Tag Archives: Walpi Housing

Island of the Blue Dolphins

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Mo was our cat, and at the last minute as Anna was leaving Hopi, he leapt out of the car.  Anna was tired, expectant and preoccupied.  She wanted to get that cat, but it wasn’t her priority and in the end she didn’t have it in her.  She was thinking of other things.  She camped by the culverts for a full six hours trying to lure him, but when all was said and done,  it was all she could give and so she got on her way.

The book always made me so sad when I was little. To think of the little girl marooned all alone by herself on that island.  Left to raise herself into an uncertain future.  Even then I wanted to reach out to her.  I wanted her to be safe.

Some would say it’s stupid to travel halfway across the country to rescue a scared and bewildered animal.  But such as it was.  Someone, someone in this wide world has to do it.  Otherwise, what really are we here for?

So I climbed into the car and drove 15 hours straight back to Arizona.  I spent 30 hours up at Hopi.  I found the life that we had built there completely dismembered and gone.   The ramada had been ripped to the ground, the gardens dug up, the fencing tore down.  There was nothing left of our life there.

I spent the weekend combing that empty neighborhood for the cat.  I crawled through mud and across tumbleweeds, caking my chest in bull heads, peering through both ends of filthy culverts.  I called out again and again for a white kitten.

And in the while, I learned a little about animal ways.  How when they get scared they hide and they dig in for dear life.  How we have favorite spots and they nurture us and give us comfort.  I found the culvert ends where he crouched in the soft mud leaving hieroglyphs of paw prints.  And where he would eat, and the puddles from which he would lap his water.  I found two dead birds at the stoop of Pearish’s porch.  He was still hunting, and he wanted to please, he wanted to remain connected with humans, with us, and show he was still present.

He was independent and well good enough to fend for himself.  Most creatures do.  For those of us still standing, it’s what’s allowed us to survive for near forever.

But he was so scared.  Too scared to even come out and face me and an uncertain future.  Too scared of retribution and fear of what may happen.

In the end we were saved by a Hopi security man.  He had spent weeks watching him on the hospital security cameras.  His watchful eyes are what saved us.

He was the one who saw him and alerted me to the fenced parking lot where Mo was sequestered.

I climbed the fence with a can of sardines.  Again and again he bolted from me.  So I lay on the hot pavement and I spoke to him.

I was so proud of him, I said.  He had survived for all this time nearly all on his own.  He was a mighty animal, fierce and independent, and smart enough to live.  But there were some things he did not know, I told him.  Winter was coming.  And his family was never coming back.  And if he stayed here, if he was too afraid to join us, then here he would die.

It was a long way to our new home.  I told him that it would not be easy.  That this journey would feel to him excruciating and endlessly long, but that Mango the dog and the other cats and the chickens and all of us had already made it.  It was just he alone that had stayed here.  And our life here was no more.  Most people had already left and decamped for other places.  The birds themselves would soon be flown, and the mice that he hunted and fed on would soon be burrowed deep in the ground.  Come to me.  Please, I asked.  Please.  Trust me.  It will all be okay.  It will all be alright.

He walked and nuzzled against my arm.  And I grabbed him.  Loving him so much I gripped him to my chest, and carried him in a near death lock strong enough to defy the sink of his teeth and his clawing scratches.

Considerations

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Walpi Housing is all in transition.

Kerry and Kristina are moving out next month as are we.  We have a bunch of folks over for dinner and most everybody, including Hopi, are heading out in the coming weeks.

A particular era is over.

But where will this leave Poe?  It’s clear he’s not coming back here.  Without mending and stewardship in the near term, he would be finished.  Kerry and I contemplate taking him to Bernd Heinrich in Maine, but we don’t know if he still has his aviary.

And Poe deserves…he deserves what?

At the very least to live large.

He’s not a beast. And I wouldn’t denigrate him with the word animal.  He’s a being.  On par with human beings.  And every effort needs to be made to make him whole and restore him to raven-ness, whenever, and wherever that may be.

One morning I make an announcement.  We’re taking Poe, I say.

Mazie wants to know how.

We’ve already been read the riot act by the rehabilitation community.  He’s a protected species.  It’s illegal for people to own them or have them in their possession.  It’s illegal to transport them across state lines without a permit. And as I’ve been reminded, I haven’t been trained in rehabilitation.

Thank god.  If I was trained in anything, it would keep me from doing half the things I do.

Being Poe © Kerry Hardy

Guardians

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Poe ensconced with a wildlife rehabilitator in Flagstaff. And Mazie and I are camped out in Sonoma California, trying to piece together a new life out here for our family.

We’ve found house to buy. It’s big and green and old and wonderful. But after eight years at Hopi, it’s hard to imagine a life as wild and wonderful and full of serendipity as the one we now have. Is this it? After decades of wandering, are we now settling down? Where’s the adventure in it?

On a Tuesday morning, sitting in the courtyard outside the Sebastopol Inn, I call our friends Kerry and Kristina back home. I’m worried, I tell them. How are we going to make a new life for ourselves out here?

Kristina’s answer is simple. This thing that we need to do is too big, she says. We can’t do it alone. So we need to put it out there, we need to seek out our allies and be available when they present themselves.

As for Kerry, he points out that when driving into Walpi Housing in the middle of a barren desert, would we have ever imagined that it was an ideal spot for building large wooden structures, and butchering a cow, and raising a mess of ravens? Could we have even conceived of the adventures that awaited us there?

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Two hours later, Mazie and I sit in the Holy Cow coffee shop in Sebastopol. I’m despairing. Will I be able to talk to the ravens in our new home? I ask Mazie.

Daad, she says, and rolls her eyes in a way to indicate that once again I’m proving myself an embarrassment.

On the wall behind her hangs a large painting of a young girl cradling a crow. And further down, another canvas of an enormous raven perched on the body of a baby. I step up to take a picture of it and an older woman sitting at a nearby table asks if I’m interested in ravens.

She’s read all about them, she says.

Bernd Heinrich? I ask.

Heinrich is amazing, she says and we high five.

I tell her the story of the wash ravens and she tells me about herself. Her name is Maryann Markus. She used to teach, but she’s retired and she’s built herself a studio and she spends much of her time drawing nests. She is fascinated by ravens, she considers them her totems. There’s something I’ve never shown anybody, she says removing a velvet pouch from her purse. Inside, a hematite figurine of a raven. I squeeze it in my hand and rub it and squeeze it again. It’s heavy and has the dense sensibility of a low rumbling current.

She looks at me. It’s yours now, she says. They’re such powerful birds, guardians really. She asks if I’ve met Michael, the owner of the coffee shop and to fellow who did the paintings. She leads me to the back to introduce us.

He’s my age more or less, introspective and gentle seeming. Michael, too, says he can’t get his mind off these birds. He’s been fixated on them a while and keeps working them, making image after image. They’re deep, intense creatures, he says, and we’re afraid to let them into our lives. He says that the image of the baby and the bird scared people, but that they misinterpreted it. I see him as a protector, he says.

I tell him about the raven in our care and how our neighbor killed and maimed two of them. How I was fed up and in a weird way it was a last straw for us. I just wanted to get out of there.

But that’s all part of it, too, he says. You can’t run from that either. He says he hopes our move here works out well and that things take a good turn with the house. Before I leave, he gives me a hug.

I walk out of his office and see one more canvas.

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Is This the Way the World Ends

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I’m in Hotevilla when the call comes.  There’s a propane leak at Hopi Health Care and they’ve evacuated the facility and the adjacent housing complex.  They’re afraid the whole thing is going to blow.

I drive back to First Mesa.  The hospital and housing entrances are blocked by a phalanx of squad cars.  Two fire trucks wait on the side of the road about a mile distant.  I drive past, hook a right on the airport road and park on the cracked asphalt adjacent to the air strip.  I secretly cut across the wash and desert to the rear of our house and hop the fence.

Inside, I settle down with a ham sandwich.  The neighborhood feels ghostly and empty. What do I take? I wonder. I finish my sandwich and grab my laptop and Mazie’s violin.  I load a duffle with some meat from the cow we slaughtered.  A half bottle of Hornitos.  I shoot a quick video of each room of our house (for insurance purposes).

The first editions of Stephen’s journals, the signed first editions of Cormac McCarthy books, my signed Turrells, the Heriz, my journals and family heirlooms – it’s all destined for flames, I decide.

I plop my Mennonite hat on my head and wrap my scarf around my neck.  I move the chicks outside.  I open the gate and our dog Mango steps out with me.  We’re joined by the stray pit that everyone dislikes and together – the dogs and me, violin and duffle in hand, set off across the desert. A sand storm kicks up, sending tumbleweeds skittering past.  A thunderstorm approaches.

Perhaps this is how it ends.  Behind me I’ll hear an explosion and feel the heat of an enormous fire ball.  Anna’s work and all of our worldly possessions will have blown up.  And then we’ll climb in the car with Mazie and drive west.

And that’s it.  We’ll be done with it.