Rocky Mountain High

Less than fifty miles keep me from Farmington, N.M., and caring for the extreme need to re-supply food, water, as well as fix my stove that blew its motor just as I got into the Rocky Mountains and over several feet of new snow that fell over a week ago--maybe two....days have over-lapped, blurred, lost meaning, until I only know that I am walking up mountains that never go down. I just walk thinking of meals at tables, clean people in colorful clothing smelling like soap, and the hum of warm wine sipped from thin glasses. Leaning over a roadkill elk, I remove the twin ivories and drop them in my pocket to drill and tie to Osa's knife when it gets dark and I recline in my hide behind cedar and stone. I have lost touch with 2007 and find myself in 1880. I eat spruce grouse when jerky runs low, washing blood off my hands with snow wondering if my high school guidance counselor foresaw this coming. I am sleeping with snow to wake up with water and I have forgotten that it should matter.

The Apache people sought me out as I traveled through their sculpted mountains, and bedded down beside their horses, and snow-bound wild elk a quarter field away. I had been told ghost stories about the blacks before I came to pass through inner cities at night and been offered their help. I had been told evils to be had by the Mexicans that worried me until I slept in the fields where the illegals sought their rest, and we shared quarters for coffee. Weeks ago I was told that the Apaches would rob me blind and stumble drunk out from behind every tree intent on doing me harm. These are not the people I have found. The Apache, like so many other peoples I have passed though,with my heart bound up with warning, have been a kindness I would do well to aspire to. Day after day their cars pulled to the side of Rt. 64 to offer me a ride, hand me a few dollars toward my walk from a truck of smiling braids, eagle feathers waving from the rear-view, and shake my hand as if I really mattered. When I arrived in the Jicarilla Apache Mts. I was only in town for a half an hour before a bronze elder under a blaze orange cap took me out for a bowl of potato and beef soup, fry bread, speaking softly of payote roads he has walked. Storm after winter storm bound me in my tent, hands holding my map with numb fingers until I could sleep again and dream of warmth I used to know. When I could take to the road again, another reservation car would find me , once with a kind elderly Apache woman holding out a bag of jerky for my trail, and a sack of mixed nuts and dried fruit she drove out just to deliver to me some thirty to fifty miles one way.
As I came out of a fenced sage field with my water jugs filled with rusty water from a winter windmill no cattle use, a pick-up slides to a halt beside me. I shrug another nip of worry. Another woe to deal with. "Just filling my water jugs. I was all out and there's nothing but snow. It's hard to melt snow with snow. I tied the wire just as I found it." My face is worn down, every feature is pulled by the wind and bitten past red.
The native man driving smiles over what I assume is his family,"This land, it belongs to everyone. This is Apache land." He smiles. Giving my card, I tell my story. The man has used Peter's book with his students and understands the gist of my journey. Soon the truckload of passengers is trying to give me everything they can for my walk. With a quick good-bye the truck sails off. I think the driver was afraid I would be given the truck soon. Taking a swig of the dirt-red water that tasted like a mix of stone and the dust on my teeth, I squint after the truck with my new book of Lifesavers candy in hand wondering if grandmothers everywhere are issued these books of candy to hand out to people everywhere that need a smile.