Koshari and the Water Serpent

 Koshari and the Water Serpent

1.

Koshari was studying for his MBA in Berkeley when the tribal lawsuits about the mountain ski resort were tried and, then, appealed.  He didn’t pay much attention to those proceedings.  In fact, at that time, Koshari was acquiring other skills that he thought necessary for a successful career as an entrepreneur and, perhaps, politician.  Often on the weekends, he played golf with some young lobbyists in Sacramento.  He learned handball and tennis.  Koshari was naturally athletic and he excelled at these sports.  And, one weekend, with a group of friends, he traveled to Tahoe for skiing.  Koshari was well aware that the Hopi disapproved of skiing, at least on the San Francisco Peaks because those places were sacred to his people.  But he didn’t see any harm in learning to ski at Tahoe on mountains that were, presumably, sacred to some other tribe but not his own.

True to form, Koshari had no trouble with mastering basic skills on the slopes.  He had been water-skiing on Lake Powell in High School and had a knack for maintaining his balance on the ski-runs.  The bunny slopes were too easy for him after an hour or two and he spent the afternoon navigating trails marked with blue squares – that is, intermediate level ski routes that most of his friends favored.  The next morning, he attempted a couple of black diamond routes and, soon enough, was fearlessly streaking down the slopes.  His buddies were astounded at how quickly he became proficient on the mountain trails.  When he posted some pictures on instagram, his kin back on Black Mesa replied “Sacrilege!” and “Better Watch Out!”  Koshari knew that his cousins and uncles were joking with him.  But he noted that the mountain shown in the picture was not in Arizona and, so, its summit and slopes were not taboo.  Koshari was a good enough skier that he bought equipment and, after graduation, a couple years later, brought the gear back to Second Mesa where his family lived.  

Koshari stood for election to the tribal council as representative of Shungopavi, one of the Second Mesa villages, but, at that time, he was living in Flagstaff and working at a branch office of a big accounting firm.  There was too much home-cooking in the election and Koshari was soundly defeated.  He thought that his next venture into politics would be as a State Representative or, even, perhaps, a congressman on the federal level.  He accepted a transfer to the Phoenix office and busied himself in party politics on a part-time basis.  Everyone liked him and he was confident that he would be successful when he next ran for office. 

2.

We ascended to our Winter lodges on the mountain’s clean side after Niman, the harvest and leave-taking festival, and, on the mesas below, rain fell through crooked bars of lightning as the wet season began.  For the people, there is duration measured between our return to instruct as to the time for hoeing and planting and, then, the masked dances at intervals to preserve the ancient obligations and, then, Niman, when we return to the heights, but, for us, all times are the same and can be seen the way that the heights and forest and deserts are visible to the eye from the mountain’s peak, an uninterrupted unity without before or after, neither cause nor effect – all moments are equal: the crew building the government road, the true people emerging from a hole roaring with wind and clambering up into the fourth world, the drought withering the corn and squash and beans, the rivers running dry or flowing as floods, the huntsman chasing antelope in the grasslands or the hunting party spearing mammoth with lances tipped with fluted stone points, cities at cross roads, fire falling from the sky and tearing open the plateau, and the vista of the high plain under the mountain with scattered towns of stacked rock and round towers and ball courts cut into the earth, a pleasing prospect with each hilltop place visible from afar, lines of sight marked by bonfires, a network of trails with people coming and going between cultivated fields, and, in our glance, those same towns fallen into wind-stalked ruins, the gardens overgrown, the strange enemies on their short, wiry horses and the other enemies with wagons and cars and railroad locomotives, the ruin of the rivers and the befouling of fully one-half of the mountain, a volcano erupting and the black-capped flows of lava splitting apart and showing red veins and the little spatter cones with their whirligigs of molten rock, the snow falling and the hungry barren land after the snow-melt, the massacres, murders, rapes, the car crashes and train derailments, the wild-fires in the grass and forest, the villagers retreating into canyons to live beside their granaries in the cliff niches, the great blaze on the mountains and the silver beetles buzzing over the walls of flames and dumping water and foam – heat close enough to sear us except that our lodges both are eternally present and eternally absent so that, to us, all things including the fire on the mountain both are and are not --  

3.

The fire on the peaks was hard to see from Moenkopi on the western border of the Hopi Reservation.  At night, an orange glow hovered just above the horizon.  During the day, the San Francisco high country was shrouded in haze, rising milk-colored mist that the children were told rose from the lodge fires of the Katsinam or Kachinas.  So there was always smoke around the summits and, of course, with the forest on fire, the smoke was more dense, a thick white fog that concealed everything but the dull, grey shadow of the pyramidal mountain top.  Some of the more devout and thoughtful children were afraid that the towering walls of fire on the peaks would burn the Katsinam and drive them away from their people, either into underground caves or to a refuge high in the sky. The Hopi children were anxious and the TV reports on the fire, filmed on the high slopes, weren’t encouraging, but the teachers told them that the Katsinam were steadfast and that they fearlessly assisted the firefighters laboring on the hillsides, that they stood by their sides and protected them from harm and, even, guided the heavy planes buzzing over the peak and dropping water and foam, katsinam hovering airborne above the high ridges and the alpine meadows to show the planes where to dowse the flames below.  Some of the children drew Kachinas shaking hands with firefighters or raising their hands to shield them from the flames.  There were pictures of Kachinas flying through the air like Superman to lead the planes to where the fire was hottest.    

4.

Fires come and fires go – it is always burning and not burning.  It has been thus from the time of the meteor and the volcanos and the wooly mammoth.  But befouling of the slopes west of the divide, that is a desecration, and, of course, a more serious thing.  Tainting the snow poisons the streams and lakes and, ultimately, the water-table itself in the fissures in the lava mantle and, where water is poisoned, nothing can live. This angers the water serpents. And, all this so that, people can go on sticks down the slope of the mountain, gliding over the toxic snow – there is retribution coming for this sacrilege --

5.

The party bosses groomed Koshari for a seat representing Coconino County.  The western part of the Hopi Reservation was in Coconino County, but the tribe was aligned with the other Indian country occupying adjacent Navajo and Apache counties, places where the elected officials were intimately enmeshed with politics on the reservations.  The plan was for Koshari to return to Flagstaff, establish residency there within Coconino county, and, then, run for office during the next election cycle.  So the Phoenix operatives suggested that Koshari work to court voters in the Flagstaff area.  In late November, he traveled to a party fundraiser at the Lowell Observatory on a hill top overlooking Flagstaff.  There were some lobbyists in attendance, the Secretary of State, and representatives of the governor’s office.  The lobbyists who represented mining interests and tourism concessions suggested that Koshari spend the night in town after the fundraiser and, then, ski with them the next day at the Arizona Snowbowl on the flanks of Agassiv Peak in the San Francisco massif.  

The fundraiser was dull with too many speeches.  On the walls of the dimly lit observatory, pictures showed galaxies and nebulae in far reaches of space and there was a small exhibit describing how, in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, once thought to be a planet but, presentlym demoted to something on the order of an asteroid or a comet made of ice, a celestial snowbank. The great refracting telescope hung on its gantry over the politicians and their constituents.  Evidently, a native son had written a book about Saturn or Uranus or something and signed copies of the volume were on sale in the gift shop.  When the speeches were over, Koshari mingled with the guests and, then, went downtown to a cowboy bar where he had a nightcap with the mining lobbyist.  They confirmed their plans to ski the next morning.  

6.

This Koshari, this clown, I know him, and, of course, he knows better himself than to venture onto those filthy tongues of snow, white and lapping at the sides of the mountain the way a child licks an ice-cream cone.   But it’s not an intervention, this retribution.  The calamity has always happened, is happening now, and will happen forever.  In this world, betrayal corrects itself.

7.

The tourism lobbyist, Jason, was hungover and so they didn’t reach the basin hollowed into the side of the peak until 10:30.  The road through the ponderosa pine and douglas fir was steep with many sharp turns.  At this time of day, all traffic was ascending.

They made several ascents on the gondola.  From the station at the top, Koshari could see blue-green forests stretching to a horizon tethered in place by dark cinder cones.  Between mountain ranges, sloppy red streaks of slickrock lined the canyons.  It was clear and cold, bracing.  Koshari felt a tremor of fear, an uncanny sense that he was trespassing.  Perhaps, it was just jitters before the downhill run or a response to the icy wind blowing down from the rounded summit.  So this is what it looks like in the realm of the katsinams, Koshari thought.  Until he went away to school, Koshari had gazed at the distant mountains every day, wondering about them – he always imagined that the spirits lived in teepees of brightly painted tanned hide, dwellings of the sort in which TV Indians resided, not at all like the brown pueblos in which his people lived.  The upper slopes were empty, lifeless except for small pockets of wind-dwarfed brush clustered under tilted slabs of rock.

Eighteen inches of powder snow had fallen a couple days earlier, covering a ten-inch base largely deposited by the snow-making machines.  Wind had swept the powder snow off the flanks of the high summits behind them and the bare rocks and talus were incised with deep shadows from the raking sunlight.  Koshari skied alongside the mining lobbyist, Jared – they lazed down the mountain on several blue square routes, dodging skiers who were intimidated by the slope and so braking as they descended.  This wasn’t thrilling enough for Koshari and, so, he tried a black diamond trail, zooming down the mountain alone to meet the lobbyists at the Agassiv Lodge grill for lunch.  It was a little after 1:00.

Koshari ordered a club sandwich with fries and a bloody mary.  The drink was full of vegetables and very spicy – there seemed to be cayenne pepper in the ice cubes. 

Jason asked Koshari about his outfit.  He had purple snow-goggles dangling on a lanyard across his chest and his ski togs were zebra-striped black and white.  

“You look like a convict,” Jason said.  “It’s great but I’ve never seen gear like that.”

Koshari said that his girlfriend had picked out his ski outfit at a mountaineering shop in Santa Fe.  

“It’s colorful,” Jared said, then, correcting himself: “well, not really, just black and white.”

“My stocking cap is red and green,” Koshari said.  

“Christmas colors,” Jared replied.

Koshari had the feeling that the two men were ganging up on him.  He mentioned that his girlfriend was the meteorologist at CBS 5 in Phoenix.

“The weather girl?” Jason asked.

“She’s a trained meteorologist,” Koshari answered.

“Beautiful woman,” Jared observed.

Jason was eating a grilled chicken salad.  Jared had ordered a hamburger.

The tourism lobbyist said that the Arizona Snowbowl was an outstanding example of sound conservationist principles.  Jason said that his other clients aspired to do as well.

“Conservation?” Koshari asked.  “How so?”

Jason said that the snow-machines necessary to maintain the trails were operated on Grade A+ reclaimed water pumped uphill from Flagstaff’s wastewater treatment plant.

“You, my friend, are skiing on reconditioned piss-water and turd-slurry,” Jason said.

Jared was indignant: “Really, dude, I’m eating.”

“No, it’s completely safe,” Jason said.  “Not quite potable but all cleaned-up enough to be converted into snowflakes.”

“I didn’t know that,” Koshari said.

Jared said: “Dude, you go down those hills with reckless abandon.”

Koshari didn’t know if this was a compliment.

Jason asked: “You’re Dine, right?  Navajo?”

“No, Hopi,” Koshari replied.  

“Well, the tribes got with the Sierra Club and made a quite a ruckus about the water reclamation for the resort,” Jason said.  

“I must have been getting my MBA at Berkeley when that happened. Out of the State –“

“You have an MBA from the Berkeley Business School?”  Jared asked.

“Indeed,” Koshari said.

“And his girlfriend’s a network TV weather lady and he skis with reckless abandon,” Jason said.

“Very impressive,” Jared observed.

“The Sierra Club made arguments about nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient poisoning,” Jason said. “The tribe’s were upset about the sacred peaks, the spirits or gods.”

“The kachinas are supposed to live on the mountains,” Koshari told Jason.  “But they aren’t gods.  Supernaturals but not gods.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jason said.  “It just goes to show.  You try to be a good steward of the land, you reclaim water at great expense and recycle it and someone’s a got a beef with that.”

Jared asked Koshari where he had learned to ski.  

“I’m self-taught,” Koshari said.  Jared said that he had taken lessons from a professional ski instructor at Aspen.  

“It’s not that different from water-skiing,” Koshari said.

They finished eating and Jason picked up the tab.  “On the old expense account,” he explained.

The gondola loaded just outside the bar and grill and so they rode up to the top of the mountain to continue skiing.

8.

At the dances and festivals, the figure masked as the clown shows the people how not to behave.  He wears a flat white mask with eyes like apostrophes and has a black downturned mouth.  Corn husks sprout from his skull-cap like horns.  The clown’s body is painted white with horizontal black stripes and he wears high-topped leather boots.  When one of us inhabits this dancer, he is a negative example to the people – he does all things that are forbidden and has no respect for tradition or manners.  The other dancers reproach him but he whips them with a leather thong.  Serpents are his enemy.  

9.

On his third run, Koshari shot downhill on the Upper Volcano trail, a black diamond descent marked as 1421 feet long.  The trail looked like a long sloping fairway, lined by dark evergreens stooped under the burden of the wind.  The surface was groomed with moguls and Koshari, who was alone, could see a dog leg about a 900 feet downhill where the run turned to the right above a windrow of grey-red boulders. 

The moguls tossed him up and down like waves on the sea. It was exhilarating.  At the dog leg, Koshari veered to the right and powder snow fountained-up from under his skis.  The slope was steeper and, a hundred yards below him, he saw something stretched across the ski-run, a sort of sinuous hose or pipe, perhaps, a line running to one of the snowmaking machines.  The steepening grade rocked him foward, threatening to cast him over the pointed tips of his skis and, instinctively, he crouched to lower his center of gravity, but this only caused his speed to increase.  Koshari knew how to careen down the slopes but no one had ever taught him how to slow down or stop and, so, he plunged forward at the hose that blocked almost all of his path downward.  He veered to his left where there seemed to be a small gap between the pipe or hose or whatever it was and the stiff, sinewy little trees on the edge of the trail.  – This is pure negligence, Koshari thought, to not warn skiers about this water-line twisted across the run.  Then, he lost control, the tip of a ski embedded at the base of a mogul like a pole vaulters pole, and, so, he was flung upward, airborne, before crashing down in the deep powder under the pines.  

One ski unbuckled and fled downhill, uneasily slipping over the moguls.  Koshari knew his leg was broken, twisted unnaturally under him.  His goggles were knocked off his head and resting in the ungroomed snow between the pines.  Something was hissing as if the pipe or hose were full of steam venting over the slope.  Half-covered by brush, he saw the round mortar head of Super Polecat snow-cannon.  Koshari looked to the side and saw that the thing on the Upper Volcano trail was a great serpent, its undulating sides as thick as a barrel and mottled yellow and green.  The serpent reared its head over Koshari, long and narrow and flat, skull shaped like horse’s head with yellow equine teeth and a red tongue that flickered flame-like between fangs.  

“Koshari,” the snake hissed.  He writhed in pain from a broken femur and hip.

“Shame,” the water-serpent told him, “for shame.”  Then, the whole length of the mighty snake slowly slid past him, creasing the powder snow, as long as a freight train moving like a sidewinder into the pine forest.  

After a couple minutes, a man and woman wearing woolen masks with dark amber goggles skidded to a stop by where Koshari lay.  Koshari admired how they brought themselves to a stop, snow-plowing through the powder.  They asked him if he were hurt and Koshari said that he thought his leg was broken.  The woman knelt down by him and put her gloved hand on his side.  The man vanished in a cloud of upturned snow.  He asked her if she had seen a water serpent gliding over the trail and into the woods.  The woolen ski-mask and the goggles made her face inexpressive.  She muttered that she hadn’t seen anything unusual.  She was like an overgrown beetle or wasp with round, gold compound eyes and a head clad in wool.  

It’s bad form to fall while skiing and Koshari was embarrassed.  The ski patrol brought him on a toboggan to the bottom of the run and, then, hauled him cross-slope to the base of the gondola where there was a first-aid shed.  Someone informed the mining and tourism lobbyists and they appeared in the metal hut, clucking through their teeth with phony sympathy.  Only amateurs fall on ski slopes and only rank, unprepared amateurs sustain injury.  After wishing him well, the lobbyists hurried away.   

An ambulance arrived at the parking lot.  Koshari wished it wouldn’t sound its siren to attract attention to him.  The vehicle took him to the hospital at Flagstaff for x-rays and an MRI.  Koshari’s girlfriend, the meteorologist for the CBS affiliate in Phoenix was on-air that night, both at six and ten, and she wasn’t able to come to his bedside until the next day.

10.

Water is life.  Across time’s panorama, the peaks are mostly unspoiled.  Blink and you will miss the pollution, but, when it is present, it is an affront, a stench in our nostrils, a poison that runs in our veins and makes us bad-tempered.  But we are not neglectful.  Despite all betrayals, we will enter into time as is our custom, descend in February to mark the Spring planting of beans and squash and maize and, then, after six months during which we inhabit the masked dancers, we will ascend again to our thrones in the high mountains.  We are friends to mankind.

11.

Koshari told his girlfriend about the water serpent that he had encountered on the mountain.  She said that he was delirious with pain and had hallucinated the creature.  After that conversation, Koshari didn’t tell anyone else about what he had seen.