You May Now Call Me Indiana

You May Now Call Me Indiana 

On March 11, 2011, I received an innocuous little envelope telling me that I’d been selected to intern with an archaeologist at the Williams Ranger District in the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona. This internship was funded through Grinnell College’s GRINNELLINK program, which works with Grinnell alums to provide current Grinnellians with work and career experiences.

I am not an archaeologist. I must admit that to this day, I have not even set foot in an anthropology class and, other than ogling some amazing ruins in Mexico (Xochicalco, Teotihuacán, Tenochtitlan), have little background in the study of ancient cultures and peoples.

What I do know, however, is that I like nature. I like it a whole lot. Maybe I’d even make some sort of commitment and throw out the ‘love’ word.

Because I live in a small town, because that small town is in Iowa, because there are exactly three people and two quadrupeds that would care to see me there, because there was the possibility of getting funded to travel, I decided to apply for a summer internship.

I’m a Spanish major and I'm a writer, but I’m also a nineteen year old kid figuring out what it is I want to do with my life. In looking at possible summer internships, I toyed with the idea of working with my senator in Washington D.C. while living with my older, law school-bound brother (an intern with Wexler &Walker, a law firm that lobbies).

Yet, the idea of wearing pantsuits and walking so much concrete did little for me, and on a winter run in a county park near home, I realized that what I wanted was exactly this: I wanted the elegant lines of trees, the fall and rise of sloped ground, and the way the wind smelled, different in the snow and rain and sun.

What I knew about the Kaibab National Forest (KNF) internship was that it promised the outdoors—and lots of it. The positive responses from Grinnellians who’d interned there in the past and a search of the KNF’s archaeology page online confirmed that yes, this could be the thing for me.

Still, come June sixth, my departure date, I prepared to leave with my stomach in knots. I didn’t know anything about anything to do with archaeology. I was going to Arizona, which I could only picture as a slightly less immense Sahara Desert, and I would be living with people I didn’t really know.

A stranger in a strange land, if you will.

Of all the good and bad things I imagined (and yes, there were many), the intense, transformative, and ultimately beautiful experience that I had was never one of them.

I didn’t for a moment imagine that Arizona would break my heart.

What I want to do in this space is to record the things that happened to me. I can’t promise eloquence or excitement or depth, and I’ll probably get things wrong along the way of this retelling, but now I’ll end the disclaimer and defer to Gary Snyder.

Piute Creek

One granite ridge

A tree, would be enough       

Or even a rock, a small creek,

A bark shred in a pool.

Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted

Tough trees crammed

In thin stone fractures

A huge moon on it all, is too much.

The mind wanders. A million

Summers, night air still and the rocks

Warm. Sky over endless mountains.

All the junk that goes with being human

Drops away, hard rock wavers

Even the heavy present seems to fail

This bubble of a heart.

Words and books

Like a small creek off a high ledge

Gone in the dry air.

A clear, attentive mind

Has no meaning but that

Which sees is truly seen.

No one loves rock, yet we are here.  

Night chills. A flick

In the moonlight

Slips into Juniper shadow:

Back there unseen

Cold proud eyes

Of Cougar or Coyote

Watch me rise and go.




Photos: 1. Grand Canyon 2. Havasu Falls 3. Hopi Reservation 4. Tawaa Park, Hopi Res 5. Shoshone Point, Grand Canyon