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Forbidden Mesa

 

 

            Thomas Standing-Rock's anxiety climbed with the upward thrust of the cliff.  Although his quest had brought him safely this far, the thought of going any further now filled him with dread.  The cave was located halfway up the cliff.  The unseen base of the mesa was hidden by a forest of dark, forboding trees.  To dwell upon what was inside the cave would have stopped him cold.  It was enough just to concentrate upon the forest ahead: its gnarled trunks and the rocky ground below.

            For his tribe, who lived in the desert, the forest was a scary place to be.  It was filled with ghosts, who inhabited old trees.  Since he had always been a poet at heart, he saw more than the average mind.  The tangled woods were not simply filled with ghosts; they might also contain goblins, vampires, or ghouls.  Appearing in his conscious mind were all the superstitions buried in his past.  The monsters and fiends he had seen so often on televsion also flooded his overwrought mind.  One by one they appeared, from both Indian legends and Medievil mythology: primitive spirits and Satanic imagery, mingling in various shapes and forms.  Trees, bushes, and even rocks hid them.  They lingered in shadows and appeared furtively at the corner of his eyes.  Lurking deliberately to catch the unwary, they were always just out of view.  Faintly heard but always sensed, they could imitate nature while riding the wind.

            Always creeping into his thoughts were those specters from the past.  Soul Catcher, Night Trapper, and Shadow Creeper, and a countless array of other spooks were just waiting to come out.  Tiptoeing in back of him or flying askance, they now poured out as demons from hell and wicked ghosts from the land of the dead.  Half of him--the Christian side--imagined demonic and hellish specters dogging his trail.  His other half, still influenced by old superstitions, imagined those creatures from tribal lore.  Together, combining with the sights and sounds of the night, they distracted him from his quest.  He was not even in the woods yet, and his urge to turn back was already strong.

            As he approached the forest, he felt the presence of evil as he had never felt it before.  Was it behind him, or was it in front of him?  Had it been following him across the desert ever since his quest began?  Or was it there now waiting ahead in the shadows of the woods?  Who was the presence he felt now: Satan, Night Trapper, God?  Or was it something else?  Was he being taunted by the Devil or by his own fears?  If the rumors and legends about this journey were true, he was in for the greatest nightmare of his life and a great test of his faith.

            There was something wrong about this whole trip.  Although he tried to shed his doubts and fears, they remained fixed in his mind.  He therefore remained ready for retreat.  Almost immediately, in fact, after reaching the first gnarled trunk, the presence he had only suspected before seemed to reach out to him.  Soon, he felt beset by both a warning and a lure.  Although the forest was, as he expected, a dark and unfriendly place, it was part of a mystery he had to solve.  Each unexplained shadow in the moonlight seemed to be lurking in wait.  Each snapping twig and crunching leaf jarred his mind.  After stumbling over rocks and stepping into chuckholes awhile, he cursed himself for ever starting this quest.  Slipping and sliding finally down an unseen hill, he found himself momentarily out of control.  As his hiking boots eventually found a foothold in the soft dirt, he realized he had stumbled onto the lip of a great crater that stretched for hundreds of feet into the woods.

            Shining his flashlight as far as it would go, he shuttered at the thought of what had caused such a hole.  A meteorite had struck this spot many centuries ago.  There were trees growing continuously around it's periphery, and yet there was nothing but barren rock and dirt evident on its concave slopes.  Standing-Rock's natural curiosity, which rankled some members of his tribe, was momentarily aroused, as he gauged its size.  There were many legends about this spot.  He remembered hearing about them around the campfire at night.  He also remembered a television program that contradicted tribal myth.  He recalled the commentator's voice in the background explaining the geological history of this region.  Meteors of this magnitude, he explained, were equivalent to an atomic bomb; a city such as Flagstaff or Albuquerque would have been leveled by its blast.  He could invision the great fiery orb from outer space exploding upon impact, after barely missing the mesa nearby.  If it had been a mere kilometer closer, it would have smashed the rock to smithereens.  There would have been no mesa to climb then, only a pile of rocks beside a great black hole.  The Anasazi Indians would never have built pueblos on its face.  Shines-In-The-Dark, the prophet, would not have used it for his retreat.  It would never have been chosen as a sacred shrine by his church, which had made this pilgrimmage mandatory for priests to make.  Perhaps the Old Ones of the church would have found a less hazardous journey for noviciate priests...If only the meteor had landed a little lower and a little further west, he would never had to make this dangerous quest.

            But he was a truthseeker, soon to be tested by Great Spirit, Himself.  If he failed now, he could never become a priest.  Right now the entire church was holding its collective breath, praying that there would be a vision in his quest.

 

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            While he stood on the crater's rim, Thomas Standing-Rock contemplated upon his task, realizing that he was not even halfway done.  A warm breeze blew his way.  As if Great Spirit, Himself, approved of his quest, it blew steadily awhile upon his check, caressing away his fears as He had done to Whispers-In-The-Wind, grandfather, and Shines-In-The-Dark, the prophet, long, long ago.

            According to tribal tradition, the crater was caused by Great Spirit's anger against the people who originally inhabited this land.  Who these people where no one knows, but grandfather said that some of their bones are found in the mesa above.  Thomas had a theory that these bones belonged to the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians: the Anasazi.  The prophet, himself, found some of these bones in one of the mesa's caves.  A more important landmark for the Imotl people was the mesa, itself, which had, because of Shines-In-The-Dark, become a part of tribal tradition.  In spite of his misgivings, Thomas was proud of what it symbolized.  It was up there on top of Forbidden Mesa that Shines-In-The-Dark received his commission from God.  In one of its caves the prophet's mummy is said to reside, although he has never been found.

            As Standing Rock wearily set up his camp, he wondered fleetingly if he would find anything at all on the mesa.  A rush of dread returned to him as his doubts returned.  Although the honor would give him prestige, he had no desire to find the prophet's remains.  What if the traditionalists were right and his discovery would bring him a curse instead of the blessing promised by the priests.  It would make him perfectly happy to bring back only potcherds to prove that he was there.  He could, with a clear conscious, gather his evidence, spend the required night, make his obeisance to God, then make the trecherous journey back down. 

            But he sensed, with nagging forboding, that something momentious was going to take place during his quest.  The questions plaguing him now were basic: when?, where?, and what?  Was something going to happen tonight?  Would it be right here during his sleep?  Or was it waiting for him on the mesa as he suspected all along?  If so, was it danger or illumination he would find?. . . Was it an evil event or something very good?  He could not be sure, but he knew that for him it would be either extreme; there would be no moderations for his soul this time.  Inuwetok and Hoteh, Great Spirit and Satan, both dwelled in the desert tonight. He was being tested this very hour by his two halves: dark and light.  He must not fail Inuwetok by giving way to his doubts.

            While gathering twigs and walnut branches to build his fire, Thomas continued praying to himself, glancing expectantly around, until he found himself absorbed in the crackling flames.  It was suddenly apparent to him how important a fire could be.  He had read about the significance of this invention; mankind changed drastically when the first primitive humans learned to use its power.  Not only were animals afraid to approach their camps, but it gave them warmth and allowed them to cook their food.  Now, Thomas reflected as he staired into the flames, every living soul on earth knew it intimitely as both a blessing and a curse.  It seemed strange to him now that such a comforting source of heat could have devasted so much of the world.  As he watched it rise from the dried brush and logs, sending sparks into the moonlit sky, he felt protected against the creatures of the desert.  A mountain lion or bear would not bother a man sitting by a fire.  But a man or a spirit would.

            Fingering the helt of his knife awhile, Standing Rock also remembered that the fire was also a lure.  Men were attracted by campfires, often to the detriment of the camper.  Spirits, on the other hand, cared not whether it was dark or light or warm or cold.  These recollections caused him to begin praying to himself again, as he drew out his knife, his face set in a methodical frown.

            For several moments he just sat there by the fire,

his face glowing and gray eyes blazing with inner turmoil.  The first discomforting pangs of hunger were a welcome distraction, though they reminded him that he could eat only enough raisins and beef jerky to sustain him through his quest.  As he began munching on the prescribed snacks grandmother had packed for him, he listened to the sound of the fire crackling and managed to tune out the surrounding night.  Inwardly his thoughts traveled as his gray eyes staired vacantly at the fire. 

            He was, he realized, a mere mote in God's gaze.  And yet he was certain that he had a purpose in His plan.  He was a halfbreed, an object of scorn to many members of his tribe.  From the time that he was child, he had been treated as if he were an outcast by many of them.  But according to grandfather, his two halves are the best of two worlds: the Whiteman and the Indian.  Because of his grandparent's love and his membership in the Native American Church, his physical difference became his strength.  He truly believed that he was special.  He had known this always, even before his was old enough to join his grandparent's church.  In his blood was the turmoil of two great races, but it was his Indian half that he felt the most now.

 

 

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            Beyond the mesa, there was an epoch tale of a nomadic people who had been transformed into agriculturists and builders, whose ancient monotheistic religion, carried on for thousands of years, was now planted in this desert soil.  He could remember his grandfather telling him about some of the great leaders of his tribe.  Whispers-In-The-Wind, during his tribe's pre-Christian days, had led them out of the wilderness in order to escape starvation.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs had given them a small segment of land near a Pueblo reservation.  For several decades his tribe suffered persecution from both their neighbors and the White Man living in nearby towns.  But the great sage Whispers-In-The-Wind held them together and made them proud of who they were.  Before he died, he had a vision that told him that the White Man's Christ was also their Christ and that the Judeo-Christian God worshipped by nearly half the world was another name for Inuwetok, who was also the Great Spirit worshipped on the Plains.

            During the early part of the twentieth century, their arose a religious movement on his people's land.  At the forefront of this movement the was the nephew of Whispers-In-The-Wind, Shines-In-The-Wind, who had been his grandfather's best friend.  Under Shines-In-The-Dark's influence, the simple vision of Whispers-In-The-Wind progressed from a religious movement to an established parrish within the Roman Catholic Church.  Although it was called the Native American Church, the Old Ones who were the overseers of the parrish, were actually priests and nuns who shared the responsibilities of its organization and missionary work.  Where their church differed from the White Man's version of the faith was in the mixture of the ancient monotheistic belief of their forefathers and the existing ritual of Roman Catholicism.  It was Shines-In-The-Dark who first practiced the vision quest to Forbidden Mesa.  His revelations of his tribe's destiny had made him a saint within the mother church.  It had never been made clear to his people who was parent and who was child, but the prophet made it plain that Inuwetok was far more ancient than the Judeo-Christian conceptian of God.  So it seemed obvious to Standing Rock and the other clerics that the term mother church was strictly a organizational term.

            It was because of this tradition that Thomas Standing Rock was taking his last test for service into his church.  All his studies in the siminary and specilized training peculiar to the Native American church would come to naught if he failed tonight.

            As he sat by his fire scanning the darkness beyond, he saw a light that seemed to come from the mesa, itself.  From such a great distance, the faint glow could be almost anything: a helicopter, small plane, a mountain climber's campfire, though he found this latter possibility hard to believe.  No one but a truthseeker such as himself or a fool would be on top of Forbidden Mesa, especially at night.  The light appeared to remain steady on its topmost horn for just a moment and then move out slowly to the west.  After eliminating a camp fire from his short list, he therefore also decided that it could not be a plane heading his way.  It moved too slowly at first.  For that matter, if it was a helicopter, it was acting in a bizarre and erratic way.  Instead of merely huvering around a spot awhile then gradually moving on as helicopters normally do, it descended straight down toward the earth in one abrupt move and sat there at the far edge of the crater, huvering as a firefly by its rim.

            Suddenly Forbidden Mesa's dark silhouette no longer dominated his attention.  Something unexplicable had come out of the sky, . . . something that had nothing to do with his mission tonight.

 

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            Drawn to this specter but afraid to leave the security of his own fire, Thomas Standing Rock rose slowly from the ground and remained frozen on his feet. . .

 

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