Above Teec Nos Pos

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Above Teec Nos Pos

“The farther you go, however, the harder it is

to return.”--Anderson Cooper.

I remember         visiting      the Four Corners Monument,

                   where the edges of         Utah,

                                                               Colorado,

                                                                      Arizona &

                                                                             New Mexico

touch,        where a simple wooden platform

                  was erected over the bronze plaque

                  representing the latitudinal cross hairs

            where the four Southwestern states

        go all back to back & belly to belly.

One could straddle the plaque

        putting your body in all four states

             at the same time, & as your muscles

                     cramped, & you smiled like you had farted
                             in a crowded elevator, your companion

                                   could/would snap a photo for posterity.

                                   There were a dozen ramshackle sheds

                                    in the perimeter where the Navajo, Hopi

                                    Apache vendors could sell their Art and

                                their native jewelry--you know, those

                           fabulous, clunky, magnificent pure silver

                   and turquoise necklaces, bracelets &

           belt buckles; beautiful & heavy & authentic.

Last summer, after more than a decade, I stopped there again. I was

confronted with a paved road, a gate, and a fee to get in; followed by

concrete parking stalls instead of the dusty ruts between arroyos. The

vendor’s sales stalls were all concrete, like thirty of them, encircling the

monument, & it was obvious that some of their jewelry was made in

China. I had to fight back nausea as I looked down on the imported

junk. The bronze plaque is now sunken into the middle of an amphi-

theater. There were fifty people in a line waiting to snap their pictures

with the cross hairs, with two Indian park rangers herding them. 

I’m sure the tribal councils are pleased with the increased revenue

from the new hordes of tourists, but I felt claustrophobic, & in some

inexplicable way--violated--as if a callous slobbering band of bilious

entrepreneurs had smelled profit, & their greed moved them to erect

some faux state park-like Mescalero madness, some crass commercial

carbuncle, destroying & deflowering its former pristine funkiness, 

turning a once comely maiden into a trashy painted-up tart. I knew

that I would never need to stop there again, as I was witness to

the demise of the former placid rough-hewn wholesomeness,

and pure Native American Southwest authenticity; those halcyon

memories have all but vanished.

Progress will roll over

us, regardless of our pleas

to preserve the past.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub "Poetics"