Semester in the West

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Kiana Potter: Energy Follows Thought

With his left hand cupped around his ear, he leans forward in his eroding camp chair that has held so many bodies over so many years. He repeats our names under his breath with a subtle nod of his head, holding the words in his mouth, willing them into memory. Wrinkles drawn like the drainage bed of a dried desert river fan from soul-soaked pockets of deep blue reverence. Strands of long white hair curl over the cliff of his chin. His small stature, held together by the cloth of sun-stained skin, contrasts an enormous spirit in humble grandeur.  

In the belly of Butler Wash, just outside of Bluff, Utah, Joe Pachack led us to experience the remnants of Ancestral Puebloan homesites. Originally from Colorado, Joe was drafted as a high schooler in 1968. During his time as a helicopter guard, he flew over Bluff, Utah. Feeling a pull he recalls as “metaphysical”, he reveres that first sight as “an oasis in the desert”. It took him 20 years, but when he finally made it back he never left. Now Joe has spent decades in Bluff as an artist recording rock art and artifacts. 40 miles directly south of Butler Wash, Joe was the first person to rediscover rock art of a mammoth or bison, suspected to have been drawn by the Clovis people who inhabited the Bluff area as early as 14,000 years ago. 

Arid ground plumes below the impact of many steps as we chase heels on a tight single-track trail. Misunderstood as lifeless, the desert floor springs into a virdescent jungle, demonstrating what is possible where just a few fleeting drops of water flow. Primrose greets my lower legs with a gentle tickle while the yellow flourish of Rabbit Brush speckles the landscape. Red star explosions of Scarlet Gilia found communities between Ash Berry. I introduce Horehound Mint to my tastebuds for the first time, bitter over a quick goodbye. Pale sticky spikes of cocklebur cling to the legs of wandering pants as Joe playfully identifies them as porcupine eggs. Gently taking a plant in his hand, he invites us to the smell of a Wormwood branch. I hold it to my nose, inhaling until I can no longer separate the scent from the air. I consider the label of sweet citrus and sage qualities, struggling to find the words to understand a new smell, like trying to imagine a color I have never seen before. As he talks, a wave of inspiration bathes me in urgency. In the presence of such a library, the holes in my knowledge are a humbling infinity between the things I know. 

The succession of human civilizations in the area shaped the landscape. While speculation plays a large role in the interpretation of the area’s history, Ancestral Puebloan Basketmakers were the first to establish permanent homesites in Butler Wash around 650 A.D.. Throughout history, the homesite in Butler Wash has been occupied by an evolution of Puebloan Tribes. Puebloan Basketmakers I, II, and III walked in the footsteps of their predecessors, sharing the same Kivas and carving stones. By 1300 A.D. they are assumed to have migrated out of the area. 

On the hillside, crumbling walls sewn together by adobe clay stand below the roof of a water-carved alcove. Goosebumps diffuse down my arms as I stare into a time capsule. We gather around a disintegrating rectangular Kiva, speculated to have been built by the first Basketmakers to settle the alcove for ceremonies or burials. The Kiva’s original architecture was almost indistinguishable from the carnage. Its sandstone building blocks eroding back to dust, rubble strewn across the floor in hurried chaos. Joe explains that pot hunters, archeologists, and other heedless guests had stolen artifacts, tearing the homesite apart. “What we’re seeing here is a truly amazing site that has been ripped to holy hell. It has been disregarded.” He states matter-of-factly. The remains are fenced off by bent rebar stakes and a sagging thin chain, a barrier of morality rather than physicality. “I bent a lot of these,” Joe said gesturing. “Donated my rebar bender and welder to the BLM to do things like this. And it's helped.” In another homesite, we see modern words branded over irrecoverable petroglyphs. “MIKE WAS HERE” along with a hundred other names and initials announcing their personal negligence, covering up the only form of written history for the first people in the area. “If we don't have reverence for it, it doesn’t mean anything to us.” Joe’s words heavy in the hot air as he draws our eyes to the overlooked details. Smoke stains older than time and memorial shadow the alcove’s walls. Faint fingerprints preserved in clay grout fossilize forgotten people, their energy still here. But amongst that beauty, looters saw the money that comes from stealing a hand-coiled pot and a collector found their newest piece of home decor, something to show off at dinner parties.  

 As I write this my head spins. I want to tell you how meaningful it was to be around Joe, how unsettling it is to see the extractive destruction of homesites. But my mind teeters on eggshells as I unpack the complex dichotomy of Joe as a non-native person, who has dedicated his life to holding reverence for these places, and the simultaneous ruination of them by others. Feigning for a conclusion, I am humbled by my missteppings. When trying to do justice to this topic, don’t paint Joe as a savior. Address the flawed and violent history of archeology. Don’t romanticize the Puebloan people and do not generalize Native folks across different landscapes and time periods. Explain how non-native people should coexist with the homesites of Butler Wash but remember, you don’t have the answers. Maybe walking through the homesites, despite doing it in the most respectful way we knew how, was wrong. Maybe we should be doing it because what will happen to the history if we do not? Where is the reciprocity? What does that look like? Profit and preservation do not go hand in hand. If they did, maybe textbooks would tell uncensored stories of violent colonialism. Kids could be taught to care when they were taught to read. Maybe as adults we wouldn’t be swimming in the world of righteous academia, struggling to keep our heads above water, wondering why we didn’t stop and listen for the answers to these questions a long time ago. My brain is muddled, my tongue swollen with the taste of a lifetime infused with the narratives of settler colonialism. 

The reality of the situation specific to Butler Wash, is that the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloan Basketmakers have moved out of the Bluff area. There weren’t many people who could credibly guide Joe on his endeavor in Butler Wash, so Joe approaches things with a humble curiosity. Amongst an epidemic of white-saviorism, skepticism is a healthy reaction. I am not in a position to make claims of the correctness of his actions, but well-intentioned people are looking for examples. In a world where the paralysis of perfection is the death of progress, Joe is moving. I heard his voice quake under the weight of his words, the crack in the back of his throat that makes the hairs on your neck stand up because you know he is trying not to cry. “If I teach you an ethic, it is that another person’s culture can be as sacred as yours, and it’s not possession. It’s a concept. It’s an idea. It grew over time and has evolved into something magnificent.” His words echo. 

Joe steps around the cryptobiotic soil, admires the ants, and tastes the wind. He doesn’t seem afraid of doing it wrong, but of not doing it at all. When faced with the decision to think critically of the role of non-native stewardship, we must resist the complacency of non-action. “It’s the opposite of living in ignorance, believe me, energy follows thought. So think it, and you can invent it, and you can help a community gather around it.” With credit to Willie Nelson, this is Joe’s mantra. There will always be things lost in the separation of an outsider, but the knowledge that Joe has dedicated his life to is worth something. In a time, desperate for change, can Joe be an example of reverence?