Mad, Mad Month — Becoming See

Glass Buttes, March 26-30

We come to flint knap. My exposure to this skill has been minimal. I find it difficult, painful. I joke with Grey that I should probably give it up since I haven't figured it out the first time.

But I sit with some of the folks who are at the event, old timers with 30 years of experience knocking rocks around. They are patient, thoughtful. We sit around a smoky fire, glass rock shards in a riot of color scattered in piles everywhere, under an aging Juniper tree. The blue berries reflect the clear blue sky; blue on blue that we've missed west of the Cascades.

The dirt and sand under my fingernails matches what I've got encrusted in my hair, my nose, my ears.

The desert pulls me in.

I drive up the mountain with someone. We crouch in front of a little fire made of dried juniper and grass and wet wipes. I sprinkle tobacco on the flames, say thank you to the desert. To the rocks, the sky, the wind. To my friend who came to do this ceremony with me. I'm making it up as I go along. I'm See, and I don't know anything that's worth knowing, except that I don't know anything. My little fire with the tobacco sprinkled on it, the gratitude to the sky--I'm pretending to know what I'm doing. Pretending like what I'm doing means anything. It's not enough.

Baskets, April 3-5

A guest instructor brings her basket making expertise and her self expertise. We spend an entire day processing cedar bark from big pieces down to 3/4 inch strips. Jokes. Basket cases used to make baskets in insane asylums, she tells us. That's where the term comes from.

Once, I made a box out of pieces of paper with a group of people in a place where I didn't want to be. Then we used crayons to write positive affirmations on strips of paper and put the strips in the box. I wrote, "Studies show that positive affirmations are non-efficacious." Then I threw my box in the trash. The folks supervising me were not amused.

Starting the week off right.

She shows us a slideshow. We're told it's to put the basket making in context, to show how indigenous cultures operated in our bio-region. It's not that. We see what used to be, and the devastation that colonization, exploration, and industrialization wrought on the people who came before us. We learn how much has been lost, perhaps irretrievably, from the arrogance, presumption, rapaciousness of the culture we were all born into.

Our guest asks us what watershed we're from, what land we're from. Who lived there before us? I have no idea. I don't know what state I call home, right now, let alone who lived there before me. I don't even know where I'm sleeping next week.

There are no guides, anymore. There is no culture of story, no home for me, no sense of place or community to fall back on.

I'm on my own and I did it to myself. I'm See. I don't know anything. I'm from nowhere. Grey stays up until 11 PM talking me through it. It's not enough.

Cedar bark for baskets. Photo taken by Sky.

White River, Mt. Hood, April 10-13

We're supposed to be turkey scouting.

Cameron and I see a turkey in the field near our campsite on the first afternoon, after spending several hours wandering the hills together. Low scrub, grass, mixed with fir forest. Everything is dry. The fires come easy. We're getting spoiled by the high desert.

Turkey: scouted.

I spend one day working on my bow. One day in camp, reading. One day building a blind in a whole separate location with Grey. I don't really expect to hunt a turkey, but a few weeks from now I'll sleep in that blind.

The group runs into a stump with a Nazi symbol carved on it with a chain saw. Our last night, we gather around the stump with a hatchet. We have the camp ground to ourselves, though it's littered with shot gun shells and beer cans and will be full of people once the season opens.

I take the first turn. I work on that hateful thing with a vengeance. I strip down to my last layer, take off my hat. Sweat pools in-between my shoulder blades, under my arms. It's evening, getting colder, but I am red.

Red. Shaking. Teeth gritted. I taste blood. My jaw aches. I cry a little.

Each plonk of the hatchet on the stump rams up my arm into my brain. My shoulders ache before I'm done and hand the hatchet off to the next person. Defacing the defacement isn't enough to make me feel better. Nothing really does.

The men take their turns. I take another.

I grab a handful of pine needles. Two pine cones. A bone I found, probably a shin, probably a deer. Impromptu altar on the stump top. I sprinkle the wood chips on the needles.

I want to say so much, but I can't. I feel stupid, self-conscious. And angry. I talk to the air, because I cannot look at the men, "I hope the person who did this someday comes to a place where they feel like they don't need to do this kind of thing any more."

It's inelegant. And inauthentic. I don't wish that person well. I wish that person suffering--the same suffering I'm feeling right now.

I can't light the needles. I try multiple times. They are dry, the lighter is working. My form needs work, but mostly it's my attitude. This isn't just a stump. It isn't just an idiot with a chain saw. It's the past I don't have, the culture I don't claim, the community I was never a part of, the trauma that isn't mine.

Someone has to help me with the fire. The needles burn on the stump, a pile of red shards. It lasts much longer than I think it will; I end up scattering the smoldering needles and piling dirt on top of the altar to make sure the sparks are extinguished. Fire in the high desert is serious business.

As we walk back to our camp, the men and I hear turkeys calling. We creep through the fir trees up to the edge of the field in the dusk and listen to the light gobbling. There is a kind of peace in that, in the sound between the silence, in the sweetness of the pine needle smell, in the darkening gloom. But it's not enough.

I'm See. I know nothing. I'm from nowhere. I stand for nothing.

Back Home at Camp Trackers, April 17-20

On Tuesday I finish my bow. I've been working on it since October. "One more pass" is my least favorite phrase in the English language right now, but I don't rush it. I sand it to 600 at least three times. Cut in an arrow rest.

I bleed when I fire it for the first time. I rub the blood on the belly. The red stains the orange and mixes with the grain. I oil it anyway. It tells me its name is Barsoom.

Because inanimate objects have names and talk in my universe. And I honor them with blood.

I've had a few conversations about discipline, the last few weeks. Our group throws out some definitions while we're turkey scouting.

I like, "Discipline is doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it."

Barsoom is the first thing I've finished the way it's supposed to be finished since I graduated college in 2013.

Someone tells me that the next time I think about not finishing something, I can imagine myself breaking Barsoom in half. Seems fair.

I'm See. I know nothing. I'm from nowhere. I stand for nothing.

But I finished one thing.

And I know I'm capable of more. That's enough, for now.

Bleeding on Barsoom. Photo taken by See.