An imperfect map

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns. - Joy Harjo

As 2025 spools through the end days, and I am (somewhat) liberated from the demands of art shows or markets for a brief few weeks, Janis truck and I go on little tethered wanders, exploring nearby arroyos and washes, reading the stories told by the debris left after summer monsoon flooding, finding glimmers of grace, albeit battered, surviving still in the overarching, impossible blue, flecked here or there with the last remnants of cottonwood gold.

Treasures for my personal map making find their way onto the back of the truck: rocks for garden projects, beautiful, eloquent logs and cactus skeletons. It’s a deep in the heartland of desert version of beachcombing, where wandering the tideline is seasonal rather than diurnal. Janis Truck is the perfect companion.

It feels so good to be alone with the crows in all this vast landscape, thin winter sun warm on skin, too warm really for December, but I’m not one to complain about warmth. Cold is amongst my least favorite things.

On one of our explorations, Janis truck and I find ourselves in the remnants of the small mining town of Chloride established in 1881 when silver chloride ore (Chlorargyrite) was discovered along one of the stream banks. At that time it seems, from what I can find out, that the mineral had uses in photography, lens making, stained glass colouring and maybe some medicines.

As I gear down to pull over in front of a seasonally bedecked saloon and dancehall, planning to park and do a walkabout, looking, seeing, listening for ghosts and other souls who might inhabit the geography and spaces, I get a back of the neck prickly feeling of being watched. Of a presence. Not the Deliverance “Paddle Faster” ominous kind of feeling, but rather that curtain twitching, nosey kind of being watched feeling. The line spanning healthy territorial situational awareness and xenophobia is a continuum, a taut string which it seems I’m constantly stumbling into, twanging. Creating discord with the clumsiness of my existence, of my other-ness, of my apparent difference.

I had hardly set dusty sandalled foot on dusty street of this ghost town before one of those all terrain vehicles which have replaced the horse on farms these days, spluttered up emitting way too much engine noise and exhaust fumes for such a diminutive thing in such a peaceful setting.

I ended up submitting to a tour of the gift shop housed in the old saloon and dance hall building, where I dropped some money on some stuff I didn’t need, and the adjacent museum which contains an amazing collection of artifacts artfully arranged in what was once the Pioneer Store.

I would urge a trip to this ghost town just for this experience of display of historical hoard.

The interiors of both buildings are frigid in extreme (see above about me and cold)

This museum is only a single room, but there is so much to delight in. Apparently the “archives” of the town newspaper are up those stairs. No entry to the public. Dang! Newspaper archives from the days of moveable type would be so my thing.

It’s not just a collection of everyday tools, but details of craftsmanship are everywhere.

The enormous, original store safe is all painted up so beautifully and going nowhere.

On the front, Billy the Kid rides again, acid deterioration patina provided by decades of bat and rat excrement and urine, apparently.

Inside the safe, the art is better preserved, almost pristine with glowing colours. Yes the safe was even decorated INSIDE. A gargantuan thing of beauty indeed.

Outback of these building I caught a glimpse of a RV park and picnic tables. Apparently historical reenactment groups use those spaces. Making and remaking their own maps. Cosplay is big in certain circles.

The experience of these buildings was complex, for me. For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

While there’s much to wonder and delight over, I felt immensely pressured by the docent from the ATV, who followed rather too close to me physically, in crowded small spaces, pouring forth an overwhelming, non stop flood of very information dense sound. The cold I can deal with. A barrage of noise is another thing entirely. You must make your own map

I think she was trying to tell the story of her family, how they came to own the town (literally it seems), what they found in the buildings, what the buildings were, how they have restored, or not…but with no stop or replay it just became noise. Annoying noise. A cacophony. In my ears. Emitted from way too close to me. You must make your own map

It’s obviously practiced, this Chloride Ghost Town Interpretive Tour which I didn’t know I had signed up for. At times she even hurled questions about the artifacts at me, as though I were a schoolchild and she the schoolm’am and this were an oral examination.

If so I failed utterly. I have retained very little from the verbal assault. Seems I might do better with visual and print rather than live audio tour. For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

History is told by the victors. Somewhat stridently and assertively in some cases. Avocado toast with homemade pickled red onions, on the front porch, at the foot of Turtleback mountain might just bring me away from the edge of that abyss, of having failed at learning a ghost town’s history. As told.

I think it’s time for a full reading of A Map to the Next World by Joy Harjo, Muskogee Nation, amongst whose literary honors, is that of first indigenous (Native American) person to serve as poet laureate of USA ( 2019-2022).

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light.

It must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

Wait: there’s more:

Recommended Reading:

By The Fire We Carry: The Generations Long Fight For Justice On Native Lands, by Rebecca Nagle. 2024

I could not put this book down, though it’s tough material. True crime and courtroom drama, with a healthy dose of excellent investigative journalism through the lens of US native peoples, treaties and “Indian Law” - yes all that horror and litany of lies and broken treaties. Part biography, part history, part true crime, totally engaging. Read it. The author performs the audiobook, adding a layer of authenticity.