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There’s no way I can tell you when I came into possession of this thing, but perhaps my wife remembers.

It may have been in a box of family relics Granny gave me, who knows? But it’s a typical Farr family artifact, because it’s totally plebian: a kitchen fork… I know it belonged to her mother, and I think it belonged to hers, which dates it to the early 19th century, say 1810-1820. The amazing thing is, we use it all the time! We throw it in the sink to wash. It’s my favorite kitchen tool, and I hunt for it in the drawer whenever I need a “stabber.” I don’t know when we absorbed it into our regular utensils, but we did and never looked back. Well, until now. Just look at this:

My grandmother’s family is from West Virginia. Her father was a circuit rider, a preacher who rode his mule to a different Methodist service every Sunday. I used to have his saddle bags (long story). While I’m proud of that tradition, my mostly intuitive sense of him from the little I was told is that he was pretty much a joyless, tyrannical cheapskate, but then that went with his brand of religion: “shoutin’ Methodists,” they called them. None of these people ever had anything fancy or luxurious, and if they had, they’d have felt guilty! I conclude that this must be an ordinary object for the time, and if they passed it down from daughter to daughter, it was because they didn’t want to have to buy another. Nothing special then, or is it?

Look at the graceful design: the way the fork itself is fashioned, the riveted wooden handle that feels so good. It’s a pleasure to hold and contemplate. Practical, yet resonates on many levels. This is truly a very fine fork, and someone made it. See the image above? The thin shank between the two halves of the handle is actually tapered, which tells me someone pounded it flat on an anvil. Though a one-of-a-kind, it’s still utilitarian and couldn’t be anything more, coming from my family. Put all of this together, and there’s a stunning message…

“MY GOD, WE’RE USING A 200-YEAR-OLD FORK!” was the first thing that came to mind. The second was that no one I know can do this anymore. Make a fork, that is. (Could you?) The third was that we’re so advanced and all, but nothing ordinary folks could buy today would ever be this good or last this long.

Considered in the context of what a throw-away society has meant for social justice and the Earth, this isn’t just a fork, it’s an indictment.

I didn’t see or hear a thing before I almost stepped right on the rattlesnake!

There he was, about five feet away, backing slowly off but still facing me. I took a step toward the reptile as I fumbled with my camera case, and he moved on a little farther to coil up under a small outcropping of rock. I wasn’t the least bit worried and couldn’t believe my luck. Deciding I could get a better image with a telephoto macro shot, I made a lens change that someone should have filmed and took my pictures. The snake stayed there the whole time. I told him, “Don’t be scared, little brother, don’t be scared,” and maybe he believed me.

What a GIFT! I was so happy. They don’t make luckier men than me.

The whole trip was a mad rush of desire from end to end. I’d read a story about Tsankawi [tsan-kah-WEE] back in March and knew I had to go: an unexcavated Pueblo settlement from the early 1400s on top of a mesa reached by climbing ladders and ancient footpaths worn into the rock? With cave dwellings and petroglyphs, less than 90 minutes away? Are you kidding? New Mexico is full of exciting things like this, but in my long career of self-inflicted punishment, these wonders were just something else to be denied–until I read about Tsankawi, and something finally snapped.

When we finally got a few warm days, I declared that one of them was mine and I was going. Taking my camera, video recorder, lunch, a walking stick, and of course a great big knife, but going, then and there. Just me, no obligations, and only a rough itinerary. I was mildly anxious that the ’87 Ford F-150 with the big straight six might shred a belt or fry a fuel pump, but I filled both tanks and thundered off regardless. God, I love a road trip in the bright sun and cool, dry air! The truck ran fine, of course, outside of a few idiosyncracies of age. For instance, there’s an oil leak from the valve cover that drips a little onto the engine block and makes a stink. That, and double-clutching past a worn-out throwout bearing. (I live with these instead of monthly payments.) But the Ford is tough, with six-ply tires, and scared of nothing. A dented brute that likes to run.

It was raining off and on when I got there. I saw three cars in the parking lot but never met another person on the trail. Being out on the exposed mesa during a thunderstorm is dangerous, and I heard thunder. Warily, I held my ground and was rewarded: the sun came out when I was at the far end of the mesa, looking over the edge of a cliff. After shooting a few videos, I found the snake. Wild joy! On my way back, I saw this:

A petroglyph in the wild! [Look closely.] Electrifying, I tell you. It just was, I can’t explain it. And me with a backpack, walking stick, and cameras, scrambling up the rocks to get a better look, NO THOUGHTS, just flow, experiencing life as if I were the river, not a swimmer…

I took more risks, I saw so much. I went beyond Tsankawi, to an overlook above the Rio Grande that simply stunned me with its grandeur and no guard rails–one could step right out and fall 600 feet–then drove past Bandelier and cool green mountain forests, through weird Los Alamos, down-down-down to Española, and north back home to Taos, pretty much in shock.

When you’re up there in those mountains, you don’t ever want to come back down. I don’t, anyway, and that’s what got me into this mess. I’m a dented brute myself, because I like to run. And I’m never so high as when I’m off completely on my own, crazy-nervous, going somewhere new and taking chances. (Acting purely on desire, focused on the now!)

You’d think one might remember this more often than once or twice a year, you know?

I could say “Natives,” but that doesn’t quite capture it. It’s more about spirituality, and respect for same, which simply doesn’t exist in most of the places I’ve lived.

Last Friday night there was a very sad accident on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe. At around 9:00 p.m., a 34-year-old driver (possibly drunk and carrying a suspended license) crashed at what must have been very high speed into the back of a car carrying four members of a Navajo family from Naschitti, north of Gallup. The impact was so violent that three cars in front of the vehicle that was struck were also involved. Killed in the crash were two sisters, 17 and 20 years old, who had just come from playing in a Class AAA girls state basketball tournament. Their parents are both in serious but stable condition in the hospital.

But this is what happened yesterday: Santa Fe police blocked off the southbound lanes of busy Cerrillos Road at 3:30 p.m. for a whole hour, so that a 66-year-old Navajo medicine man from the family’s home community could conduct a healing ceremony, asking for “physical and spiritual healing of those who were injured, those who helped the injured, and those who were left behind to grieve.” There were 50 people present from Naschitti and 20 cars parked right in the middle of the road. The mayor of Santa Fe was present, and the police chaplain assisted in the service.

From this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican:

Nez prayed in Navajo and used an eagle feather dipped in water to bless members of the gathering… The medicine man, with the gathering following him as a cold rain began to fall, then proceeded to the exact spots on Cerrillos Road where the two sisters were struck, and more prayers and blessings were offered.

Friends and relatives placed roses in the median dirt, and planted other flowers and laid balloons along the west side of Cerrillos in remembrance of the sister.

There are five surviving siblings, all of whom had played for the team at one time or another. Another sister on the current team had injured her ankle and didn’t go to the game!

It’s not often that an article in the morning paper makes me cry, but this one did.

Another outstanding New Mexico experience!

It rained, it thundered, it hailed, there was one rainbow after another, and then the Grand Entry parade began. Toward the end, I got as close as I could to this drum group (sorry, I don’t know their name) and captured a little of what it’s like to be there at a pow wow.

At the end of the grand entry, my wife choked up. “It’s so awesome and overwhelming,” she said when she could get the words out. That’s how it is when you’re from god-help-us America and this hits you all at once: the beauty, the dignity, the power of a culture rooted in the universal. A pow wow isn’t a religious event, but you feel the spirit, anyway.

(I also had a Navajo taco that dwarfed my paper plate and scored a killer silk-screened shirt, which kind of frames the whole thing rather well.)