Page 7 - The Noise November 2016

Life a#t#nodapl Following Ed Down the Rabbit Hole
Sacred Rock Camp Water Protectors at the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
Photo by Alex Hamer
“I have burned down my old life and dedicated my new life to saving humanity in-spite-of-itself,” Ed. (*submitted entire story by text message.)
Sunrise was cold today. The frost on my blankets was the second indication that this was going to be a chilly morning.
We were staying in a two to four person summer tent my friend Chelsea had brought with her from Hawaii. Someone donated a bigger tent in a march I had put together to protest this false democracy in July leading up to the DNC. That tent had become victim of the first 70-mph winds at the camp. The poles snapped under the weight of mother nature’s heavy breathing. We had moved to Rosebud Camp, opposite the main Sacred Stone Camp, and up against a 5-foot embankment leading to the road that connects the camps through the way of a farmer’s land. That road is closed, so we have to travel a long way around in order to get to Sacred Stone but it’s worth the travel.
Now we have to figure out how to winterize our small, pathetic camping area against the winds and the frost.
The loud speakers are always playing into our ears from the common area, like a radio signal playing through invisible earphones. The flood basin we are in happens to lend itself to amaz- ing acoustics as the voices of the many, from all corners of the earth come across the airwaves. Usually in the morning we hear the same gentlemen speaking. Today he is asking all his “relatives” to volunteer for a work crew to help collect trash. “The person organizing the work crew is semi-famous and will autograph the trash bags,” he says. Native humor is the best. Chelsea goes off to find food as she notices that I am determined to get this camp orga- nized. We were left with the leftover supplies as friends before us moved on. Now it was just us, and the nagging sensation things really were as disorganized as they seemed to me. I was bound to clean it up. I also knew that if we didn’t get our wind barriers up we were going to lose another tent. That’s life on the prairies. The Lakota would migrate to the Black Hills to receive protection from the wind. We weren’t moving and had to come up with plan B in the meantime.
I had pick of the supplies. The people that came before us had collected many pallets,
nailed them together to form a supply rectangle with two pallets on each end; two pallets that made up the floor and two on each side leaving the top opening. It was halfway filled with random chairs and miscellaneous stuff so after emptying everything on the ground I summoned the spirits of wisdom and came up with a plan.
I hand three hand tools: sledgehammer, ax and shovel. I took the sledgehammer and pro- ceeded to knock one side of the container where I was able to loosen two panels and drop them on the ground. We now have a floor.
Chelsea came back and we dragged the tent over to the pallets where it just fit. While bring- ing it over, I noticed a brother (We are all relatives here) sitting on an a wood stump at the abandoned camp next door. When we dropped the tent he came over to us. We noticed he was a bit out-of-sorts. He stopped to tell to tell us about a rough night he had. After a long pause, he spoke of a night when he was younger. His father was upset at his mother and after an argument they got in their cars and peeled-out. The darkness did not help the situation and with one curve, the mother’s car went off the side of the road. The father came home in tears.
“That was a sad night,” he said, followed by him saying he still loved his father, despite him having caused the events that led to the mother’s death.
He walked away in that moment as the sun went down. I thought about what he said sitting by the fire that night what and it stuck with me as I fell asleep under the stars and to the sound of dance and coyotes.
Ed wrote this story with text messaging from his cell phone since he has no access to computers at the access pipeline. More info about him is available on gofundme.com and search Ed Higgins Coast to Coast.
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7 • NOVEMBER 2016