eternal. I just use the Personal to get to the Universal. And no matter how old or bald or broke or lonely or fat or scared I feel, the path always goes on, with or without me. I just have to walk it as best I can while I'm here, find some friends along the way, use my volition for The Good and The True. Not perfectly mind you, not always with my head held high, but I need to just move the feet, even when I don't feel like it, and again do the best I can. God and I are partners here, with other people too. I ain't a puppet. He/She/It ain't no puppet master. And the other good folk who walk with me, in front, behind and beside me, are all equals too. The illusion is, that it is otherwise, that we are not the same, that we didn't climb out of the same ocean.

       I've only gone about halfway up. Going to be dark in a couple hours. Don't want to be hiking out in the dark. Off to the south, across a mile wide valley are some hills of the Southern Mustangs, peaking in and out of the clouds. First they are obscured completed in white, then ten seconds later, a peak shows through; a half minute after that, full details can be seen of the ridge-line; another minute later, back to fully obscured in misty clouds. I sit on a rock, try once or twice to shoot the mountain across the way, and then realize, this is for the Mind's Eye, not the camera's. Photography is a wonderful lie sometimes. It can show the details, the specifics, even sometimes create something that isn't there, but mostly it fibs, giving the strong illusion that what you see is what there is. The slow swirling motion of the mist, the tap tap tap of the rain, the smell of the grasses, the cactus, the ocotillo, and agave, a fragrance that can not be describe well or bottled. The smell of a Barn in Heaven, with angel clouds to boot. Turning these sights, smells, sounds in a three dimensional sphere of existence into a two dimensional photographic window is one tall order. But I try, partly to stir my emotional memory later on, but also, sometimes, to seek the Eternal and share it with others. I try as I can. A Fool's errand that I must do, in order to be happy.

  I get back to the truck with much time to spare. Looks like I have another hour of light. I drink some Coke Zero, and light a Camel. I look in the back seat and see my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I grab it, open it to page 424 that I book-marked before I left my apartment and read "Harry fell, panting, onto grass and scrambled up at once..."