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Shouting at the Sky
Troubled Teens and the Promise of the Wild
By Gary Ferguson
So much craziness, and on one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen. The kind of desert night that feels like a gift. Delicate. The air filled with the smell of juniper and sage, desert holly and cliff rose, sandstone and alkali dust. And out beyond camp hundreds of sego lilies, one to a stem, their ivory blooms glowing in the wash of the moon. Lying awake through these wee hours I'm thinking maybe all this wouldn't be so hard to get my head around -- wouldn't seem so filled with contradiction -- if my culture hadn't spent the last hundred years thinking of the wilderness mostly as some kind of tonic: sedative, blood pressure medicine, speed. The wilds as the place we go to smell the pine and the rain, dangle by ropes from the chins of mountains. It's been such a long time since deserts and woodlands were places of confrontation, stages on which to wrestle with shadows and cry for visions, holy lands hiding strengths that go unsuspected in more common hours.
The old people of this place, the Paiute, knew full well that beauty and craziness would be found together like this, standing hand in hand. Paiute creation myth tells how long ago the earth was danced by two brothers, Coyote and Wolf. Wolf with his perfect, wholesome vision of the world, a creator who never wanted anything more than an abundant life for the people, a life free of anguish, free even of death. And the younger Coyote, spoiled, mischievous, the glib talker who time and again pulled his older brother away from those plans for perfection. And how after a time Wolf went away, leaving the world to unfold according to the imaginations of Coyote. We cast our fate with Coyote, said the Paiute. And so our lives are driven by this strange mix of urge and shadow, by schemes going out into the world meaning to be clever, coming back full of pain.
