Sacred Mountain

SACRED MOUNTAIN

During the week of August 23-27, 2004, I was a guest of the Yakima Nation, deep into the foothills near Mt. Adams on the Yakima Reservation. I work at the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, VAPSHCS, at American Lake, Washington. For the past nine years, for one glorious week a year, the VA offered this sensitivity training at what was called Camp Chaparral. They give five days of authorized absence, paid the seminar fees, and provided transportation. This year, on a whim, I applied for the training and was accepted. An Orientation session was scheduled in mid-July, set up by the Minority Affairs director.

Melva and I have prowled around that high desert southeast of Yakima many times, but we had never driven south on 97 through Wapato to Toppenish. I had a stay-at-home vacation in mid-July. On Tuesday, of that week, we decided to take a day trip. Melva, who is a teacher, was of course also on her summer vacation, and available to travel at a moment’s notice. July 2004 was a scorcher on both sides of the Cascades.

We left Sumner early in the morning, and drove east up 410, up over Chinook Pass. The mountains and foothills are very rugged there, reminiscent of the North Cascades highway. As we approached Toppenish, we found it to be 98 degrees in the shade. We stopped at the Yakima Cultural Center. It consisted of a huge gift shop in the middle, flanked by an Indian library on the south side, and an Indian museum on the north side. I asked around about Camp Chaparral. I was told that it was high up in the mountains on the northwest side of Mt. Adams, and that there was no public access. I bought a Yakima Nation tee shirt, and we drove to road’s end, west out to White Swan. We checked out the restored buildings at Fort Simcoe State Park. Late in the afternoon, loaded down with fresh fruit and produce, we slipped due west past Naches, headed hell-for-tamarack toward White Pass. We were looking forward to munching on some pizza and gizzards at the Packwood tavern.

“What the hell was that?” Melva asked in a worried tone.

We were driving our 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser. Terrible clunks were thumping up through the floorboards. We turned around immediately. Something was going wrong in the transmission. As we headed back to Naches, it was stuck in a lower gear, and the engine was racing. The tachometer was registering high rpm’s. We pulled into the nearest store/gas station. Attempting to park, we found that the reverse gear was gone. So we just parked the car a bit away from the others. It was 4:55pm.

We called the Chrysler dealer in Yakima. They were closing up at 5pm, and their garage was closing at 5:30pm. The nearest towing service could not get to us for another hour. The soles of our shoes were bubbling on the hot blacktop. The towing company assured us that they had a key for the back gate at Hahn Chrysler. So we sat everything up, and waited. To keep from frying, we ducked in and out of the air-conditioned convenience store. I was worried. We were not prepared for our fairly new car to break down. That was always a trauma. And I had to be back in Tacoma the next morning, to report for the Camp Chaparral Orientation meeting. Stress clamped down on us like a cheap girdle. Sweltering, only half conscious, my mind wandered.

Mt. Adams was a mystery mountain. It stood between Mt. Rainier to the north, and what was left of Mt. St. Helens to the southwest. It was shorter than Rainier, but still quite majestic. It looked like a smaller clone. Pop used to talk about taking Mom-Mom and Aunt Ardy up there to pick huckleberries, but for some reason I never found my way there; never paid much attention to it.

A few years ago on a day trip to Mt. St. Helens, it was a clear day. From up on Windy Ridge we had a panoramic view of Mt. Hood to the south, and Mt. Rainier to the north. As we gazed east, we were amazed at the raw natural beauty of Mt. Adams. As a native Washingtonian, I wondered why I knew so little about it. Later looking at a map I realized why. There are no highways very near it. It is criss-crossed with U.S. Forest Service roads only. Public access, such as it is, is mostly from the west side. There is no state park perched on its foothills, no great lodge built high up on its shoulders. Baker, Rainier, and St. Helens all crawl with people. They are bone fide tourist attractions. I remember driving up on each of them with my family when I was still a kid in the 1950’s. But not Mt. Adams. It has been hiding in plain sight. The entire east side of the peak is controlled by the Yakima nation, as part of their reservation. Gates and guard shacks close off the Forest Service roads that approach it. Tribal police and game wardens prowl about in their jeeps and SUV’s. The fine for unauthorized trespassing was several hundred bucks; quite a deterrent.

From space, using one of the NASA satellites, one can get an image of the four corners, the four counties that nestle up to Mt. Adams. There is Lewis County to the north, Yakima County to the east, Klickitat County to the south, and Skamania County to the west. We can see the hot brown earth colors of the high desert dotted with thick gray-green sagebrush, and it seems to move west toward the mountain. Then, ever so slowly, the Ponderosa pine begin to grow on the higher sides until they congregate and create a dense deep green forest on the muscular foothills along the east shoulders of the peak. The mountain stands at latitude 46.206N and longitude 121.49W.

Mt. Adams stands proudly at 12,276 feet, right in the middle between the higher Mt. Rainier, at 14,410 feet, and what is left of Mt. St. Helens at 8,366 feet. It is perched 50 kilometers [30 miles] due east of the crater shell left by St. Helens. Adams is a towering strato volcano. It has eleven glaciers, most of which are fed radially from its summit ice cap. From high above the peak, peering down on it from our planes, helicopters, and satellites, we can make out all eleven of them. At noon we find one called Lava, and then scanning clockwise we could log in Lyman, Wilson, Rusk, Klickitat, Mazama, down to Gotchen at 6:00. Rotating further to Avalanche, White Salmon, and Pinacle at 9:00. Oddly the section of the mountain that is northwest, from 9:00-12:00 has no glaciers.

Folks have named the burly ridges and shoulders of those glaciers, that seem to spread out like a great root system to help prop up the mountain.
There are names like Red Butte, Goat Butte, Devil’s Garden, the Spearhead, Battlement Ridge, Ridge of Wonders, Little Mt. Adams, Hellroaring Falls, South Butte, Suksdorf Ridge, the Bumper, and Foggy Flat.

In the high Cascades, within what scientists, philosophers, and shaman have called “The Ring of Fire”, Mt. Adams is second in eruptive volume only to its distant southern cousin Mt. Shasta in northern California. Adams far surpasses its loftier neighbor Mt. Rainier. Adams is primarily composed of lava flows and fragmented rocks of basaltic and dacite lava. The main core is younger than 220,000 years. Debri avalanches and lahars created several valleys radially around it, during the post-glacial time. The longest lahar extended over 55 kilometers (35 miles) from the volcano. The last debri avalanche was in 1921. Mt. Adams has erupted repeatedly over the last 100,000 years. Geologists tell us that it has not erupted at all in the last 100 years, but that it did erupt three times in the last 1,000 years. Using that timetable, she will be scheduled to blow her top again at the turn of the next century.

Northwest Indians have called Mt. Adams “Pahto”, or Pahtoe, or Klickitat. They told early explorers, like Lewis and Clark, about the fiery Mt. St. Helens. The Indian name for St. Helens is Louwala-Clough, the “smoking mountain”. One legend says that the mountain was once a fair maiden called Loowit. When two of the sons of the Great Spirit “Sahale”, fell in love with her, she could not choose between them. The two braves, Wyeast [Mt. Hood], and Klickitat [Mt. Adams] fought over her, burying villages and forests in the melee. Sahale was furious. He smote all three lovers, and erected a mighty mountain peak where each fell. Perhaps their undying passions remained as molten magma, lava and scalding steam.

Hall J. Kelly, in 1839, wanted to make the Cascades a Presidential range. He knew that Lewis and Clark had named Mt. Jefferson in Oregon. But Kelly was confused. The maps at the time were inaccurate. He meant the name “Adams”, after president John Adams, to go to Mt. Hood. He, in his original plan, had left the mountains of Washington out of the picture entirely. But the unnamed person who had mapped the mountains mixed up Kelly’s names, and he put the name Mt. Adams forty miles in the wrong direction—where there happened to be a burly mountain that was ready to bear an English name. So after 1853, the mountain was no longer Pahtoe. It officially became Mt. Adams when the Northern Pacific Railroad expedition put the new name on their official map.

If one frequents the premiere Sasquatch website, BFRO.com [Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization], you discover that in Washington state, some of the most frequent sightings of Sasquatch are in the five counties that border Mt. Adams. There was a huge find, with concrete proof gathered, done by a BFRO search team southwest along Skookum ridge a couple of years ago.

Besides firmly believing in UFO’s, I have always believed in the existence of Sasquatch. When I was a kid, Pop used to talk about an Indian legend coming out of NE Washington, near Colville and Kettle Falls, the legend of “the wood ape”. It was always portrayed as a monster, a bogeyman. In the 1950’s I paid little attention. Then the 1960’s descended upon us, and there was a plethora of Bigfoot sightings, footprints, and incidents in the news.

Sasquatch is a derivative of the Indian word “Sesquac” meaning “wild man”. It was first coined by the Coast Salish Indians on Vancouver Island, and in the interior of British Columbia. In the Indian languages clear across North America there are more than sixty different names and terms for Sasquatch. The name Bigfoot was just a media term, generated out of sightings and footprints in Northern California back in the 1950’s.

For over 400 years there have been records of sightings of a large hair-covered manlike animal in the wilderness of North America. There have been literally thousands of sightings, and 350 of them have been in Washington State. The last one was on September 10, 2004 in Ferry County. The witnesses are usually people with unimpeachable character. The huge tracks have been photographed, and plaster cast for over 70 years. Native American legends continuously refer to them as non-human
“People of the Wild”.

A lot of folks feel that Sasquatch is a fine fable, and they would like to believe in it. But where is the truth? The facts suggest the presence of an animal, probably a primate that does exist today in very low population densities. If true, this species likely evolved alongside humans, and it became astonishingly adept at avoiding human contact through a process of natural selection. To others, these same facts just point to a cultural phenomenon, kept alive today through a combination of misidentification of known animals, wishful thinking, and the deliberate fabrication of evidence.

Putting together all the sightings, incidents, and reports, BFRO has come up with a profile of Sasquatch. It is considered a large, hairy bipedal non-human primate that is distributed over North America. Its size, and its odd gait let people know that they are seeing a creature different from man.

Its skin color ranges from deep black or charcoal to deep brown, sunburned reddish brown, and gray. A few albinos have been seen. It is covered with hair, not fur. Being a primate, it does not molt its hair, replacing one hair at a time; thus the hair cannot be found in wooly patches. The body can have varicolored patches of hair. Most of the time the hair appears clean, glossy, and shiny, but it can be otherwise. Females tend to look cleaner than males. Males have lots of facial fur. Females do not. Long hair on their shoulders bounces “like a cape” as they run. There is long hair on the buttocks, and long hair covers the genitalia.

Then there is the odor of the beast. 15% of encounters reported a stench. Gorillas when stressed exude a gagging powerful aroma. Sasquatch heads look small for their bulk. Sagital crests exist on adult males, probably bony, which makes them look like they are wearing a hooded sweatshirt. The size of the brain, its volume, is at least the size of a gorilla. It has deep-set eyes under a conspicuous brow ridge. Their faces are flat with prominent cheekbones. Deep brown eyes are predominant, with a red component, like a bloodshot sclera. Albino Sasquatch have blue eyes. The nose is pug-like, but human in shape. The mouth is thin-lipped, and the lips are yellowish. They have large square teeth. Their ears are usually hidden under the hair. The muscles on the back of the head flare out to the shoulders, obscuring the neck, like a weightlifter. So when they turn to see something, they have to turn their whole body, and not just their head.
Like man, each one is an individual. They have been described as everything from ape-like to looking like an old Indian.

Their trunk is carried forward in a hunched over position. They can stand upright, but mostly they don’t. Their shoulders are very wide, about 40% of their height. In a very large man this runs like about 25% of his height. The Bigfoot chest is estimated to be 60” to 75”, and many have described their stentorian breathing. The females have prominent breasts, hair-covered except for the nipples. Their arms are massively muscled and long. Their forearms are covered with longish hair, making them look a little like a forest Popeye. They have very large hands, “the size of paddles”. The fingers are short, and the thumb is closer to the wrist than ours. The hand lacks the thenar pad, that mound of muscle at the base of our thumbs, and this is a corollary of the lowest opposability found in the higher primates. They have dark fingernails, not claws.

Their legs are real big, like 20” in circumference. The calves all look huge. The foot can be up to 27” in length, with no arch, and toes that splay outward. The skin on the soles of their feet is very thick. Their height average is about 7’10”. The tallest reported was 10’ tall. Many that are seen are only 6’-7’ tall, suggesting that these are the younger ones. Their weight is estimated to be 550 to 650 pounds. They think that the largest males, at 10’ tall, with 27” feet, could run 1,000 pounds. They have wide arm swings and very long strides. When seen they are usually just walking. They seem to glide when they walk, and they do not lock their knees, so they look like they are riding a bicycle. Those wide arm swings seem like a cross-country skier with poles. There is no up and down movement of the upper body. Their step length is up to 5’ at a stride, with their feet mostly in line; very little straddle. This is something that a hoaxer cannot duplicate. They do not often run, even when shot at. And they are considered powerful swimmers as well.

They are primarily a nocturnal creature. Perhaps they see well in the dark, with larger eyes, larger pupils, and more rods in their retina. They can walk with ease in total darkness, but they have been seen out foraging during the day too. Often they are spotted just after daylight. They have heightened senses. They stand very still in the forest and listen. But several times they did not detect a human sitting still in full view. With those thick soles on their feet they can travel through blackberry bushes, devil’s clubs, and over sharp rocks without a problem.

In terms of their diet, they are considered an Omnivore, with a substantial Carnivore component. They have been observed catching ground squirrels, and even preying on deer or bear. They can be scavengers too. They eat a lot of road kill. They have snatched kill from hunters. They only eat garbage as a last resort. They only kill livestock infrequently. Some Sasquatch look very well fed, others are skinny.

It is postulated that Bigfoot infants are small, like human babies; but they become fleet of foot quickly. They stay with the mother until puberty, at about age 10. They measure about 6’ tall at that point. Offspring seem to be spaced at about 5 years apart, based on records of group footprints. Mating has been observed between May-June. Most births occur between February-May, suggesting less than a year for gestation. On two occasions females have been seen carrying dead infants. Older grayish Sasquatch probably live to be about 35 years old, so that is three generations per century. Old ones have thin hair, snaggle teeth, open sores, and deeply wrinkled skin. When one dies, it is suspected, various carnivores eat the corpse. Possibly, they themselves are cannibalistic. Rodents eat the bones, and moths consume the hair. The residue of the corpse would fall prey to the acidic environment of the forest. There would be no remnants left that would be visible under the seasonal leaf and needle fall.

They sleep mostly in temporary shelters, padded with available vegetation, like bear grass, leaves, ferns, and moss. Sometimes partial roves are fashioned from broken boughs. Once discovered, a nest is abandoned. The Sasquatch is solitary and constantly on the move. Caves and permanent shelters are only used rarely.

Their upper body strength is legendary. They seem to like to exercise this strength, throwing basketball sized rocks in long arcs to ward off intruders. They have been known to lift up the corners of mobile homes and RV’s, cars and trailers. They can lift and throw full fifty-gallon drums, which would weight 450 pounds, or large rocks that would weigh 200-300 pounds. They twist the trunks of small trees, possibly marking the way, or their territory.

Mostly they travel in silence. They can make patterned repetitive knocking sounds with rocks or pieces of wood. This can be used for long distance communication, or for deterrence. They are capable, however of a complex collection of sounds, starting with whistling [like the Yeti], up through moans, howls, and chilling screams that can rise up from a deep growl. Sometimes, though rarely, they have been heard producing a melodic sound, a collection of complex vocalizations; like a primitive language; soft tones like a woman talking off in the distance. They even make giggling, laughing, and crying sounds.

Mostly they are solitary creatures, but sometimes they can be seen in a group, foraging. The young ones play, and often can be seen, while the adults stay hidden. Males seem to be sighted more often. They move around more. They have a natural curiosity. They will investigate a lighted window at night, or noisy animals in a barn. They will not tear open a backpack, like a bear would. They seem orderly and systematic in stone stacking. They are often polite. If food is deposited for them, they have a tendency to return the favor with a gift; a dog skull, a little pile of stones, fresh evergreen shoots, a small freshly killed squirrel, live kittens, or a turtle. Are these shared food or gifts?

They react calmly to women and children. They try and avoid men. When startled they will leave leisurely, sometimes while even being shot at. There is absolutely no documentation over the last 100 years of a Sasquatch doing deliberate harm to a human being. They tolerate children and small animals. They, like gorillas, have a special distaste for aggressive dogs. They have been seen slapping a 75-pound dog, knocking him 40’, and they have killed them, swinging them against trees. Perhaps this is a reaction based on centuries of conflict with wolves and coyotes. While hiking, if you were to happen onto a Sasquatch, one should not stare at it. Sit down, and groom a companion, or eat food. Sometimes, out of curiosity, they will tarry.

They do not seem to use tools. Sometimes they use sticks or rocks, but rarely. When they die it is mostly from parasites within them secondary to their eating habits and the manner of food. They could die of wounds, or dental disorders, or even gunshots. One does not find remains of dead bear that have died of natural causes either. There are 700,000 bear in North America. There are probably only a few thousand Sasquatch. In America, the highest concentration of Sasquatch population is in Washington, Oregon, and California in the Cascades, which morphs into the Sierra Madre. Most sightings are just chance encounters of single individuals. They are seen most often right at dawn. They are not seen at all during the dead of winter. They may hibernate. A Bigfoot would have to forage over hundreds of miles to sustain its food needs.

This species is deviant from Homo sapiens by anatomy [crest, feet, hands, musculature, body posture and gait, behavior [nocturnal, lack of compelling use of tools, lack of apparent language, lack of cultural traits], and sociology. The paleontological affiliation, or identity with Gigantopithecus, as championed by the late Grover Krantz, has many aspects to recommend it. Gigantopithecus Black was a great Asian creature, probably an ape, of the Miocene Epoch; about 24 million to 5 million years ago. Anthropologists have only found a handful of bones to substantiate Giganto’s existence. Possibly, descending from Giganto, the Sasquatch has co-existed alongside humans for hundreds of thousands of years. There is a theory that man hunted Giganto into extinction. Perhaps Sasquatch has a genetic memory and aversion of man the hunter. Maybe, in the shadows, Bigfoot migrated across that land bridge with Asian primitive man. Gigantopithecus was thought to be 9’ tall, and weight 1,000 pounds. Sound familiar? They were the largest “documented” primates to ever walk the earth. At some point there would have been millions of Giganto skeletons extant. Today we have only found a few bones. The entire world’s collection of Giganto bones would fit in a small suitcase. So, again, most animal bones are reabsorbed into the biomass. The process of fossilization is rare.

Some scientists today are endeavoring to prove that Sasquatch, this hulking creature of legend, is not myth. Jane Goodall called for a legitimate study to determine whether the greatest apes that ever lived are still with us, that they persist in the world’s moist mountain regions. Stone age creatures are still with us; some reptilian, some insects, and mammal hybrids. So why not Sasquatch? Goodall stated that the existence of hominds of this sort is a very real possibility. Mythical giant ape-like creatures lurk in the traditions of nearly every Native American linguistic group, from central Asia to the central Rockies.

Not long ago a group of BFRO enthusiasts and amateurs camped out for two days in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, near Skookum ridge, out on Skookum meadow. They put out food deposits that were mostly fruit. They basted some of the food with pheromones. They blasted out pre-recorded Sasquatch calls on loud speakers at night trying to attract the animal. On the second night they recorded and heard a powerful reply to their broadcast. They collected from one spot where a Sasquatch had lay down to reach across for some fruit, some hair, footprints, and scat. Not wanting to just walk up to the food, this animal lay on its side, and reached across. They were able to fill this imprint with 400 pounds of plaster. So in that Skookum meadow, a giant biped sat down in the mud. The cast clearly shows a hairy forearm the size of a small ham, an enormous hairy thigh, and outsized buttock, and a thick Achilles tendon and thick heel—all from a creature that is not supposed to exist.

When we look at the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon, there are several theories to explain the sightings.
1. Fear manifestations
2. Misidentification of bears
3. Paranormal/UFO-related
4. The Collective Memory Hypothesis
5. The Sasquatch/Giganto connection.
What is interesting to me is that the patterns of eyewitnesses are not demographic; rather they are geographic. These are not certain types of people. They are just all kinds of people who venture into certain areas.

In addition to the sightings around Mt. Adams there have been numerous sightings on the Olympic peninsula, in and around the Olympic National Park in Grays Harbor County. Loggers, farmers, and tourists have all seen Sasquatch over there. Interestingly, Melva and I spend a lot of time out there on the coast as well, but that is a narrative for another time. Last August BFRO sent out another search team into the Olympics. They were camped out there for a week. They came back with seven sightings. Another group is returning there next month.

So, anyway, all these kinds of thoughts and images were swirling through my mind while waiting for that tow truck on that hot summer’s afternoon in early August. Finally the PT Cruiser was towed into the Chrysler dealer, and Melva and I got a motel room. We had to call Andrea, our youngest daughter, and request that she drive to Yakima later that night, and pick me up. She arrived at midnight with a girlfriend in tow. I got home about 3:00am. I needed to be back to the VA American Lake campus by 9:00am the next morning for my Camp Chaparral orientation meeting.

I made it, but my mind was full of cobwebs, doubts, and grievances. "CD", the new Minority Affairs Director, who was a rather large woman with a short haircut, ran the meeting. She had come down from the Seattle VA campus. There was a video to see, thirty pages of brochures and disclaimers and explications to read. There was a list of what to bring, and what not to bring, and information about conduct and decorum; such as showing respect for all of the Indian elders and the Indian customs. We were informed that the Camp was considered sacred ground, and that included every rock and stick. So it was discouraged to pick up any sort of souvenirs. We were advised against bringing wheeled suitcases. The ground was graveled and uneven, and the Camp set between several small hills. In the video we listened to several Viet Nam veterans discuss their experiences and trauma in country. As they spoke, they held a “talking stick”. There were slides and photos of the camper’s cabins; with names like Warbonnet, Horse, Cougar, Porcupine, Ram, Owl, Bear, Eagle, and Deer. There was no plumbing in these cabins. There was a common shower room/bathroom building, with one side for the women and one side for the men. There was information about the food. The Camp fed folks three square meals a day, fed them like loggers. There was a Craft building, a parade ground, and a huge fire pit.

There would be classes during the day and various activities at night, cumulating with a full-blown Pow Wow on Friday, the last night. There would be sweat lodges built south of the camp alongside a cold mountain creek. We would be allowed to do the sweats if we wanted to as a part of our spiritual and cultural indoctrination, orientation, and education. All of this sounded grand to me, but there was only one huge hitch; my health. Packing gear for a week’s stay in a duffel bag would be easy enough, but who would be there to help me carry it? The cabins had bunks in them, but they were only covered in canvas, like the old World War II Army cots. Since I always have trouble sleeping while away from home, I had some concerns. With my asthma I have to prop my head up a lot too. How would I manage that? Often at home I sleep part of the night in my recliner. Noises bother me at night. Sometimes this leads to terrible insomnia. They recommended that we all bring earplugs to deal with other people’s snoring.

So I wondered if I was going to be able to physically endure the rigors of the place. I fired off an email to CD, telling her about my trepidations, and requesting some accommodations. As a disabled person I have become accustomed to requesting that. My email box was silent for a week. The very day that I had decided to bag it, to send off my regrets, my no thank-yous, CD responded at last. TA from the Portland VA, which is our VISN headquarters, as the coordinator for the trip had contacted the staff at Camp Chaparral. I was going to be allowed to stay in a staff cabin on flat ground, on a bed with a real mattress. The cabin was called “The Crow’s Nest”. I would stay with Bob Wahpat. I reconsidered and decided to go for it. What the hell, if the week made me lame, I would just have to take some time off to recuperate? Melva is always telling me that I should not give up trying things, that I should not let my disability limit me completely to having some fun, to living my life. And of course, she was right. The Camp sounded just too neat to miss.

On Friday night, August 20th, I packed and repacked my gear. I used my old moldy U.S.Navy duffel bag. When I finally finished Melva could barely lift it. What a good start, I thought! Our departure time from the Seattle VA was supposed to be 8:00am. We were supposed to be there to load up our stuff by 7:15am. Of course, Melva and I were in the parking lot waiting for the rest of them at 6:45am.

There were three vans assigned to transport we 20 employees. Camp Chaparral is only open to outsiders one single week a year. Our VISN, or service area for the Northwest VA only covered Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. We were 120 staffers strong heading for the Camp, coming from Seattle, Tacoma, Anchorage, Portland, Walla Walla, Roseburg, White City, and Boise. Over the last nine years we have been the only invitees. There has been some talk about opening up the Camp to whole VA, which would include 172 hospitals spread out clear across the country, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

CD was overseeing the loading process. I met a fellow in the group who was using a Canadian crutch. His name was Lawrence. So my little support cane seemed less conspicuous already. It turned out that there were half dozen guys at the Camp that used canes, and most of them were in worse shape than I was. And there was one guy, a diabetic, who was in a wheelchair.

CD requested that I sit up front and operate a walkie-talkie, that I be a navigator. I agreed. The three vans left Seattle, ours bringing up the rear. It was 8:00am. We were right on schedule. It was a sunny morning, and after we passed Issaquah, heading east on highway 90, the jagged foothills of the Cascades rose up proudly in the early light as we motored by. Small patches of snow were still visible on their higher ridges. Puffy wispy clouds hung around their burly necks like lace collars.

Our van was the blue one. Our driver’s name was DK, a youngish looking gent in his early 30’s. He kept complaining about not getting enough sleep the night before, being too anxious and having to pack. He tended to drive under the speed limit, so we were constantly hailed on the hand squack box, and asked to catch up to the two vans in the lead. We were designated as “Blue Van”. CD was in the lead in the “Green Van”, and the middle vehicle was the “Red Van”. We stopped at the summit of Snoqualamie Pass for our first pee and smoke break. This slowed our progress, but we had until noon to make it to Toppenish.

I noticed that a lot of the employees were waltzing around with cell phones plastered to their ears. I guessed it just took a while to divest one’s self from certain aspects of technology. We were told that cell phones would not function at the Camp, and that there were only two phone lines out of the place for emergencies. How quickly we are changing as a species. Just a dozen years ago I had a lot of trouble grasping the concept of the Internet. It was to be an information highway. Well what the hell is that? At present we pay to watch television, and we buy bottled water as a beverage. What’s next, an air meter? Really, some people can no longer leave their domicile without their cellular phones. They just feel naked without it. How did we ever get along with just pay phone booths?

I began to buddy up with PB, a VA staffer from Seattle. He wore a paisley hippy soft cap over his baldness, and his hair and beard were prematurely white. He had twinkly blue eyes behind large bifocals. He took over as the driver of Blue Van, so that DK could sit in the back and flirt with the younger women, and get some shut-eye.

We stopped again in the outskirts of Ellensburg, just off the freeway at the base of the Yakima Canyon. We gassed up, bought snacks, and stood in line for the filthy coed restrooms. We pulled into Toppenish at about noon, more or less still on schedule. We drove over to the Indian Affairs complex, and CD signed us in. Then we all met at a local café called the Wagon Wheel. Per usual, the potato salad I got with my club sandwich was canned. I left most of it. I do dearly love homemade potato salad, made the Carpenter way. Mother and Mom-Mom made it right. Sister Clys and my brother Bud, who is a chef, still do too. Mustard and mayo mixed just right, loaded with hard-boiled eggs, Walla Walla sweet white onions, and garlic dill pickles. Mother used to make a huge crock of it, and we would eat on it for several days. It tasted even better after a day or so when the flavors mingled. And how about those homemade garlic dill pickles? Mom-Mom was the queen of canning, and her dill pickles were pretty good, but Aunt Ardy always made the very best garlic dill pickles. No one ever disputed that. They were crunchy and snapped with garlic zest. My mouth waters when I just think about those pickles. Clystie loved the pickles too, but she found out that she was allergic to them. She used to break out in hives. But sometimes she would just eat them anyway, and suffer the consequences.

It is funny about sense memories; food and the past. Pop used to love onions, and he loved black pepper sprinkled on everything. I seemed to have inherited that as well. He conditioned the grandchildren early. I constantly flash on the memory of one particular road trip that he and Mom-Mom took Clystie, Bud, and myself on. No, on that particular time, I think it was just me that was with them. Anyway, Pop was driving his 1955 Chevrolet pick-up with a camper on the back. We had stopped somewhere alongside a river, possibly in Idaho. We pulled out the Coleman stove, and Pop began frying up thick hamburger patties. Mom-Mom cut up some thick slices of white sweet onion; like a quarter of an inch thick. We had a fresh loaf of Wonder white bread. You know the stuff we loved as a kid, before we found out it wasn’t good for us? Even today I have to occasionally slip in the odd loaf of Wonder bread amongst all the healthier loaves that Melva prefers. Mother used to bake homemade bread, and I loved it fresh and hot out of the oven. She would make out lunch sandwiches out of it. After a few days, the bread was less appetizing. I remember swapping out my homemade sandwiches for anything on Wonder bread. How foolish I was. For some reason, on that day alongside Pop’s pick-up, standing next to the tailgate, we had no condiments. But we were ravenous and the hamburger meat smelled heavenly. Pop fried up some thick slabs of bacon too. We stood in the road, leaning up against the truck, squinting into the sun, being serenaded by the river, and we wolfed down those incredible hamburgers. Since then I always prefer a thick slice of onion on my burger. One bite, and I am back to that Idaho morning, smiling into the face of my grandfather.

We rushed to finish our meals at the Wagon Wheel, and we drove back to the Indian Center. 18 government vans were parked smartly in rows in the smallish parking lot. Over a hundred VA employees were milling around, flirting, smoking, lying about the lawn, all eyeballing each other. They handed out cabin assignments. As a gimp, I already had mine, but the paperwork substantiated it.

Finally it was 1pm, and a burly Yakima yelled to get our attention. He told us to load up, and get into a line behind his red Jeep Cherokee. Some tribal police began to direct traffic so that our 300 feet of steel and rubber could bend like a robotic centipede, and begin its journey from out of the sweltering heat of the lower valley, south and west toward Pahtoe, the majesty of Mt. Adams.

As we moved out, we found our blue van right in the middle of the pack. We became the fulcrum of the convoy, number nine in line. Number 9, I though, number 9; like that famous line in the Beatles song. We cruised the twelve miles out to White Swan, a tiny town made up mostly of reservation houses, reminiscent of Tahollah and La Push out on the coast. It was gray and overcast now, and we could only see the base of Mt. Adams. We turned off the Ft. Simcoe road onto Signal Peak Road, and continued southwest along Mill Creek, out past the Shaker Church, the hop fields, the farms and wide pastures, the livestock and idle tractors, and up onto Whiskey Flats. The line of vans stretched out in front of us and behind us, with our van being an articulated joint in the long finger of vehicles.

There is something powerful and fun about being part of a convoy. You turn heads as you roll by. Indian children in cluttered yards waved at us. Packs of dogs stood still watching us. Looking at the curs, I wondered if the Yakima Nation still ate dog. Several crows and one hawk flew as scouts for us. How did we look to them, high up in the thermals, this many-colored motorized reptile that crept into the foothills? PB, while driving, got out his digital camera and snapped several shots over the steering wheel.

About ten miles out of White Swan, after the pine became more abundant, we had to halt at a gate. An Indian policeman had a guard shack there. He held his clipboard and checked off our license numbers as we moved past him. One by one we passed through the checkpoint and reassembled beyond it. We ran out of pavement soon, and we hit gravel. The road was well graded, so there were few washboards to bounce over; but the dust was unbelievable. With our van in the middle of the rolling pack, the accumulated dust was so thick that we could not see the vehicle in front of us at all. We could barely see the edges of the road. PB began to weave left and right, trying to get a glimpse of the vans ahead. We rolled all the windows up but that fine alkaline dust seemed to penetrate the glass like it almost wasn’t there. We crossed and criss-crossed the Klickitat River several times. We turned often onto different forest service roads, rolling deeper into the woods, and climbing higher into the foothills. During the orientation for Camp, the brochures contained information stating that the facility was “high up on the sides of Mt. Adams, between 8,000 and 9,000 feet.” I had some concerns about that in regards to my asthma. Living at sea level the way I did, any altitude over a mile high made it hard for me to catch my breath. But it turned out that Camp Chaparral was at about 3,000 feet, like the summit at Snoqualimie Pass.

After a hectic forty minutes of eating dust, we arrived at the Camp. Some of the staff in our van had been there before. One woman, CR, had attended the seminar four other times. She loved it so much that she was paying for it herself this year, and taking a week of annual leave. As we drove in she pointed out the Chow Hall, the cabins, the shower building. The vans peeled off in several directions, stopping in niches between the buildings. Fifty doors opened at once, and everybody poured out, talking loudly and pointing at the sights. I managed to pull down my heavy Navy duffel bag, and my black shoulder bag. People milled about, looking for their cabins. I asked some of the Indian staff that had come out to meet us where the Crow’s Nest was, and I solicited help to carry my duffel bag.

A smiling twelve-year-old Indian girl offered to assist me. Before I could protest, knowing that the bag had to weigh forty pounds, she had shouldered it and I was following her down a steep grade covered in pee gravel. Since I have become disabled, I always feared that a healthy twelve-year-old girl could probably kick my butt. In front of me, walking easily under the load was living proof of that terrible postulate.

We walked down past a large pit used for the center campfire. It was cold now, the bottom covered in dark ash and mud. A tall stack of freshly cut firewood was perched next to it. Moving east across the small parade ground, what we used to call a grinder in boot camp, we found the Crow’s Nest to be nestled between two classroom buildings, called Meeting Rooms; directly across from the Crafts building. There was a cluster of smallish houses and cabins to the east of the Crafts building. I was told that they were mostly used for staff and their families.

I thanked the young lady and entered the Nest. Two staff members were already in there. They had set up their bunks to the left of the door. The Hooch Master, Bob Wahpat, called Crow, was using the first bunk. He was a Yakima, and was fairly tall; almost six feet. His bunk had several colorful Pendleton Indian wool blankets draped over it. Just beyond him was a shorter man. His name was Frank Basta, called Wolf.

“Put your shit wherever you want,” Basta said wryly.

I claimed the bunk to the immediate right of the door. There was a small worktable alongside it where I could pile my bags. I put my worn torn flat sheet over the stained lumpy single mattress, then unzipped and unrolled my black sleeping bag, laying it over the cot like a bed spread.

Bob Wahpat sat on his bunk quietly and watched me unpack. He had strung cotton clotheslines around on their side, and they already had several shirts and jackets hanging from them. They were both wearing bright green jackets with Yakima Warrior Association logos on them. Opposite the door, across from it, was another worktable. There was a small VCR/TV combination sitting on it. HIDALGO, the film, was playing on the screen. An open box of assorted videos sat next to it. A new coffee maker sat on the other side of it.

One could tell that Frank Basta was quite a character right away. First of all he had a New York accent. He was short, like 5’6” tall. He looked very Italian, like he would have been more comfortable wearing a pinstriped suit and a Borsolino hat. He had white wavy hair, and he wore it shoulder length, tied back. He was husky, and still quite muscular for his age. He was in his 60’s somewhere.

“Christ Almighty,” Frank quipped,” We were told to expect some cripple who would need two crutches and a wheelchair. You seem to be doing fine.”

I talked to them a bit about my autoimmune process, the infamous CIDP; chronic inflammatory demylinating polyneuropathy. They both nodded their heads, but I figured that they were clueless as to the particulars of my explication. Actually it turned out that I was mistaken. Basta’s wife had lupus, and he had a pretty decent understanding about autoimmune diseases. I became immersed in Indian humor immediately. They dearly love to kid around. Sarcasm is the flavor of the day; every day. I asked Bob as to his role there at Camp.

“Were we talkin’ to you?” Frank asked in his best De Niro east coast accent.

After a moment I slipped into a New York accent.
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you, elk-breath. I was talking to Bob.”

They both laughed, and the tone was set for the hooch; humor would reign supreme. Bob was a Viet Nam veteran, and he had been a sub-chief of the Yakima tribe. He was going to be one of the guest speakers during the class sessions. He was raised right there in Wapato, and had gone to public school. He was a valley native, a homegrown commodity. He wore a ball cap, also Yakima tribe bright green, and it was festooned with military and Indian pins. His eyes twinkled, and he seemed to grin a lot.

Frank, also a Viet Nam vet, had grown up in Brooklyn. He was half Italian and half Micmac.

“Oh yeah,” I said,” I heard of dat tribe, the Mickey-Macks. They sold Manhattan to the white guys, right?”

Peals of laughter followed.

“No, I am wrong,” I said,” Those Mickey-Macks are the Indians that Walt Disney hired to work at Frontierland.”

Frank had come to Camp for nine years straight, since its inception. He traveled all the way from the east coast. He worked there as a handyman and carpenter. One year he built and maintained the sweat lodges. For the last several years he had lived on an island 14 miles off the coast of Maine, in a tiny town called Rockland. He loved it there. He was living in and remodeling an old farmhouse. He talked about the severe winters, and the hatch of biting black flies in the summer, when the populous had to wear face nets like beekeepers to remain sane.

A loud bell began to toll; a real one, not a recorded bell.

“Time to put on the feedbag,” Bob said.

The line of bodies for the supper meal snaked down the hill and out along an arbor that had been built adjacent to the fire pit. Several barbecue stoves and picnic tables were located under the pole structure. The Indian elders were allowed to go to the front of the line. They truly were revered and respected. They would sing a prayer before the meal.

The kitchen was large and bustling. The staff was used to feeding hundreds at a time. The food was plentiful and tasty. Taking seconds was encouraged. Initially I found it difficult to find a place to sit. There were tables inside and outside on a deck behind the building. It was uncovered. There were some open spots next to several Indians. Frank and Bob were sitting with other staff members, and there was no room near them. I wasn’t sure about the proper decorum. Out of hunger and desperation, I asked if I could sit next to an elder. She said no problem, and that solved the issue.

That night my hooch mates sat up late watching videos. I tried to get to sleep at 9:30pm. The lights finally went out at 11:30pm.

“The lights will go on at 0500,” Bob said earlier,” So that I can put on the coffee, and get to the shower room while there is still some hot water.”

About two in the morning, Frank awakened me as he opened the door and slipped out into the darkness. He had to piss. He wasn’t gone very long, so I figured that it was probably permissible to urinate on the nearest tree after dark. As Frank re-entered, Bob sat up and asked,” Is it 0500 yet? Could you turn on the coffee?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Frank said,” What are you doing, keeping track of our piss breaks on a clipboard?”

After that when any of us rose to piss we would announce the time when we returned so that Bob could write it down. It created a lot of humor.

Having conditioned myself to awake at 0330am at home, I had no trouble rising before my hooch mates, dressing in the dark, and making my way up the gravel-covered hill to the shower room. The Camp had several bright outside floodlights, so I could see fine to ambulate in the darkness. The shower room and bathrooms were two separate buildings connected by a common deck; a men’s side and a women’s side. Then each individual side was split again between the STAFF side, and the GUEST side.

Of course the shower room and the toilets were only moderately hygienic. There were five sinks, but only three of them were functional. There were no mirrors over the sinks. There was one 6’ cracked vanity mirror that hung on the wall adjacent to one of the urinals. There were eight shower stalls; four down each side. Two of them had no showerheads. The water just gushed out like from a garden hose. I found a stall that I liked, and it was my targeted shower for the next seven days. There were thick rubber mats on the floor in front of the stalls. They hurt my feet as I walked on them. But it doesn’t take much to give me pain in my feet.

Later when I remarked about the lack of mirrors, Frank remarked,
“ Oh hell, that’s simple. You just have to shave and take a piss at the same time.”
I did a lot of strolling back and forth from the sink instead.

It rained hard that first night, Saturday. It was the first rain we had had for over seven weeks. It had been an exceptionally dry summer in the Northwest. Sunday we were told to just laze around and get a sense of the Camp. We were informed of specific boundaries for the Camp. There was the compound itself, and a few trails that ran adjacent to it. There was a swimming pond on the north side, and a creek ran down the western border. This was wilderness. Bear and cougar were all around us. We were advised not to wander off. We were reminded that we were only guests at a sacred place, and that we were not permitted or privileged to travel outside the designated perimeter. Tribal policemen and game wardens patrolled regularly.

A sight seeing tour was loosely organized. Several vans were used to transport some of us up to Potato Hill, where one could hike and pick huckleberries. I knew that I could not hike, and the overcast skies with their drippy gray clouds masking the mountains discouraged any enthusiasm on my part. I opted not to go. I met PB, who also stayed behind. We went over to the Crafts building. Three Indian women, and several of their children were assisting a dozen or so VA guests in sewing moccasins, or stringing beads, or making a dream catcher. Crafts were not my dish of tea, so I just sat and watched the others.

“ Hey, I’m going to the cabin and get my paint kit,” PB announced. When he returned he had a nice artist’s kit, with a sketchpad, charcoal and pencils, brushes, and watercolors. He talked about spending two weeks in Paris last year with his wife, attending art classes. How neat, I thought. He opened up the kit, pulled out a thick folded card, like a blank greeting card, and he began to paint a mountain landscape on it. I used to sketch a lot when I was a kid. So I asked for a blank card and a pencil, and I began to sketch. I drew him sitting there painting. It was fun, and it turned out pretty well. I inked over the pencil lines with a ballpoint, and colored it with watercolors. I scribbled a little message inside, signed it, and gave it to PB. He loved it, raving about my artistic talent.

I asked for a piece of sketch paper. On the wall next to us were several prints of Western scenes, taken from an old calendar. I am much better copying from something that I am at free hand, so I spent the next hour sketching my rendition of a mountain man on a horse. I didn’t think it was too good, but several Indians that were passing by praised my talent. I thought, OK, what the hell. I opened a magazine that they had there, a program from a local Pow Wow. It had a lot of photographs and paintings of Indian dancers in full regalia; porcupine quills, eagle and crow feathers, leather beaded shirts, necklaces, pants, and sashes; often with warpaint on their faces. During the week at Camp, I drew seven sketches, each one more complex than the other. I gave them away as gifts. It joyfully reawakened my talent as a sketch artist, and it provided entertainment and gifts for my Indian hosts.

Monday morning dawned dark gray, and then it cleared up, peppering us with bright sun breaks. Everywhere we went, Frank and I were providing a comedy routine, a sort of “Are you talkin’ to me” De Niro farce, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Some people asked me what part of the east was I from. East Seattle was my reply. After a few days I had Frank’s Brooklyn accent down to a natural utterance. My skill as a mimic had gotten me in trouble as a teacher. When one of my students has a specific accent, whether Southern, Indian, Hispanic, Black, British, or the East Coast, I have a tendency in my endeavor to communicate to slip into their speech patterns, inflections, and accent. My students have never complained, but my supervisors have. They claimed that I was being disrespectful. My immediate supervisor once said,
“ I was walking by your office this morning, and Christ as you were teaching Mr. Gonzales you sounded like a Mexican bandit!”

After breakfast we were assigned to a classroom, and we were put into VA groups of fifteen. We had a pair of elders, an Auntie and Uncle, a facilitator, called the Interpreter, and a half of a dozen Indian guests; singers and speakers. I was assigned to Dan Foster’s family, as our groups were dubbed. Foster was 6’3” tall, with wavy short hair and a toothy grin. He was half Scottish and half Lakota Sioux. He looked white. He had a PhD in Psychology, so he was Dr. Foster. He talked about his twelve years in college, and all the prestigious positions that he had held over the years. He had even served for a time on a Presidential council. He was never braggadocio. He was matter of fact, and he just spoke of his accomplishments as if he was talking about shopping at Safeway. Speaking for himself, he made it clear that he found out that as long as he looked, acted, and talked like a white man, he remained successful. But every time he allowed his Indian side to emerge, the whole system fell apart, and he found himself demoted and transferred out. So he was silent much of the time. But too often he felt compelled to speak out, to break his silence. So his professional career was peppered with terminations, demotions, and washouts.

We had been told in advance about the “talking stick.” When it was handed to you, it was your turn to speak. No one could interrupt you. You had the floor. The chairs were set up in a semi-circle with Dan and the elders and Indian guests at the top. Our Uncle was Larry Washington. Our Auntie was Vivian George, called Babs. Dan was wearing short hair because he had just attended his cousin’s funeral. It was a way to grieve respectfully. The elders would bless the room, specifically the floor representing the earth. They ring a small bell, and then sing the prayer. Auntie Babs had a lovely singing voice, and quite a repertoire of songs. She talked about how the songs were handed down in her family through the generations. I have to say, that in the past, whenever I would hear an Indian song, they seemed to all sound the same. After my week at the Camp, I did get so that I could discriminate the subtle differences in tone and language. I got so that I actually began to like to listen to them. One elder, Aunt Bessie, had the most soulful voice it would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. She sounded like Bessie Smith.

Looking around the room, the VA employees from five states were all eyeballing each other. There was Devin Keyes, the young man who had been our first van driver. MD had been a medic in Viet Nam. Medics had a life expectancy of 15 minutes. He did two tours. We called him Mike the Medic; how original. His hair was prematurely white, close-cropped, usually under a ball cap. He had a walrus moustache. He tended to wear muscle shirts and shorts with those huge safari pockets on them. He liked to split wood and hang around the central fire pit a lot. We would see him perched on the upturned logs, like some kind of crane. He enjoyed looking down on people, I guess. RD was a short slight balding Jew, with a well-trimmed dark short beard. He had packed too lightly, and now that the weather had turned colder, he was shivering a lot. He worked at the VA Seattle campus. BA was up from Portland. He had an average build, short hair, kind of wild eyes, and crooked teeth. He didn’t shave for the entire week, and he looked pretty shabby. TO was a Native American and a VA employee. His long white hair was tied behind his head. He never untied it. He was there to learn more about his Indian heritage, and to share his feelings about the VA as a bureaucracy. DT was an RN up from Portland. She worked in the ER. She seemed to be a very compassionate and caring person, and holding hands with death daily had taken its toll on her. EY was part of the administration at American Lake. She was 30ish with long brunette hair and a stunning figure. She seemed used to being the pretty one in the room; yet she did not seem vain. AB was a nurse too. She was tall, plump, and 40ish; all bosom and big eyes. She had a lot of emotional moments to share. SG was a short thin lady who had some kind of clerical billet. She had a plain face and a prominent nose, but when she smiled her face lit up radiantly. CG worked at the VA Regional Office in Seattle. She was shorthaired; square shouldered, and wore no make-up. She studied everyone, but did not talk much. Marleen was Native American. She was very nervous and very quiet. She was one of the guests.

Dan explained that these group sessions would not be therapy, although they might be therapeutic. In front of every third chair, on the floor, was a box of tissues. Initially that seemed kind of pretentious to me, but it turned out that much of what was said, and what was shared, was very heart warming, and sometimes heartbreaking. Tears of anguish and joy would flow within that room all week.

Dan handed out the “talking stick”, and it was passed along from person to person. We were asked to introduce ourselves, and try and explain or define why we had come, what we were searching for, and what we thought we might contribute to the overall experience. It took several hours to make it around the circle. Everyone opened up emotionally immediately, like we were a pack of Pavlov’s dogs and someone had rung the bell. There was one man who was gay, two women who were lesbians, several women who were battered spouses, several men who had done some battering, several people who had wrestled with substance abuse and the subsequent treatment for it, several people who had attempted suicide; and this was just the guests. The Indians hadn’t spoken yet.

When it was my turn with the stick, I used a little humor to break the ice.
“ I have come up here looking for my father,” I said, explaining that if any of these elders in the Camp had been in Seattle in 1943, and had dated any white women, maybe I was their long lost prodigy. Then I rambled on about the frustration of being disabled, of what CIDP was, and how long I had been searching for some kind of healing. And I talked about the trouble I had encountered while trying to teach Native American vets.

Dan Foster was wearing a beautiful hand-made cotton “ribbon shirt”. It had various American flag patterns on it, and the ribbons were red, white, and blue. When we had our first break, as a lark, I walked up to Dan, and informed him that I really loved his shirt, that Flag Day, June 14th, was my birthday, so that a shirt like that would be a great addition to my closet. He smiled and walked away; saying nothing. I felt uncomfortable and foolish. When the class reconvened, he had changed shirts. He stood up, walked over to me, and handed me the folded up ribbon shirt that I had admired; gave it as a present. He explained,” For Indians, the notion of property or possessions is not important. When you try to own things, often they end up owning you. And after all they are just things. We believe in the “Giveaway”. As long as my children are not hungry, I will give anything I have away if it is admired. For instance I used to have a large collection of beaded belt buckles—but not any more. They now reside on the belts of others.”

I felt obligated to reciprocate. We had been oriented to the possibility of the giveaway, or bartering. So I had brought my Bowie hunting knife for just such occasions. When I dug it out of my duffel bag, and I presented to him later, he seemed very pleased with it. For an Indian, once a gift is given, it is never taken back. The term “Indian giver” has no basis in fact. White men are the Indian-givers, not the Indians. Inadvertently, I was the icebreaker for the Giveaway. Soon others started following Dan around admiring his clothes. On Wednesday, as we stood in line at the Chow Hall, he emerged shirtless, and wonderfully muscled, heading back to his hooch. Someone had pestered him so often that he had stripped his ribbon shirt off in the Chow Hall and handed it to the person.

Because Dan was so much taller than me, the sleeves on my shirt were way too long. I had to roll them up. My hooch mates, Bob and Frank, got a lot of mileage out of my actions. This was especially true for Frank Basta.

“ So what’s next?” Frank asked,” Will you get his pants? His underwear? You will look wonderful in his tiny tight shorts, and the legs rolled up on his pants!”

Dan had talked about how recently someone had shot his dog, a Great Dane. This had happened just before he came to the Camp. He also talked a lot about his fat wife, who was a Blackfeet. She ruled their home and their family with an iron hand, but had a loving heart. They lived on the Blackfeet reservation near Flathead Lake, up by Glacier National Park, in Montana.

“I can just see it now,” Frank explained,” You will be wearing one of his ribbon shirts, with the sleeves rolled up to your elbows, his hat pulled down over your ears, his underwear choking off your nuts, his long pants rolled up to your waist, his cowboy boots flopping like mukluks, and you will be carrying his dead dog in your arms, and his wife will be on your arm loaned out to you as well. Hell, we need to start calling you Dan Foster, Jr.”

Dan told a cute story about his five-year old daughter. After the dog, Shiloh, was killed, she wanted to know where it was. Dan explained that some bad person had shot it, and that Shiloh had died. She asked where Shiloh was now. Because of predators, like bear and coyotes, it was hard to bury dead animals. So Dan had tossed his dog in one of the reservation dumpsters. The little girls began to cry her eyes out. She demanded to go and visit with Shiloh. Dan took her there, and showed her what was left of the dog. It was traumatic for her, of course. She had nightmares for weeks.

A month later one of their aunts died, and they prepared for her funeral. When the daughter was asked if she wanted to attend the funeral services, to go and visit with her grand auntie for the last time, she began to cry uncontrollably. After they calmed her down, and Dan asked her what was wrong, she answered, “ Daddy, I know that you threw Auntie in that dumpster with Shiloh, and I am a scared to go back there!”

On the second day of our sessions, the family began to hear the narratives of the Native American vets who had served in Viet Nam. They had all suffered from PTSD, although initially none of them would admit it; even Dan Foster himself. He had gone through a terrible decade of drinking, bar fighting, divorces, and job losses.

Our first guest was Orin Miller, a Yakima, who had been a tribal policeman and a game warden for over 25 years. He talked about having been a point man for many of the recon assignments his squad had pulled.
He talked about giving up his youth, of growing up in battle, and of becoming hardened to killing; numb to it; about watching a lot of his buddies being blown away. About how he was wounded, healed up, and sent back into combat, and wounded again. About how he had to choke back his nightmares after he returned to the world. Like so many others, he began to drink too much, fight too much, and he had to try and hide it from his employers. He, of course, could not hide it from his family.

Later, in a quiet moment, since he was sitting next to me in the circle, I asked him about his many decades in the forests, and whether he had ever had a Sasquatch sighting, or seen any sign.

“I have never seen a thing,” he replied,” For over twenty years I hiked around every inch of these woods, day and night. When people would get lost, I would go out at night and find them. But in all that time I never felt the presence of such a creature.”

As you might imagine, that is not what I wanted or expected to hear. Then I asked him about UFO sightings. The week before, I had just seen a television show on UFO’s on A&E. On it they had mentioned that the area around Mt. Adams was a hot bed of sightings.

“ Hell, I never seen no strange lights in the sky,” he replied,” Unless I was drinking. I don’t believe in UFO’s or little green men anyway.”

You don’t believe in Sasquatch either, I thought. When one studies unusual phenomenon, the reoccurring theme is that only some people actually have the sightings. In terms of UFO’s many believe that one has to be chosen and allowed to see them. Examples have been given of two men standing near to each other. One can see a UFO clearly, and the other sees an empty sky. After my sighting in 1983, I have conversed with many people who believe in UFO’s but never have had a sighting. Go figure.

So, anyway, Miller’s lack of enthusiasm for Sasquatch did not dampen my own. I know in my own heart, just as I felt that someday I would see a UFO, that some day or some night I will be driving up and down one of those forest service roads between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams, and I will have a Sasquatch encounter or sighting. If it never happens, at least it gives me something to stay interested in, and to pursue. I am just fascinated by the mere possibility. I feel that I just need to adjust my sensitivity, and get my vibes right, and be in the correct place at the appropriate time; and it will happen. Good luck to me.

Our next speaker was my new friend, Bob Wahpat, aka Crow. He had been a medic in the Marines during the Viet Nam conflict. He saw a lot of action. Men were wounded and died all around him. But the fateful day came when it was his turn for morgue duty. He was to clean up, prepare and ship home those broken slain bodies of his buddies. He protested. As an Indian, he had been trained to believe that only a medicine man could touch and handle the dead. He was told to follow orders. Still he protested. They threatened him with federal jail time, and/or the shame of a dishonorable discharge. As a warrior he could not allow that to happen, but as an Indian he had to betray his beliefs and his spiritual training. So he gave in and ran the morgue for several months. It deadened and destroyed something inside him. When he returned to the world, he shared his experiences with the elders in his tribe. He was punished emotionally for his transgressions. His country made sure that he was highly decorated, but his people painted him as a pariah.

Then we met Steve Reuben, one of the few thin Indians. Most of them were very overweight. There was an Indian joke that a man had to be morbidly obese to be a tribal elder. Steve had classic chiseled features. He looked a little like Iron Eyes Cody; like one could put his profile on the nickel. During this camp, he worked as the Master of the Sweats. A few years previous, Frank Basta had performed that function. The sweat lodges were at the south end of the compound, out of sight of the populous. One needed to strip them self-naked and bathe in the icy water of a mountain stream before entering the sweat lodge. One must enter pure, clean, and blessed. Steve’s nickname was “Microwave”. This sweat was always extra hot. One of the VA employees, a young man, had passed out from the heat, and had to be carried out and revived. After the sweat, one was supposed to jump back into the cold creek, cooling down. Then they were to hike down to the Camp and take a hot shower. I knew that with my asthma, and my disability, that I would not have been able to crouch down and crawl in and out of the sweat lodge, nor would I have been able to stand the heat. Dan Foster talked about a meditative state that people can get into with the experience of a lot of sweats. He said, that for him, an eagle came to him and fanned him with its great wings, so that he never felt the heat.

Steve talked about having been a Green Beret, and how he had learned early on that he was good at killing, especially using a knife. After a time, he began to like the killing, to crave it. He finished two tours of duty. He was in his third tour of duty when he was finally wounded severely enough to be sent home and discharged. He missed the jungle and the slaying. He was plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. He drank too much, fought with everyone, and battered his wife and his children. He married and divorced with regularity. He had spent time at American Lake on the PTSD ward, and the substance abuse ward. He and I had been in close proximity to each other several times and never knew it; small world. Years before, at Camp Chaparral, he began to open up, face his demons, and begin his healing.

We saw several examples of this phenomenon. A number of Native American vets would be invited to attend the Camp. Most of them were Viet Nam combat vets. Often they would sit through a week of it, but they would remain silent, saying nothing. But the next year, or the next, they would attend again, and perhaps they would be immersed in a group, or family, that they were somehow comfortable with, and they would begin to open up, to talk, to let out the fire and pain in their entrails. As guests, we saw that this was one very important function of the Camp experience. We were privileged to share the vet’s catharsis, and provide fellowship for them.

During the evening of the talent show, Steve really kicked up his heels. He really is quite a ham. He presented the Reubenettes for our entertainment. The dancing group, bopping to some rock and roll, and miming the words, consisted of VA employee CR [during her fifth stay at the Camp], Aunt Tessie, a 90-year old elder, little 8-year old Kalli, the daughter of TA, our VA coordinator for the Camp, and Steve himself in drag. He wore heavy make-up with glitter on his cheeks, and blood red lipstick, and a shocking white wig, a stringed shawl, and a long dress. It was the hit of the show. There was one guy that read some of his free verse poetry. I was a little sad that I had not been alerted enough during the orientation to realize that I should have, or could have, brought along my own free verse. The ham in me screamed to participate. But instead, I stayed mostly in the Crafts shack and worked on my Indian dancer sketches.

One morning in our hooch as I was getting dressed Frank asked me,
“ It is probably none of my business, but how in the hell did you get that hickey on your neck? A little snuggle in the trees last night?”
“ No,” I said,” I noticed it a couple of days ago. I think it is a spider bite.”
“There it is,” Frank said.
“What?” I asked.
“Your Indian name. Henceforth you shall be called “Spider”.”
So there we stood; Crow, Wolf, and Spider.

Another of our Indian Viet Nam veteran guests was David Mann; called Coyote. He was the former director of the camp. He ran a plumbing company in Fife these days, and commuted to the reservation on weekends. He was staying in a tee pee that he had erected on the north side of the compound. He wore his hair with shaggy bangs, like a Beatle cut. He had a pure white shock of hair slashing through the front of his bangs; like a Jay Leno look. He had penetrating eyes. He paced up and down restlessly in front of us. He had been in the Special Forces, a lot of Black Ops all over Asia and the Middle East. He talked passionately. Often he wept, or we wept listening to him. Unlike some of the other Indian speakers he made eye contact with us. One often felt that he was talking directly to them. The custom of non-eye contact was disquieting for most of us, and hard to practice and get used to. Even Dan, as he lectured, often stared at the floor, or the ceiling.

Before each day’s session, and after each break, the elders would bless the room, and Auntie Babs would sing a song of prayer. On some of those mornings, we would remain standing, and while on our feet those of us who felt the calling would speak out and say what was in our hearts. Some sang a few verses of Christian hymns, others prayed. Ralph spoke once in Hebrew. At one point I said,
“ What if God were one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?” repeating some lines from a popular song I liked.
Later I said,” Do you want to hear God laugh? Make a plan.”
The next day I had written a prayer, and it seemed to connect with some of the folks in the room.

Lord,
God,
All that is;
Who is our Father,
Our Mother,
And our Brother.
Thank-you for allowing us
To gather in this sacred place,
This holy ground;
Where demons are driven back
Into the darkness,
Where the purist white light can bathe us,
Each in turn,
And together.
Thank-you for the silence,
Where we can leave behind
The language of the machines,
And can learn the language of the heart.
Thank-you for the forest,
And the four-legged ones,
And the phantom wandering ones
Who are our guides and our conscience.
Please accept our tears,
And our sadness,
And let them soak into this sacred soil.
Please allow us to take our new strength
Back to the chaos of the world
Outside,
And may we continue to see others
With our new eyes.

Dan Foster talked a bit about his childhood, about what it was like to be forced to attend the State Indian School, run by Catholics. Like many of the young boys, he was sexually abused by some of the priests. How did we all, in good conscience, allow this situation between the priest pedophiles and the alter boys to exist for these many centuries? I seethe with rage when I think about all those young minds and young bodies and young spirits being twisted up and darkened and traumatized.

At one point our Auntie Babs shared a shocking experience with us. Back in the late 40’s, and early 50’s, the government sent representatives to the Yakima reservation. They gave medical physicals to all the children. Suddenly they announced to the families that most of the children had tuberculosis, and that they would all have to go to a “special” hospital. The parents were not allowed to protest, and they were given no visiting rights, or any level of communication with their children when they were away for their “treatment”. The youngsters ranged in age from six months old to 14 years old.

They were taken to Coleman Hospital. It was a government hospital that was finally given to the Puyallup tribe. It was visible for 80 years from the edge of Tacoma, there at the end of River Road, west of Puyallup. More recently one used to be able to see it from I-5. It was tall and official looking. The Puyallups used it for administrative offices for a time. The tribe had built a Bingo parlor, and later a gambling casino below it. In 2004, they tore down the hospital, and they plan on constructing a huge MGM-like casino in its place.

Vivian [Babs] told us that most of the children figured out right away that they did not have tuberculosis, but they were held as prisoners at the facility. They were given all manner of experimental drugs and experimental surgeries. Some had to stay at least a year. Some stayed three years. Some are still there. About 25% of the children died from “medical complications” and incompetence. Most of the girls were raped and abused daily by the staff. My God, it sounded like a Nazi death camp medical clinic. I am sure that the black spirit of Herr Hitler was smiling as it witnessed the carnage, rape, and horror.

Suddenly for us it was Friday, and things began to wind down. Dan recommended that we all read, WARNING; PSYCHIATRY CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH, (1998) by William Glasser. At one point, he took me aside, and invited me to visit he and his family on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana.

“I would like for you to relax, and play with my children and my dogs. And maybe we could work a bit on your healing. We have some different ways of doing things there.” He said.

I was very pleased with his invitation. Perhaps some day Melva and I will take him up on it. I was extremely impressed with this gentleman, and he with me. One day in the Chow Hall line, he was behind me.

“Do you write?” he asked.
“Yes, I do, all the time.” I replied.
“I thought so. When you speak, you choose your words carefully, and I can see that you have done your research, and that you have written about many of these things.” He added.

They had a Pow-Wow on Friday night, our last night at Camp. They put out five long tables for the supper meal. They were loaded with elk and venison steaks, and freshly baked and freshly caught salmon, and half pound hamburger patties, and huge sausages of several kinds, three kinds of beans and chili, three kinds of potato salad, and assorted fruits and vegetables—a picnic for the Gods. We all ate until we were stuffed. Then they brought out the freshly baked cinnamon rolls.

The sky was clear, and the huge bonfire was built up using all the rest of the chopped wood. The red-orange flames licked the sky, rising up fifteen feet in the air. There was a veteran’s procession done twice around the parade field. The Indian veterans held the colors and the armed services flags. As a Navy veteran, I was invited to join in on the march, to blend into the procession. I was glad to do it. It was unrehearsed and a bit ragtag, but it felt good to stand up there, and to march with 80 other men and women, kicking up rich red dust, pounding the earth with our 160 feet, marching to the bellicose sound of many Indian voices singing and chanting, and to eight Indians beating simultaneously on a huge war drum. The group drumming reminded me of the Japanese drummers used at their festivals.

Orin Miller’s family honored him with a huge Giveaway. They called certain individuals up and presented them leather shirts and beautiful wool Pendleton blankets, eagle feathers, and other gifts. This ceremony went on for over an hour. Many people started getting restless, even some of the other Indians. Steve Reuben and Orin and David Mann were dressed up if full Indian regalia. One older woman, an elder I did not know, seemed to be getting cold to me. It gets cold in the mountains after the sunset, even in late August. She was only wearing a light jacket, and the night was getting very chilly. I went back to the hooch and retrieved my favorite thick black sweatshirt. I brought it over to the elder, and insisted that she wear it. She put it on and smiled a wonderfully large grin. I told her that she could return it to me the next morning over at the Crow’s Nest. She nodded, but of course, she never returned it. I had given another gift, I guess.

The dancing and the singing and the drumming went on for many intense hours into the evening, and early morning. I retired at 10pm, knowing that I still needed to rise early and join the few dawn dwellers that would meet me in the shower room, so that we could be blessed with the first hot water of the day. The next morning, Saturday, Bob and Frank and I exchanged hugs and phone numbers.

“If you are ever up there in Maine, come and visit me on my island,” Frank said.

“When you return to Toppenish, call me anytime.” Bob said.

The day was sunny and fairly warm. No one really needed a jacket. The Chow Hall had packed us sack lunches, and stacked them on tables near where we were loading up our vans. The Ponderosa pines pelted the thin mountain air with their sweet pungency. Our caravan of government vans wound back down through the foothills late a fat serpent; satiated, full, and wiser. Mt. Adams stood out proudly in the sun of the late August morning. We kept glancing back at it as it gave us its farewells.

Glenn Buttkus September, 2004