Writing by Lara Mehling
Epiphany 2: Call for a Unified Stewardship
Epiphany 4: Navajo Dine Nation: A Potential Model for Local, Renewable Energy
Other Writing:
» Memorial for Two
» Birds
» Snakes
» Blue
» Tail Feather
» Sacred Bone
» The Things We Leave Behind
» Red-Winged Blackbirds
Epiphany 1: Contemplating Western Identity: The Interdependence of Land and Man
As I look out the window along this highway and watch passing farmland turn into desert the further I head south, I wonder about this adventure in the West that I am undertaking. This terrain all belongs to something greater called the American West, but what is it that ties it all together? My thoughts wander to ideas of western culture, identity and landscape that I encountered in literature and popular culture. Not only do I observe the realities of the West and its environmental condition, but I begin to see the confusing interdependence of the land and its people—or the people and its land. I have lived in California for eleven years yet never stopped to question this rather undefined concept of the West.
Until now, the term “the West” was vaguely synonymous to me with “West Coast”. My second thought, however, upon hearing the term, would have been an image lingering from a series of Marlboro ads—the typical sunset, rocky desert and cowboy. When I was younger, my brother and I frequently dressed up as cowboys and Indians. I have a photo of us where I am wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, a cowboy hat and holding a pistol while an absurdly colorful feathered chieftain’s headdress buries my little blue-eyed brother. All this took place in the middle of Germany, a place about as far from the Wild West as I can imagine. What a testament this is to the power of that mythic image of the West. I think to foreigners, the West still is a distant legend. And its cowboys were our childhood heroes. I mostly saw theses scenes in comic strips or cartoons, never hearing the complete story. And yet I never questioned their validity or became aware of their irrelevance to the European culture surrounding my childhood. My primary education focused on European peasants and farmers, kings and queens, not on any characters from the American history textbook. So without clarification or context, our imaginations ran wild, we drew cacti—a plant I had never seen the likes of—on etch-a-sketches during long car rides and cowboys with lassos in crayons on windows. I am not sure when I began replacing myth for fact, but perhaps I am still filling in the gaps with stories from each place I go. Cowboys and Indians proved so universal an image that I knew of no diversity between the states—I condensed all of America into that single vision.
The years I have spent living here in the United States have replaced that single image for one of a fragmented country containing many more cultures. But these landscapes passing by the window are not separate but in fact all connected to form one continuous rippling plain, despite their cultural or political differences. Sometimes the continuity of it all is hard for me to remember. It is much more evident, however, from the road and I am able to piece together these vast expanses for which the West is so famous. The transitions are smooth and I begin to question conceptual state borders, lines we have drawn but cannot see. I wonder if I am capable of orienting myself without these human guides—roads, signs, names. To me it seems that we partition the vastness out here in order to comprehend and manage the overwhelming size of this land. In a country with such a range of landscapes, however, the unification of a country through the land seems impossible. For me, a sense of place is important in developing a sentiment of homeland. And thus, when dealing with such a large country with such diverse places, I cannot quite understand American patriotism for this very reason: How does one find a universal patriotism if the land to which the citizens connect is so utterly diverse? If the land fails to bring conformity, well, then the unity must come from somewhere else.
I would argue that it is based on the ideal of individual freedom or independence. Gary J. Hausladen states in his essay, “Where the Cowboy Rides Away: Mythic Places for Western Film”, that the cowboy of the Wild West became America’s new national identity. Although this theory does not seem particularly representative of all fifty states, it did fit my childhood perception of America. According to Hausladen, the Wild West identity created an image powerful enough to stand as the nation’s new patriotic constitution. And so it came to be that America represented, at least for me, a world entirely foreign and dreamlike. By idealizing the cowboys, I indirectly admired the independence demonstrated by an adventurous lone ranger. The West embodied, for me and America alike, a common dream. And so in the absence of a national and uniform landscape, the identity of the West has, until now, been based on this commonality.
The freedom of these rangers, based on an assumed sense of ownership, played a key role in constructing the heroic reputation of cowboys. They remain as heroic figures to us because of their fearless victory over the Wild. Like colonists riding on horses, wearing leather boots and hats, these Euro-Americans dominated the American West. Janie Tippet, a rancher from Wallowa County, Oregon, when asked about the possibility of the reintroduction of beaver to the local area, replied by saying, “In the West, there’s this thing that man dominates. So that mindset is hard to change”. For her this was an explanation of the ranchers’ resistance to changing cattle grazing practices. And it struck me as a very honest and truthful thing to say. This American tradition of cattle grazing is not easy to change; a lifestyle passed on for generations is difficult to put into question and reevaluate. And so these deep roots of running cattle became a culture in itself from which we do not quickly move on. Perhaps this ideal practiced in cowboy culture even inhibits progress toward a more contemporary Western identity. For it seems there is nothing left to dominate. Every spot on the map is already designated a specific color—wilderness or campground, these public lands are claimed and tamed. And so I stare at these cowboy icons, lassos in hand, and wonder, if there is nothing untamed remaining, what becomes of the Wild West? We got rid of any wild that was ever part of the American West a long time ago. And yet, we still hold onto this nostalgic self-image. But my observations lead me to think that this identity is long outdated. The cowboys did their part and now we live in a domesticated landscape dependant upon us as a direct result of our domination. We have the reins in our hands. And when I hear the words restoration, conservation, reintroduction and recovery program, I begin to see our fault: We have taken this land’s former independence and claimed it as our own.
We created a strange mutual dependence with the land, namely its natural resources. This reciprocal relationship is what defines the possibility of a new uniting theme. Only this time, the theme appears not to be between the individuals of this nation, but rather between the people and their surrounding environment. The arid land of these open spaces—for that has become, for me, the new definition of the West, not conceptual but rather geographical—is as thirsty as we are. Water, then, appears to be a new commonality within the West. And once again this new identity, too, appears separate from the rest of America. This common necessity for water would replace the previous common dream as basis for unity within the West. And as a result of all the agricultural domestication, the land is no longer self-sustaining. Ironically, we are now the only ones able to protect this land from our very selves. Human degradation of the land has granted us alone the power of restoring independence to the land. We can choose to protect the West and return sustainability to it, but that is a sacrifice I do not believe we are yet prepared to make. Maybe this is the true task of the environmental movement—to grant the land, not exclusively that of the American West, its organic rights, to recognize them and finally return the independence we are taught to uphold.
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Epiphany 2: Call for a Unified Stewardship
The American West is defined by public land. Frederick Jackson Turner discussed in his 1893 writings that the culture arising as a result of these public rights developed a social equality among the western settlers that ultimately led to economic and political equality. He also noted that, “not without a struggle would the western man abandon this ideal and it goes far to explain the unrest in the remote West today.” More than a century later, there is still unrest, perhaps a new unrest. Citizens are still struggling for this public right of social equality as a derivative of the land. Proper management of the land’s resources, namely stewardship — in its various forms — is the current consideration. Although there is no shortage of stewards in the West, a universal understanding of ‘proper’ stewardship with a single objective, strategy or authority, does not exist.
Jon Marvel highlights one view of stewardship. As executive director of Western Watersheds Project (WWP) — an organization that challenges, with direct litigation, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) ability to properly regulate ranchland health— Marvel argues that ranching in the West is not a form of stewardship. His goal is to eventually put an end to livestock grazing on public land in the West, on the premise that it is economically and environmentally unsustainable. Even with the restoration of public lands in mind, Marvel and WWP decline annual Shoesole meetings discussing resource management project proposals. Shoesole is a non-profit group of Elko County for collaborative action regarding resource enhancement comprised of federal agency officials, ranchers, and wildlife specialists. The consequent lack of direct communication creates a hostile relationship similar to the “dysfunctional relationship” Marvel observed fostered by ranchers with their neighbors; he believes that “ranching culture in the West is intolerant of other people”.
Ranching on public lands in the West presents an opposing view to Marvel’s form of stewardship. As a culture, despite all of Marvel’s endeavors, it is not so easily changed or abandoned. Ranching is set apart from other forms of stewardship because of its main objective as a culture and business. Ranchers such as the Boies family—participants of Shoe Sole and directly affected by the lawsuit— adopt holistic management practices in order to do their part in rehabilitating the land’s vitality while maintaining ranching as the cultural and economic priority. Allen Savory developed Holistic Management as a way to incorporate conscientiousness of the land’s ecological health with agricultural aims, sometimes using each part to improve the other. Ranching on public lands in the West as a priority could thus be considered primarily a cultural ‘issue’, not an environmental one.
This principal cultural difference overshadows the mutual aim at enhancing the sustainability of the land shared between both parties—WWP and the Boies ranch. Thus, collaboration can only occur on ecological solutions in management, not in the preliminary debate concerning ranching in the West. Yet even with this mutual aim in mind, the ideals manifest themselves in disparate forms of stewardship. Ultimately, these emergent forms demand the question: What is ‘stewardship’? Who is a true steward, what constitutes good stewardship and what are its objectives? WWP, the BLM, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the National Forest Service and other government agencies and non-profit organizations, as well as the ranching community, could all be considered stewards of the land. Despite this range of land management agencies, discrepancies within the details of management and assessment remain. The objective of stewardship for some may be the health of the land, or it may be the wellbeing and recreation of the people, or the vitality of wildlife. Stewardship is not solely concerned with the condition of the land, but also intricately connected to social consequences, environmental concerns, and economic stability.
Cultural disparity and the absence of universal land management standards are stalling collaborative stewardship in the West. This undefined ‘proper’ stewardship may be in need of centralized authority and yet, to whom should the responsibility be given to make these decisions of public land use—the people, the state, or the federal government? In the mean time, the more urgent modification is the direction of stewardship toward an emphasis on the land as opposed to the people since this is the common concern. That is, if it is even possible to divorce the two. Because, although priorities vary in this struggle between western men for Turner’s notion of the “ideal”, it might be wise to begin in the common recognition of both parties: The land’s need for rehabilitation.
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Memorial for Two
This desert highway sees a green patch.
Tall trees sway in straight rows
growing high above the wild sagebrush.
Any lone tree found in the desert is a landmark.
Testimony to a site now desolate—
Here lies Manzanar.
Bare bones and windblown dust salute the flag of liberty.
For the white man is a victim of color once more,
threatened by an invasion, but not his own.
Tall, white and almost alone
—five graves remain—
This monument cannot tell all the evidence.
Foreign characters to remember
classrooms of Japanese children dancing in circles,
bright feathers in their hair.
How bold of America to teach that blood story
to those fenced in
on these same desert floors.
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Birds
Dots and lines
Like I drew them yesterday,
Those birds, dark and heavy
Flew against an empty sky.
Weighed down by rock and mountains,
White granite peaks, snowless and dry.
Echo up this canyon,
It is too early to speak.
Yell at the serenity
Of this orange striped morning.
Cries—strange and pained—call,
And my cold alertness marks it all.
Down low the lake is dry.
Cemented sand cracks
Like eggs for other birds, not these.
No birth here in a dead sea
Only seagulls looking for salt
And sandpipers, western migrants like me.
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Snakes
Today I stepped over a snake,
Twenty-five curves in the line.
As my feet crossed its body,
Dreams of sliding down
The red tunnel of serpent necks,
Spilling into a square
Turquoise swimming pool
Surfaced from my memory.
I linger and examine
From a few steps away, remembering
My solo spot was on an island in a canyon
And I slept in a half-cave overhang for protection.
At night I trembled at every rustling noise.
Then I found what I feared at the rock pile.
Interrupted by a hiss, a curling diamondback
Under a near rock.
My heart beat like a tangled hummingbird.
So I got up in the head-throbbing heat
To draw a snake in stones.
I counted the curves, admired its stillness.
These creatures, I see now,
Are more graceful than birds.
Their bodies wind soundlessly.
Meandering movements,
Every length keeping course like an old riverbed.
Like spiral glass wind-charms, too,
Spinning and swindling
To move continuously upward:
Just another optical illusion.
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Blue
Juniper berries and shadows at dusk, blue,
Like my sandal straps and plaid cotton dress.
Tent, chair and other dyed fabrics
Leave only the open rain puddles to receive
From the big sky that shares its color sparingly.
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Tail Feather
There are rocks here to remind us of animals.
Bear’s Ears and Mule Ear, north and south.
And yesterday I saw a bird dive into the ground,
Tail feathers sticking up straight, speared fan-like.
I wonder where it came from, what it spotted form the sky,
What mark on earth drew it down so forcefully.
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Sacred Bone
Spiral calendars of the solstice are clocks
With sun-strip aperture hands
Straight down the center.
Dark dwellings in shade
Measure time by the sun’s intrusions.
The gaping fishmouth of the cave swallows
Light at the rim
But the dome remains damp, cold
Like an underground chamber
In a stone cathedral,
Hollow and loud in its beckoning silence.
But I was not quiet until I picked up the bone in question.
I did not know that it might have been a human sliver.
I did not know that it might have been a Navajo.
I did not know that if it was both,
I had committed a terrible wrong.
I let the bone fall immediately back
Into pulverized stone,
Alongside the cornhusk.
All my careful steps undone,
All for a disrespect I did not intend.
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The Things We Leave Behind
I have been thinking about the things we leave behind—both with intention and neglect. I see waste and I see artifacts. Here in the red desert I hunt arrowheads and chert chips, pottery shards and steps. These are artifacts. These I did not leave, but these I leave now after finding. On other desert campsites I find waste: Broken glass bottles and rusty cans. These modern vessels are discarded trash littering the landscape, things we no longer have purpose for or find meaning in. The Pueblo people, however, respected their waste because they saw spirit and being in these things. Unlike our modern culture, these ancient people let the remains of cornhusks and animal bones rest in their living quarters at “a midpoint in their journey back to dust,” as Leslie Marmon Silko writes. On a hike into fish mouth cave on Comb Ridge I found these things left behind. I came across walls and homes in which I discovered cornhusks and a bone.
With curiosity, I picked up that bone. I placed it in the open hand of local artist/archaeologist Joe Pachak—he was examining another relic at the time. His gaze focused on the object and then lifted, looking me straight in the eye. He told me of the Navajo respect and protection of bones. Then he tossed it back down, quickly. I stared down at the sliver—it could have been human, it could have been a Navajo. I share this moment because the shame I felt at disrespecting something I did not understand shattered the careful intentions I had when visiting this ancient inhabited region. All my careful steps to avoid breaking a 7,000-year-old pottery shard, to notice details and not shake walls, were undone by one thoughtless act. I fell quiet, wandered up the pulverized stone slope further into the cave and found a quiet spot to sit on my own. The cave was dark and damp, so utterly different from the blazing scene beyond the rim. In my solemnity, I was reminded of a medieval castle or of a tall hollow cathedral, loud in its request for silence. The sensation of a church, I realize now, is the closest I could have come to understanding a sacred home. A dripping leak in the sandstone ceiling drew my eyes up and over onto the back wall behind me. Here I found another thing we leave behind: Words and images.
The stone was full of scrawled names and dates overlaying ancient rock art. Again these things resembled both waste and artifact. Like the pottery shards and the glass bottle pieces, both signified vessels of our culture. These wall decorations appeared similar in the deliberate effort to leave behind. Only the approach and the aesthetic were, to me, shockingly different. While the Pueblo people etched their cultural history and communal stories into the stone, this graffiti was selfish and uncompromised. The Pueblo people drew images that were not detailed or specific, but rather representational, capturing the essence of things. A squash flower is simply four linear petals, for if it had more detail, it would hold true to only one blossom, not the spirit of all. Names and dates have the opposite objective. Although both the rock art and the graffiti are ways of illustrating a legacy put in stone, leaving behind a story, the new stuff disturbed me. Rather than focusing on place, this modern graffiti focuses on individualism. For the Pueblo people, place took precedence over time. Places told stories and these were carried for generations, holding importance regardless of their age. This land is public, it belongs to us all, and curious hikers like me enter the cave, just the same. And yet we are visitors, not residents. Regardless of our right, this is not our home. We do not understand the sacred stories of these people and this place.
I have come to realize that to respect is sometimes to not touch, sometimes to pick up, but always to consider what the landscape looked like before. Leaving behind, whether it is waste (not yet become artifact) or art as memorial, is something us humans have done for thousands of years. It is a way of passing on a bit of our story, both practical and mythical. But the place in which we choose to leave behind our mark should be our home. I want to be able to define this place for myself, for a culture I can feel a part of. But what exactly is it that we, even as a defined culture, should leave behind to accurately tell stories while not forgetting to respect the chosen locality? I am not sure that our waste will ever become artifact.
Reference:
Silko, Leslie Marmon. “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination: From a High Arid Plateau in New Mexico”. On Nature, Edited by Daniel Halpern. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987.
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