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Knight Creek

“All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the word—

Those that stay at home and those that do not.”

—RUDYARD KIPLING

At first light, in heavy frost under clear open skies, I woke (fully clothed) to sweet wood smoke and birdsong. The midnight scramble up Knight Creek had brought us into a small, grassy basin where rocks and rims framed the sky in a jagged line high above us. A cooking fire burned inside a ring of stones, and the tea water was on. From my frost-covered sleeping bag, I watched fellow traveler Raven on the hillside gathering what I later found out were yarrow leaves, for tea, while Glen-boy cubed potatoes with a pocket knife into a large cast iron frying pan.

“You carried potatoes and a cast iron skillet in your pack?” I asked, amazed.

“Yes, and honey too!” he cheerily replied. “I can’t get filled up on that dried stuff.” I was beginning to really appreciate this Glen-boy with the cavernous appetite and legendary resourcefulness. Throughout the camping trip I would find there was no end to the astonishing items he deemed necessary to bring on a wilderness foray: axes, shovels, plant and geology books, home-canned peaches, and potatoes and honey.

As we ate, the sun topped the ridge, warming the canyon. It would be difficult, I thought, to describe such a place to a stranger. So much of the magic was in the air, in the things you couldn’t see. My immediate need, after ravenously devouring my share of breakfast, was to be alone, to absorb Knight Creek in my own way. I was delighted to discover we all felt the same pull as we dispersed in different directions.

Without my burdensome pack I felt like a mountain goat leaping from rock to rock. Fresh water trickled from a source somewhere above. Belly down, I swallowed long sips while lying next to the fragrant earth. Nearby I found tipi pits, the thousand-year-old shallow depressions marking the placement of ancient Nez Perce lodges. I wandered in and out of quiet draws, the silence broken only by a bird whose song was one long note, followed by two short notes. In a sunny open place, I spread my sweater in a tipi ring and lay down, the distant creek sounding eerily like children’s voices.

It was mid-afternoon when I returned, and the others had been busy. A smoke stain discovered against a nearby rock bluff had inspired a move of headquarters, and serious efforts to build a shelter, or “hootch,” as Chuck called it, were underway.

A fort. My own delightful relationship with forts went back to childhood and blanket-covered card and ping-pong tables in the basement. Once I was given license to roam the neighborhoods, my friends and I built forts in crabapple trees, forts in wooded thickets, forts in attic spaces, stuffy and dark. And when the windblown snows descended from Canada and railed against us, we tunneled snow forts into the drifts against our homes, soaking pair after pair of mittens.

From the creek bed we worked in teams to gather six dry ten-foot-long cottonwood logs, and from a central point against the bluff, we fanned them out until we had a rough, three-quarter-circle tipi. A seventh pole made the center ridge. Seven poles and seven people. We wove supple red branches cut from brush along the creek like a basket frame. After that came cottonwood bark shingles, secured with bark strips.

Gouging a place for a hearthstone, we discovered chipped, charred bones and mussel shells embedded in a deep layer of charcoal. We were within the perimeters of the original hearth. As I tried to comprehend this shadowy presence all around us, I had the eerie sensation we were picking up where the last tenants left off.

The fire was laid, the match lit, and with satisfaction we watched the smoke curl against the rock face of the bluff and out through the poles.

The next day we built a sweat lodge next to Knight Creek.

“Did the Nez Perce do it this way?” I asked Cougan as we pruned slender side shoots from the ten-foot-long red osier cuttings. “How will we heat it?”

“We’ll heat the rocks in a fire outside. That hole Chuck is digging? We’ll put the hot rocks in the hole, but first we’ll build a lodge over the top of it. You’ll see. As far as I know, we’re pretty close to duplicating a Nez Perce lodge, though I believe the men and women sweated separately.” He grinned. Then he said, “I think the most important discipline was to maintain a spirit of gratitude.” And I nodded.

We thrust the largest diameter branch ends into the moist soil a few feet apart, in a circular pattern. The whip ends, sticking up, were bent over and twined to an opposite branch, forming a dome, about five feet high, eight feet across. Using small branches, we threaded and wove them in and out, tying and binding the framework together. As we worked, we laughed and talked, our clothes and hair gathering forest chaff and bark. Some wore feathers. Happy as children at play, we were engaged in a primitive wonder of our surroundings, our labor.

Next, we covered the structure with whatever was at hand. Sleeping bags, blankets, plastic ground cloths. After Chuck ceremonially identified the four directions, a blanket doorway was placed facing east. A rough log cabin pyre of scavenged wood was assembled to form a sturdy wooden cradle holding fist-sized volcanic rocks, gathered from the hillside. A match was lit, the fire burned, and Chuck and Glen-boy traded stories about Old Joseph and his sons, Young Joseph and Ollokot.

Old Joseph’s band had practiced the Dreamer religion, and Chuck explained this meant they believed the Earth was the mother of all life and that the changes due to farming, mining, and the establishment of civil boundaries constituted a desecration. He spoke of the “Dead Line” located on the breaks of the Minam, above his schoolhouse. How in the latter 1800s—and in response to the settler’s survey stakes—Old Joseph’s warriors had erected a series of rock cairns along the old wagon road. The settlers called it Joseph’s “Dead Line.”

“Why did they call it the Dead Line?” I asked.

“I don’t know, maybe they were mocking Joseph. From everything I’ve read, relations were good between them up until then. But he wanted to impress upon the settlers his people’s claim to the Wallowas. They’re still there,” Chuck said. “At least two, anyway. The cattle have rubbed on them, scattered the rocks, but they still stand.”

Sitting before the fire, the night reaching in between the quivering trees to touch us, I thought that when the snow melted off, I’d walk up to try to find those old cairns. See if there was any power left in the rocks. From the breaks of the Minam country to these canyons, I’d felt a sense of watchfulness, of listening. And now, up Knight Creek, it was like I was in the heart of the conversation. I felt our solemnity, gathered as we were, each on our own quest for meaning, identity, and ritual. Dreamers, all.

When the rocks pulsed red, Raven rolled them out of the coals with a green stick, and Chuck carried them with the shovel blade to the hole inside the sweat lodge. The air filled with the smell of singed bark and a hint of sulfur. White ash floated through the dusk, light as feathers. Shedding our clothes, we entered the lodge, crawling clockwise from left to right. The glowing rocks, the shadowy presence of friends who had worked and sweated together throughout the day, the night dark and lonely beyond, warm and clan-creating within. When Canyons began chanting wordless melodies, I listened but didn’t join in, glad for the dark. As the sweat lodge filled with voices, I thought, Can this be me? Water hissed as it hit the rocks, and the native sage gathered earlier from the hillside flared and burned briefly, long enough to illuminate a snapshot of our faces before we were cast again into shadow, breathing its lingering fragrance.

When the door-flap opened, I scrambled to follow my shouting companions to the creek, whooping and shrieking as we entered the frigid water.

Later, we lay down head-to-head in a circle, our bodies fanning out like the spokes of a wheel. Under the peaceful stars, we drifted toward sleep, lulled by the voice of Annie reading from Hyemeyohsts Storm’s book, Seven Arrows.

In one of the stories, Little Mouse is determined to find the source of the unexplained roaring in his ears, a sound only he seems to hear, and leaves the safety of his home to investigate. Along the journey, he is aided by Spirit guides who take the shape of a raccoon, a frog, an old mouse, a buffalo, a wolf, and an eagle.

I lay awake thinking. Yes, humans are like mice, “so busy with the things of this world that they are unable to perceive things at any distance.” I could feel the roaring in my own ears and the burden of responsibility that prevented me from experiencing life in new ways.

I heard my dad’s voice, “Just finish your education, one more year and then see what happens.” And Mom’s, wondering when I’d buckle down and see something through. I couldn’t help what I felt . . . the yearning, the longing for something more.

As Annie continued to read, Little Mouse received a new name, and I closed my eyes and dreamt a dream of what could be. Feathers, quills, bone, teeth. Dreams of this new tribe.