Winter Solstice Edition, 2007
"Elk Journey" by Jo Belasco
Note: This photo-essay and Carol's new artwork are both expressions of ways to know about and respond to major life changes -- in this case, one of loss.
When I first began to suspect that I might have to leave Sowbelly, I didn’t want to think about the prospect. How could I leave a place that had intertwined with my soul? Because of the wildfire and our work on documenting forest recovery, I had come to know the canyon better than I knew some of my human friends. I could hike for hours in the folds of her arroyos and ascend her buttes, to be greeted with a view of 50 miles in all directions. This was a sacred land, a land that our guests came to and were healed by. This was a land where I knew we were to do our work. So, how could I be pulled apart from it? Feelings of despair and anguish at the thought, not only of leaving that sacred land but of the effect it would have on my work, constantly entered my mind.
Living within Indigenous worldview means living in relationship with the land and all of her creatures. When you’re in relationship with someone, you are in communication with them and they with you. It’s no different whether that someone is a human, another animal creature, the land, the air or the water. Unfortunately, individuals in Western culture think this means that those creatures will speak to them as if human. Perhaps some of them do, but generally speaking, communicating with the natural world is much more subtle and very different than human communication. It includes patience and observation and the ability to piece together what the natural world is trying to communicate.
And so it was that when we were looking for our land partner, several elk led the way. It was, by Western culture standards a simple, and to some people meaningless, gesture. Seven bull elk standing near the road that led to the ranch. It was, however, an unusual sight, and one that led to finding the ranch where we did our work for 3 years and where so much healing and understanding happened.
We only saw elk two more times during our stay there. Once, Dawn and I drove around a bend in the road and there were 2 bull elk, standing in a pasture. On the other occasion, we saw a herd of possibly 30 elk, as they ran through the forest, moving on before winter set in for the year. We heard elk a few times throughout the years, as they engaged in rutting behavior. But elk were not a presence we were used to seeing, unlike deer that we might see on a daily basis, depending on the time of year.
When it came time to prepare to move, I had to walk a horse from a pasture “on top” of the canyon, down through the canyon, to our other horse pastures. I had put him in with our wild Mustang mare after her companion had to be put down because of cancer. It was about a week or so before we had to leave the ranch, so it was the beginning of October. As I walked him down, he seemed a bit nervous.
I chalked it up to him not wanting to leave the mare. Suddenly, I heard a cry. I thought it was the wild mare, upset that her companion had been taken from her. But the direction wasn’t right, and the horse I was leading didn’t react as horses do to each other’s calls. I looked to the east and spotted something behind a small butte. As I looked more intently, I realized it was an elk. I continued to watch, mesmerized at seeing an elk deep in the canyon. Suddenly, I saw another elk running up the grassy hill to the small butte, and as he did so, he bugled! I had never before seen an elk bugle in the wild. This was to be my last walk in the canyon, and I knew it. The place I had spent so much time hiking and photographing, where I had truly reconnected to the land and all that doing so means. The elk’s call was so many things at once. It was a heralding of change, of going through the doorways that scare us most, of moving on and moving forward. It was an acknowledgement of the work I had done to preserve the canyon, a “thank-you” of sorts. It was a blessing from kin who brought us to the canyon in the first place. I was deeply honored and awed and humbled by the experience.
As it turned out, we had to leave the ranch a day later than planned because rain had prevented our movers from being able to move us earlier. The landowner had been very unhappy about the delay and had wound up sitting at the gate as we were doing the last minute loading of dogs and cats into our rented van and car. But then, it was done, and we were driving out of the canyon for the last time. We were heading to a motel in Lusk, Wyoming for several days because our rental ranch in New Mexico would not be ready yet, and then it was on to New Mexico and an uncertain future. We had done much soul-searching about this move – what it meant to us personally, to us as an organization – and we had felt that it was meant to be, but we could not fully understand how or why at the time.
We drove slowly out of the canyon, the sun fading behind the canyon walls as it set to the west. I was driving ahead of the rental truck, in a car, and as I approached a bend in the road, I saw movement. I drove slowly, and there, after the turn, was a huge bull elk. He stood in the road for the briefest of moments and then he turned and began to trot up the road, leading the way out of the canyon. I slowed so that the person driving the truck behind me could see this incredible sight. Again, the elk had stopped on the road and only began to move as we approached. He trotted along the road for several more steps and at the next turn, he went over the side, into the canyon. We continued on our journey, and although our hearts were still heavy and anxious, there was a renewed hope, a knowing that each of us feels at some time deep in our soul, that this journey, for whatever inexplicable reason we did not understand at the moment, was the journey we were supposed to be on.
Some people might say it was coincidence or that I am “anthropomorphizing” the elk or that I am rationalizing our having to leave Sowbelly. I know because I used to live in that worldview. But to people who think that, I asked the question: What if I’m not? Over the years I have learned enough to know that if we don’t open ourselves up to what the natural world is telling us, we miss very important and life-changing experiences.
So here we are in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. We are surrounded by friends who love and support us and our work. We live in a place of incredible cultural diversity. We have resources that are important and integral to our work. We live in a land where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains, and the power and beauty of this land is palpable. And we have found our new land partner and with it, our continued vision, a vision that would not have been possible to actualize in Sowbelly.
Do I miss Sowbelly? In some ways, I will always miss that land and her creatures. But I have come to realize that she was a step along the path, a place along the journey that allowed incredible healing to happen, incredible work to happen. As much as I thought she was my permanent home, she was a place of great learning, but not my final destination. This country, this land of mountains and plains, of rivers and great trees, of bear and mountain lion and coyote, this land is my home. The mountains call to me, to hike them, to photograph them, to simply be within them, to learn from them, to replenish my soul in them so that I can work and continue this journey. Just as the elk led me out of the canyon, the mountains have welcomed me home.
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