Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (16 page)

My first postgraduation adventure was a road trip the day afterward, with two girls, a sculptor and a painter, both friends from art classes. Atz Lee piled in as well, and we headed off in the Bronco that belonged to one of them. We were headed west, where they would drop me off in San Diego to see my mom, who was working at an alternative health center called Optimum Health Institute and attending its program for her seemingly persistent health problems. We all made it as far as Seattle, where we had a falling out because I could not afford my share of the gas money. My little brother made his own way down to San Diego (he was only
sixteen, but somehow in our world this seemed normal, and I didn’t worry or look out for him), and I stayed in Seattle, busking and writing. I found busy street corners and yodeled and sang “Who Will Save Your Soul” and newer songs like “Money” until I earned bus fare to go on.

Eventually I made it back to Alaska for the rest of the summer, and I got a small cabin at my aunt Mossy’s. I wrote feverishly, spending two weeks in silence. I cannot overstate the importance of silence to young artists, or to anyone seeking a creative voice. It takes great influences to find your way to unique self-expression. You must stand on the shoulders of artists who have gone before you. Read great works. See great arts. Listen to great voices. This sets a bar for your spirit and psyche to work toward. Then you must dive inward into silence. Stand on the rippling edges of the expansive universe within your own being and create from there. Don’t compare yourself with what’s popular. Doing so is like one child comparing himself with another. Greatness is never achieved by trying to imitate the greatness of another. Greatness is chipping away at all that does not belong to you and then expressing yourself so truly that others can’t help but recognize it. It is in silence that we discover ourselves. The silence and the unknown can be frightening, but with time it stops feeling like there is nothing there. The darkness and silence will begin to feel like a void in a positive sense—the womb of creation. It is the magical nothing that something is birthed from. Feed yourself a diet of great work, and then go away by yourself and listen alone to your soul speak to you. Silence will be your greatest teacher.

That summer I fell in love with a young man named Phillip, and by fall we had decided to take a road trip across the States, eventually winding up in Boulder, Colorado, where I planned to move in with a girlfriend from Interlochen. Like the kids we were, we slept in the back of his pickup truck and showered at rest stops. I thrilled at seeing the country change as we headed east. Phillip, or Musse as I called him, was fairly
fluent in Swedish, as his family hailed from that part of the world. I tried to learn how to speak some as we drove, writing down notes and pronunciations of each word.

“How do you say ‘dolphin’?” I’d ask, looking out at the sea.

“
Delfin
. But you say it like del-feen.”

“How about ‘wolf’? Would it be ‘voolf’?” I asked, sort of kidding.

“No, that’s
varg
, pronounced va-ree.” Oh, not too similar this time. The music of each language is so particular; which words rise and which ones fall determines and describes as much as the words themselves. It was like learning a difficult song, as exciting an adventure as the drive itself.

“
Hoor mor doo? Tack, yag moor brah.
” Does that sound right?” I would ask.

“Yes, that’s right, but do you even know what you are saying?” Musse asked patiently.

“How are you? I am fine, thanks,” I answered, all teeth, beaming with pride. “Where are we? Arizona? How do you say ‘Arizona’ in Swedish?”

“Arizona,” he answered in a flat tone, staring at me with a smile to make his point.

“Riiiiiiiiight . . .” I said sheepishly, and looked out the window. I tried to see the subtle beauty of the desert that had inspired O’Keeffe and so many others. I didn’t get it. I missed the explosive drama of the land that raised me. “Shit!” Musse said. I stayed quiet as he pulled off the road. Our engine seized, made one loud clank, and then quit right then and there. He got out and opened the hood.

“I ran it out of goddamned oil. Son of a . . .”

I got out to investigate. Musse kicked the dirt and flagged down a passing car. He explained what had happened and asked if they would be so kind as to stop in the town up the road at the service station and have them send us a tow truck. They said they would, so we watched them
drive off. We began to wait. There was plenty of daylight and it wasn’t too hot. “How do you say ‘broken engine’ in Swedish?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood, but Musse wasn’t interested. He just stared out the window.

It took a few hours, but a tow truck came and we drove into a small dusty town, where the mechanic surveyed the damage. He turned to us slowly, wiping his hands on the oil-stained legs of his coveralls. “Well, you are gonna need some parts that we ain’t got.” He watched the thoughts cross our faces:
Where will we stay and how long will that take?

“But, I can get the parts,” he continued, clearly enjoying himself. We stared at him.

“It’ll take a week.” He raised his hand as if to stop us from flooding him with questions, then answered them before we could ask. “There’s a cheap motel called the Cactus Inn up the road. You can stay without settin’ ya back too much. If you didn’t know, this is kind of a resort town. You can go sightseein’ down there at Havasupai, maybe take you a mineral bath,” His mouth shut again, this time for good. The tow-truck driver turned to us and offered us a ride to the motel.

We grabbed some clothes out of the back of the camper shell and shoved them into a bag. The motel was cheap, but not cheerful. I have always hated depressing places. I guess I’ve always been depressed enough on my own that any extra provided by a dismal environment was just more than I cared to bear.

I asked the lady at the front desk if there was anywhere else we might stay, perhaps the mineral spa I had heard about. She was tired and couldn’t have cared less if we rented a room from her or not. She told us if we were the adventurous but broke types, we could hike into the Grand Canyon, and after several miles along the bottom, we’d find an Indian village. No hotel, but there were places to camp and hot mineral springs. A local man named Gary would drive us out to the trailhead. A week
camping somewhere would beat a week of sitting around bored. We walked into the lot and saw a worn and dusty burgundy Cadillac, with a man just getting into it.

As Gary drove us out, I tried to pay attention as he told us what to expect. We had a six-hour hike ahead of us.

Musse and I had spent the night before in the back of the truck, backed up to a lovely vista overlooking one of the branches of the Grand Canyon. We had risen early to the sound of wild horses as they snorted sharply, approaching our vehicle with equal measures of curiosity and caution. I lay there and watched them scrounge for food among dry grass and sagebrush. I had no idea when I’d awoken that morning that later in the afternoon we would be afoot, hiking into that massive canyon I’d stared into as I stretched, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

After about thirty minutes of driving, Gary pulled over at a rest area, pointed us to the unmarked trailhead, and wished us luck. It was only noon and we had plenty of time to make our way down to the bottom. I marveled at the red dirt trail that cut like a ribbon through the hard rock canyon walls. Deep purple clay wove in and out of the steep cliffs, and the downward pull was hypnotic, impossible to disobey. It had warmed up considerably with the sun high overhead. I tied a bandanna around my head and took in the vast landscape. It really was beautiful in its own way; nothing like Alaska, which was full of bold colors, water, mountains, and varied landscapes. This terrain was muted, just variations of one color. The canyon was massive—my eyes boggled to comprehend the twists and turns of sandstone cut by the invisible sword of millions of years of wind and weather. As we descended deeper, the walls grew taller, like massive wings that unfurled around and above us as we walked. Sounds changed as we descended. At the top our voices were tiny and lost in such a big sky, but at the bottom the slightest whisper carried and echoed as it rattled around the canyon walls.

We walked for some ways like this, seemingly at the bottom of the world, along a narrow path of pebbles with womblike canals unfolding before us. Even though the sun was at full strength, the carved canyon walls remained cool. I listened as our footsteps clattered brightly and echoed against stone. Soon I heard something familiar: the crisp and precise sound of hoof on stone, many hooves. We rounded a corner and there was a short straightaway, where we could see a mule train coming toward us. An Indian man rode a sinewy horse, and in his hand was a lead rope with a train of maybe six mules tied nose to tail. They were packed with garbage, mailbags, and random items that were being brought out. I introduced myself and said we were looking for a place to stay at the falls. I asked him about his mules and told him I had run a few pack trains on hunting trips in Alaska. His eyes brightened.

“I have two cots in my yard in the village underneath a cottonwood tree. You can sleep on them if you want for free. You can stay as many days as you need if you run the mule train up to the top of the canyon once a day for me.”

I turned to Musse, and then back to the Indian. “Sure! It’s a deal!” We shook hands and I asked his name.

“Indian Joe,” he said with a broad smile. “Follow the trail to the village, and the first house you see on the right just before the village is mine. My wife’s name is Sue, and tell her I said you may stay on the cots in the yard.”

We followed the trail to Joe’s. Without opening the screen door between us, Sue pointed to the west, and in the distance we saw a tall cottonwood tree, such an usual sight for the desert.

I pulled my sleeping bag off my pack and laid it out on the single bed closest to the tree. The sunlight was dancing through the canopy overhead, creating a kaleidoscope of color and sound as dry leaves chimed in brittle tones. I lay down and stared up at the shock of green leaves, so rich
and vibrant against the monotonous landscape. The canyon walls rose around me at every angle. It almost caused a feeling of vertigo. I felt like a tiny shell laying there, an archaeological artifact, a brief blink and breath of fragile skin.

We set up camp by our tree and shared our food and talked until we both grew quiet under the spell of the evening’s music. Hawks cried in a far-off corner of the canyon. Dogs barked, trying always to get the last word. Chickens clucked from the safety of their evening roosts. Then all was silent but for the great collective hum of the desert. Bugs and frogs, insects that rubbed their wings against trees like locusts, all blurred into a white noise.

I went to that place I rarely find: a deep and restful sleep with no ghosts nagging. I felt safe and happy in my soul, surrounded by beauty and God’s music . . . then, a woman screaming.

I startled awake, my eyes shot open with alarm. Adrenaline rushed through my body as I tried to comprehend the sound. I sat disoriented, trying to find the source.

“What . . . ?” Musse stammered.

My God,
I thought,
a woman is being murdered!
I knelt on my bed, turning around as I tried to make sense of the painful screeches bouncing off the canyon walls. I looked in the direction of the house and saw no lights. I could hear no one stirring. The scream would stop as abruptly as it started, then a deafening silence. In the utter confusion, we waited for another outburst.

“From over there?” I pointed to the northeast, just behind the house. The cobwebs of slumber had cleared now and on the second scream I was able to pinpoint the source a bit more clearly.

“My God, it sounds like someone is hurt!” Musse said.

But I began to recognize the sound, and it slowly became clear. It was the incredibly sad and mournful crying of a . . . mule. I half laughed.

“No way!” Musse proclaimed in disbelief. Sure enough, shadowy four-legged figures could be seen, restless in the shadows in the small pens on the other side of the house.

I sat for a minute and contemplated the comedy of the situation. It had to be a nightly occurrence, as not a single person besides us seemed bothered by it. The mule in question kept it up for only another hour, but it had set pins and needles loose inside my skin. I kept thinking I felt critters crawling around, though I knew that up high on that bed it was unlikely. I was sure glad I wasn’t sleeping on the ground.

Dawn came and the air was cool and damp with the difference. Indian Joe must have had an eye on us that morning, for as soon as we rustled around, I heard his voice bark from a distance.

“Morning! Come on over when you get up.”

I had wondered about our deal, and if he was serious about letting a complete stranger run his mule train. Apparently he was very serious. I rounded the house and headed to the wooden pens.

“Sleep good?” he said with a grin. “My mules scream. Very scary if you don’t expect it. Look, after breakfast, we’ll pack the mules. You’ll ride Rocky, my horse. Just follow the trail. Real easy, the mules could do it themselves but they are lazy and wouldn’t go if you didn’t make them.”

Sue made eggs and fresh salt bacon. It was the first real food it seemed like we’d eaten in a long time. Afterward Joe placed his dishes in the sink and told Sue he had the day off since he was putting Jewel to work. Sue was quiet and winked at me as I picked up my plates, said thank you, and headed for the door.

Musse helped us pack, as Joe explained that the mule train was critical to life in the village, the source of groceries and mail, among other things. We gathered the tail of each animal and tied it up so the hair created a loop. We tied the lead rope of one animal through the looped tail of the one in front of it and so on up the line. We used a knot that would release
if it was pulled on really hard. A quick-release bolen. On the steep trails, if one of the animals were to lose its footing and fall down the steep patch, the rope would come undone to prevent dragging the whole pack train down with it.