Mesa Trail ch. 32
Draft 2

"A large wooden bowl. Large enough for a little girl to sit in... while her mother spun her around on the kitchen floor. A beautiful wooden bowl. Large enough for another little girl to ride in...while her mother set her afloat on the waves of the sea..." – Keeper










Inuna felt completely at home up here in the cave of the ancient sun dance.  This was the top of the world, at least in these parts anyway.  Rarified air, her grandmother used to say.  Quiet, where the spirits are at work.  Even the trees, she used to ask. Yes the trees especially.  Imagine the patience, grandmother used to point out, to know you were going to be in one place for hundreds of years.  The roots travel downward in between breat rocks and become friends with things nobody else knows about.  The earth gods down there rising up in the form of trees.  You imagine the greatest change of scenery for a tree is nothing more than a slight shake created by the brush of the wind god.  In winter some limbs might tighten up or lose leaves.  That's it, and they don't complain about it one spit.  She always said spit instead of bit on purpose, then smiled wide and the creases of old tan skin parted in wisdom.

Then came the golden hawks making their circle around the meadows that pitted the backs of these mountains up at Flagstaff.  If you listened closely enough, Inuna thought, you could hear the wings break the wind. How often could you hear such things down below in the city, all car wheels and construction.  A rustle in the underbrush, a shake of the ponderosa limb, the hawk wing, so much more truth in these motions than all the rest of the babble below.  She knew she was virtually alone in this, and this thought, that her ears could hear the motions of the world, could see the very patterns of the clouds and smell the rich floor of the pine canopy, connected her to the unexplainable, history itself, the same mind's eye of those that came before.  What else was the greatest purpose for the human being than to serve as observers and voice for the voiceless.  Who would hear? Who could really hear anymore?

She knew Hannah had taught herself to listen and was so proud of her, all on her own too, caring for her little parcel of the earth and now she too could see the connection that was Bear Canyon Creek, the rolling rocks, the birches that barely grew out of a crack out of the side of the mossy boulder. It didn't start at the trailhead, it didn't finish at the bottom of the creek, it was continuous, like time itself, so fluid, it had a smell, a taste...it had carved out a part of the mind of people themselves.  Josh was not as comfortable inside the silence just yet.  The glittering gold walls were like something right out of an Indian Jones mystery and he half expected some strange wheel to take shape before his eyes where they would have to replace a bag of gold for weight on some kind of booby trap.  All was fine with that -- what stories to tell his friends in school -- but he felt too far from home and was ready to head back down.  "Rain is on the next peak west," Inuna said, "I can smell it." This was not as comforting to Josh. Time to leave.  He now half expected to see one of those strange shaped rocks to turn to a dinosaur like something out of Jurassic Park.  The movie gods were likewise powerful.  The hawk screech was not the peaceful confirmation of flight but an image of it pouncing down on something, so raw, so vicious. Inuna gathered their things and strung her backpack over her shoulders and took one last look around the golden cave. Must keep this sacred, untouched.  They would dig this cave out of existence. They would dig a hole, before they knew it, around and around and around until they reached the very bedrock a thousand feet below.  They would get the gold, but they would also get the mountain.  So hard to replace a mountain, gone, vanished from time itself, no memory, no spirit left, just diminished by that much.  She walked over the printed handprint in the side of the cave, placed her own hand over, then said something in another language. "Inuna, people of the sun mountain," and headed back out of the cave with Josh when they first heard the booming clap of thunder.