Page 9 - the Noise December 2016

Song of Water
“I see young men...whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? ...How many a poor immortal soul have I met well- nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty...”
By Dulcy Perkins
It is raining today. The smell of petrichor gives way to the creosote. I think about the desert soaking in what it can, letting go what it can’t. The power of the rushing water takes with it soil and bits of organic matter as it gains momentum, accumulates. The rivulets make their way down washes to the Verde, Oak Creek, and Beaver Creek, laying aside some of the alluvial silt as it slows, laying the means for farming in the desert. The soil and its nutrients settled entire peoples along the green ribbon of the rivers’ banks.
I grew up on the north side of the Valley. Hemmed in by Woodchute, Mingus Mountain and the Black Hills to the west, Sedona and the Mogollon Rim to the east and south — I always looked North, to Black Mountain and the red spires of Sycamore Canyon, the steep cliffs of the Verde River canyon, and the Antelope Hills. It was here I learned agriculture, and here I saw with clear eyes the magnitude of the natural world that came with it.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Cabin and plow sketch from Mike Williams superimposed onto West Clear Creek
When the Sinagua emerged from the alkali depths, they listened to th
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On the white limestone cliffffs and caliche ridges, stone walls remain. Generations took shelter from storms, came down to the river banks to feel the cool water on their feet. Was it a burden to dust a structure so permanent? The weaver takes her time to warp her loom, scaffffolding of the work. Every opening of the shed, every line of weft, is given consideration. It is sent offff hundreds of miles on faith for a return copper medallion, shell, feather or bird in its own beauty and craft, be a fair trade. This is the faith of farmers. The Sinagua left for southern and northern territories; evolved into new cultures. And though they respectfully left the dwellings abandoned, the
Yavapai took up the fifields, tools, and seed, bringing the Sisters into a new era.
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View of the Mogollon Rim from ruins at Montezuma’s Well
Red stone ruins line the Verde above the mouth of Sycamore. Walls mapping out the boundaries of hearth and outbuildings to store crops are filled with mud of floods. Persimmons, pears, and plums, heavy with the fruit of their labor still stand in languid shade of the canyon’s walls. What quiet desperation when your fields teem with fat cattle, clucking hens with their chicks, gardens of peppers and corn, children playing? The Mexican and white families who harvested the crop since moved down river, leaving their homes to ring tailed cats and canyon wrens. But the evidence of the progress and trade remain in a supply route from Flagstaff into the Verde Valley still traversed by explorer, cattle, and wildlife.
As more settlers moved into the valley, the landscape changed further. Canals grew longer, brought life giving water to fields high above the river’s banks. Pine sided houses and barns, dark with age and rough from the sun’s toll stand like old growth in new generations of homes. Fences of cedar posts and rusted wire lay along boundaries, keeping livestock in and out. Deer trails made wider by the use of domesticated hoof became wagon roads. A moment frozen in time by the skeletons of cedars declares death in the valley. Husbandmen stood against the scythe of the smelter, and verdure returned.
Still we push this barn out ahead of us, and don’t mind wiping the dust from the mantle. A new generation, alongside the last, feed themselves and their community. Wheat fields and milk goats, fruit trees and cattle, break up the encroaching growth. Generations from now may see the relics we will leave. Will they wonder at the crucifixion thorn and harsh sun, and fail to remark if each generation hears the song of the water?