Coming of Age in the Red [with comments and a physical update]

Things, "seen and unseen", are very much on my mind these days.  And, quickly, I am not preparing to enter the
Fog and Beyond.  That trek will surely come -- but not for a long, long time.

This older piece, Coming of Age in the Red, hasn't been around for a long time. Older hands might find it of
interest again but, in any case, there are new members on several discussion lists who haven't seen it. 
This isn't my special Bear Day -- that's October 17 -- but it is spring and, concurrently and somewhat
unexpectedly, I am finding myself in what may well be a slow and consistent pattern of improvement
health-wise.  Despite a somewhat brutal year on several fronts, there have been some tangible
indications of this physical improvement in the last several months.  I can look out my window, here in
southeastern Idaho, and see mountains still covered with snow. And, in their own way, they beckon.  But, of
course, my heart remains with and within the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area of my native Northern
Arizona.  I have never given up my intention of returning to that, for me, most special corner of the
Universe -- and retracing my long trek into and down the canyon just as I did it as a 21 year old in 1955. 
http://hunterbear.org/ghosts.htm   The beat of the distant drum comes ever closer and the Call of the
Canyon is  compelling.  [Hunter Bear]

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR] AT 18 -- JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE U.S. ARMY

OIL PAINTING BY FRANK DOLPHIN, AT FLAGSTAFF ARIZONA

                                                                                                                                   
                                                        COMING OF AGE BEAR [SYCAMORE WILDERNESS]                                                                

See Sycamore Trek:  http://hunterbear.org/sycamore_trek.htm

Wilderness:  http://hunterbear.org/wilderness_life_and_times__and.htm

Grizzlies and Sycamore Canyon:  http://hunterbear.org/grizzlies.htm

[This is as good the second time around as the first. I think you've also hit on
something that's really missing in our world today, and that is simple rituals
for young people--ceremonies. Joseph Campbell, in The Power of Myth, laments on
how this lack is weakening our culture. Solid, sacred rituals have been
swallowed by negative, ugly rituals--boys joining gangs and getting beaten up as
an initiation ceremony. This is a needed ritual but it is happening in a
perverse way. Not everyone can go hunting but we need to find ways to help
young men and women BECOME men and women.  -   John Salter  10/12/05 ]

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I wrote and posted this piece a few years ago.  Some have seen it, many have
not.  When some things of mine are finally published as a print book, this
will certainly be high on the pine.

It's Fall in the West.  Here in the higher altitudes of the Mountain States,
the air is living-crispy during the days and the nights call for our wolf
robe or at least my colorful Pendleton blankets.  Occasional rain and some
snow are slowly bringing deer, elk, and moose down into the somewhat lower
winter ranges -- not far at all above us right here -- accompanied by lions,
bobcats, coyotes, even an occasional wolf. Bears are doing their final
fattening up for their long den-sleep -- which will carry them far
feelings-wise from oncoming cold weather with its cutting winds and
inevitable snow.  But now, the sky can be as blue as turquoise, the mornings
always promising good luck, and the slowly dimming early evenings with their
fading sunlight and faint haze and creeping chill have a strangely appealing
and mystical feel.  The nights can be downright witchy.

For me, it's the Time of my Coming of Age Bear.  

As a boy, I shot my huge Coming of Age Bear -- deep in the vast Sycamore Canyon wilderness area in Northern
Arizona.  At that point, I then became a man. The fiery spirit of the Bear and its abundantly fine qualities
-- intelligence, courage, stamina, instinct -- are with me always and have served me very well and
faithfully on my swift and rocky River of No Return.  I plan to do much more in my life -- much more indeed --
before the eventual trip into the Fog and Deep Canyon, up over the High Mountains, and Far Beyond to the
Shining Sun in the Turquoise Sky that glows forever down on the Headwaters of Life. And when that Journey
finally comes the great Bear will accompany me.   Fall  2005

COMING OF AGE INTO THE RED:  A SYCAMORE MEMOIR

His old Stetson pulled hard down just above the eyes in his weather-lined
face, Frank took a stick and drew three circles in the sandy soil on the
edge of our greasewood campfire -- its low, dancing flames keeping at bay
the chilly winter cold of that semi-desert Arizona night.

"Lenin saw it this way," he told me.  "These are the things that strangle
the people.  Capitalism. Government.  Church."  And he then drew a complex
of intricate, interactive lines between and around the Circles.

And, just a few yards to the west of us, we could hear in its little gorge
the rushing water of the Verde River, just joined by Sycamore Creek which
came down from the north out of that massive, splendid and vasty wilderness
area called Sycamore Canyon -- my own great traditional hunting region.

And only a few miles to our west loomed Mingus Mountain on which blinked the
lights of the old copper camp of Jerome. Now -- with the ore just played
out -- it was headed toward ghost and artist town status. But it was once
the hell-blasting scene of legendary Wobbly and then other class war
struggles -- some of which went well into my own Teen years.

I was a young Native -- 18 -- when that campfire burned on the Verde that winter night.  And I got a very thorough
lesson in class struggle ideology -- not from a college
prof-type in a suit -- but from a Levi-clad cowpuncher turned artist because
of a back broken from a horse throw.

He was, of course, a great deal more than that.  Born in 1914 in upstate New
York, his father a construction engineer who later did contract work in the
developing USSR, Frank Dolphin had briefly attended Syracuse University and
then went with his parents to live in a small town in Southern Arizona.
While his father worked abroad in the Red East, Frank drifted into
California, labored in the "Factories in the Fields,"  became a militant and
Left farm workers' organizer during the great waves of  Red strikes in the
Imperial Valley and the San Joaquin.  Framed up on a murder charge, he left
California, went into the Teton Basin country of Wyoming, established a
small ranch, married and had a couple of kids -- boys.

Sometimes things -- even things in as beautiful a setting as the Tetons --
just don't work out.  The War was coming on fast. Pearl Harbor was still to
occur but  Canada was now fully embroiled. Frank joined the RCAF, rose to the
rank of First Lieutenant, serving in the New Hebrides.  After the War, he
drifted back into Arizona, working for various cow outfits in the northern
part of the state.

And then he was thrown by a spooky horse.  And he broke his back.

He never rode again.  For awhile he worked as a cow camp cook -- a major and
very important vocation.  But even that was tough.  Horses and wagon, rough
country, long hours, heavy weather.

In time, he came to my home town of Flagstaff.  There he became an  art
student of my father -- who was the first Native hired as a professor at
Arizona State College.  And Frank was, even then, a damn good artist.

That's when we joined forces.

For my part, I was entering a Critical Transition.  I was very much -- as a
friendly and complimentary reference on my behalf later given the Army by a
top U.S. Forest Service official said -- "a nature boy."  I spent a lot of
time in the woods -- as much as I could -- and had ever since I could button
my Levis and pull on my engineer's boots.  My parents were permissive but
grade school and high school were, to me, prisons -- and some teachers and
all administrators seemed to see me  as one of the guys for whom God had
especially designed punishment.

My best high school memories were not classes.  They were our match-winning,
champion rifle club  -- of which I served as president -- and our very
wide-ranging hiking club. In each case, the faculty sponsor was an effective
teacher -- and eminently kind -- and a friend.

In the woods -- and as the years passed I went into ever more rugged and
remote areas -- I could be my own person.  I was always hunting, sometimes
trapping.  Claiming to be the legal Federal work age of 18, even as I was
actually some years younger, I worked very capably indeed over several
consecutive seasons  for the Coconino National Forest as a firefighter and
as a  remote fire lookout/radio man.

Early on in forest fire fighting, I saw, first-hand, virulent anti-Black
hate and violence in a fire camp  -- and years later I wrote an
award-winning short story about that, "The Destroyers."  But in other such
camp settings, coming in from the fire lines to eat and drink coffee and
catch some sleep, I heard talk -- very interesting talk -- about the work
situations in the nearby metal mines and lumber camps.  Favorable talk about
militant unions, like the old Wobblies, and some of the newer radical ones.

Things -- Big Things for me -- were happening.  Flagstaff, a rough and
racist mountain town bordering Indian Country, was being challenged on 

the human rights front by my parents and others of
conscience in a very tough crusade. And that effective and long-enduring
struggle included people from all Native tribes of the general region and
other ethnicities as well.

There was a new War -- and a Red Scare.

There was a lot of talk about "Communism."  In the final semester of my
final year of high school, our English teacher, essentially a nice guy,
brought men from the American Legion to our class to warn us about That.  We
were told It was in the unions -- and that It was also, through something
called the American Friends Service Committee, trying to agitate the
Navajos in our very own setting.

I grinned on that one.  The young AFSC couple, Quakers starting work in the
vast and very adjacent Navajoland, were living temporarily -- at that precise
moment --  in our house on the far edge of Flagstaff.  There, they were
meeting  many Navajo leaders. They also met other activists such as Chicano
leaders -- and, too, Wilson Riles,  principal of the small Black
elementary school, whose graduates then went into the fully integrated
Flagstaff junior high and high school complex.

I was at virtually the end of high school when I read a copy of The
Communist Manifesto that an older academic friend of our family lent me at my request
from his own vast library.   I was surprised at how it stirred my blood,
planting seeds for sure.

So too and very much did Granville Hicks' excellent biography of Jack Reed
stir and plant, that next fall when I started in as a freshman at my
hometown Arizona State. [John Reed:  The Making of a Revolutionary,
Macmillan, 1936.] Mother had suggested I hunt up and read that one.  The old
Anglo Mississippi-born lady who was college librarian  looked suspiciously
at the book and  then at me.  But I was an Indian and so was Dad who, of
course, was a  professor as well -- and she said nothing, at least not to
any of us. The book had not been checked out since 1938.

And then, in due course, Frank came into the picture as an older student of
Dad's.  And he arrived just before I completed my young life-long Mission:
to kill a very, very large bear.

That was mandated from almost the Hatch onward.  It didn't come easily. It
took a super long time indeed to accomplish.  And then, one warm October
mid-day, well off-any-road and far, far down into the huge and remote and
heavily forested eastern slope of the Sycamore Canyon wilderness,  I came to
a rare wonderful  spring of pure water emanating from the rocks in an aspen
grove. Flowing in a small stream two hundred yards down a leisurely slope
through the yellow pines and scrub oak and even some red maples, it
culminated in a kind of level clearing  -- a "park" as we call it in the
Southwest -- which was about 20 yards across. There the water gathered,
surrounded by and mixed with  green grass.

And there in the mud I saw the many fresh tracks of a huge black bear.

And so, under a scrub oak tree, surrounded by its fallen acorns mixing with
old needles from the pines, I waited.  Hour after hour  deeply into the late
afternoon.  My 30/30 Winchester lever action with the long octagon barrel
and the curved metal buttplate leaned against a low oak limb, right handy.

And then, looking once again at my Hamilton wrist watch -- the high school
graduation gift from my folks -- I saw that it said 5:10 p.m.  And I looked
up, across the clearing.

And there It was.

It was a huge black bear,  a male, walking smoothly on its fours just inside the timber along
the edge of the clearing, its massively long arms reaching full out and moving
back and then forward again in easy, flowing  graceful coordination with its huge back
legs.

Still seated, I cocked my 30/30 rifle, aimed and fired.  The bear, not
mortally hit, turned and ran directly away from me.  Standing tall, I now
fired by pure instinct -- one of my best shots ever -- hitting It in the
back area.  It turned, snarling and pawing, and I fired five more shots into
It.

I had killed it. A huge bear.  I was now a Full Man.

The sun was dipping far down toward the western rim of the Great Canyon as I
cut the throat of the bear and drained the blood, then gutted him.  Propping
the body cavity open with sticks in order to quickly cool the meat, I also
covered the area with my sweat-stained and human-odorous shirt in order to
discourage any scavenging critters from getting too close.

Then, literally covered with the Red Blood of the Bear, I climbed out of the
Canyon in the darkness and, eventually reaching my vehicle, made it back to
Flagstaff on the remote woods roads.  It was very late. But my parents were fully
as pleased as I.

My father and I and one of my two younger brothers -- and Frank -- left
very early the next morning with bedrolls and three day's rations for
Sycamore and the Bear.  It took Dad and I several trips and every bit of those three
days for us to get all of the bear meat -- in several huge hunks -- out of
the super steep Canyon.  Green blow flies laid maggot eggs in the bloody
hide and we had to abandon that -- save for several furry strips which I cut
off.  During this back-breaking struggle  -- hundreds of pounds of meat from
the huge bear whose live weight was estimated as being at least 650
pounds -- Frank cooked for us, assisted by my little brother.  
And that's where I got to know Frank Dolphin well.
And he certainly came to know me.

After that, a lot happened fast in my life.  Frank told me many things --
radical and militant organizing accounts and sagas and organizations and
movements. On things like Wobblies and Communists he had some pithy advice.
"You ride one horse," he told me,  "and, when it goes down, you find another
and  ride it.  Keep going always, full ahead."

It wasn't all Revolution and such.  One hilarious account involved his
spending six weeks in a brothel at Elko, Nevada painting appropriate murals
on every wall.  During that extensive, strenuous period, in which all his
needs were attended to much more than adequately, he never "saw the light of
outside day -- neither the sun nor moon."

Even at the time of the campfire on the Verde, the Army loomed in my future.
So at 18, I finally volunteered. Before I left, Frank carefully painted an
excellent oil portrait of me -- seated and wearing my Levi jacket -- and
caught so very well the stubborn Native nuances in my still-searching face.
"This is for your family," he said, " Especially for your mother."  Pausing,
he then he went on, "in case something  should ever happen."  Again he
momentarily hesitated, "If or whenever."

He was a realist but I've been lucky.

When I came out of the Army, an epoch later, with an honorable release from
a full stint of active duty, much indeed had flowed together in an
irreversibly committed River of No Return.  I was a Red. And I've been one
ever since.

I went on to many, many radical social justice activist things all around
the Land. And I saw Frank, who kept on painting fine stuff, over the many
years to come.  In various news media, he sometimes saw me in all sorts of
colorful and strenuously challenging situations -- and he also heard all
sorts of accounts from my family. And he had no hesitation
about telegraphing me once  from a Montana jail for funds to pay a large
fine for whatever Sin -- and I sent it all and more by return wire.

Frank died in early 1973, then living at a wide place in the road called Dolan Springs --
far out yonder in extreme Northwestern Arizona and close to the Nevada
border.

The oil painting he did of the earnest 18 year old Native who was struggling so
hard to find his bearings in the high winds turbulence of the very early
'50s hangs now from the wall of our Idaho living room. And it's on our very
large social justice website, Lair of Hunterbear
http://www.hunterbear.org/this_oil_painting_of_me_was_done.htm

All of the bear meat -- rich and strong -- every single bite of it, was
eaten by my family and close friends over several years.  When I returned
from the Army, I resumed my eating.  It lasted for a very long time.

And His skull, with feathers attached and the salvaged strips of furry hide
dangling, hangs always wherever I am. It looks down from my wall, right here
in Idaho.  It looks at Frank Little, Cherokee Indian, and  Wobbly martyr
lynched at Butte  by the copper boss thugs in 1917. It gazes at a photo of
Jack Reed at his typewriter.  It looks at a sketch my father gave me in my
baby crib of the Mohawk leader, Joseph Brant [ Thayendanegea] burning out
the Anglo settlers in up-state New York in the 1770s.

And the Skull sees a bust of Lenin -- and his 45 volumes. And sitting right alongside 
those great works are several splendid books from my special 
Saint, Ignatius of Loyola -- founder of the Jesuits.

They all look at the Essence of the Bear -- the Skull.

And They all go together.  All of Them.

Now and then, I can close my eyes and  smell the greasewood fire and  hear
the Verde in its gorge. For a moment, I see the creased and friendly face
under the old Stetson.

And then, as I Fight On, I draw three circles in the dust and sand.

Hunter Gray  [Hunter Bear]
www.hunterbear.org (strawberry socialism)
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 

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I hope you get your bear.  I don't claim to  know how such things work, but I do know there is a lot of mystery in the
universe and I still recall you very wonderful and shining vision that you shared (and wrote about so
vividly). All my best, Dale [Jacobson]  10/16/05
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Happy Bear Anniversary Day, Hunter!

 JS and family  [John Salter] 10/17/05
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Good day to you, Hunter. Best in the future.

Macdonald Stainsby  10/17/05

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As further commemoration of your Bear Anniversary, here is my all-time favorite bear poem, by Jim
Harrison.  John Salter  10/17/05

My Friend the Bear

Jim Harrison

 Down in the bone myth of the cellar
of this farmhouse, behind the empty fruit jars
the whole wall swings open to the room
where I keep the bear.  There's a tunnel
to the outside on the far wall that emerges
in the lilac grove in the backyard
but she rarely uses it, knowing there's no room
around here for a freewheeling bear.
She's not a dainty eater so once a day
I shovel shit while she lopes in playful circles.
Privately she likes religion -- from the bedroom
I hear her incantatory moans and howls
below me -- and April 23rd, when I open
the car trunk and whistle at midnight
and she shoots up the tunnel, almost airborne
when she meets the night.  We head north
and her growls are less friendly as she scents
the forest-above-the-road smell.  I release
her where I found her as an orphan three
years ago, bawling against the dead carcass
of her mother.  I let her go at the head
of the gully leading down to the swamp,
jumping free of her snarls and roars.
But each October 9th, one day before bear season
she reappears at the cabin frightening
the bird dogs.  We embrace ear to ear,
her huge head on my shoulder,
her breathing like god's.

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Thanks for a very good poem.  It reminds me of a lecture I once heard during 
my first year of North Park College in Chicago.  The professor talked at great 
length about the "groaning of creation," (as described in some chapters of 
Romans of the New Testament).  This must have been a religion class.  I really 
can't remember too much else.

Again, thank you for bringing this poem to our attention.  And I would like 
to add my wishes for a Happy Bear Day! 

Alice M. Azure 
Mystic, CT 06355  10/17/05

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Howdy, Hunter Bear,

When you meet your Sycamore Bear in the next , it will
thank you for the passover and welcome your wisdom in
the council of elders so conviened to consider the
greater good you have created in this world. Your
words will be carried on this cyber-wind into eternity
and all who tune in will surf among the stars, in
peace and purpose, thanks to your scholarship. Mazal
tov n brucha, good luck and blessings.

Bob Gately, on the desert   10/17/05

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Bear Greetings from the Mato Ska
M. Zehr  10/17/05

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Thanks for this Hunter,very inspiring as usual.
Hope you get your bear Hunter, but I hope you don't get your last one
for a long long time.

Rad Dan [Murray] 10/18/05

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Thanks so very much for the kind Bear Day messages and the even broader
plethora of Good Thoughts from a great many good friends. [That poem, "My
Friend the Bear," is an extraordinary piece of fine and soul-reaching work.]
Loyal and faithful Cloudy , with her own substantial wild strain and
intriguing little quirks, comes to mind immediately of course.  She, is
gaining weight and furring out for the winter, with her usual impressive
Bobcat ruff.  I am fortunate and we all are in our own unique ways.
William James, in his "Life is Worth Living", was neither simplistic nor
trite: it is a Great Experience.  And with Spirits and
Friends-of-all-Species, we are never, never alone.

Yours, H  10/18/05 

HUNTER GRAY/HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

Our Hunterbear website is now more than ten years old.
It contains a vast amount of social justice material.
Check out our Directory/Index: http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm

See: The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father] and its
accompanying essay on Minority Adoptions and Native Land
and Resources:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm

For a good feel for some of the civil liberties challenges faced 
by an effective organizer, see this cluster of four full consecutive
related pages:   http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm
This is not just history.  This is a contemporary and national matter.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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"[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt."
--Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31