Writing by Gabrielle Boisrame
Epiphany 2: Hoofprints and Arrowheads
Epiphany 3: Why Environmentalists Need Climate Change
Epiphany 4: Seeing What Was Meant to be Hidden
Other Writing:
» Modern Pilgrimage
» Reflection of the Past
» Comb Ridge as an Old Woman
» Impromptu Discovery
» Migrations
» Musings in 2058
Epiphany 1: Waves of Realization
It was the end of a long, tiring day. As part of a habitat survey in Oregon’s Joseph Canyon, my classmates and I had been trudging up and down steep hillsides counting plants, measuring grasses, and the like. Sitting down to rest back at our campsite, I looked across the dirt road and my eyes were greeted by yet another steep hill. This one was covered with tall grasses which rippled seductively in the wind, like the waves of a vertical sea. The day before had had its share of wind as well, but I had happened to look over at a different hillside. That hill’s grasses made barely perceptible, disjointed movements. This looked alien to me, utterly at odds with the graceful, uniform way I had seen grass wave on many hills back at my home near California’s Coast Range.
I mentioned this discrepancy to a friend sitting close by, expecting simply to share the lovely sight with her. “I think that’s because it’s all non-native grass,” she replied, “Look, the bunch grasses over there are hardly moving.” She was right. The slope which I found so unassumingly beautiful owed its windy waves to the fact that it was covered in a grass introduced from Asia which grows in a thicker carpet than the native bunchgrasses. Its uniform cover gave the invasive grass its flowing, watery look, but on a different windy day could easily fuel a rapid fire, among its host of other ecological problems.
The scene I had viewed as alien was actually what had originally covered this whole area, while the one which was so beautiful and familiar to me was, in fact, foreign. I was a bit embarrassed not to have noticed this on my own, considering that we’d been having natives and non-natives pointed out to us constantly for the past two days.
Of course, this was not the first time I’d had my perception of a place challenged. Even just in the past two weeks of learning more about Eastern Oregon’s natural and political history, every time I look at a creek I see it in terms of the health and abundance of its surrounding vegetation. A gentle curve in a stream’s bank can mean fishing, flooding, grazing, or spawning, depending on who you ask. The thick groves of pine and fir trees both provide homes for silent owls and mock the poverty of the former logging town below.
It’s thoughts like these which remind me why I’ve always been attracted to the world of mathematics, where the cosine of “b” very obligingly remains 1/3 no matter which way I spin the triangle. I do recognize that not everything can be this absolute, however. In most cases, the danger lies in believing too strongly that something is universally true. This can be seen throughout history every time the previous “absolute truth” has been dethroned by anything from the discovery of fossils to that of planets.
Sometimes, it seems, a clear outside guide is needed to change our perceptions. In the case of my grasses, I was shown that what I once thought of as beautiful was so only in an aesthetic sense. At first I felt a little guilty about enjoying the rippling grass, but I couldn’t help it, I did enjoy it. Maybe sometimes it’s all right to temporarily forget that something is harmful, like these grasses causing fires and removing habitat for wildflowers and small animals, just long enough to stay sane. Any longer, however, and the pleasure could veer dangerously toward apathy. I’m not going to completely stop enjoying everything that I learn has a harmful side. What I will do, I hope, is remember to leave my mind open to seeing them from a different angle. Most importantly, I will accept when they must be sacrificed. When possible I will even help with the process of changing them to something else, equally beautiful, but different. Something that, when looked at from as many perspectives as we feel capable to interpret, comes the closest to being universally good instead of simply visually beautiful.
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Epiphany 2: Hoofprints and Arrowheads
I bent over and picked up a sharp black stone. The shallow grooves along one edge showed that this was a flake of obsidian, discarded an unknown number of centuries earlier during the making of an arrowhead. Ironically, I had found the obsidian on one of the relatively few sites that still hosts the way of life that once helped displace the Native Americans: the cowboys. I was on a BLM grazing allotment, with hoof prints and cow pies covering the dried, cracked earth around me.
Except for celebrity versions like national parks, Western public lands are overlooked by most while being fiercely fought over by the rest. These rare users include hikers, ATV’ers, and, probably most controversially, ranchers. The valley where I found the flake was an example of how devastating cattle can be to a landscape. A few large old mountain mahogany trees and some sagebrush (which cows won’t eat) were the only vegetation around me.
This area was shown to me by Jon Marvel, a man who has devoted his life to ridding Western public lands of cattle. The next day I was given a tour of a different BLM allotment, this time by a rancher named Agee Smith. There were still some bare, trampled areas, but mostly I saw thick groves of healthy aspen trees, lush grasses, and clear streams. Agee told us he had once thought that his love of the hills around his home could not be reconciled with his way of life. Now, however, through more careful management of his cattle’s grazing he believes he is actually able to use them to increase the amount of native grass and riparian vegetation on his allotments.
Many people decry public lands ranching as an affront on lands which supposedly are there for everyone, not just ranchers. What it seems many people don’t want to think about is that the original purpose of setting aside these lands as public was to sustainably use natural resources, not preserve them all as untouched wilderness. The laws governing these lands offer regulations and guidelines as to their use, but it is difficult to measure compliance when science is uncertain and laws unenforceable due to staff and budget constraints. Also, since nobody knows what these places looked like without human interference, judgment calls must be made as to what is best. In the end, the issue boils down to whose vision for public lands gets implemented.
It may have been a mistake to bring cows into the equation, but now that they are here they cannot simply be ignored. The elk, ranchers, sage grouse, horses, hawks, fences, and aspen are all here, and they do not always coexist happily. This might have been a friendlier relationship, but our culture has always insisted on being able to do things more efficiently. In the case of Western ranching, this mindset led to the landscape being grazed to a point where it could barely sustain anything. Today, more and more ranchers are taking factors including health of the natural environment into account, which will be necessary if they are to stay on this land. Of course, the ranchers cannot be looked at purely as numbers either. Their connection to this way of life and land cannot be captured in a statistic any more than the value of a pronghorn.
Another rancher I spoke to said that she wanted to protect wildlife diversity, but not at the expense the diversity of human cultures and lifestyles. Although it may sound idealistic, I feel like her desire can and should be a reality for the diverse inhabitants of the West to feel secure in their homes as well as the continuation of their natural resources. The arrowhead I found is a reminder of how devastatingly far we have already gone with culling diversity. At first glance it may seem that ranching has become only a superficial space-filler for what used to be there, especially looking at the obviously impractical glitz of dude ranches and rodeos. Speaking to Agee Smith and some of his ranch hands, though, it became obvious that flashy public displays are merely a by-product of ranching, or a way of attracting customers to stay in their lodge.
Nothing short of the deep love of the land and true ranching lifestyle these people have could keep them here under such harsh conditions Today many people view Western ranching as unnecessary, just as the discarded bit of obsidian I found was once viewed. Perhaps if those who oppose ranching were educated as to the value and needs of the others, they might at least acknowledge those views and agree to cooperate with the ranchers to develop practical, sustainable ranching methods. This is the only hope I see for both keeping the fields of sagebrush in as close to a “natural” state as possible, and saving ranches from the fate of the flake of obsidian: becoming a fondly remembered piece of history.
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Epiphany 3: Why Environmentalists Need Climate Change
I have a confession: I used to be extremely frustrated with all the attention climate change was getting. I felt that its causes, from gasoline engines to coal-fired power plants, were detrimental enough in their own right that they didn’t need climate change added to their lists of evils. Emissions from cars cause smog and asthma. Power plants do the same, while the mines supplying their coal turn millions of acres into uninhabitable wastelands. Even without environmental concerns, the price of gas and electricity are concrete incentives to conserve these resources. I believed climate change was a serious threat, but it seemed to me that most environmentalists were unnecessarily placing something that many people don’t believe exists front and center in most of their arguments.
I thought it was narrow-minded and a waste of the environmental movement’s efforts to focus on controversial global concepts when there were so many obviously harmful localized issues. Many climate change-related problems could be mitigated if these local problems were dealt with thoroughly, whether or not those resolving them did it for climate change’s sake. I’ve seen hard-working neighbors devote precious time to stopping subdivisions of open spaces near their homes.
I’ve met a Navajo woman who lobbied against construction of a coal fired power plant on her reservation despite threats and attacks from its proponents. The greenhouse-effect of carbon that would be released from these two projects was not the motivator here, but still sacrifices were made to stop them from happening. Not everyone needs the added disincentive of rising global temperatures to convince them that there is a problem.
In other sectors, however, I have now realized that the situation is different. A prime example is the city of Aspen, Colorado. City planners are avidly pursuing new technologies to decrease the environmental impact of Aspen’s utilities. No one in their right mind would propose a power plant in a wealthy neighborhood in Aspen, nor attempt to subdivide its ski resorts, but climate change can be felt here. The coveted winter ski season is getting shorter, for one. Also, many of the well-off, highly educated inhabitants of this area have both the time and the temperament to pay attention to the scientific community’s predictions of a dramatically changed world. Although climate change can’t be attributed entirely to whatever carbon emissions this city produces, a number of its inhabitants understand their partial responsibility. For people like the residents of Aspen, life is comfortable but the future is worrisome and guilt is hiding behind every light switch and car engine.
Of course, getting people to respond to this global issue is much more difficult than getting someone inspired to protest a proposed coal fired plant on their home. The environmental movement is trying its best to get the public’s attention with heart-wrenching visuals such as photographs of polar bears on shrinking ice floats and Inuit villages falling into the ocean, often displayed alongside the statistics and figures that just aren’t enough to fully get the message across. Unfortunately, although images conveying “warming” are fairly common, the “global” side is lacking. Despite our increasingly global mindset after years of international trade and the world wide web, imagining a car in Detroit being part of why icebergs are melting at the poles is a huge stretch of the imagination, and can’t be shown directly. Unfortunately, greenhouse gas molecules don’t come with “Made in the USA” labels or the sender’s e-mail address. It’s these difficulties, I now realize, which force the environmentalists I thought were wasting their time to focus so much effort on explaining global warming.
It seems to be working. “Green” laws and energy projects are showing up more and more as doubts about climate change become less widespread. Not everyone will be inspired to alter their lifestyles to address the issue, but current trends are pushing more and more people in that direction. Even slightly superficial “solutions” such as buying carbon offsets or putting solar panels on a large second home show that climate change is beginning to affect people’s decisions.
Although it’s too late to stop many of climate change’s effects, at least now it is more widely accepted as fact and local issues have become everyone’s issues. What makes climate change so difficult to grasp, its global scale, is also what makes it important to so many people. These carbon emissions are not just polluting this city’s air, we realize; they are contributing to rising sea levels, larger deserts, and a host of threats to human life in every corner of the globe. People living in power-plants’ shadows or whose water is polluted don’t need to be told of these dangers, but for those who previously felt disconnected from environmental problems it can act as a much needed wake-up call. Maybe the flap of a butterfly’s wings won’t lead to a hurricane, but driving that hummer will help.
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Modern Pilgrimage
We flock to the mountains in our SUVs
And hope to find the Answers.
Our guide is a fleeting thought that maybe
If we return to the primordial sea from whence we came
Then our gills will turn into wings
And we can fly up, up out of the pond
No matter how big or small a fish we were
And reach Nirvana
Or whatever you see it as
That we’ve all been too distracted
By flashing lights and ready comforts
to notice.
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Reflections on the Past
First conceived on the banks of Pyramid Lake, Nevada, previously known as Lake of the Stone Mother
I picked my way down to the water’s edge. Ripples colliding from opposite banks reflected the morning sun, emphasizing a repeated design. Suddenly I was sure that I was seeing what had inspired the diamonds and Vs so often woven into baskets and blankets by this lake’s first human admirers. Like the hazy area between water and air in the distance, the line between necessity and art was blurred. Those people long ago who braved the desert and made it their home found time amid the heat and scarcity to add beauty to their lives for its own sake.
Of course I can’t assume to know the thoughts of the first Paiute weaver. I do know, however, that a blanket will not keep anyone warmer, nor a basket carry food better, if it is decorated rather than bare. The Paiutes must not have thought, as Oscar Wilde did, that “all art is quite useless.” Who’s to say that they did not search for forms to warm and feed their souls in the lake they believe to be the tears of their common Mother.
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Comb Ridge as an Old Woman
Plastic, molten stone buckles and warps below
Its motions have affected mine
Layers of sand lain flat by ancient oceans
Which I’d kept hidden beneath my lush green flesh
Rose from dark depths in isostatic struggles
And over many lifetimes eroded, eroded
Washed away by waters which once formed me
But now so quickly seem to drag me always down.
This continues still as I stand, what’s left of me
Softness stolen and replaced with harsh but commanding lines
Cross-bedding and eclectic clasts
Unveiled for all the world to see
And you wonder at my hanging valleys
Carved by ancient streams
Whose cool beginnings
Now can barely be but guessed at
By those few who know me best.
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Improptu Discovery
I’m climbing alone over a boulder field from the canyon floor up toward a rock formation I first noticed three days ago, but didn’t decide to explore until about 20 minutes ago. I learned the futility of planning too far ahead in this unfamiliar landscape yesterday, on another solo hike. My carefully thought-out route through various parts of the canyon was thwarted by the simple fact that canyons do not provide climbable paths when and where I want them. Eventually, I had to completely retrace my steps. Today, I’m giving up on plans, I decided to start out down the one arm of the canyon I haven’t explored yet and be back by dinner. In between, I’ll just see where the rocks take me.
Navigating the sinuous canyon floor, I jump and climb from boulder to boulder. I’m trying both to avoid crushing fragile desert life, and having poky desert life prick my fragile skin. My body’s barely conscious adjustments of muscles to stay balanced transports my mind far from these sandstone canyons to a small, mirrored room where my body made similar adjustments for pirouettes and pas-de-bourrees. Of course, in these dance classes the object was to move as gracefully as possible, whereas in the canyon survival will suffice, but I can’t help feeling a strong connection between my careful movements across the sandstone and those I’ve made across stage floors for much of my life. With my hikings boots laced as carefully as pointe shoes, I trust the rough boulders to support my ascent as I’ve trusted partners to lift me into the air, and stand comfortably on well-callused toes to balance on a ledge. This whole travel begins to feel like an improvisational piece, where I take cues from the music that is my surroundings, and the plants and stones which are my fellow dancers, to determine each move.
Suddenly, the music changes. Looking up for the first time after some tricky maneuvers, an ancient stone wall which had previously been blocked from sight by a ledge is now visible maybe 30 feet ahead of me. It’s built in the same style as the ruins I’ve seen at the canyon’s mouth, but to call this a “ruin” seems inaccurate. The first room I see is completely intact, reaching from the flat top of the ledge to an overhang serving as the roof. The only opening in stone and mortar is a perfectly rectangular window about waist-height. A thin, flat door-stone which seems to have once blocked this aperture now lies on the ground beneath it, propped against the cliff.
I am thrilled by this surprise; finally a discovery that is all my own. Even though I’m sure many others have been here before, luck and happenstance were my only guides today. I found it myself, nobody pointed it out to me or suggested that it might be here, and I’m filled with the thrill of discovery. Still, I pause before moving closer. An older, more experienced dancer than I has just come onto the floor, and I must be careful not to step on his toes. I take a moment to mentally apologize for any trespass, and disrespect I may unwittingly bestow on whoever’s ancestors built this place, or whose remains might even now lie within it. Carefully, I creep closer, drawn to the lone window by curiosity. I’m almost too afraid to peek inside. What was the door-stone meant to hide?
What purpose did such a structure serve? Even a small person would have trouble fitting through the small window, and the room is long enough that anything stored in the back would be out of reach from the window. This is not an inviting building, it seems meant to keep something inside, and away from the outside world, and not let it out.
Maybe I would not get this sense if I wasn’t alone, if this find had not appeared so suddenly and unexpectedly, or if it wasn’t so deeply dark on the other side of that solitary window. I do sense it, however, as I crouch nervously a foot away from the wall, peering inside. Of course I see nothing but emptiness and more stone once my eyes adjust to the dark. Still, the feeling of awe and respect pervades. I’m hungry, but I could no more eat next to these walls than I could have a picnic in a graveyard. It’s the wrong move for the music; too mundane for such a place. I find somewhere off to the side to pull out the granola bar I’ve been saving.
After eating I explore the rest of the ledge. There are other walls, but no more fully intact ones. One structure makes me think of a children’s fort with its tiny doorway. The opening is not any larger than the first one I found, but it’s placed on the ground as if inviting young ones to crawl inside, instead of being halfway up the wall like the first room’s window. Amazing how much this detail changes the entire mood of these weathered stones.
I feel like a character in one of the Narnia stories, where average people found themselves in a different world which could only be reached when one was not trying to get there. Yesterday I was looking for a path into the canyon, and when I didn’t find one I hoped I’d at least happen across the trace of an old kiva or something to give my backtracking purpose, but this never materialized. Today, like the travelers to Narnia, I had one of the most exciting and unusual adventures of my life precisely when I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. I turn to the weathered stone wall one last time, thank my partner for the lesson and for the dance, and head back to camp.
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Migrations
A sandhill crane would most likely find my actions incomprehensible, absurd at best. In the summer, when these giants of the avian world are enjoying the coolness of Canadian tundra, I am home in California baking in 100-plus degree heat. As soon as they head south, I fly the opposite direction using fuel instead of feathers. I settle back into college life during northwestern falls with grey skies and bitter cold which would make any reasonable bird move camp. Meanwhile the cranes, since they are reasonable that way, are enjoying the more comfortable temperature of lower altitudes, along with the green bounty brought by winter rain.
Recently, we did manage to cross paths. When I was home for winter break, my mom and I drove several hours to explore a nature preserve near Sacramento which reportedly had prime bird watching. Since I’m the only other member of the family interested in birds, my mom is eager to take me on such outings every time I come home.
After an afternoon of chasing coots and mergansers with eager, telescope-equipped eyes and looking up the difference between goldeneye and bufflehead ducks for the hundredth time, we asked a ranger about the cranes. We had heard they were migrating through the area, but weren’t sure exactly where to look. The ranger said there were a few on the preserve, but in the evening most of them gathered in a nearby field for the night. She gave us a map and sent us on our way. We drove down a series of poorly maintained country roads, past farm houses and plowed fields of the type that characterized my childhood in the highly agricultural Central Valley. Reaching our destination at sunset, we were delighted to see huge sandhill cranes with outstretched wings beginning to drop out of the sky onto the half-flooded field. Quietly exiting the car, we watched transfixed as groups of cranes flew in from every direction, calling in their loud, guttural voices.
One by one, each crane glided to a landing. They would swoop in low, slow themselves down with a few strong wing-beats, and then splay bamboo-like legs out underneath themselves in a briefly awkward-looking moment before touching down. Regaining regal composure, they would then settle on whatever puddle or mound they preferred, joining hundreds of others already in place. They didn’t seem to mind that this was not one of the wetlands their ancestors had roosted in, but instead a plowed field left barren for the winter. Water is water, and what does a crane care if it lies in perfectly straight ditches rather than picturesque pools?
As it grew later, the cranes became black silhouettes against an increasingly dramatic sky. In a beautiful role reversal, the positive space of the moving cranes was solid black, and the “negative” space of the still sky took on the role of the color palette with streaks of gold and red rising up from the Coast Range to the west.
The fossil record of the sandhill crane is half again as old as that of most birds living today. Perhaps this long history has made its imprint somehow on the human subconscious. Perhaps that’s why these large, graceful birds seemed somehow deeply familiar to me even as they appeared exotic. Despite looking as if they belonged in another part of the world, they somehow felt, to put it plainly, “right.” It seemed natural for birds to look this way; that they must have always spread seven-foot wingspans over marshes for long, gliding movement. Looking back, this is an odd reaction considering that most birds I see every day could easily sit in my hand if they weren’t always flapping vigorously from one protective shrub to another. Maybe it’s party due to the fact that despite spending most of their lives miles away, the migrating birds fit into this scene like perfect natives.
Eventually the sky’s brilliance faded so that Mom and I could no longer see, but only hear the cranes discussing matters unknown to us in their loud, unashamed manner. We drove back past the gates and farm houses in the dark, reviewing the incredible scene mentally and with each other. In the back of my mind, and probably my mom’s too, was the thought that a week later I would be flying north again on my reverse migration. Like the nomadic cranes, though, my return home was certain. It doesn’t matter how much I change, or even if my familiar roosting grounds look different upon each return. I remain a native while becoming a foreigner. Water is water; home is home.
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Musings in 2058
Sitting in the JFK airport, I pull the Newsweek magazine I’ve been reading out of my purse. The front cover has a picture of a model-T Ford next to the latest electric Toyota, the main story being a history of the automobile. My mind wanders back to when I first got my driver’s license in high school, and how nervous I was to fill up gas myself the first time. Very few people know how to use a gas pump any more. I remember when a small car could be filled with $20, then $50, then $200, until rarity of fossil fuels made it so that only corporations like airlines, and a few wealthy auto collectors, could afford them.
We came up with alternatives, of course. Money is an excellent motivator for innovation. I think the general consensus is that change came too late, however. Riding the tram from my sister’s apartment to the airport, I’d looked up at the PVs installed on every rooftop and lamp-post. I’d thought of the seeming futility of trying to pull energy from the sun when the sky is so dark from smog. I guess they still produce enough electricity to be worth it, or maybe the city planners expected the smog to disappear as soon as they switched mainly to electric. The air is better that when all the cars ran on gas, the locals tell me, but not as much as they’d hoped.
I flip to a random page in my magazine, grumbling to myself about the volume’s cost. Printed news is more expensive now that most people read the online or i-mag version of everything. I feel extremely old sitting here with my hard copy, but paper is a familiar companion I am not yet ready to part with. The story I’ve landed on is about another proposed gargantuan hydroelectric dam on some river somewhere. I’ve stopped keeping track of new “cutting edge hydro projects.” Power for all of our new clean cars has to come from somewhere, and despite the fact that cheap PVs are almost everywhere now, water is more reliable than sunlight. Coal is probably the most reliable, but increasing health concerns made new coal plants illegal a decade ago. Environmentalists were thrilled by this victory, but every year since then more and more dams keep cropping up.
Maybe I’ll offer to pay for a kayaking trip for my grandson for his birthday. There aren’t many free-running rivers left now, and I want him to be able to enjoy them while he can. Maybe my sister will chip in with me and we can send her grandkids along too. I wish I’d come up with the idea while I was still at her apartment instead of now, in the airport about to head back to the west coast. Oh well, I’ll just call her from home. It really was a nice visit. Maybe they’ll invent the electric airplane soon, and it won’t be so ridiculously expensive to fly here. Well, not as expensive for me personally. I shudder at the thought of how much water would be needed to power our skies. Maybe they could put more wind turbines on the airport roof. I smile at the thought of wind behind a departing jet spinning a windmill to create electricity to power yet another jet. My practical side reminds me hat this might help, but there’s not enough open space left in the world for wind to save our rivers.
The article about the new dam reminds me of the book in my purse that I haven’t started yet. I pull it out, once again feeling ridiculously old holding paper while everyone around me reads from illuminated screens of all shapes and sizes. The book is a series of essays about water, a popular topic nowadays. They’re mostly nostalgic pieces, about how much the author enjoyed swimming and fishing in local streams as a kid, but now the same places have either been dried by global warming or fed into a pipe for irrigation, power generation, or municipal use.
Looking over at a group of school children in the waiting area, I wonder if any of them have ever gone fishing, boating, even wading in fresh water. Probably for most of them the only “natural” body of water they’ve seen is either the ocean or behind protective signs and fences in a nature reserve or national park.
My plane is boarding. Soon it will take off and add its share of carbon dioxide to the blanket lain over New York City. During my flight I’ll look out of the window at fields of soldier-straight windmills adjacent to cities glowing in the night. I’ll fly over rivers looking like giant staircases with concrete dams forming the steps. I’ll turn to my book full of words as nostalgic as my thoughts. I’ll wonder if the young woman sitting next to me will be able to answer the challenge my generation was so sure it could handle: fixing our parents’ broken world.
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Seeing What Was Meant to be Hidden
Many college students decide to go abroad their junior year, to explore new cultures, master a foreign language, and generally learn more about the world. This semester I joined 20 other students on a slightly different route. Instead of visiting another country, we decided to more fully explore our own, or at least a portion of it. For 3 months we traveled around the American West, meeting with scientists, ranchers, activists, you name it, learning about the region’s environmental issues.
Our nomadic lifestyle and remote campsites made it hard to keep in touch with “the outside world.” It wasn’t long before we began worrying that we were too disconnected, distancing ourselves from reality instead of learning more about it. Eventually I realized that such thoughts entirely missed the point. Yes, we were largely ignorant of international affairs for the semester, and couldn’t follow the historic presidential campaign as closely as we’d have liked. What we did do was come face to face with what had been going on right in our backyards without our really knowing about it.
For three months we lived realities most of us had only read about.
We’d all heard of wartime internment camps for Japanese Americans, but how can books or documentaries match the experience of going to the remains of the camp called Manzanar, below the Eastern Sierras, and feeling the same hot, dusty wind that greeted its prisoners? The humanity of the tragedy revealed itself in the rounded stones which delineated both graves and the gardens these people made in an attempt to create a home in their captivity.
As for another group the U.S. government relocated, few of us had any real insight into what a Native American reservation meant before spending the night within the Navajo Nation’s borders. History books tell us of people being forced off their homelands, but that seems purely a misfortune of the past before seeing half wild dogs and cows roaming the streets of towns consisting of shacks. It means nothing compared to being approached by an old Navajo man who sells you a shell necklace and, upon taking your ten dollars, thanks you with a toothless smile, saying he can now go buy something to eat. It becomes pertinent and real when you hear a woman saying a prayer in the Navajo language, asking that a power plant not be built on her ancestral homeland when two others are already poisoning the air and water of the Navajo Nation. Plants that sicken people who can’t afford hospital visits in order to power the homes of those in more affluent areas who take their energy-hungry televisions and computers for granted.
Not too far south from the reservation, miles from any official border crossing points, a dilapidated barbed wire fence marks the boundary between the United States and Mexico. In one area I noticed the wire was cut. Man-made barriers don’t stop people, the landscape does. Illegal immigrants cross here because the fence is smaller, but unfortunately the desert is wider. Visiting these areas we found coats and other belongings hanging from creosote bushes where their owners realized they were too much to carry through the unexpectedly harsh terrain. I knew people who crossed from Mexico illegally; had heard their stories, and thought myself sympathetic. Standing under the sun and staring at a humble memorial built along a narrow path used by these immigrants, I realized I hadn’t really understood before.
Even if I hadn’t left the car all semester, and simply driven through the arid west, I would have seen power plants belching smoke, lakes left dry when their historical water sources were piped elsewhere, and rusted, nodding oil wells relentlessly pumping up more sources of energy. The dirty but necessary side effects of our modern lifestyles have been relegated to remote, unpopulated areas, just as internment camps, Indian reservations, and border crossings have been pushed to the most remote corners of the country and our thoughts.
Throughout the semester these previously hidden places were all forced to the forefront of our consciousness. But despite being far from our familiar classrooms, academic habits were hard to break. Balancing our emotional responses to these experiences with a need to understand them meant forcing ourselves into approaching them the way our college had taught us. To understand it fully, the Navajo power plant had to become a case study. We had to back away in order to examine it carefully from all sides. The personal emotions did well up, though, and they are what will keep us from forgetting.
Sometimes our balance of objective and personal was off, and we changed our subjects to fit our thinking rather than the other way around. We often lapsed into approaching the people we met as textbooks, asking what would normally be considered overly personal questions in our thirst for information. We tried to discipline ourselves into an academically rigorous mindset to cope with the unconventional semester, but in so doing distanced ourselves from what was presented. In order to truly understand a place, a problem, or a person, it must be approached with the ability to see our own reflection, but not stare so closely that we ignore the greater context of its surroundings. Being able to look at a situation objectively is often necessary, but it’s impossible to truly care about something until you realize its connection to yourself.
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