El Morro, Atsinna, Dragonflies and Thunder

This morning we climbed El Morro, which means 'the bluff' or 'the headland', a bulwark of red and white sandstone standing against the sapphire sky. At the top was a partially excavated Zuni pueblo, called Atsinna.



A Zuni ranger popped out from under the half-buried first floor and greeted us. He told us that over a thousand of his people once lived there and that they travelled first from the Grand Canyon and went all through the West. Each time they moved, it is because they were given a message by the Sun or the Moon. He spoke of the Red-Gold and Turquoise Dragonflies as spiritual messengers. We stood in the middle of the world, he said, what the White Man calls the Continental Divide, the saddle in the North. Other rangers, he explained, would tell people to stay away from this, don't touch that, don't sit on the ruins, but not him, he invites, beckons people to join and listen. He said sometimes people came and told him they were one-quarter Navajo or one-eighth Lakota and that they would ask him what he was. He shook his head. "We are all mixed." He pressed his firm, flat hand against his heart. "It is here that matters." He told us he was restoring the pueblo because now that it has been excavated they must repair it frequently to keep it from eroding. Grandmother, Grandfather or Sister is here in these rooms, watching and laughing, he says, they can see me but I can't see them. They knew of this time now, when the world would become heavy, too heavy for the gods to hold, because there would be too many people. There would be a great time of scarcity and sometimes the future is sad, but he would continue to teach people, tell the children the stories of his Grandmothers, all the children, regardless of their skin, because this is what he must do. He talked to us a long while and finally said he must end his break.

We thanked him and ventured down and around the box canyon. We were thirsty and hot. A pool under the bluffs harbored bees and dragonflies, just past the petroglyphs of rams, hands and snakes. In a very short while after coming down from the ancient Atsinna, in time for us to take shelter at Inscription Rock Cafe, the monsoon poured down cool rain and hail on the desert.

After a Monsoon at Dusk

The silence is deep enough that you can hear the plants grow and the heart leave footsteps in silt. The pinesap and sagebrush fill the air. A lone crow or dove whoo calls and breaks. The white-jade of sage reaches in delicate tendrils above the dark green. Little bulbs of flowers rise like drops in shocks of white, yellow, lavender, orange and red. The blond grasses shoot out of dark roots and hold rain like pearls. Sounds envelop you in the silence, such that the pack of wolves seems to be in the sunset instead of in the purple darkening East. The soil grows alive in hillocks of fungus, moss and succulents. Pine sprigs hold droplets underneath, gleaming spiders' eyes in the last grey of twilight. Night falls like feathery down.

A Funeral of Birds

My brother Shevy picked me up from Zuni in the midst of ominous clouds, but the rain didn't break as we drove up into Candy Kitchen through the green pines and red sandstone. When we pulled into their acre under the piñons, I noticed a dying baby swallow in the bed of the truck. She had fallen out of a nest, perhaps, in Zuni where they darted around the eaves of the roofs. She was severely stunned and too young to make it without her mother. She opened her black eyes and beak a few times weakly, sometimes sputtering and spasming. I didn't have the courage to kill her and when I tried to set her in a tree, she would seize violently until she started to fall. Knowing the kitten was prowling, I set her at the foot of a tree. The kitten would have a play at hunting.

I felt regret at not having the courage to kill the bird. Max consoled me, "The kitten got hunting practice. Babies killing babies."




I was not consoled. I had never taken an animal's life myself and had wished I had, to spare her the minutes of kitten torture before she died.

The next afternoon, some of our neighbors spontaneously visited all at once and convened in the driveway. The UPS truck pulled in randomly at the same time to deliver Shevy's chainmail supplies. The dogs barked briefly, but without enough urgency to warn us of the coyote passing across the road with a red young chicken in its mouth. We marveled at how close it got at such a leisurely pace, as if flaunting the kill. Shevy and Max don't have guns and the coyote disappeared in the pines to the South. After a check of the chicken houses, we determined it was our neighbor's chicken.

Young Mike, who lives down the road, had a violent, rapist rooster to kill for a neighbor and Shevy and Max had been thinking of taking their rooster Spud as well, as he's been pecking the hens quite rudely. We decided to meet here to harvest the birds the next evening.

Shevy had to work that afternoon so Max and I distracted ourselves with projects. We built a deck in front of the trailer, put a loaf in the bread machine and cleaned up the kitchen.






In addition to the rapist, there was another hen who has been eating eggs, so she was also collected. Mike and I drove them ceremoniously in a banged-up hearse he and Genevieve had just fixed up. As we drove back to Shevy and Max's, he told me it had carried 27 bodies. A good number.

I was the only one who had been a part of chicken harvest, plucking and eviscerating, but none of us had killed our own meat before. We dallied, preparing nachos and listening to metal. The trailer filled with the ring and sheen of sharpening knives. Mike brought a knife his grandfather had made by hand. That was to be the knife we would use to take the birds. We were children who had not yet shed blood, so we had to steel our nerves for the kill. We decided to ritually carry the raping and baby-eating birds out of the hearse. Mike donned an executioner hood made from a Navajo Pride flour bag with eye holes cut. Shevy hooked his chainmail belt on with a cut-off Punisher skull tee. Max wrapped a cloak about his shoulders. With the Darth Vader theme playing out of the trailer, Max and Shevy marched the chickens around back and Mike came up in the hood, carrying a sword. It was unplanned and we laughed nervously. Shevy tried to open the cage and pull the cock out, but he protested in a flurry of squawks and feathers. We suspended the ritual, growing nervous now, and prepared for the actual harvest. The chickens knew their fate and that this was only ritual.




We had waited long enough. Dusk was coming. Shevy and Max decided to save Spud for another day as it was getting late and we already had two to butcher.

We cut a hole out of the corner of the executioner hood to turn it into a kill bag. A table was set with a cutting board and construction plastic. Max covered the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket with earth to catch the blood and feathers. I knew it was up to me to start it, having had the most experience. My voice was beginning to shake but I opened the cage and grasped the rooster firmly from the back. It let out a bloodcurdling scream, which scared Max off to the the pop-up at the back of the land. I whispered to it as we put it into the bag.

I was thankful Mike was courageous enough, without speaking, to take his grandfather's knife first. I held the rooster and, after a few starts and fits from the bird, Mike slit its throat. Dots of dark velvet blood hit his face. We breathed in the evening, Shevy above us, Mike holding his head and I his body. This was opening us all to the doorway in which all flesh eaters of our ancestors passed through. Shevy was in a trance, eyes open, concentrating on calming the bird as he crossed over into the spirit world. Mike and I spoke of meat eating, awareness, a few laughs broke the fear.

The vat of water was still on the flame, so we bled out the cock and went on the the hen. It was my turn to handle the knife. The hen was calm. I looked her in the eye and massaged her throat, then drew the knife through her neck. The cut wasn't very deep but she didn't protest much and ruby blood spilled downward. I drew the blade across again to hasten her death and apologized to her out loud. My nerves nearly gave and sadness welled in my eyes, but my intent grew hard and clear like the knife. Mike and I held her until she bled out and the last shudder of life left her. I went into the trailer to ask Max to bring the water. I dunked the birds and began to show Mike how to clean them, starting with the rooster. (I will leave out the details of evisceration, but for those who haven't done it and are interested, the best site I've seen so far is the blog on How to Butcher a Chicken.)

Dark came upon us and it was Mike's turn to clean the hen. The coyotes began to howl and I looked Mike in the eyes and laughed. Shevy brought out a lantern. Their crops were full of grain, since the neighbors who sent them to us didn't know to fast the chickens before harvest. It was messy and we were inexperienced. The hen had a fully formed egg with a soft proto-shell and yolks at various stages and sizes clinging to the back of her ribcage. We stood mesmerized before her. Since she had been eating her own eggs and the eggs of her friends, her liver was yellow and she was mostly bright yellow fat.

It was well after dark when we finished. Mike and Shevy went to bury the bucket of blood, guts and feathers out West behind the land for the coyotes: an offering of sorts to let our chickens alone. Max and I cleaned up the site. He dumped the vat of fatty, bloody water on the turnips. As wolves howled from the Sanctuary to the East, we washed up at the water tank on the shed deck, the grey water going into the blood bucket to rinse it. Shevy then dumped the bucket away to the North. He came back with a quartz crystal spear he found there and placed it on the table where we slaughtered.

Mike bid us farewell and we sat in the trailer for a while, mostly silent, until almost midnight. Shevy said to me, "You don't look so good."

I hesitated. "I'm processing...that was my first kill."

He nodded. "Oh, I didn't know."

We eventually shuffled off to bed, warning each other we might be kept up by coyotes. Half-asleep, continually I reminded myself we cleaned everything up. Through the night, I heard wolves and coyotes yipping and howling and kept smelling wafts of bird fat and death.

In the morning I awoke with a heavy humility. I had looked a soul in the eyes and took its life. For the first time in this body, I felt a sense of adulthood. I placed the quartz under the piñon pine where we spilled the birds blood. Sunday we will feast on chicken and dumplings, BBQ chicken and greens, and give thanks again.

Dancing and the Night Adventure

I have been reading Zinn and writing my zine, cooped up in this Federal housing on the Zuni Reservation for weeks. Shevy and Max came over and I began to spazz about how silly it was that the carpet was white in a desert filled with red sand and just how on earth the woman who lives here can keep the carpet so white with a dog, a baby and a toddler. I wanted to have the house in the same condition they left it in, but I am simply not a neurotic cleaner. I'm actually a poor cleaner. I think a little dirt and dust is great. But I am neurotic about doing a good job, so I started to scrub the carpet insanely and wailing loudly about how all the mother must do is clean this god-forsaken carpet. I couldn't seem to get one speck of dust out if it. Shevy and Max tried to calm me and took me out of the house for the first time since I've been here. The dog Guinness has severe separation anxiety and so my instructions were to crate him if I left, so he wouldn't pee on everything, destroy blinds, or try to run after the car. This is the main reason I haven't left until now, as during the day it's much too hot to crate him. So I crated Guinness in the backyard and we went off to Ramah to céilí dance.

Céilí is Irish social dancing, a little like square dancing, in sets of 2 partners. We learned the Siege of Ennis and the Fairy Reel. I hadn't had so much fun in I can't remember when! Though it was quite funny, because my gender was confusing to some of the folks and céilí has traditionally specific roles for boys and girls. Shevy drank a bit of Jameson and I drove us back to Zuni in his pickup. They were going to stay the night with me and drive to Gallup in the morning to pick up Sparkles, who was getting his balls chopped up. Shevy was a little tipsy on whiskey and explained his plan for telling Candy Kitchen that I was trans. I thought it was highly amusing, since publicly supporting my decision to be trans in his small rural community would be a testing of the waters, since neither he nor Max is out to most his neighbors there.

When we got to the house in Zuni I was laughing and went out back to let Guinness out when I saw the busted open empty crate and no Guinness. My stomach fell. I called for him, driving the pickup around the Reservation, while Shevy cleaned and gutted trout to fry up for dinner. I grabbed a flashlight and took off in the moonlight through the valley between the mesas to the East. I walked all around almost to the lake, the silvery moonlit grass sticking in my socks. There was no sign of Guinness and the dogs on the Reservation were uncannily quiet. I heard faint coyotes to the North. I sat with Shevy and Max, eating in relative silence, and recalled that he had no collar. We waited, lounging and digesting wordlessly. Shevy and Max finally went to bed.

It was one in the morning and I put on a pot of coffee. In dismay, I formulated what I would say to the couple if their dog didn't come back. I sat in the yard drinking coffee, jumping at every sound and softly calling the dog's name. I was about halfway through the coffee when I heard whining around the side of the house. I called for Guinness and I heard a clamor over the fence. Guinness bounded up grinning like a dog, covered in mud. I squealed with relief, almost in tears. He jumped inside and around all over the white carpet, mud practically flinging, and I was never so glad that the goddamn carpet was getting dirty.

A New Place, A New Way

My time in Zuni is almost up. Two more weeks and I'll be going back to stay with my brother for a bit until I ride a train Northwest. This desert I'll miss sorely.

The beautiful swallows have built a nest at the corner of the house, which the cat, Luna, watches with predatory constance on the window sill, her tail swishing in violent bursts.

Rains come in huge, quenching drops from heavy thunderclouds riding the blue like dark chariots.

Bulwarks of red striped sandstone, millions of years old, rise on either side of the valley. Sky riders have passage on rainbows that arc into the valley at nearly every rain.

Dawn turns the plains at the feet of the mesas into molten gold, the near-white grasses shimmering with a brightness that nears pain, like the true form of a god.

The warbles of great elder ravens can be heard amongst the pine and juniper, whose language is more ancient than the trees and stature is as tall as a human child. They fly as strong as kestrels and hawks, their wings nearly as wide as a human is tall.

Lizards and snakes scurry across the pink sand, through gnarled shrubs, scraggly grasses and spiked cacti.

And finally, after dusk is the blackness, the jet of galactic dust clouds even blacker than the sky itself, and the stars that sparkle on the night waters. Stars that cannot be seen under the electric web of the city. Stars which I will return to, first to see again with these eyes, then to greet me when the Valkyries take me to their halls...

Until then, I will walk through the streets of a city on the edge of the Empire, to gather my strength and will, gather my knowledge and skill, gather my allies and return to the hills with a band of heathen queers to live the way we choose, to live with the hills instead of off of them, despite the calls and comforts of the Imperial Cities...