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This was in the Billings Gazette, Oct. 2006 :Joe Medicine Crow: Living in two worlds.
An interview of history by Becky Shay on the Gazette Staff. Thank you Becky.
LODGE GRASS - Joe Medicine Crow has lived in two worlds and succeeded in both.
Thought to be the oldest Crow man living on the reservation, he is the official Crow Indian Tribe historian. He is a Crow chief, having completed the required four war deeds while serving with the Army in World War II.
After the war, Medicine Crow lived off-reservation for 20 years.
"I almost lost my language," he said.
But, during that time, Medicine Crow gained other life experiences, some while working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 32 years. Since the turn of the millennium, Medicine Crow has earned two honorary doctorates.
"I live in two worlds, and I enjoy them," Medicine Crow said.
Medicine Crow has written books about his Crow heritage.
"One, I can't even read," he said. "It's written in Norwegian!"
Medicine Crow said that, when he worked as a land appraiser for the BIA, he would wear a tie and sports jacket to work all day.
"After 5 o'clock, I'd turn into an Indian," he said with a chuckle.
His years living with a foot in both worlds taught Medicine Crow much, he said, including that it is good to follow the Crow ways of respecting the Earth and all people.
"I was acquainted with the good and the dangers of the white man's way," Medicine Crow said. "You learn from experience, they say."
Medicine Crow was born in 1913 and called himself "second-generation of Reservation Indian Crow." His earliest memories are of his grandparents, the Yellowtails, teaching him traditions at their home near Lodge Grass.
"At that time, my grandparents were our teachers," he said.
Medicine Crow still lives on the land near Lodge Grass. In a house tucked in the trees, he leads visitors past a living area with plush furniture and a large-screen television. Through the kitchen and down a hall, he enters a small room. The 92-year-old offers chairs to his guests and perches on the edge of a single-wide bed.
This room is den, library, picture gallery. The bed, heavy with blankets, is pushed against one wall. A gray metal desk occupies another wall. Near the ceiling, one wall is lined with five college pennants, each with a piece of white notebook paper on the edge listing the year and academic degree Medicine Crow earned there. The last two denote honorary doctorates from the University of Southern California in 2003 and Rocky Mountain College in 2002.
Medicine Crow tells stories in the circular, weaving way of those who have a strong oral tradition. Sometimes he punctuates a sentence with a "ha!" and a little chuckle - seeming both amazed and humored by what he has said. Other times, he raises his right arm and jabs a pointed index finger into the air to drive home a point.
On occasion, Medicine Crow folds his hands, intertwines his fingers and looks down. Collecting his thoughts, Medicine Crow's silence draws in his listener. He tells of Crow Indian history and his own.
His grandfather taught Medicine Crow to be a warrior.
"He would make little bow and arrows for me," he said and talked about the "rigorous physical training" that included running and swimming in icy water.
"But that came in handy when I was in the Army - World War II," he said.
Medicine Crow recalled being about 6 years old, when his grandfather woke him up in the middle of a winter night. The snow was deep, he said, and, without shoes, he was told to go run around the cabin. The training continued to become more strenuous and built up to running without clothes to a clump of sagebrush across the yard and back, then later running out to the sagebrush, rolling in the snow and returning.
The warrior tradition is deep-rooted in Crow culture. Medicine Crow explained that the great warrior, No Vitals, had a vision that Crow would have to be strong to fend off the other tribes and white men, who would try to take their good land.
"The great spirits said, 'I am going to make you warriors, strong and cunning,' " Medicine Crow said.
As a result, the Crow "became militaristic," he said.
"Kids train to be warriors right from toddlers," Medicine Crow said. "We were a war-faring people."
In his recent book, "Counting Coup Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond," Medicine Crow describes how he became a chief. The book was written with Herman Viola and published by the National Geographic Society.
"Naturally, I thought about the famous warriors when I went to Germany," Medicine Crow wrote. "I had a legacy to live up to.
"My goal was to be a good soldier, to perform honorably in combat, if the occasion should occur. I did not think in terms of counting coups. Those days were gone, I believed, But when I returned from Germany and the elders asked me and the other Crow veterans to tell our war stories, lo and behold, I had completed the four requirements to become a chief."
The coups that Medicine Crow counted were:
- He led a war party by taking a detail of soldiers, under fire, to retrieve dynamite to use for attacking German guns.
- He touched the first fallen enemy and stole his weapon when Medicine Crow and a German met on a street in France. Medicine Crow knocked down the German and kicked his rifle away counting coup twice.
- He entered an enemy camp and stole horses when he snuck into a farm where German SS officers were holed up for the night. Medicine Crow stealthily entered a barn and corral, mounted a horse and, with a Crow war cry, ran the horses toward the Americans.
Sitting in his house more than 60 years later, Medicine Crow says with a touch of pride that "I never got a scratch."
Medicine Crow's life has criss-crossed two cultures. He appears as comfortable in traditional beadwork regalia as a USC T-shirt worn over a Western dress shirt. As he tells of the U.S. State government's efforts to snuff out Crow culture, several of the anecdotes parallel his own life and the effort to "keep up the old ways."
"The government tried their best to transform these people into the ways of the white man," Medicine Crow said. "Yeah, they tried all right. But we had what you might call cultural persistence."
_______________________________________________________.
MEMORIES:
EDITORS NOTE: Brad is a published author. He writes poems, short stories about life. He was able to catch the essence of his grandfathers spirit in his work as well as life as it was on the ranch in the late 70's.E-mail: DARREGNAW@aol.com
There are four parts to this collection: Recollections, Taking Cattle to the Mountains,A Typical Ranch Day in Gods Country and a poem: Seek the Seer
Brad and his Grandmother, Orlando, 2006
.
Brad Wagner, Recollections 1/3/99
I remember being 13, and sleeping in the upstairs of my grandparents home at the Beaver Creek Ranch. Like a ritual,
every morning, sometime between 3:30 and 4:00, I would hear the footsteps of my Grandad coming up the wood stairs from outside to wake me.Sometimes it felt like part of my sleep, but I could almost always hear him coming. It was like I would get conditioned to waking up at a certain time, and sometime by middle summer or so, I would hear him moving around downstairs, and actually hear the front porch door swing open and footsteps on the ground as he rounded the house to climb the stairs to wake me.
He seemed to get some kind of joy, or pride, out of coming up
to wake me. Breakfast at this time usually consisted of a bowl of cereal, a muffin,maybe a few pieces of toast. Once in a while he would cook one of those half hard boiled eggs. Put it in a little silver egg holder and tap it just so,and then eat the middle out of it. I guess this is an Scotchish style?,I forgot, but he seemed to enjoy it. He was that kind of man
.
The little things in life were some of the most important things.
The egg in the egg dish, the perfect piece of pie,
the wild flower in the field. You could always gather
strength and satisfaction from his joy of enjoying the
smell of oxygen in the morning air, or the picking of
wild flowers for grandmother or upon fixing a particularly
bad section of fence, the look of accomplishment and satisfaction.
Grandad always exuded a sense of grand accomplishment.
What a joy it was to be alive and enjoy "GodsCountry". Living life with a sense of accomplishment was something that I learned from him.
After breakfast, we would stack our dishes in the sink and
clear our mess, and generally, it was only about 4:30 a.m. by then.Always going straight through the barn turning on the lights and yelling at the dog. Numerous and various stray cats that look like they just got out of a fight with a neighboring indian cat, scars glistening, scurry around and up in the loft and out of the way.
He heads through the rear sliding wood doors, leaving them open,and walks through the corral to the
far wooden gate and swings it wide. I follow, not talking, at this time of the morning your senses are at the edge of reality, and it seems like the sky is bright,the stars are twinkling, the air feels cool and crisp and carresses the skin, no...this is not a time for talk, this is a time to enjoy the simple sense of
accomplishment, attained by catching, and corraling, and
controlling one of the most beautiful creatures on earth and best friend to man. As I stand behind the far corral gate, and look up at the rimrocks in the distance, I can make out some dark figures of animals high up on the hill.
Grandad takes a half filled bucket of oats and shakes it and begins his ritual call of "Hey Boys!....Hey
Boys!..."This part always amazes me, some of these horses seem smart enough to give MR. ED a run,and here they come running when this kindly old rancher calls them.
Sure enough, one by one, and then quickly, like a sudden wind sweeping, they all run into the corral. I shut the gate behind them and begin attempting to make out Priceless amongst the moving animals.
My recollections from this age have these beautiful creatures
standing 10 feet tall. I know now that they weren't but at the time they seemed like giants. At this point, I knew it was the fourth quarter, with time running down, and me needing a field goal to win.
From experience, I knew that if I didn't move quickly,
Grandad would have his horse caught, saddled, and be sitting on it ready to go, looking at me like I was an idiot "Easterner"
or something. Finding Priceless, I was usually able to slowly walk upto him soothing him with some talk about how much fun it was going to be today, and slip the halter on
him. After I saddled him in the barn, I would lead him out
to the gate to open it for the other horses to go back to
their routine day of running around to the very limits of the fence line and eat as much grass, or hay, or oats as they could.
What a life. I on the other hand, and Grandad, and Priceless,
and maybe Watergate, or whichever young horse got selected would be led by the old cowboy out,and over, and up, and down, straight down if necessary, and in, and wherever we needed to go to go on our cattle humanitarian medical mission, doctoring pink eye, and foot rot, and enjoying the most wonderful thing that I've ever discovered on this planet. The wonderful satisfying sense of accomplishment and enjoyment to belive and on a mission.
I love my Grandad and I hope that he is in heaven right now, riding the range and enjoying himself like I know in my heart, that he is.
Memories of a Grandson B.L. "Brad" Wagner
TAKING CATTLE TO THE MOUNTAINS:
Taking the cattle to the mountain was always an exciting event in the summer for me at Beaver Creek Ranch. All of the kids would talk about it days in advance. We knew that my Uncle Joe and GrandDad were making plans also, but very rarely were let in on what they were. All I knew was that we would get to ride horses, and herd cattle, and sleep over night under the stars. What an experience. While other kids were back home in Wisconsin watching Rawhide and The Rifleman, and playing cowboys and Indians. Here I was in Montana actually living it.
It was a couple summers working out on the ranch before I
realized why we were even taking them from the lower lying areas to the mountains. I guessed that the grass was greener up there and the cattle could eat more and get fatter. The first couple times, I don't think I really cared "why" about anything. All I knew was that it was a blast and hard to hide the expression on my fence.
We would take off from the ranch and head the cattle almost straight down the dirt road toward the dipping vat. They would
and could run and walk on the grass beside the road. It seemed to me that most of the time they were on the left. I know that I always envied my cousins. They were younger than me, but much more experienced horsemen. Gary and Gordon almost always were the point riders. Up on each side of the herd
keeping them pointed and going in the direction that we wanted them to.
Without these guys doing their job, most of the cattle would just head 5 different directions and it would turn into a big whirlpool of milling animals.
Uncle Joe and Granddad always seemed to be moving. Riding fast young horses they would go from point, to side, to the rear, and around the side and to point, trying to help keep everything moving as best as possible.My youngest cousin Ronny and I, and my Aunt Donna would be at the "drag", in the rear, pushing and yelling and whooping and trying to get the very slowest
of the rear herd moving. We had to always laugh because we would try every type of yell imaginable, and even take our hobbles out and whip some of them to get them going, but they would barely even react. Except when old GrandDad
came around. When he would pass around us at the rear, he would kind of situp high in his saddle and make a wild yell and whoop and the whole hind end of that herd would take off at a gallop like they were being chased by the devil himself. I don't know how he did it. When he left and went around to the
front somewhere, we would try to duplicate the same noises, and sound and expression and everything and they would turn their heads sideways and look at us like we were crazy. I never could understand that.
Anyway, almost a full day of this would find us at "Box Canyon". This was an area of rimrock where it formed a sort of 3 sided box and the rest was fenced in. Here we could leave them for the night, and head back and sleep in our beds. After this leg
of the journey, Granddad would go to his pickup. (I believe Grandmother would drive it up for us.) He would open the quart box and pull out a bottle of whiskey and let us all have a swig. Me, my cousins, whomever, after all, we deserved it. A full day of cowboy type mans work. I think that the kidswould ride the horses back from here. I remember one time when we were far
enough away from the canyon and from the barn, we raced. That was fun. Once in a while we all had some fun on horses when we thought we could get away with it. For me it was fun being on one whatever we were doing.
The next day, we were back at it and pushing them to the dipping vat. It was called a dipping vat because the corrals were situated in such a way as the cattle would be pushed up through one area and they would actually fall into some insecticide and have to swim through it to the other side. Thus the dipping vat. Again, we would leave them here for a night, going back to sleep in our beds.
The following day we would cross over the river and follow it up
sort of, along a trail that led first, past the Fish and Game parking lot.This consisted of one small clear spot beside the river where people would park vehicles and walk up and around fishing. Shortly after this along the trail, you would see a sign that said "Entering Wyoming" or "Wyoming State Line". That was kind of cool too. Going from Montana to Wyoming herding
cattle. The trail gets narrower here and becomes harder for people to be out in front and on the sides, then when everything seems to be steep and straight down everywhere, it goes right and up and opens to a valley with some fresh spring water coming out. Beautiful clean clear water. "The third crossing".
This was a neat name for this place. As I remember, it seems that the fence line was just above this place and we pushed all the cattle through this fence there. That would let them go up and around and spend their summer eating the green grass of the mountains. Here we would sleep out under the stars
over night. Uncle Joe would put hobbles on the horses and let them hop around feeding. We would break out our bedrolls and put them on the ground. Have a camp fire. Lay out sleeping under the stars in the cool crisp night air. It was pretty easy to sleep also. That riding, riding, riding, finally would
catch up to you to where, you were almost obliviouso mosquito's, cold, even the thought of rattlers crawling in your bedroll with you.
One of the funniest times here, not for my Uncle, but....We woke up in the morning and all of the horses were gone. Uncle Joe blamed it on Priceless. He said that Priceless learned to hop away, and would lead all of the other horses away. I remember thinking what a tragedy it would be without horses here, but Uncle Joe would catch them easily. He went down hill a ways and took two or three throwing ropes and tied them between trees at about shoulders height. Then we went through the woods above where we thought the horses were and did a little
drive. Sure enough, there they were when we came through, milling around behind those ropes like they were in a corral.
Another time, I was looking for pretty rocks in the water here at the third crossing and bent over to get a drink and there laying like it was meant for me to find was a scalping knife rock.
Perfectly curved and carved to fit the hand, and sharp enough to cut almost anything. I carried this with me for years after in my pocket for good luck,and for an interesting conversation piece. I lost it at a campground in Florida when I had it out one time to show a friend of mine named Indian John.It just seemed to melt back into the earth.The next day was the fun day. We would saddle up and head up to the cabin. One of the most memorable times I can recall on this day was riding up
to the gate leading into the cabin and looking across at debris and paper and plates and food containers all over the ground. Also the refrigerator was out in the lawn with the front torn open. Uncle Joe was saying something about "Damn bears!' This time we would unsaddle, and let the horses go free, as
they were enclosed in this massive fenced in area, and then clean and pick up for a good while. It seems that the bears had got in and dragged the refrigerator outside and since they couldn't open it, they just tore it open.I will always remember what went through my mind at this juncture. "We're
sleeping in there?" That tickled me. I know that I took a nap outside the front door on my bedroll with one eye open and one eye shut.
At one time on this trip or another, I was carrying the garbage can out and around the back of the cabin towards the trash pit with my head down thinking about something, and when I looked up, there was a bear in front of me coming straight at me
with his head down like he was thinking of something too.
Course this story was told about a million times after by my GrandDad....I dropped the can and turned around and ran as fast as possible and the bear did too. The bear was in such a hurry that he headed under the fence and the barbed wire took some of his fur with it. I kept some of that fur by the way. Hair of the dog that bit you, they say, you know!
The day we arrived and the cabin was ransacked. I sneaked up the little hill and peered across the far valley to the tree line
the way and saw a couple black bears, a brown bear, and a kind of orange colored looking bear. Far off in the distance. Guess What? The next day my Uncle Joe thought that I should take the wire pliers, wire, and some supplies and lunch, and spend the day over there checking the fence line for holes. This was a day! I was very brave at first and followed the fence and fixed spots here and there, some easy, and some hard. Stopped about where I had seen those bears and ate lunch. This is when I thought that every squirrel making a noise, and every wind that rustled, was a big bear coming to get me. You know how sometimes the woods themselves take on a sinister kind
of sound when you are by yourself. The afternoon couldn't have gone by too quick for me. The only thing I could think about was the stories I had been told about Yellowstone Park transportingtheir bad bears here and leaving them. After, of course, they had become incorrigible and would attack people
and things.
The drinking water at the cabin came from a spring too, and trickled down into a big round old wooden horse trough. I would have to say, that in retrospect, this water was the best tasting water that I have ever tasted. I have tasted some good water too now. It always tickled me though that the horses and the humans would drink at this same trough. The water would
continually fall and replenish itself, there is something different though, the first time you see your horse drink, and then run off and then you go up and drink. Fitting for the lifestyle we all had led the last several days. Fences fixed, cattle delivered, cabin and area policed, wood chopped, we would stop to enjoy a little. Uncle Joe taught us to throw a rope at the little corral here. I would practice and practice after that, whenever I had a free
moment. It was nice having an Uncle that would include you in everything going on, like you were one of his own even if it was just for the summer
.
Going back down went rather quickly. Granddad would sometimes go home after the third crossing, and then meet us with the pickup(s) to take us back to our real summer job on the ranch. Cutting, raking, baling, and stacking endless
fields of sweet summer hay.
After each summer, I would try to explain to my classmates where I had been, and it must have sounded so incredulous that no one would believe me. It's not like I have ever embellished a story before or anything. Something about the idea of me out being a "real cowboy" and "herding" cattle and all was just too much for most of the kids to believe. I had the satisfaction of
knowing though, that it was real, and fun, and something I would not trade with anyone ever. These experiences were all mine!!!
RETURN TO THE TOP
A TYPICAL RANCH DAY IN GODS COUNTRY
A typical day of work at the Beaver Creek Ranch left you pretty well exhausted much of the time. It was healthy work, loading up rail-road ties in the pick ups, metal fence posts, rolls of barbed wire, equipment like wire-stretchers, wire-pliers, food, water. Then driving out through the land along the bumpy rut filled dirt roads to finally go off the road and through the
tall grass and up and down and over hills to spots where either new fence needed to be laid out or old fence needed to be replaced.
Sometimes GrandDad or Uncle Joe would decide that we needed a new hay yard laid out some where. Just a square or rectangular section of fence to stack hay and protect it.
Summer in Montana is almost like God put a large oxygen mask on the whole huge sky and opened the valve full. You can take a breath and replenish hidden reserves of energy and rekindle sparks deep within your soul. The colors of the sky, so blue, and billowing white pillars and wisps of sheer white clouds,
and the orange, the strange brownish-orange of the rimrock,
set against the bright life filled green of the grass, and as a topping to this luscious desert, wild flowers speckled through out everything.
I would imagine that when this area was laid out by the creator,he must have designated Montana as his summer home.
I know that GrandDad had told me this on numerous occasions calling this "God's Country". It was easy to see why. Digging holes with a post hole digger, and setting corner posts tight with a heavy tamping bar. Then setting the smaller metal fence posts in between, finally you were able to lay out the wire, one strand at a time, stretching it tight from corner post to corner post and then tying it with wire at each post. Leather gloves were extremely important to this type of work,
and even with those on, sometimes you would draw blood. The tightly stretched barb wire,if not completely secure at one of the junctures, could come loose and act as aspeeding-flying saw and cut you severely.
Fortunately, my main two mentors, Uncle Joe and GrandDad, had one motto that was stressed over and over, day after day, until my cousins and I could hardly stand it any more. 'SAFETY
FIRST'. This applied to the pick ups, tractors, horses, cattle, fencing,rimrock edges, everything we did, so we quite used to it. Fencing was an intregal part to ranching, and quite an exhausting chore. Not quite as tiring as stacking hay, but quite physically demanding all the same.
GrandDad used to borrow me for the day to go fix fence, or lay fence somewhere that he knew he would have trouble getting to without someone young and "spry".Like going down into a canyon, or up on rimrock where the only wayto set a corner post was to dig through what seemed like almost solid rock. He would say "When my Grandson's not around I usually use a stick of dynamite to make a hole!" I believed this because sometimes he would pick some spots that had to be solid rock. Also, he would assume that you knew what he was thinking
and would yell down to you from the top of the canyon. Generally you couldn't make out what he was saying, and sometimes it seemed that he didn't hear what
you yelled back to good either. This could be good or bad depending on what you yelled back in response. If you know what I mean. It took a delicate balance for a fellow to work with old GrandDad and I tried my damnest to find this balance
and make it flow. Coming in from a full day of this left you pretty tired.
My Grand Mother would always have a fantastic ranch style dinner prepared for us. Grand Dad would walk in and sit in his chair, and Grand Mother would help him get his boots off. Then he would lean back in the chair and work on a crossword puzzle or read a magazine, or pick up the latest novel that he was
reading. I generally, took a quick bath, and changed clothes, then helped
GrandMother set the table. That was something I always did when it wasn't done already. A lot of times Grand Mother had already set it. One thing I did after though, every time, was clear the table for her. She would go to the kitchen after the meal and I would take everything from the table and
wipe it down. This was the least that any man could do after eating some of the best cooking in the world. When God made Montana his summer home, he designated my GrandMother as Head Chef. She could prepare a meal for the angels and get the highest praise. GrandDad usually had a whiskey delivered to his
chair before dinner. Sometimes he would have one after. When Grandmother was done in the kitchen she would come out and turn on a game show like Wheel of Fortune, it was sometimes only 7:00 at this time. Many nights I would be laying on the couch and catching myself falling asleep. I generally went outside and around the house and upstairs to bed at 7:30. Morning came quickly and it was not hard to sleep.
Sometimes I could hear the sounds of the neighboring ranch
where the Jigs YellowTail lived. The Indians would be rodeoing in their corral getting ready for the next rodeo. If I looked out over the treetops closely I could see a cloud of dust rising in the air, and listening closely you could hear the whoop and yell of indians riding broncs and bulls and having a good time.
The head man over there was Jigs Yellowtail. I only got to meet him a few times. He was missing a thumb from throwing a rope around a steer and dallying around the saddle horn and catching his thumb. Rope tightens and ...bam....there goes the thumb. Jigs was known to wander up into the rimrocks and just walk and walk. People would have to go looking for him and track him down and bring him back. Perhaps Jigs was pursuing his ancestors and doing some sort of dream search up there, who knows. He was always very nice to me and I liked him. GrandDad liked him also. I had
quite a few experiences with Indians on the reservation, most of which happened when I was with GrandDad. They seemed to treat him with the respect that you might give someone that was almost just as much a part of the land as they were
Not only had GrandDad been born in this country but he knew it like the back of his hand. I was with him once when we went up into the Black Canyon and he got out to do a little visiting with the Indians who had set up several T.P.s. I hung way back and leaned against the pick up and he had some food with them and talked for a while and then came back and we went even farther up into their land.I asked him what they said to him and he said "Dig deep, puppy in bottom." I thought about this for a while and then asked him what that meant and he said "The dog meat in the stew always settled to the bottom and if you wanted some meat you had to dig deep!" I think he could tell by the expression on my face that I was shocked, this only seemed to set him to laughing one of those deep belly laughs that was so infectious it made you want to laugh also. Running along this dirt road farther and farther up the canyon, he stopped the truck suddenly and said "There!" "See There!" I looked
and looked and tried to see what he was talking about. From what I could see we were looking out over this huge dark canyon with streaks of white snow in the middle running through, splitting it downward where the water obviously started to flow out of the middle of the mountain. Other than that it was just trees and open grassy areas and rocks thrown helter skelter like they were tossed around in a jacks game. You could see literally for miles and miles from the side of this mountain canyon.
Again, GrandDad said "There! See Them!" This clued me to the fact that he was seeing something alive. Maybe deer, elk or cattle, and then sure enough, my eyes focused and
one or two of the little rocks began moving miles away on the far side of the canyon. "I knew those rascals had drifted up this way!" This guy was so good, he knew he was missing some cattle, assumed they had drifted all the way 15 miles up this canyon, and had come all the way up here with me to confirm
it. You would have to have the eyes of an eagle to have picked them out without binoculars. He kept driving then and I asked him why we didn't turn around now. He said that we were going to visit a friend of his. After miles of driving, the narrow dirt road getting smaller and smaller, turning finally into just grass impressions on the earth, we came upon a small cabin home with a little barn behind it. Sure enough, one of his old cowboy friends lived here.
They chatted for a long time. Of course, I had heard most of the stories that GrandDad was telling this fellow because I had been with him when he told several of the other ranchers in the days previous to this. Alot of times you would find yourself laughing anyway to the same story of say "When GrandSon ran into the bearand scared the bear too!" The way he told a story made it come out almost fresh time after time. It was all in the telling.
GrandDad spent this journey telling me of Indian things mostly. I guess
We went horseback the next day and escorted the strays back down to our fields. They had drifted back down a ways, and I found myself kind of disapointed that they didn't go even farther away, leading us farther in. I remember coming back from this trip with GrandDad and coming down the side of the
canyon where Uncle Joe's House was and looking almost straight down the cliff at my cousin's swimming in Sweet Chocolate Pool. It was named Sweet Chocolate Pool because one time some nuns had come out to fish and decided to
take all of their clothes off and take a swim in this little ice-cold mountainfed trout pool. Of course GrandDad came upon them swimming naked and caused quite a ruckus and from then on named the place "Sweet Chocolate Pool".
Course that's how I remember it.
Anyway, sitting there astride Priceess next to GrandDad on his horse, and looking seemingly straight down hill at the kids swimming far below, I looked at his face and he made a nod
like "follow me" and over he went. Straight down hill almost it seemed, I hesitated about 1 second and then good old Priceless took it upon himself to make my decision and straight over he went beside him. Their feet slipping and sliding and sending small rocks in little avalanches everywhere, I felt like I was
standing on the horses head with my stirrups perpendicular to it's body.
I was actually calculating the chances of landing in the 3' or 4' pool below, to save myself. I mean, Damn. GrandDad had taken me straight up and down hills in the old Power Wagon before and in a pick up, but this was ridiculous.Needless to say, we survived! Him taking it for granted. Me, not saying
anything about it because I didn't want to appear scared or anything in front of my cousins. I don't know how I would have made it without Priceless.
When GrandDad went to test ride him originally when he wanted to buy him, the guy just couldn't sell him for any price. No offer was good enough, so..when he finally bought him he named him Priceless. I loved that horse, like any kid would like a horse that he could call his own, summer after summer, and findhim waiting there....ready to go....knowing what to do, how to do it,
where to go.....he took care of me, and I took care of him, talking to him, caressing his neck, brushing his hair after removing his saddle. If I could have taken him back with me on the plane I would have. These are my recollections
anyway................Brad Wagner
RETURN TO THE TOP
SEEK THE SEER
My boys stood silent in front of me,
I'd asked them if they'd come,
I had a sad piece of history,
To pass on to my sons.
This day was morbid, dark, not blue,
Not the most joyful day,
I had to tell all that it was true,
Listen to what I say;
Son's, I really don't want to tell you this,
But you must hear it ...today,
Someone's gone, someone you'll miss,
Forever far away.
Boys, Great-Grandad died today,
I thought I'd tell you now,
I really don't know what to say,
Or if it could help somehow.
Take these poems and read them well,
Treat them like your' lessons,
If you do, I think you'll tell,
Their meaning is their essences.
The boys read and read and pondered long,
Then decided to seek the Wizard,
They left for the mountains singing a song,
Through winters worst blown blizzard.
"We must find the cave of Fathers' lore,
Seek out this wise old man,
Search the earth, ..and explore,
Every nook and cranny we can."
The boys looked hard and finally found,
A cave beside a pond,
And sure enough they heard the sound,
Of the Wizard with a Wand.
After having tea and getting warm,
The oldest asked him why???
Were was Great-Granddads' earthly form,
And why'd he have to die???
He paused and looked and spoke very slow.
The words heard in our heads,
Your love has caused his soul to grow,
Now go home to your beds.
The lads wept softly, sad as willows,
This was not the answer hoped for,
The youngest said quietly "Why'd he go?
Don't send us off to pillows."
"Is your Great-Granddad in our presence? Around us or above?"
"Well, no he's not anywhere near, he must be far away."
"Then it's the memories of his essence that you love,
I'm assuming that's safe to say?"
"Well, yes, and no, I mean I don't know,
I think I understand.
But he won't be around to watch us grow,
Nowhere close at hand."
"Boys, your' love is true, don't leave in sorrow,
I've a secret I'll share with you,
So when you wake from sleep tomorrow,
you need not be so blue."
On saying this his old face peeled,
His hands removed a mask,
The lads trembled and their bodies reeled,
Standing still became quite a task.
For the Wizard was their Great-grandfather,
And they suddenly understood,
All the poetry of their weary father,
Was written for their own good.
Satisfied now, curiosity completed,
Their faces one big smile,
Understanding dawned, sadness defeated,
Life's but one long trial..................
Brad Lee Wagner
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