Close Encounters

We have been traveling from the Bighorn Mountains to the Black Hills for the last few days stopping at the National Monument of the Battle of the Little Bighorn which was fairly emotional for us because we had been talking on our travels about how the European Americans valued the Earth so differently than the Native Americans and then to see all the white (7th Calvary Soldiers) and red stones (Native Americans) who died in the battle,one group fighting to take the land away for its resources and the other group fighting to save their way of life. We hope that someday all people can look at the Earth as being a part of themselves and not just to be taken and used.  

We stopped in the little town of Buffalo to go to the Occidental Hotel and Saloon which is just like stepping back 100-150 years http://occidentalwyoming.com/

Pat in the Occidental Hotel Saloon

Everyone from Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid to Theodore Roosevelt stayed there at one time. We learned about a man named James Gatchell in a Museum of the West run in an old Carnegie Library. Gatchell ran a drugstore in town and as a boy became a friend of the Cheyenne and eventually spoke for them.  He had a particular friend named Weasel Bear who as a youth participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Gatchell was a great collector of artifacts of the west. http://www.jimgatchell.com/

Recognize this bandit?

 Again we missed the rodeo by 1 week. Next time we plan a trip I am not going anywhere without the entire Western US rodeo schedule.
Then we hiked  The Place the Bear Lives, better known as Devil's Tower which was the first National Monument.  Many different groups of Native Americans have used this as a sacred place where they came to get strength from the mountain. You can go and read the Native American stories of how the Tower was formed. The one I like is of the Kiowa People where a boy turns into a bear and chases his seven sisters.  He turns into the "Tower" and the sisters turn into the stars of the Pleiades. It strikes you so looking up that your heart almost stops.  Because it is sacred to many Native American tribes you must have special permission to actually climb it. Hanging from the trees that surround it are prayer bundles. The Geological story is almost as amazing.  About 50 million years ago magma was forced into layers of sedimentary rock and cooled underground.  Erosion of the sedimentary rock over millions of years by the Belle Fourche River exposed the Tower.  Pretty Amazing and it is still rising. 
Since we saw Mt. Rushmore 20 years ago and it didn't inspire us then we decided to go the the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is a nonprofit organization. The Founders Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear decided not to use governmental monies but only private funds because they could not trust what the government would do..Based on the words of Red Cloud of Lakota, 1891 and those words "They made us many promises, more than I can remember-They never kept but one; they promised to take our land and they took it!"  The work has gone on since 1948, Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his children (6 of the 10) and grandchildren are continuing the sculpting.  The Crazy Horses' face is done (all of Mt. Rushmore would fit into the face),  the Indian University of North American opened in 2010 and they still have to finish carving the mountain (see what it is suppose to look like in Ziolkowski model below) build the medical center, Avenue of the Chiefs and Indian Museum of North America which is being housed now in the Visitor Center and Native American Educational and Cultural Center.  Still they give an impressive amount of scholarships and think that they will be done within 20 years.  The Project's main controversy is the same one that surrounds Rushmore.  Most Native Americans consider the Black Hills and its mountains sacred and so sculpting the mountains is wrong in their eyes even though Crazy Horse Memorial benefits Native Americans and was started by a group of Chiefs . Rushmore was an insult to the Native Americans from the very beginning which was first suppose to have Native American faces as well as Presidents and the carving of the mountain. In fact the United Nations believes the Black Hills should be given back to the Lakota and other tribes. The land was part of the treaty of 1868, but the US government reneged on the treaty and took the lands they had promised.  Certainly giving the Black Hills which are part of the National Forests could help in reconciliation.  I can't imagine how though we can make retribution for all the land we took, the oppression we have caused and how it will ever be right.

Voices in the Wind Washington Oregon Idaho and Montana

Pat at Cape Disappointment in front of whale statue on the Discovery Lewis and Clark Bike Trail  to the
"The Place of Ghost Writing"  at Pictograph State Park in Montana after rainstorm.
 We have been primitive camping for 7 days now from beautiful cool Cape Disappointment through the Columbia River Gorge where it was 100 degrees up Hwy 12 into the Clearwater River National Forest to the Missouri Headwaters following Lewis and Clark's Trail.  My phone died so I couldn't take photos and personally I just wanted to take in the vastness of this country. Every place we stopped had story and the voices of the past could be heard. On the way to the sacred place below near Billings Montana a rainstorm hit us. It smelled wonderful and the Earth drank it up, but we were traveling on I-90 and Pat had work to do so when we finally stopped I walked the trail in this canyon by myself and went into the cave of the Ghosts just as another storm hit.  I couldn't help myself I stood out in it and drank it up, every pore in my body and I thought about how much we need water for life and for our souls. Because I was one of the only people out in the rain on the trail, I could listen and heard the echoes of the

 the ghosts. Looking at the sky I almost believed in heaven.  

The pictographs in the caves were dated as far back as 12,000 years ago.  The First People, Apsaalooke Crow and others who came saw the pictographs and some believed that ghosts had done the art. They came to the caves which are in this canyon of the Bitter Creek seeking visions and spiritual guidance just like I did.

from GA to Mt. St. Helens and Cape Disappointment which was not disappointing

I promised Confessions of UU sinner from UUA GA, but we got so busy and then we haven't had Internet except here and there. I have some time this am and we are visiting the International Kite Museum in Long Beach Washington.
My favorite GA workshops the ones that gave me new ideas like Multi-Generational RE (Be Like a Hummingbird), Changing Worship (The Lovers of Love: UU Sufism, CFL: Creating Worship to Imagine and Act, Thinking Outside the Music Box and Exorcising-Co-Creating Worship) and Transformation Without Apocalypse: A Moral Response to Climate Change with Kathleen Dean Moore. Portland was extremely HOT and so we didn't get out much to do our usual walk through the city.  I wrote a long synopsis of the last minutes of the General Assembly about Black Lives Matter, an Action of Immediate Witness, which I won't post, but I sent it to the Fellowship newsletter and I think the committees that might be interested.  The worse two sins were we didn't stay for much of the night activities and ran out of the WARE lecture by Cornell West because Eliza was stuck 35 minutes away in a campground we had to get back to each night before 10pm when they closed the gates.  The campground was along a cool river which we didn't even get to put our tootsie's in.  The other sin was we didn't stick very well to our vegetarian and only eating free range chicken and meats and sustainable fish because even the restaurants in the industrial district weren't into that...And I thought Portland was so progressive?

Then Mt. St. Helens   I can't tell you the power and beauty of this Volcano, the last of our volcano visits.  Sitting on the ridge across it as it still steams and adds lava to the crater and seeing how nature is so resilient just gives me hope that life will survive no matter.  I couldn't help but cry.   The Native Americans of the region over and over returned and re-settled the area after each eruption through human history, their stories of the two mountains (Mt. Rainier, the quiet wife of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helen's the tempest wife who threw fire at the quiet wife, the spirits of Spirit Lake) make you want to read more, they are resilient as well. In 1980, after the catastrophic eruption that affected over 200 square miles was devastating, but the animal life survived underground and lupine emerged on the hillside as the mudslides cooled. Wildflower after wildflower.  A newly formed lake Coldwater was cleaned by bacteria after 3 years and life returned. It makes me cry now just thinking about it.

Indian Paint Brush

We saw Ben and Kelsey and had super meals with them.  Kelsey is a fantastic chef.  Pat and I helped a little in the building of their tiny house.  No photos yet, but when it is done Ben promised to send them.  Kelsey is working on plans for building a creamery to make cheese and yogurt so they have a busy year ahead of them.  Right now they are living in a tent on the farm.  Ben's business called Feral Feet Hoof Care is growing and he travels as far as Yakima to trim horse hooves and get them back to bare-feet. Read more below. 

Coldwater Lake made by 1980 eruption

Lupine

Wild Foxglove

St. John's Wort

Cape Disappointment is a stop over to fly kites and walk cold beaches, to get ready for the HOT drive back through the plains and high deserts. We really like this area because of the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center, Confluence Project (Where Columbia River meets Ocean and Chinooks meet Lewis and Clark) and the Discovery Bike Trail. Columbia River Gorge next. Below see photos of the Chinook prayer walk to the old cedar stump. 

Pat flying his kite.

Waikiki Beach at Cape Disappointment