Tim's Tales from the Road
Tim's Tales from the Road
Entering the classroom on the first day of winter quarter, I immediately made my way to the desks on the perimeter of the classroom. Separated from the noisy antics and the loud, jeering rough housing of the other students, I sat down in my own version of ten degrees of separation. Pondering what the long-range fallout from a class titled "Introduction to Public Speaking" would mean over the next ten weeks, I decided it was best just to ponder something else.
The consequences of taking one class over another can sometimes be evident from the start. Predicting the fallout associated with one course, verses another, and how much work to expect from each professor is an enormous risk. The equivalent of weighing certain dread over possible dread. Choose the mode of execution. Some classes are known for their brutality. Other classes are far subtler in how they sneak up and catch students unaware with impossible demands and tedious busywork. As I considered this, a young woman walked into the classroom and studying the chaos, she too seemed overwhelmed. Following my lead, she also dived for the perimeter of the classroom, away from the other students, and sat down in front of me. Isolating ourselves from the rest of the students, we awaited our fate leaning back against the seldom used, dirty chalkboard. I wondered if she was weighing the same option that I was: If, it was indeed, too late to make a flying leap out of a third story, public speaking classroom window.
Our worst fears were realized when, as an introduction to the course, the professor announced that we would be introducing another student at the front of the room. Publicly. To the rest of our classmates. In roughly ten minutes. Separated by several empty desks from the other students, it seemed that by default, she would introduce me to the class and I would introduce her. She turned to face me with her soft olive skin and big hesitant eyes and in that moment I knew that she felt the same degree of separation from the other students that I did. Dark brown hair cascaded down over her face and her bangs were caught between undecided and an almost wild independence. She was pretty and in a unique, calming way, watching her was mesmerizing. 'Creek gazing' as my grandfather used to call it. That state where the softly flowing waters hypnotize and take you far away from wherever the mind was before. Looking at her, I felt that softness settle in as if I was sitting on some shaded stream bank watching the downstream bound waters ebb and caress stiller waters. Yet even beyond that, there was a grace in her movements that I couldn't quite place.
"My name is Karas." She held out her hand.
I took her hand in mine and gently shook it. Her skin was soft and warm and she smiled shyly. Playing eye tag it was just as hard for me to hold that gaze. Everything was tentative.
"Tim," I said matching her shyness with my own and a hesitant smile. She continued gently smiling back with an amused look on her face. "So what do you want the class to know about you?" I asked.
She hesitated and then looked at the rest of the students busily talking amongst themselves. She returned her eyes to mine and met my gaze with a quiet voice.
"I'm Makah. I'm a member of the tribe. Have you heard of the Makah?" she asked in a soft voice.
"Yes, I have. My grandfather was Choctaw and I live five miles from the Kalispel nation. Do you know where that is?" Immediately after opening my mouth I felt stupid.
Why is it whenever Native American issues are raised, I personally end up in the discussion? The Makah are a long way from the Kalispel and a world away from the Choctaw. Members of my family were not thrust into the national spotlight because of any determined effort to find our way back to older traditions. I had no claim to the sea, or whaling or any link to her clan. Choctaw is not Makah. I did not share any commonality with her. I was as white as they come. I have never lived on a reservation and I have no head rights. The only link between she and I was my grandfather, a man who came from a different nation: One that was set against the plains and touched by gentle forests. He was a First Nation member like her, but he was also more than a member of a foreign nation struggling to exist within the boundaries of a domestic one. He was a huge, and gentle man who touched my life in ways that makes it difficult to not feel a part of something that was and is bigger than I. "You're always creek gazing Tim", he would say. Watching the calm waters and standing back from the rapids but always, seeing what others sometimes miss. He said that I was too quiet and that I was always thinking. He would tell people who came into his sign shop that I was seven going on thirty. And yet, in spite of those senses, I was also the one in the family who was able to cram, with disturbing accuracy, a foot deeper down my throat than most. Only he was better at it.
I looked back up at her a bit redder, feeling illegitimate and noticed that she still seemed amused at me sitting before her in my Brushpoppers and Ropers.
"I have never been to the Kalispel. Where is it?" she asked.
"A long ways from here. Nearly six hours east. Just about as far as you can go and still be here," I paused, "in Washington."
"I live in Neah Bay. You can't get any farther west than our reservation. Do you know what our land means?" She looked back over at the other students again and then turning her head back, she met my gaze, "It means, 'Beginning of the World'." Karas smiled and then asked, "and you…where else do you come from?"
She wasn't asking about location this time. It was something much deeper than that and as I struggled to describe that place, I realized that some questions can never be completely answered, no matter how much time you have. The words don't do such answers justice. Descriptions encompass vocabulary words but they, those naked words with all their many syllables 'weren't there', living it, tasting it and cleaning up after it. Words could never convey who I was, or where I had been. Fourteen years on the road and never really staying in one place long enough to let the dust settle and having a home you never see. About being gay and having a partner that I dearly loved, but forced into an easy silence not by the trucking industry but by the university. These places could never 'fall in' to the scrutiny of inspection created by one-sentence answers. Yet, I settled for the only words that came to me to reply to her question. Where do you come from? What is your identity? Tell me of your tribe?
My response seemed minimal and stark. I wanted to say that there was so much more to the story. But never in a two minute introduction could any of that be conveyed. And I doubted any of the other twenty or so twenty something's would care if I could.
"I drive truck." I paused as I watched for her reaction. There wasn't any. Continuing I said, "I have been 'out there', on the road, running the 'large cars on big roads' for fourteen years, and I suppose that is where I come from, the road. But, when I am home, I live in Pend Oreille County. It’s a very different world from here."
She nodded with silent understanding. "So is Neah Bay. It is not the same as here," and she stopped speaking for a minute and looked down at her sweatshirt adorned with native artwork that scrawled the word 'Makah'. Then she resumed speaking, "I could get in a lot of trouble for wearing this sweatshirt in some places, especially around Seattle or Port Angeles. But not there, not…", she stopped for a minute and looked back down at the writing on her sweatshirt and finished her sentence, "at home."
We both looked at the other students who seemed to have discovered all that they needed to know about each other and yet I knew that Karas and I just barely scratched the surface of our own lives. I wondered what the Gap kids in their Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirts would think about the world that she and I knew. And what would they think about our respective tribes. We were all strangers from strange lands thrown together. Each of us had our unique version of home. For Karas it was at the end of the world and for me it was home on the range at 77 mph. For others in the class, it was Italy or Manhattan or a small town called Springfield, Oregon, and a high school shot up by a disturbed student. Coming from pronounceable and unpronounceable places with both warm and unthinkable stories, twenty odd twenty-something's and a few thirty year olds were at the beginning of a journey which, when it was over, would leave us all changed.
Karas introduced me first and she spoke quietly, making minimal eye contact with the class. Her soft, breeze-like voice was almost lost in the stirrings of a class of 27. Looking at her wild hair, I realized that if she hadn't told me, I would have never guessed that she was of a First Nation. Yet, in our Pamela Anderson driven society, I also wondered if her subtle beauty would go unrecognized by the rest of young men in the class. Would her under-powering way be recognized as a thing of equal beauty?
When I introduced her, my voice seemed shaky and unsettled. I told the class that we had in our midst of a celebrity, a member of the Makah Nation. Here, standing before us was a woman who had served her tribe well as a member of the tribal court. While attending college, she worked with battered women. Her dream was to be an attorney. The class listened intently and as the whaling controversy swirled around the tribe over the next ten weeks, many times I caught members of the class looking over at this gentle, quiet-voiced, woman in silent wonder. And so our introduction went. He comes from the 'drives truck' tribe. And she is from the Makah tribe. Our place in the class set by these categories. But these categories would never tell who we really were. They would just set us apart.
It has been said that most Americans fear public speaking worse than death. During the course of the class, I realized that such a sentiment was a cruel understatement. It was worse than death. Public speaking was nothing more that a long, agonizing, experience where one flails against the sympathy of an audience. An audience glaring up from their seats that would just as soon not be there. Period.
The syllabus outlined that each member of the class was expected to prepare five speeches for successful completion of the course including a personal devotional speech. I did four speeches that reflected my experience in the trucking industry including a demonstration speech on sharing the road with 'large cars', a speech on the dangers of the full implementation of NAFTA, and a speech outlining the need for change in the way truckers are compensated. The class seemed receptive to all of them but it was the final speech that was the most difficult. This speech was personal. It was intended to move the audience emotionally. It was a statement of faith and a sharing of spirituality. It was a speech that would never happen at a secular university.
There I was, caught, mid day on the campus of good and evil and I was a skeptical Christian, doing a speech about faith, God, and my personal understanding of where I fit into all of this. A devotional speech set in this very Biblical place sans one crazed truck driver. I was terrified to stand in front of so many of my classmates who had so many quick and easy answers to everything and they usually all started with "have you asked the Lord about that?" Where was I 'going to go today' with that kind of assignment?
After weeks of procrastination, I finally settled on the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah has always been my biblical hero, if I was going to have one. Like me, he was pure 'scaredy cat whiner'. He regularly complained to the big guy upstairs and he was sometimes frightened of life and its challenges. Having made a science of pissin' and moanin', if anyone started the Murphy’s luck tradition, it was Isaiah.
His appreciation for breathlessly beholding the power of a shit storm brewing out of nowhere, without warning, was a quality that I admired. Isaiah’s name must have meant 'needs Prozac' in Hebrew. He had the market on little things becoming big things, oblivious denial, non-existent damage control and then, he alone had the nerve to stand before God and suggest that if God was so smart why didn't HE come down and fix it? If Isaiah was clueless in Israel then I was his equivalent on Interstate 69. If he could be an inspiration to a barely believing trucker like me, maybe the class might also find something in Isaiah worth holding on to.
But I am not a preacher and I don't 'talk God' or walk around asking people where do you and God 'want to go today?' Weeks of terror and good old Lutheran angst were the prelude to the speech. Lutherans don't share their faith with others. Lutherans don't have, much less give, testimonials. Instead, we do everything within our power to keep God from noticing us hoping that while the Baptists are making a stir, we can slip on in to heaven. We do not have holy wars, we do not have crusades, and our bloodletting is reserved only for church council meetings and forced red and green Jello potluck feeds during Advent.
The school was deceptive in its trickery, hoping to make me a Baptist and I resented it. For awhile, I whined probably as good as Isaiah once did, and I bemoaned before God and anyone else who would listen, that I did not want to do this speech. It was too personal. How could I effectively get across to the audience what the only verse in the Bible that I have ever memorized meant to me?
The dreaded day finally came, the last day of winter quarter and the speech took the place of my final exam in that class. Attempting to bring Isaiah 54:10 down to the level of a scared trucker on a snowy mountain pass, I hoped that the innocent young Christians with their limited life experience did not burn me at the podium. Maybe those who shared that third story classroom space with me would understand that faith is sometimes found in the most dark and disturbing places.
Painfully obvious that I was not from their tribe, I stood before them and nervously told my classmates of my friends who were truck stop prostitutes and the people I knew who were addicted to crystal meth. I shared with them stories about my chicken-hauler friends who had never set foot in a church, or the friends that I had who rolled on dark highways through the night isolated, lonely, and whose address books encompassed a collection of one night stands that staggered the imagination. All of these illustrations were about people who could find comfort in that verse. Yet once the speech began, I have never felt so naked, exposed, and in need of comfort myself.
The verse is uncomplicated. Isaiah proclaims that no matter how many mountains get shook up or that may be pulled out from under you, that God is a God of peace and compassion and love. It is the Shit Happens verse to which I have always clung. It is the one verse that consoled, and that now rests buried under snow on my grandfather's tombstone. The one which I have prayed during all those snowy Montana nights where I didn't know if I was going to be able to keep the truck on the road or not. And, it is the one verse that I sometimes wonder if my father thought of, the night he got a call from the Seattle Police department.
I didn't know when I began speaking, if I would have the guts to tell the class. The story that is so painful that it still isn't talked about much in my family. A story that I didn't think a bunch of young conservative Christians would understand. But, it was a story that they had to understand, if they were to grasp the power of that verse. It was almost impossible to make eye contact with the class as I reached that point in my speech where I told them of the piercing phone call that rang shattering the predawn one unsettled, early morning.
A cold voice from the police summoning my father in the darkness of night. Summoning an already exhausted pastor, and shocked father, they one in the same, trying to rub the sleep out of dry, sore eyes. Trying to comprehend the strange voice on the other end of the line. Forced out of a peaceful rest. Not for the needs of a congregational member but for the needs of one of his own. Getting out of bed, he drove down to Harborview Medical Center.
A young man was walking down the street when strangers approached him from behind. He was hit over the head with a crow bar. Stunned, surrounded, and outnumbered they attacked him on that formerly still and quiet street. Pulling the nearly unconscious man deeper into the alley, crowbars meet human flesh and fists pummeled down until the blood mixed with tears and a fear that 'passeth all understanding' was the only emotion to match the hatred that encircled the downed man. Metal tore into skin, clothes were ripped away and humanity exited with every angry word and labored breath. The young man was repeatedly sexually assaulted and in the horror of that moment, the violence diminished an already bashed spirit and left in its place a stained secret. For both the man who was bashed and in the quiet moments when a conscience can't be silenced, for those men that did the bashing. The hate and fear in that bleak alley was slow to be extinguished until there was nothing left except the residue of spent spirits and a defeated one, clinging to hope from the tattered remains of a human body. A body that was left naked and bleeding in an alley like so much trash as a gang of men, filled with bloodied and rejuvenated manhood, sped away into the night.
I stopped in the speech and looked up. I looked specifically at Karas to see if she was with me. She and I, of different tribes, but linked after nearly ten weeks in that class together. I looked into her brown eyes, sometimes hidden by her independent bangs of defiant hair. I hoped to find a bit of courage and a bit of acknowledgement. Our eyes locked and she nodded. I looked back at the rest of the students and the professor and continued.
My father, when he reached the hospital, was confronted with the gut wrenching heartache that seeing one's own senselessly damaged flesh and blood provides. Human flesh tore into other human flesh. Spirit faced spirit and devastation resulted. From a theological perspective, I wonder how a man such as he faces such twisted and convulsing realities. This was not just about showing up at a sick person's bedside. This was not just about visiting an accident victim in the hospital. This was not just about standing beside a grieving wife as her spouse took his last breath. This was personal. It was about taking everything you believe in, turning it upside down and then ripping it to shreds. This was about asking the unanswerable. It was about standing up to God and looking Him in the eye and asking why. It was about faith where there shouldn't be any. And it was a moment that was just as much between my father and his God as it was between he and the man who lay next to him, broken and bleeding in a hospital bed.
The bashers who did this, did they brazenly and righteously claim the authority to do what they did from the same God that my father represented? Was God's name cited as they carried out their actions? Or, was this just the same ordinary sexual violence carried out by unknowns against other unknowns. Regardless of the motivation, how many actions in Jesus' name had my father condoned or participated in during the course of his ministry? How many births and marriages, and first, soft kisses and last, tearful farewells before a coffin lid was forever shut, had he witnessed, performed and sanctioned? All of these actions were done in the Lord's name. Positive, love based, actions that were now compared to this one, violent one, at par. I wonder, where did he find faith in that hour as he surveyed all the bloody things carried out in the name of the highest power? Or those other actions that seemed to occur while God was looking the other way. I am sure he was not the first to face such a dark and disturbing tunnel. A faith vacuum that swallows believer's whole and spits them back out, dazed and confused.
Rereading the verse I asked the class to consider other families who might have asked for comfort and I mentioned Judy Shepard, whose son Matt was hung on a fence in Wyoming or Billy Gaither, an Alabama man that attended church every Sunday with his family. He a closeted, gay man, still living under his parents’ roof who was senselessly murdered. A man whose family not only reeled from their son’s death but who faced the isolation that the news of their son’s sexuality created. These stories were hardly stale in the minds of the class. These were realities that unsettled and made the legalistic squirm and the compassionate crash into free fall. These were victims that had faces. They had names. These recognizable pictures of strangers with their tear stained and lifeless, bloody cheeks and mourning family members accompanying coffins to the screaming uncertainty of silent, unanswered "why’s?"
The same questions that always hang over parents facing loss, wondering when and if peace will ever come. And, if God was still on duty when tragedy struck? How does a father approach a raped and beaten son? How does a pastor explain something like this to a congregation? Where do you put their shame and your shame when all the mountains in your life are shaken and all of the peaceful, high country vistas where you have sought refuge have been removed?
I stopped speaking and looked at the class. Shaking so badly that I could barely keep my arm on the podium, I felt like I was hanging on for dear life. The class was still. Staring up at me there were several students who had tears running down their cheeks and these included some of the men in the class. The same confident men who, when they gave their speeches about God, had all the right answers. Young and assured, their faith was strong and defied questioning. My faith by contrast was weak, clouded and most of all, skeptical. Mine was, like the Kate Bush song says, all about making deals with God and getting him to swap places. It was about asking why and I was all about unanswered questions and unleashed pain. My faith was about wondering how on earth a God in Heaven comforts a father who lies next to his own mangled, bleeding, flesh.
It was the first time in that class that the topic of gay bashing came up or male rape. It was the first time that the class considered that a straight father, who believes in God and is faithful, finds himself an outcast among his peers, that a man of the cloth could be forced into a pained exile of shame and silence. In my mind, the words spoken were unpolished and too emotional. It was a speech of the unexplainable and the worst of times, spoken in a nervous and shaky voice. It was embarrassing to tell strangers that my family's raw soul was bare and that it bled like the same families now chased on the evening news. It was horrific to wonder if some in the class might feel this experience was somehow deserved, a just result of an unhealthy lifestyle. Serves you right, served gospel style much like some conservative Christians are so threatened by hate crimes legislation. The perception reigns that if you aren't doing anything wrong, God will never let anything bad happen to you. Tell that to my father.
Finally my attempt to bring Isaiah into our realm was over. Sitting back down, on the perimeter of the class, silent eyes followed me to my seat. Karas smiled, stood up and walking to the front of the room, she began to talk about her devotional story, of Jonah and the Whale. With that caress in her voice and a gentle rhythm, her devotional speech began to slowly carry me down stream. Lost in the moment of what I'd just said before the class and aware that her speech would be just as awkward for her, I wondered if she was thinking about Isaiah. Her words came slow and she spoke softer than I'd ever heard her speak before. The waters of her tongue were like medication, and from the perspective of Isaiah and a Makah, I once again found myself creek gazing.
In the past, when she spoke of the Makah Nation, she was proud. Today, in the humblest manner, she explained to the class that the name Makah meant 'generous host'. Recalling potlatches and the many traditions that were celebrated on the Makah Nation's land, hers were a people who challenged the power of the mighty Pacific Ocean at the place they called the 'Beginning of the World'. The tribe rallied against the Pacific Northwest’s notorious weather, seeking the nourishing Salmon of the ocean, but most importantly, the tribe chased the Pacific's largest mammal. The Makah were hunters of whale.
Karas spoke about Jonah and his whale from the perspective of a people who were whale hunters. A tribe that proudly held onto rich traditions, that defied survival in the surf against forces much greater than they and who came from a place where everything reflected the role of the whale in their society. Her family’s history was older than mine and the voices of her ancestors perched at the end of the continent spilled forth from the floodgates of damned memory. A history that was now cursed, protested, and misunderstood. I lost track of her biblical references as I thought about the other references from which she drew. Family, traditions, and a soul facing the same sort of forlorn existence that Isaiah had.
The Makah, I learned, are made up of five main families with eighteen sub families. Karas once told me as we talked before class, "You can spend your whole lifetime getting to know your family. I have lived in Neah Bay all of my life and I am still finding out about people who are in my family." Each family holds oral histories passed down from generation to generation. Family members celebrate equally in of the twists and turns of family life and sometimes, they share their fortunes freely with outsiders. Karas, during the course of the quarter, lost a relative and I watched as she participated in all of the traditions of her community. Still, being stuck on campus, away from family, participating in sacred rituals was difficult. I believe that she too knew the understanding of hardship as she dealt with her unreliable jeep, constantly washed out reservation roads and the challenges of being a minority on a primarily white campus. Staying close to the life on the 'res' meant feeling isolated from the rest of campus.
Yet for the Makah family is life and it is primary. When family members were born, there were feasts. But, when one of them passed on, grief and sadness accompanied the near endless peninsula rains. Certain dances could not be danced for a year, and family songs were not joyfully sung for a year. Hair was cut as a symbol of respect. The members linked by blood were also linked by their anguish.
Yet the Makah are linked by other traditions as well. Migrating whales and a treaty signed between the tribe and the U. S. Government in the 1800's, have recently brought many of the families even closer together. The tribe, addressing declining whale populations, discontinued their whaling practices in the 1920's. Now the Makah were prepared to resume their whaling practices as the whale numbers were on the increase. Guaranteed by treaty law to a five-whale, yearly allowance, the total gray whale population is now estimated to be over 26,600. Yet the tribe's decision to resume whaling is still met with hostility. Both from within the tribe, where some oppose renewing the whale hunts, to outside of the reservation, where many former allies of Native American groups are also disappointed in the tribe's decision.
Resuming centuries old whaling practices was an unsettling position for the tribe to take. Organizations like the Sea Shepard Society launched flotillas to interfere with the tribe's activities. On a few occasions violence erupted and the people who referred to themselves as generous hosts suddenly found themselves in the midst of ugliness and controversy. Still in her subtle and quiet way, Karas educated the class on her tribe's position and the whale's place in Makah culture. Standing at the front of the class behind the podium, I wonder if she felt just as isolated as I did, and no matter what explanations she provided, the class seemed slow to warm to her. She spoke of being swallowed by a whale at the same time her tribe was in the process of killing one.
As Karas wrapped up her speech, I tried to picture her as angry and hostile and I couldn't. Earlier in the quarter, upon discovering my research project revolving around unique languages that have developed through electronic means in the trucking industry, she got excited. As we talked about CB radio languages and its influence on trucking culture, her face lightened and her eyes sparkled as she listened. When I was finished explaining the project she interjected. "You know Tim, that’s just like my brother and the rest of the fishermen of the tribe. I never thought about it before, but they have their own language. When they are out on the water and I am on the base station and they are talking to each other over the radios, I can barely understand what they are saying. Things are pronounced differently, they talk in a different rhythm, and words have different meanings. Yet the minute my brother gets off the boat, he talks normally again. You should talk to the fishermen in Neah Bay on your next project!"
Willing to participate in the lives of those around her, including those of her classmates, I still felt her hesitancy to speak. I knew that she felt as alone up behind that podium as I had. In this day and age, killing anything, other than someone who is cheating on you on a daytime talk show, is considered barbaric. It doesn't matter that whale hunting is guaranteed by law, for survival or as part of a traditional culture. When she returned to her seat in front of me, I whispered to her that her speech was well done. A series of other speeches were given and as we concluded the last session of the class, I thought about all that the other students had shared. One man confessed he'd turned his back on his younger brother and another pretty woman talked about her experience with rape, the troubling news that she had just been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and that she was facing almost certain death. Students spoke of surviving high school shootings and of surviving racism on campus. Moving speech after moving speech gave light to the lives of a miss-matched group of strangers.
The entire class seemed to be facing radical change, aware of life's tentativeness, and in need of comfort. I wondered if they would ever think again of the pain of Isaiah's mountains moving out from under him without warning or hills that suddenly weren't there anymore. I considered whether Isaiah would have complained to God if he were Makah instead of Jewish and how a prophet such as him would approach a gay bashing. And, as the class left the room and Karas turned and said goodbye, I wondered if God really was a God of compassion and peace. I wondered if a 20-year-old woman facing terminal cancer, a pastor holding a broken child or even a man facing estrangement and divorce could feel God near. I didn't know. All I knew, as the last student filed out of the class, heading for a warm and sunny spring break, was that I was still in the same place that I was at the beginning of the quarter. Staring out of a third story window, pondering the wisdom of a jump and still terrified of public speaking. All I could do, as I sat silently alone in the empty classroom was return to my creek gazing and my friend Isaiah's words.
Five weeks later, Karas’ stories of the Makah were suddenly the front-page stories told by the nation’s papers. Working at a local airfreight company loading planes well into the night, the subject of whaling was at the forefront of several conversations with the company’s pilots. I listened to the men speak of the Makah and I visualized Karas speeches in the previous months. As cartons were tossed into waiting cargo holds, the Makah crash landed into the thoughts of those pilots and the wreckage created by their unwanted invasion was surprising to witness. Here uncensored feelings were expressed. The pilots who walked across clouds had little use for the current state of affairs on the Makah Nation. To these strong, ruggedly handsome men, the issue was not of first nations but about special rights. And, a people that after several hundred years of domination, refused to fall into line.
The pilots I worked alongside were courageous, friendly men who flew under challenging skies that defied wind shear and where lift became paramount to life. On three separate occasions, three of these pilots have not returned from their journeys. Lost in the rugged Cascade Mountains, they disappeared into that FFA gray area that ends discussions with the simple phrase "Pilot Error". Forget icing, natural phenomenon, or a multitude of things going badly wrong simultaneously. Flights regularly landed on barely plowed runways and took off into murderous weather. When the small, two engine planes were loaded and the pilots climbed into the cockpit, any trip that started out uneventful could, in a second, turn into a crapshoot.
Yet these men that flew over some of the most treacherous geography in the world, graciously approached the task at hand. These Cloud Walkers, of gentle spirit and warm, smiling faces, were men who always turned the night bright with positive attitudes, white lightening smiles and toughened 'can-do' masculinity. No matter how rough the weather was on the field or in the air, they approached everything with an air of confidence, determination, and try.
The day the Makah got their first whale, I walked into the airline operations room and called Karas to congratulate her on the tribe’s success. The air in the Seattle area was tense as the entire whale kill was repeatedly broadcast on local television stations as the Pacific waters turned blood red. NRA members decried the kill. Peace activists at the University of Washington marched in favor of aboriginal rights. After I hung up the phone, one of the jovial and friendlier pilots, overhearing my conversation with Karas looked up at me and said, "You know 400 years ago my family used to hunt Indians. I guess we should be able to take that back up again?"
I was shocked at how intense he was as he spoke. He wasn't kidding. This was a man who never frowned and whose blue eyes always sparkled. Today, I saw hatred there.
The comments got uglier as racist opinions against Native Americans escalated and were expressed against the Makah. The truth, silenced in the local media, that other tribes all across the Northern Hemisphere already took several whales every year, was buried. Instead, the tribe was portrayed as taking the first whale in decades, threatening its survival as a species, and they were accused of being handed "special rights" that other sportsman were not granted. The right to fish salmon, the right to hunt out of season and now this, the right to turn crimson the waters of the ocean as they took their guaranteed quota of whales. Simply because this tribe was close to a major metropolitan area, their practices drew greater criticism and attention. The Makah responded in an equal manner and it wasn’t long before bumper stickers were seen in the Seattle area that said, "I got tail in Neah Bay."
The amount of hatred boiling just beneath the surface among different groups was disturbing to witness. As each group grew more vocal and the distance between logic and propaganda widened, suddenly I was back in my public speaking class listening to Karas speak and doing a lot of my own creek gazing. Hatred spawned hatred and I wondered if the Makah could be wrong by doing what was considered their right. As the Cloud Walkers did their runway ‘touch and go’s’, I wondered if those who were wrong, in their barely contained hatred, could be right when they addressed the whaling issue. I thought of my father facing that hospital bed, and I thought about being lost in the world.
Once again, I sought refuge in that place Isaiah once found himself. Mountains were moving and hills were removed an entire region was on the verge of losing control, stepping backwards, and repeating the bloody and violent mistakes of the past. Remembering a public speaking class made up of strangers, especially Karas, who seemed so calm and rational as her voice talked about the ways of her people. Remembering my father and his child in that hospital room so alone and in need of comfort. Recalling the pilots that seemed so friendly and easy going but who could quickly turn bitter and aggressive towards another people.
It seemed on first glance that to all of those involved, there was a shortage of, love, understanding, and compassion. Not only from our immediate neighbors but possibly from a concerned higher power. Reconciling these realities with the lessons of a dreaded public speaking class I linger in wonder. I consider and marvel the witness of strangers crying for the pain of strangers. And I wonder at the awkward pauses and difficult swallows that accompanied hard, naked words spoken from a lonely podium. Seeing first hand that in spite of our differences, there are bonds that link strangers. Traditions and hope, compassion and acceptance, and even tolerance for those who face things that are difficult to understand. Isaiah had a lot to say about those unanswerable questions posed by life. A mere belligerent whiner called by God to sort things out for a higher power that supposedly represented the needs of another "first nation". And yet, I have to wonder if in Isaiah's eyes, we all aren't members of a First Nation. First in a creator's eyes who, all to often, may seem quiet and absent. Until you look to the mountains. And to the hills. And maybe, even for the Makah, to the sea. Maybe Isaiah was on to something. Spoken even to those of us that live our lives a bit too skeptically.
And who are a bit too prone to creek gazing.
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