The La Sals are
one of a set of compact mountain ranges in southeastern Utah. I'd always thought they were named because
some of the snow-covered, volcanic peaks looked like they'd been dusted with
salt. However, the Escalante Expedition
named them for the salty springs they discovered at the base. The mountains are high for this part of the
world, Mount Peel is 12,721 feet and the range, though relatively small, is
rich with surprising glens and juniper forest.
The mountains also support populations of cougars and black bears. I've been in a cabin in one of the deeper
glens the last few days which included a highly localized but relatively heavy
snow storm. In the evenings I had the
opportunity to finish Keith Basso's Wisdom
Sits in Places. It's the kind of
book that reads well in a high, remote place.
Much of it is formal anthropology and ethnography yet it's also the kind
of book that implicitly asks you to look at your own life, culture and personal
pursuits from a different kind of high and remote place.
As I first
mentioned some months ago, Basso's narrative - I think I prefer the word
"story" in this context and will use it in the sequel. One should not
infer a loss of precision or objectivity from this choice of diction, quite the
opposite - Basso's story, then, begins as a hunt to map Apache place names near
Cibeque, Arizona, but becomes so much more, a cultural map of the creation and
uses of stories in Apache culture and how they are associated with unique and
particular places. Hunting is a seminal
metaphor for them. Telling a story can
be "shooting an arrow" at someone.
Places, (and implicitly the specific stories associated with them) can
be said to be "stalking" someone.
Yet, for all that, their purpose is not aggressive, or antagonistic but
rather to facilitate respectful communication, help the listener develop
wisdom, weather a period of personal difficulty or develop perspective. A place can become so identified with a story
that it can serve as a short hand for telling the story. In one remarkable section, Basso, formally
reports the conversation of some Apache women, one of whom is distressed over
the hospitalization of her brother, which, initially, is totally opaque. The short conversation consists of each woman
naming a particular place, followed by an appellation suggesting it's
importance. At first reading it seems
like a nonsensical exchange of static non-sequiturs, something mischievously
devised by a very dry-witted Apache Lewis Carroll. However, it is nothing of the sort. Each of the particular places mentioned has a
story associated with it and by naming those places, each speaker is
respectfully encouraging the distressed woman to call the story to her
imagination and consider its pertinence to her particular situation. As a result, she is comforted, strengthened
and gains perspective. Her short,
apparently casual and mildly comic comment to a dog sitting in the sun nearby
at the conclusion of the short conversation is validation that the conversation
has been successful. Such a short,
formal exchange, is known as "speaking in places."
The book concludes
with an exploration of the Apache concept of wisdom which is remarkably
concrete and pragmatic. One step in
achieving it is schooling one’s intuition in the stories of such places. At the heart of Basso’s book is the unspoken
question of how our minds understand place and, perhaps, given the particular architecture
of our intelligence, how our ability to associate story, emotion, perception
with individual places can best be used for our and our culture’s greater good.
Modern life is
flooded with narratives of all kinds.
Recent events in Paris are, among many other things, a grim reminder of
how important it is to consciously and conscientiously make culture well. The modern liberal tradition eschews
canonical texts for all, yet the cruelty and alienation of the perpetrators of
terrorism is nothing if not proof of the need for commonly known, life-shaping
stories affirming basic values, such as respect for human life, independent of
religion or creed and perhaps unchanging, physical reminders, i.e. natural
places, bound to those stories.
One morning, after
a snow storm that wasn’t forecast, our family descended to visit Arches and
explore one of our favorite natural labyrinths, “The Fiery Furnace.” As we were uncovering the cars, one of the
members of our little expedition noted that “only fools forecast mountain
weather.” It’s an aphorism I quite
like. As for the Fiery Furnace itself,
the snow had only dusted the high sandstone fins and narrow passages so that we
had all the aesthetic benefits of snow with little additional danger or
difficulty. The walk and scramble
through the maze was, perhaps, more fun than I remembered. For decades it’s been a minor rite of passage
in our family to learn the way through though it’s an accomplishment less
appreciated these days. No doubt there
are numbers of photo documented maps instantly available on the web, though I
haven’t looked. I’m not in the least
surprised that the Fiery Furnace Minotaur with his terrible sandstone colored
bull’s head and hunger for sacrificial human flesh is, perhaps, glimpsed less
often these days.
When I was a child
my grandmother used to read the Greek myths to me as bedtime stories. The mountain just east of where I lived was
and still is named “Mount Olympus” and I naturally conflated it with the more
famous promontory in Thessaly. I
completely believed the stories, in part because they were associated with a
real place I could see. Theseus and the
Minotaur was a particular favorite, that, somewhat like the Fiery Furnace, has
only improved with time. The story of a
hero who undertakes to fight a monstrous creature while lost in an unknowable
maze with only his intelligence, a sword and a thread to guide him in order to
save 12 innocents is, perhaps, one of those stories all should have at heart.
I feel like
Basso’s book has given my intellect a good shaking and given me some new
intellectual tools and perspectives. As
I return to Thomas Malory, I’m curious to see what effect it has on my view of Le Morte d’Arthur and the period of
it’s probable composition. Most
certainly, I’ll be looking at Armstong and Hodges’ book Mapping Malory from a new critical perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment