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At the age of 15 I broke through the horizon of the familiar. From a remote sheep camp, with $5 in my pocket, I left home. I remember that day as I packed a few pieces of clothing and exited innocence. I offered a quick farewell to my family; leaving them thinking I was just going overnight at some distant relative’s place. A thick sheep camp tortilla and cooked meat with a chunk of government cheese (the best and tastiest kind) was my provision in a knapsack. I left home that hot day with not a single cloud in the thick blue sky. Dressed to be seen easily by motorists I wore my white jeans and solid red shirt, cowboy boots, a shiny belt buckle and a straw Stetson with the brim low to shade my curious eyes.
I walked four miles of dusty wagon trail out to Highway 160. It was four miles on a trail of thoughts and expectations. I watched my shadow move alongside me and I spoke out to it, seeking reassurances, finding courage and a newfound sense of adventure—and no sheep camp responsibility was going to hold me back. The sheep camp that summer had enough help with my brothers and my sisters, some cousins and adult relatives. There were plenty of hands to help maintain the camp. I felt like my absence wouldn’t be noticed as much and, besides, it was one less mouth to feed. I smiled at the latter reasoning for I thought it to be a good contribution. The years prior I spent each summer being a shepherd and felt that I would miss the sheepdogs the most. Spooky, Spunky and Dusty. They would watch well the sheep with my younger cousin. I knew they would look out toward the highway expecting my return. I held back the tears, feeling the lump in my throat. I felt a need to get out and see what was awaiting me. I had no clue, just freewheeling senses. I fingered the pollen bag and its contents of a small white arrowhead.
It was summer break again from school and the heat intensified my need to walk off into a new and cooler world. I did not know the cities and towns of the American West except for Flagstaff and the other Rez communities such as Tuba City and Kayenta. Beyond that it was all enticing images from magazine books I’d read on the sheep trail. Distant places beyond my horizons were like mythical places holding sweetness and new magic. They held names I heard from the lips of elders who worked the railroads decades before. Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angles and Bakersfield. That was only toward the west—the holy direction of Abalone Shell Mountain and the great unforgiving desert beyond. From the stories of the great journey of mercy to the home of Whiteshell Woman, my Goddess, the journey that produced my Clan’s name, from the bitter and alkaline water that saved the walkers. The staff of Bull Snake that found water gave name to my clan, “Bitterwater.” I tossed a handful of care into the wind and stepped into a new chapter of my youth. My little transistor radio streaming out Lobo’s “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo,” Daniel Boone’s “Beautiful Sunday,” Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime” among many other forms of music from the cheering crowd. The thread that strung all these beads of living was and still is the Grateful Dead.
I find great detail that I can relate to in these days of wandering in film: Into the Wild without the Alaska part. I take that to heart—a stranger in a strange land, and loving its new sounds, images and taste. Some walkabouts took me to other parts of the West over the Rocky Mountains to the East. At times I had to make that decision as to what direction I would go simply by seeing which direction my boot landed there on the shoulder of the blacktop. I tasted freedom and all that is open before him as much as a young man raised in a sheep camp can taste. The gentle breeze caressed its approval as I stuck out my thumb.
Rides came much easier than I anticipated. I rode those beautiful summers of my teen years on the kindness of strangers and weirdoes. I rode in the warmth of the conversations, mostly filling in an “exotic” life of mine to their middle-American drudgery, unwittingly becoming both a teacher and student. It was in these conversations that I learned more about myself and my Dineh’ world views. I spoke giving vocabulary to my life from an esoteric origin. I taught myself about me those summers. I rode with Brady Bunch-like families in motor homes being catered to with milk and cookies. I rode in Cadillacs and VWs, even a highway patrol car at one time. I rode with another group of “tribes” in converted school buses where the brand new, sweet aroma of cannabis hung heavy all about, but I never partook at the time.
I was 15, 16 and17 in those summers. I saw a lot of music and desert gatherings in Nevada and the Mojave Desert. Yes, I had my Slab City. It was good to be a young man with a carefree smile and falling in lust occasionally beneath the fat summer moon. I heard music and felt the love that reverberated deep into my interior. I spent days traveling with Dead Heads onto another venue. I do not remember being asked where it is I was going. I just felt so alive with the rush of wind in my face. I learned of new places. I learned of history and the passions of the modern day Gypsies of the road, the fireflies in the Summer of Love.
I always managed to come home sometimes before the summer was out just to readjust and get my mutton fix at the next summer ceremonies, and maybe a fight or two. A change of clothes and I was on the road again—the last bit before school resumed. My mother and my aunt missed my company as they looked up occasionally from their cornfield to gaze intently into the horizon toward the highway, expecting to see me slowly approaching the sheep camp again and coming home. The stories of the summer from fellow students involved attending rodeos, fairs, going to Phoenix with families and fights at the Kayenta Field House. In the end, my high school concentration suffered simply because I was bored. My body was held in the uniformed desks in the classroom, but my mind and my heart were still out there roaming the desert—my real teacher. I was 15 when the first stirrings to break out broke out. Those are the summers I remember, and respect the time I really came into being.
