No Boarders

When I visited Monument Valley in 1996 I was interested to see people living in red huts in the middle of the valley, out in the scorching hot sun. Of course, Indians don't believe in boundaries, which is an interesting concept. They believe in keeping close to the land, that the earth is our mother, and that modern society has taken us too far away from our mother. They've been living in that desert for thousands of years, so I guess they've adapted to living in the scorching heat well enough.

Most recently, I picked up a book called Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko in the Rotterdam library. A lot of it is so unlike what I usually read, that I've had to plow through sections, but it's rewarding and educational in places. I wouldn't have known that the real Geronimo was never captured otherwise, or the extent of the brutality tribal people experienced at the hands of settlers.

Here's a nice passage:

"We don't believe in boundaries. Borders. Nothing like that. We are here thousands of years before the first whites. We are here before maps and quit claims. We know where we belong on this earth. We have always moved freely. North-south. East-west. We pay no attention to what isn't real. Imaginary lines. Imaginary minutes and hours."

I wonder what such a rootless existence would be like. On the one hand, the land is your roots. On the other hand, you move freely about the land, setting up camp in different places. I guess I'd have time for my blog, but no, a computer would take me too far away from mother earth. It would be yet another barrier between me and the natural world, where I belong.

It might be interesting to be a person whose ancestors had lived in a place for generations, but that isn't true in my case. I'd have to visit several North European countries, and learn several languages before I came into contact with all of my roots. An idea that intrigues me. I learned Dutch, already knew English, am currently learning Swedish. That leaves Norwegian and Welsh, and then I've covered it.

Here's what Silko writes about Europeans:

The ancestors called the Europeans the orphan people and had noted that as with orphans taken by a selfish and cold hearted clans people, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to recognize the earth was their mother. Europeans were like their first parents, Adam and Eve, wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them.

I can definitely feel the disconnect, but I'm not sure if moving out to the countryside is the solution for me. For one thing, I'd have to learn to drive. It wouldn't be practical living remotely without a car. I'm also not certain that The Bible is really our roots, but I get the point. Gore Vidal calls it "a Bronze Age book." It is.

I considered briefly becoming a mountain woman in Utah, until I found out about the price of mountain real estate. We'd have to win the lotto.

He also warns that Native Americans were loosing touch with mother earth as they became more entrenched in "white gadgets," like cars.

I can understand a lot of this on a gut level, but I'm also aware that many of the tribes were engaged in brutal warfare. I do however believe that this point of view has something to tell us, if not that we all need to get out of our cars more and walk places.

I've started a walking campaign. Many days I walk four miles to pick up my kids from school instead of taking the Metro. It isn't the most scenic walk, and my feet touch concrete the entire way, but at least I'm moving closer into contact with myself. It's an important "step" to take.