Things to know before you go
Todays audio update: Sue Lingo dials in from remote Mogollon, N.M.
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StumbleUponI didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love
—from "Things I Didn't Know I Loved," by Nazim Hikmet
She comes to the door of the bus that she lives in, and there's something in her demeanor that fits this small, abandoned town—a sort of watchful self-assurance like a deer in the woods that does not know it is being observed. She has a rope of pale red hair down her back, and she's wearing a faded blue bandana, baggy black sweat pants, and a well-worn T-shirt. When she sees us, she stops in the frame of the bus door and pushes her bandana up her forehead. "Hi," she says, and when she smiles it is a very intense smile, one that can be seen and felt from a distance, as if it generated heat or light.
Christian and I are supposed to be on the Trail of Outlaws, not here at an abandoned silver mine an hour east of Silver City, N.M. But it's been a shiftless kind of day of dead ends and persistent rain, and both of us are road-weary and querulous and susceptible to whims. Besides, Silver City is not cooperating with us. Billy the Kid did grow up in Silver City, it is true, but the residents of that town seem singularly unconcerned with the fact. You can buy a Billy the Kid T-shirt here, but the cabin in which B the K grew up has been long ago plowed under, and the hotel in which he apparently worked is now a weed-poked empty lot. The residents of Silver City seem more interested in coffee shops and quirky art galleries (featuring, it appears, the work of anyone who cares to hang themselves in public) than their state's most famous outlaw.
Christian and I have been driving east of town in an aimless fashion for a couple of hours, half-heartedly peering through the rain for a sign to a ranch where Butch Cassidy was supposed to have worked. I notice an unnatural number of churches and frequent arbitrary billboards imploring us to put our trust in God. Christian observes that a tendency toward religious fervor increases in direct proportion to the amount of sky visible—the bigger the sky, the more fanatically religious the people living under that sky are likely to be. So we accept that it is probably divine instruction when we see a sign that declares "Mogollon—Ghost Town" just as the sun crests around the edge of a billowing gray cloud.
Mogollon is not, technically, a ghost town—it's very much a flesh-and-blood town with a fluctuating population of more or less 14 living bodies. Signs and posters warn the few straggling, curious tourists who stumble up its main—and only—street that the residences in this town are "Private Property—Keep Out." The place has a paranoid, defensive air, and there is the feeling that our progress through the town is being watched from behind twitching curtains. Which is why the woman with the red hair emerging from her bus-home with such a generous smile is so reassuring.
We introduce ourselves. Sue Lingo is as open and friendly, if occasionally difficult to comprehend (mostly because my intelligence is no match for her theories on either life or quantum physics, both of which she discusses as if they are interchangeable ideas). We tell her what we are doing, and Sue laughs, "No outlaws here. I've run 'em out of town."
She takes us into her bus and shows us around. Sue has lived in Mogollon for 22 years; eight of those years in this bus, which she bought off her brother for $300 and a trade of some welding work. The bus is completely self-contained with a composting toilet, a woodstove, a bed, and a desk.
The population of Mogollon has shifted over the years, Sue tells us. Sometimes she has had the whole place to herself for a year or two at a stretch. Other times she has shared the town with Vietnam War veterans, fugitives from the law, hippies, and people who are just plain odd.
"The man down the road, for instance," she tells us, "I have nothing at all against him, but if I have to communicate with him, I do so via e-mail." (We've met the man down the road. Although he is not Russian he's a self-appointed Tsarist with a museum of Russian artifacts and a wealth of conspiracy theories, and if he has indoor plumbing, it does not smell as if he has made use of it in the recent past.)
Sue, who now works (bizarrely) as a computer technician for Gateway, has gone through long periods of living on $400 a year (which will buy 150 pounds of beans, a tub of lard, and a sack of flour), and a life of self-enforced exile has made her wary. "I'm an Edenist," she tells us, "There's two of everything, and I am both parts—I'm complete in myself. I've learned not to need anything, to shut off desire." She takes a breath and then says, "Desire can turn you into a slave."
Check back tomorrow for the final dispatch from the Outlaw Trail.
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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)