I don’t actually know the date that Wings captured this image — it’s been too many years ago now to pin it down any more closely than “winter, about ten or twelve years ago.” But for some reason, I have always associated it with Valentine’s Day, which leads me to believe that he took it one February long ago.
Which means, of course, that on some level, I have always associated it with love.
On this last day of the month that the outside world links with notions of love, it seems fitting to lead with this image, for many reasons.
This month, we have used this space to explore our cultures’ many ways in which love manifests: romantic, platonic, filial and familial, of and for culture and clan and community. But love extends beyond the limitations of humanity, to encompass our world, the animals and plants with which we share it, the spirits themselves. What we casually label “love” comprises so much more than affection; it includes honor and respect and sacrifice and humility, in defense of our own and in defense of our world. Love exists in the braided hoop that links us to past and future, to ancestors from the time before time and to children who will be born far beyond the reaches of the Seventh Generation.
Our natural world is instructive in this regard.
We live now in a larger world in which whatever happens to us in the immediacy of the moment is all that matters: no thought for the long term, nor for the larger context of history. It’s a dangerous approach to living, one that has brought us to this deadly pass with regard to climate change (and with so much else). This country continues to be a colonial culture, and as long as it exists in its current incarnation, that will not change. Within our own small indigenous communities, we can continue to practice the traditions that have always been mitigating influences, harm reduction writ small and localized, but absent the kind of societal upheaval that forces a remaking, whole and entire, of the dominant culture, our approach to living will remain just that: localized.
Perhaps the greatest barrier to healing the way in which the world lives out its collective existence is one of control: So-called “Western” culture has taught that we can affect anything and everything, that we control every aspect of our lies and destiny. We know better, of course; there are forces that far exceed our own small powers, and to think that we exert control over them is hubris. But that is precisely where the lust for — and illusion of — control leads: to hubris, arrogance, ego, authoritarianism.
As Native people, one of the misconceptions we face regularly about our ways is that they (and therefore we) are “fatalistic.” Nothing could be further from the truth. If we indulged in fatalism, we would neither keep to our traditions nor even be here to practice them. To the contrary, what we do is keep ourselves firmly grounded in the larger context of our history, our identity, and the braid that links us to past and future, what some call the Red Road, others, the Sacred Hoop. It’s a worldview that declines to privilege our own immediate existence over the larger arc of the world and time.
An anecdote from our days in the gallery is instructive. Here at Red Willow, when a member of the community walks on, a cedar post is placed at the head of the grave. In a year, that post will be turned into a cross. In the cemetery in the old village, many of the graves are vey old indeed, and time, weather, and subsidence have taken a predictable toll. Many of the crosses no longer stand upright; some list to one side, others have fallen down completely. The cemetery is a part of the guided tour of the village, and one of the inevitable questions we would be asked by tourists visiting the gallery was why people didn’t set the crosses back upright.
The answer is simply that when it’s time for them to fall, that’s what they will do.
The key phrase is “when it’s time.”
Modern technology has given us the illusion of control over forces of life and death. We are not peoples who refuse to avail ourselves of it; far from it. Some of the most technologically plugged-in people we know are Native millennials. We use modern medicines and medical procedures; indeed, they have lengthened our life expectancies considerably, at least for those among our peoples who have ready access to them. We drive cars and watch TV and surf the Internet and use power tools and cell phones. It’s not a question of will, or of ability.
But just as with the crosses, our peoples know that some fundamental aspects of existence are meant to be left to their natural course, to occur (or not) when it’s time.
The photo above is an example from our natural world here. When I first came to this place, the trees looked just as they appear in the photo: four dead cottonwoods, ghost sentries standing guard before the mountain. Just to the northeast of that stand were four more:
Yes, technically, it’s five, since the second one from the left includes two separate trunks intertwined, but I’ve always thought of it as one united spirit.
Today, most of these trees are gone.
Of the four directly above, placed in a line, only the one on the far right remains.
Of course, the very fact that both stands of trees were dead is proof that we are all humbled before powers greater than our own: As tall and regal and seemingly strong as these eight sentries were, they were, in the end, unable to transcend death. But even in death, they gave life to the landscape, serving as perches for raptors and smaller birds, adding a stark beauty to our view.
Then the winds came.
That is nothing unusual here; in this place, the wind is spring’s defining element. And by “wind,” I don’t mean a gentle breeze, or even an occasional gust; I mean a sustained gale that last for weeks, even months, and inevitably counts among its seasonal casualties numerous tree branches, miscellaneous roofing panels and structure, the occasional power line . . . and, of course, sometimes an entire tree.
But a few years ago, the wind took out much of the stand in the top photo, although from the top, not the root, and the first two on the left in the photo immediately above; the third would fall to a storm later. Of those shown just above, the first two to fall were eventually cut up and hauled away for firewood; part of the third remains in place on the ground; the fourth still stands insistently in place. In death, all four provided beauty; post-death, the other three warmed the homes of one or more families.
But for purposes of this discussion, it is the stand pictured at the top of this post that interests me most. When the wind damaged it so badly, I was afraid that it would be cut down entirely. Later that spring, in acequia-cleaning season, the people responsible for that particular system set fire to the grasses to clean out the ditches. That’s not nearly as negligent as it sounds; in this area, we have invasive grasses and bindweed that, left unchecked, choke off all resources to other plants, and by the time spring rolls around, they have carpeted the land completely. The traditional way of dealing with sections where the dried grass cover has made digging impossible is by burning it. Of course, burning can only occur on those rare spring days when the wind goes on a brief hiatus, and whomever is doing the burning needs to be experienced, watchful, and quick to respond.
That spring, it got away from them.
I was headed into town in the early afternoon, and when I pulled even with this part of the field along the highway, a fire truck had been driven down below the fenceline to sit in front of the trees. The fire had been put out, but blackened tendrils stretched outward in several directions, charred veins on the surface of the land. And the fire had reached what remained of the cottonwood stand.
I was still mourning the loss of the trees to the wind; now, I was sure that the additional damage would lead whomever was responsible for that plot of land to cut them down entirely. Truth be told, I felt ill.
A year passed, and no one did anything with the trunks and stumps that remained.
And then, that spring, something wonderful happened: The largest of the remaining trees began to leaf.
Now, that stand of dead cottonwoods is smaller, shorter — and beautifully, defiantly alive.
These great old trees that had always seemed a symbol of history and time, of the spirits’ blessings, of lessons in love and humility — these trees that I feared were lost to us forever were in fact returned to us in newly transcendent shape and spirit.
And every time I pass by them, I’m reminded that things happen when it’s time.
~ Aji
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