102805 its 928am

Its a soggy morning in Bozeman, the American flag with copper eagle soaring above it sits motionless in the wind against the flagpole. The sun is starting to pry open the clouds, and the mountains that surround the town are beginning to show their new coats of snow.

We’ve been crossing through the crucial landmarks of the American west, and specifically getting a feeling for the ultimate in truths that this country and its identity deny, which is that not very long ago, Native American culture was brutally wiped out, and the wisdom and profundity of so many people, whose home was this soil, was trampled and tossed aside like a tabloid magazine.

I felt something very strongly along these lines in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. We had driven up into them on a beautiful way, camped the night out above a pretty lake, awoke to frozen boots and frozen truck and frozen coffee cups and frozen us, and then we set off again, way high up into the mountains, whose peak is somewhere around 14,000 (feet that is) though the pass we went through was around 8000′. The craggly rocks leveled out and smoothed slowly, the white firs and thin aspens more thinned out over the yellow meadows whose ceiling was the sky, drapes over with soft linen clouds like handkerchiefs blowing away from earth. We approached Medicine Wheel, a spot I must admit I previously knew nothing about. Prompted by a sign that said that Medicine Wheel was indeed off to the right up a treacherous dirt road with boulder strewn cliffs on either side and snow packed up the walls of course I took it. The truck protested and bumped and rattled and cautiously pulled itself up the couple of miles to a vastly deserted place (save for the SUV full of loud tourists from Montana who apparently never leave the house save for to pick up some fast food). What Medicine Wheel really is, I don’t know. From what I understand it has been a place of worship for many different tribes of Native Americans for over 7,000 years. That people would walk the endless miles of the west, up into these brutal mountains, and come to the most exposed spot in them to pray. And that all people should and could come there. The trails that ran to and through Medicine Wheel are apparently some of the oldest in North America.

The site itself was quiet and subtle, lines of stones lined up like the spokes of a large (35 feet or so diameter) though not giant, wheel. At the four points of direction there were larger pits built from rocks, presumably for fire. The area was wisely roped off, and a sign asked people to walk to their left around it. Along the ropes were thousands and thousands of prayer flags, bundles of sage, necklaces and other offerings tied to it. Inside the circle/wheel were the same, along with jawbones of animals, feathers, dreamcatchers, all, presumably, sacred to someone.

The place was wildly exposed and I felt the chill of desolation as I looked off to the west, where the mounds of dirt were pressed some 10,000 feet below. I felt the power of someone there, in prayer, while the lightning storms and blizzards rushed across the face of this place as if creation were taking place from that mountain top every day and night.

And coming back down the thin road I realized in a profound way the sadness that is inherent in the destruction of Native American culture. Its so simple, and yet, its as if people don’t take the treasures of knowledge and wisdom that cultures practicing rites and reason for more than 7,000 years in this land, the most beautiful place in the world, the American West.

Two nights before we spent the night below the towering and endlessly imposing/impressive Devil’s Tower, in Northeast Wyoming. It is known to most tribes from the area as Bear Lodge, or Home of the Bear, or something along those lines. You may know it from Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”, its the mountain that everyone goes crazy to make out of paper mache and mud and where the alien spaceship lands and makes music with the CIA or whatever. Anyways, you might not have seen that movie. But this formation is truly, and I’m not just trying to impress you here too, but its one of the most grand and awe inspiring things I’ve ever seen in my life. Its literally just thousands of rock columns, from afar looking like small and compact but up close being massive hexagons of about 20′ in diameter, pure rock, all pressed together and skyward. It looks as though the biggest tree in the world ever by far, as in a Redwood Tree that reached out of the upper atmosphere was cut, and all that was left was the stump. This too was a revered sacred space, where all kinds of people came to hunt, live, and be reverent. Its nearly impossible not to feel reverence for this thing. Its so much bigger than words or even pictures can convey.

And today we head into Yellowstone.

And so, nothing to complain about, off to get some coffee, off to see some wolves.