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from: Alexandra Fuller

Land of Abundant Scarcity

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002, at 4:23 PM ET

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Today's audio update: Bo describes the hike up the Hole-in-the-Wall trail.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles.
—from "Song of the Open Road," by Walt Whitman

A homestead site is lost in the spectacular scenery.

In anticipation of this journey across the Outlaw Trail, I have been inoculating myself for weeks against the bodice-ripping, gun-slinging glamour of the Old West. But even I, hardened African and career cynic, cannot help being a little swept away by the myths and tales that are folded into the sagebrush-creased canyons and creeks of Willow Creek Ranch at the Hole-in-the-Wall. You'd have to be a lump of clay or Samuel Beckett to resist this land's lure.

Gene Vieh (owner of Willow Creek Ranch) is, like the land he loves, dry, sun-scoured, and uncompromising. He does not suffer fools and does not, as he says, "do emotion very well." But his passion for this ranch is palpable "I fall on my knees in awe," he says and, for a man short on both emotion and words, that's saying a lot. He is the first man to have purchased this ranch—until now it had only passed from the original homesteader to the homesteader's nephew.

Gene Vieh found his calling at the Willow Creek Ranch.

Gene takes the whole day to show us the physical and historical highlights of less than 10 percent of his ranch. Even that is almost too much to absorb in one day because the landscape is fairly shouting with history. Nothing rots, it becomes sand-blasted and sun-bleached, perhaps, and splinters into dust in time, but the marks left by humans show for a long time out here. Century-old wagon wheel tracks still leave a burning impression in the thin grass, and although cabins may sink and lean, their shells are still here.

Part of what is so affecting about the history that gusts through this place is its immediacy. Native Americans set up tepees here almost within the realm of living memory (tepee rings and petroglyphs and the rock pyramids set up for "buffalo jumps" are evidence of that). They came here, in part, because of the vast herds of bison that swept these plains. But North America's greedy ingestion of territories, steadily and relentlessly west, swallowed first the Native Americans (the cavalry was instructed by the government to kill all the "Indian" stallions, and then to kill the bison. "Make 'em walk and make 'em starve" was the idea) and then the land on which they had once lived.

Now the Native American voices are silenced, but the quiet is eerie, as if borrowed or temporary. It feels as if the players that might have kicked up all that dusted history and whose songs and wood smoke would have filled this air might, at any moment, return and declare us camera-toting tourists in our bright white sports utility vehicle invaders. Which, of course, we are—the latest in a series of invaders.

Gene talks about the outlaws and homesteaders who once inhabited this valley—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Alex Ghent (who supplied the Wild Bunch with their fast, steady horses)—as if they were neighbors who have only recently moved away. Alex Ghent was being poisoned by his own water (the spring from which he was drinking has an unusually high mineral count) and ended up leaving his homestead in the shadow of the Red Wall in the '30s. Butch owned a little red cabin not far from Ghent's place, but he was forced to sell in 1890, not long after he had arrived at the Hole-in-the-Wall, when he got word that the law was closing in on him. It was a shiftless, restless life, and the ghosts gusted up by these lives are correspondingly thin and ragged.

Perhaps it is this, finally, which impresses me most: We are at the site of one of the three most famous outlaw hide-outs in North America, and it has not been bricked up, paved over, and turned into a concession stand. When Christian and I hike to the top of the Hole-in-the-Wall and look out at what lies on any side of us, we are the only humans as far as the eye can see. Like Gene himself, this land has managed to stay intact because it does not "do" emotion very well.

Check back tomorrow for the next stop on the Outlaw Trail: Thermopolis, home of beer, beef, and a wax museum.

well-traveled
entries
123456789
from: Alexandra Fuller

Land of Abundant Scarcity

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002, at 4:23 PM ET
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Alexandra Fuller is the author of the best-selling memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood.
Music heard in the map feature: "The Last Steam Engine Train," by John Fahey, The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites (Takoma TAKCD-8909-2) (p) 1999 Fantasy Inc. © 1967 Tortoise Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved.
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Notes From the Fray Editor (Notes From the Bog):

Many residents of the Southwest spoke up for various parts of the contemporary scene there. The usual move was to call Fuller a second-tier cultural prostitute herself (selling her experience to Slate). The two posts below also attack Fuller, but from opposite sides. Gloria Tagai says that Fuller has been misled and is misleading others. The information in the article is wrong. Ernest, who grew up on the Navajo reservation, thinks Fuller has mischaracterized her exchange with Rose Yazzi as "prostitution."

Remarks From The Fray:

I am a Navajo woman. I am wondering where the writer received her information. What is "Teehindeeh" (she says it means "bog hole")? I tried to decipher this word and then asked an elder who had no idea what I was referring to. Who is Chief Hoskinini? Again, I tried to decipher the name and again referred to an elder. We were both puzzled.

This white African of British descent, who attempts to portray herself as worldly sophisticated traveler, has instead been sadly misled by her "guide". She states, "To pay for glimpses into something I can never hope to understand or assimilate in an afternoon can only be degrading and demoralizing to both parties." If she felt as such, why write such a horrific piece of trash?

It has been she who has been degraded and she should feel demoralized for offering such an article without validating the facts. I shudder to think of how many Americans are reading this article and take it for truth. As a closing remark, dream catchers are not native to Navajos, so the belief that it "prevents evil spirits from entering from Mother Earth" is not a Navajo belief. And what was that about the poles and the umbilical cord in a hogan?

-- Gloria Tagai

(To reply, click here.)


So why is being (even briefly) introduced to a new culture a negative? Why is it "cultural prostitution" for age old customs to be shown as they have always been practiced? Travel to Shiprock New Mexico during the festivals and see the Navajo Dancers perform. These people have to fight every day to keep at least the essence of their old cultures and traditions alive...and it is a worthwhile fight. I do not see these attempts as "prostitution". I think the author should stop looking at the world through the myopia of cynicism and instead try looking at it from the perspective of a child...untainted by past experience.

-- Ernest

(To reply, click here.)

(10/25)

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