Coyote Crossing

4 comments on "A gift from The Very Silly Raven"

Morongo Bill and Scott Fajack have alerted me to a new development. Looks like I may have spoken unfairly as to the character of the person who took the Sunrise Rock cross from its site in the Mojave National Preserve. The Barstow Desert Dispatch has printed a letter sent to them indirectly by a person who claimed to have taken the cross. I reproduce that letter in full here.

The person’s choice of the Desert Dispatch says to me they were more or less local — they could have gotten a letter on the front page of the Los Angeles Times if they’d wanted. The letter itself is obviously conscientious and thoughtful. I still think the act was ill-considered, but if this letter is for real I now think better of the motives behind the act.

The letter:

1. The cross in question was not vandalized. It was simply moved. This was done lovingly and with great care.

2. The cross has been carefully preserved. It has not been destroyed as many have assumed.

3. I am a Veteran.

4. A small non-sectarian monument was brought to place at the site but technical difficulties prevented this from happening at the time the cross was moved to its new location.

5. The cross was erected illegally on public land in 1998 by a private individual named Henry Sandoz. Since then the government has actively worked to promote the continued existence of the cross, even as it excluded other monuments from differing religions. This favoritism and exclusion clearly violates the establishment clause of the US Constitution.

6. Anthony Kennedy desecrated and marginalized the memory and sacrifice of all those non-Christians that died in WWI when he wrote: ‘Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles — battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.’ The irony and tragedy of that statement is unique.

7. Justice Kennedy’s words in particular and others like them from the other Justices caused me to act.

8. At the time of its removal there was nothing to identify the cross as a memorial of any kind, and the simple fact of the matter is that the only thing it represented was an oddly placed tribute to Christ. This cross evoked nothing of the sort that Justice Kennedy writes of, it was in the end simply a cross in the desert.

9. Discrimination in any form is intolerable, as is hatred.

10. Discrimination or hatred based upon religion should be despised by all Americans, and offering that this event was caused by hatred or malice is simply ignorance of the actual intent.

11. Despite what many people are saying, this act was definitively not anti-Christian. It was instead anti-discrimination. If this act was anti-Christian, the cross would not have been cared for so reverently. An anti-Christian response would have been to simply destroy the cross and leave the pieces in the desert.

12. We as a nation need to change the dialogue and stop pretending that this is about a war memorial. If it is a memorial, then we need to stop arguing about the cross and instead place a proper memorial on that site, one that respects Christians and non-Christians alike, and one that is actually recognizable as a war memorial.

13. If an appropriate and permanent non-sectarian memorial is placed at the site the cross will be immediately returned to Mr. Sandoz.

14. Alternatively, if a place can be found that memorializes the Christian Veterans of WWI that is not on public land the Cross will promptly be forwarded with care and reverence for installation at the private site.

15. In short this has happened because as Abraham Lincoln said: ‘To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.’ Perhaps this was an inappropriate form of protest if so I humbly request your forgiveness and understanding for the actions that I have taken here.”

9 comments on "The Cross thief speaks"

I’m unnerved and upset by the attention the theft of the Mojave Cross has brought to the Mojave National Preserve.

First off, the basics. I recognize the importance of memorializing those who fell almost a century ago in the First World War, and the appropriateness of some sort of memorial at Sunrise Rock. I also understand and support those who feel the cross, as an explicit symbol of the Christian ideology, has no place on Federal land. I think the cross necessarily diminishes the sacrifice of those war casualties who were Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, or who adhered to some other metaphysical viewpoint not falling under the rubric of Christianity.

I think the caretakers of the cross are fine and sincere people. I think the cross site, if not the cross itself, is a facet of the history of the desert and could be argued to deserve preservation and interpretation by the Park Service. I think anyone who has an unconflicted opinion on the specific issue of the cross at Sunrise Rock is not as informed as they ought to be.

All that said, the cross is an ugly thing grafted onto a landscape that needs no enhancement. It looks entirely out of place at Sunrise Rock, about as deserving of siting there as would be a billboard or a giant pink flamingo. When I first started spending time on Cima Dome, in October 1997, the cross wasn’t standing: it had been lain in a cleft atop the rock by someone. The bolt plate was atop the rock. I have no idea whether it had been taken down by vandals or was in the process of being installed by the Sandozes: all I know is that it made me roll my eyes to think of the thing standing on the rock.

I think most of the people who are outraged about the theft don’t give a packrat’s ass about the place itself.

They certainly haven’t gotten many facts right in the reporting. The cross is described as being anywhere from 4 to 8 feet in height, set on a plain or a low pile of rocks atop a craggy peak (it’s actually on a tall pile of rocks atop a softly rounded dome), far from any routes of travel (it’s twenty feet from a relatively well-traveled road) made of rugged wood or PVC pipe.  Those outraged by the theft claim no one but the VFW ever sees the cross, when in fact it’s seen by a significant percentage of visitors to the Preserve. Even in the Supreme Court decision, Justice Alito described the cross as more likely to be seen by rattlesnakes than by people. (I hope his legal opinions are better-informed.) They claim the site was chosen because the rock resembles a WWI doughboy in repose, a claim made up out of whole cloth. They claim it’s explicitly a war memorial, when there is in fact not a single thing on site – no plaque, no inscription, nothing – to indicate that some church didn’t put it up in order to win souls. I have seen boxes of fundamentalist literature left at the base of the rocks onto which the cross was bolted, but I’ve never seen a single piece of literature there mentioning war, or soldiers, or Europe.

And in fact those who are the most outraged by the theft don’t hesitate to declare their outrage in fundamentalist Christian phraseology: take a look at this Facebook Page for examples.

Some people are pissed off for legitimate reasons. Our friend Morongobill is pretty angry at the theft for example, and I respect his anger. Still, I’d bet very few of the people professing outrage actually care about the site. I’ve heard people talking about reinstalling the cross and putting land mines around it, even.

You know something? I actually thought of taking the cross down in the first few years I visited Cima Dome. It’s an intrusion and an eyesore, a blister on a beautiful rock face, one more example of an obsolete human value system literally set up above all that is real surrounding it. The fact that it’s a Christian symbol only makes it worse. Christianity in this country is a force for ignorance, for hatred, against freedom, and obstructing sane stewardship of the earth. The fact that there are less politically powerful tendencies within American Christianity that are not as destructive doesn’t change the odious nature of the religion as a whole. Sunrise Rock just looks better without the cross. I wanted it gone then and I still do.

But I didn’t take it down, because I learned that there were people in the immediate community to whom it was very valuable. They had put it up for arguably laudable reasons, and had done so when my father was a toddler.  In the meantime, I learned that there were much greater threats to the landscape of Cima Dome than an ugly piece of public art.

Today I’d help the Sandozes put it back up just to shut the nation’s teabaggers up.

The thing that annoyed me about the theft — aside from the certainty that the right wing lunatic fringe would erupt — was that the thieves almost certainly came to the Preserve solely for the purpose of removing the cross. I may be wrong, but I’m betting that was their first and last visit to the place. The place didn’t matter to them: it was just a backdrop for their ideological act.

And the place doesn’t matter to the wingnuts, either. Most of them would be fine with installing a twenty-foot replacement, then scraping a hundred yards of perimeter free of all that pesky desert vegetation so that security cameras would have an unobstructed view. All this to glorify a god that doesn’t exist at the expense of a nature that does.

The cross itself was vandalism. The cross itself was desecration of a sacred place. It has survived long enough that it’s worthy of some sort of respect as a relic of early 20th century history, like the sheepherder’s carvings in the bark of Sierra Nevada aspens or 18th century settlers’ names carved into rock alongside petroglyphs, but that doesn’t make it any holier. If it were up to me the thing would be gone for good, perhaps replaced by a nonsectarian stone marker carved of native stone to honor war dead and explain the history of the site, perhaps replaced only by a small scar atop the rock. If it stays, I’ve gotten used to it: I don’t much care anymore.  I do care about a piece of land I love devoutly being used for rhetorical points by people who would just as soon let the desert burn.

It’s a couple of goddamned sticks, people. Put ‘em back or don’t, but get the hell over it.

10 comments on "A couple of sticks"

Looks like someone stole the Sunrise Rock Cross this weekend.

For the record: I think this is an inflammatory act that does neither side much good.

3 comments on "Mojave cross stolen"

It wasn’t that special a night, really. I was in Black Canyon in the Mojave Preserve for a two-day meeting of desert protection activists, good people all and fine company, but that soul-quenching aloneness I long for will have to wait for another visit. There was good conversation with people I had not seen for a while as the sky went dark, and then one person after another drifted away, those still talking just slightly more alcohol-fueled than I could keep up with. Being the only sober person in a crowd generally makes me retreat into myself and so I slipped away, got my sleeping bag and Thermarest, and wandered out into the desert.

The temperature had dropped some, and the wind picked up: those still talking at the picnic tables were bundled up against the chill. My coworker Terry had grown a look of slight concern earlier when I said I didn’t think I’d be putting my tent up. There was a low in the mid-forties predicted for the night with a stiff wind, and was I sure I’d be warm enough? I gambled. Putting the tent up means taking it down the next day, and anyway I’d just be trading a few degrees warmth for the constant flapping of tent fabric before the wind.

I found a bare spot in the lee of a leafless acacia, set out my sleeping pad and bag, took off a layer of clothing and stuck it in the sleeping bag’s storage sack, weighted with a gallon and a half of water. I lay back and zipped up. A faint chill ran the length of my legs and I wondered if that would set in, grow by increment and make me shiver through the night.

It didn’t, and I was moderately comfortable all night. I slept moderately well. I woke frequently, the way I do on any first night sleeping out. I would open my eyes, check the position of the Large Bear relative to its northerly cub,  realize I didn’t remember where it had been the last time I saw it so that I couldn’t gauge elapsed time, settle back and wait for a meteor, and then fall back asleep. Around five the sky got light, but I dawdled lazily for an hour or so before getting up.

All told it was an unremarkable night spent sleeping out, one of hundreds in my life, and though I suppose I may be a bit unusual in that I still find the practice comfortable with my half century old skeleton it was nothing special. I got tired, I laid down, I slept, I woke up, I drank coffee.

Except that there’s this: Settling into my bag, as I turned out my flashlight, the sky rushed in to mantle me. No moon in the sky, but the stars were bright enough that I could see the acacia branches silhouetted against them, and a dozen feet of earth in any direction, and my hand in front of my face, and nothing else on Earth but half the universe beyond it. The low murmurs of my companions a few hundred feet away faded, their small lights squelched, and in my waking sleep I was alone. All that was was me, the acacia and the universe, and the acacia and me merely bits of the universe where it had folded in upon itself, the crystallized ash of ancient stars. 

6 comments on "Getting down to basics"

One of my favorite photos of me ever. Taken about a dozen years ago by Sharon Leach as we hiked in the Shoshone Range, central Nevada.

There’s just something about pinyon and juniper that makes me utterly content. It might just be my favorite biome.

6 comments on "In the Shoshone Range"

It was late when I took this, after a day of temperatures in the mid-100s, and the temperature had fallen down into the double digits. Matthew and I watched one thunderstorm after another track past. One of them lit a small fire on the north slope of Clark Mountain, a dozen miles away. We watched it burn. We had just walked through the edges of the Hackberry fire, put out only a month earlier.

Sometimes I wonder if the Hackberry Fire, and all its kin that burned across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts that summer, were as much of a blow to my life that was as that more intimate familial loss that burned through my mind a year and a half later. For a few years I told myself I had the life I wanted, that I could keep it, the smell of sagebrush and Jeffrey pine and Sierra granite greeting me reliably year after year. 25-year-old Chris goes into the desert, and 75-year-old Chris goes into the desert, and nothing changed between the two visits, I expected, except a few trees gone, a few fatter around the trunk.

But of course time is change, and of course change doesn’t work that way. Only one straight line exists in nature: the trajectory of one who plummets. Even that course is subject to alteration, interruption by a finger of rock sticking out of the cliff face you fall past.

I wish sometimes that I did not see these things. I wish sometimes that I could go about a life unburdened by importances, to live in blissful ignorance of the price the world is paying for us.

2 comments on "Almost five years ago"