River

The mountains were named after a Crow Indian woman who lived in them after she went insane when her family was killed in the westward settlement movement. Before the colonizers, the Crow people called the mountains Awaxaawapìa Pìa and were famous to the Crow people for having metaphysical powers and being unpredictable—a place used for vision quests.

Here I was, 200 years later, donning my bright orange backpack and brown boots, trampling the fallen logs and stones, scattering the trail. We hiked four miles upward, found a spot to lay our tents, and roasted rice over the fire.

The stars above looked down on the successors of the colonizers who murdered the natives. The natives, who for thousands of years prior, had trod the land with undying respect for Turtle Island, which had nourished them. We, the successors of the colonizers, pitched our plastic tents on the dirt that lay below our shoes. Our fire burned bright, but in no comparison to the light of the stars.

Fourteen teenagers. Two 21-year-old women. Not another soul of a human for miles around, only the bears and coyotes who call the trees home.

The stream rapidly rushed by our settlement. Half of us took the liberty of sleeping in through the morning. The other half began our descent down the stream. The cool nature of the water numbed our toes and cooled my clothes as I stripped them off. Not a foreign matter on my body, I lie in the stream and let the cool water right off the mountain rush through my hair, under my arms, over my thighs, and between my feet. I was encapsulated by nature, and lie there for some time, listening to the sounds of the birds above my head.

I saw trout, shimmering in the stream. They touched my fingertips, and although I was a stranger to their waters, they sensed my soul as one of their own.

I want to say I am connected to the earth. I want to say I am a child of nature. I want to say I came from life in the forest. But it would be a disgrace to do so.

My ancestors murdered those who relied on the earth. While the native people ate the fish and drank the water of the stream, my ancestors came in on horses with their muskets and murdered them. The native people wore the skin of deer and lived in the lean-tos made of trees. My ancestors boasted the bounty of their heads and burned the wood tents they called home.

These thoughts rush through my mind as I lie in the river. My soul is tied to the clouds above my head, and the pine trees are my haven. The moss might as well be my deity in the way it comforts my body over the sharp rocks. As much as I crave attesting my life to the essence of nature, the actions of my predecessors cannot be excused, as, without their despicable acts, I would not be here.

The Native Americans should be here, feeling the melted snow as it rushed off the hills. They should be in my spot, tanning under the blinding sun, eating the berries, admiring the wildflowers. But instead, they are bound to the trailer park, selling their beads by the side of the highway, attempting to preserve their language but dying from a lack of nourishment before they can pass their culture to their children.

The unpredictability of the peaks is because of their nature. The snow that melted to fill the river I lie in, and the rocks that build the character of the hill, every aspect of the forest makes the peak unpredictable to the human. The black bear that eats the rabbits sees the peak as consistent, but the hiker sees the cliffs as daunting. The perspective of the soul depends on the form it is in, and my soul in human form sees the wilderness as an area I can visit and love and cherish, but not something I can ever come from. Nothing will ever change my history.

My people took this land from those who named it. We named this land after the effect it had on the people it came from. The natives fully believed that nobody owned the land, but according to my ancestors, the only people worthy of owning the land are not the earth, but themselves.

That selfish nature is what caused the homicide of millions, and caused centuries of despair to the natives who lost all they knew and loved when they could not match the musket.

So there I sat. Lying, in a freezing stream, in the woods where we had no way to tell the time, but the sun’s place on the horizon. My friends were down the river, hiking the side of a cliff to touch the ice in mid-July. I sat alone, in the river, with the souls of the animals and plants around me.

Thousands of years of stories held in that stream rushed by me, cleansing me of the industrial land I came from. The deer who drink from the river are connected to the dinosaurs who swam in the river, and the plants that soak up the water were the same ones eaten by the natives who relied on the land for a home.

I want to say I am home in solitude, alone in a river. I want nothing more than to slip away into the rush of the water, and swim with the trout. I want to escape the bounds of where I came from, and fully accept a fate of wilderness.

But it can never be, as I was never supposed to be here. My ancestors call for me to build houses on this land and make money from the timber around me. The native Americans were forced out as a result of this idea, and I will never share a history with them more than empathizing. A girl of colonizer descent who loves the wilderness will never be the same as a girl who loves the wilderness whose ancestors lived off the land.

My companions came back after an expedition to touch the cold. They laughed and told me how bored they were, and wanted their phones and snacks.

I smiled and walked back with them. Maybe they will never understand.

At least I can’t relate to that.