White

Coming up the icy track my boot slipped upon the rocks stained red with iron. The eroded mesas were fiercely lined with snow, white and martian. Over my shoulder the sun was inching closer to the mountain line, only an hour or so left to get out of the valley before the cold and darkness would make it impossible to return to the shelter. I checked the laces on my boot, and picked the packed snow from the grooves. Everyone thinks the winter is silent. Everyone thinks that snow is white. I heard the far off pacing of the mountain goats, causing the stirred fall of crumbling shale. The bears were all in for their long sleep, and did I imagine, the snapping of that twig? I crouched to the ground and searched with my less perceptive eyes, my eyebrows frozen with mist from above my protected mouth. The pricking of the ears, the raised flag of tail, and then lightly hoofed away, the doe and her almost grown brood. I sighed in relief, if the coyotes were out there would be little I could do to defend myself against a full pack, even if I had carried a gun. It seemed unfair to go against our ancient world with the techniques reserved for modern war. The coyotes were here first, after all, and I was in their house. It was their prerogative to kill me and eat my flesh to nourish them through winter. I paused my journey back to the shelter to drink from an icy stream. The water was like daggers down my throat but it was clean snow melt. My stomach ached from the cold of it. Out from their shelter my lips cracked and began to bleed. A drop fell upon the snow, and I stood, staring at the beauty of that bright carnelian bead freeze upon the down.

The snow. Monet once went to Norway to study it's ephemeral forms. If you look long enough, you will understand what I see, what Monet had seen. Snow isn't white, not at all. Lora always liked to tell me that I saw blue where there wasn't any, perhaps she's right. I wondered if perhaps it was due to eye color, hers a deep Egyptian brown, mine a Celtic blue. That was a hypothesis for another time, one that I had neither the science nor tenacity to pursue. Especially in the blue folded mountains, nearing sundown. I took the notebook from my pocket, one could hardly call it black anymore, it's cover ravaged by six generations of hidden neglect. I had managed to date it within a decade, to around the 1820's, this land would have been subject to both Spanish and Anglo-Saxon invaders, the thought of the Ute tribe stood with me as my heart contracted, it was sick with sadness. The Ute still lived in this territory, much reduced. Bled letters inked in a utilitarian hand worked steadily across the first page; 'Post Tenebrus Lux', after darkness, comes the light. It had taken me months to decipher the anglicization of the Ute landmarks, and it led me to this valley. I had been here for days, listening in the snow, searching the canyons.

A tree cracked from the snow, and in shock I dropped the book and it slid swiftly down the arched back of the canyon. I followed it instinctively until, too late, I realized I was falling too. I quelled the desire to scream, an avalanche would do me no good at all, and taking out an alpine stick I dragged myself at least to my feet so my injuries would be less at the bottom. Despite my best intentions as I managed to grab the book my head met the body of a tree.

My eyelashes were glazed shut, my nose a mess of snot, and numb yet burning pain. My head ached, as did most of my limbs, I felt my hands, one still shut around the book, the other still clutching my stick. I managed to rub my eyes free from the ice, the sun had set, all I saw was darkness. I fumbled my way to standing, and began to run in place to try and get some warmth back into my clothes, I chewed on some deer jerky, and my jaw began to loosen, my body though on fire was at least warming, and leaving the possibility of death behind, much to death's chagrin. I fumbled and found my headlamp, adjusted it, and turned it on the lowest setting. It glared against the panorama.

Breathless, I watched the regal creature gaze at me. His flank was white, his great antlers proof of his prowess and survival, great pools of mist came from his nostrils, I diverted my eyes in an instinctive bow, and he snorted in reply. He walked coolly off, not frightened of my presence nor bothered by my survival. And I a shy human, followed his trail, not knowing why. Even with his slow and steady gait, my recently dethawed limbs were still jerking with contracted cold and I almost lost him in the frozen aspens, silver specked with black. The Aspen's eyes all stared back.

I put my hands into my coat, leaving the arms flapping and empty, while letting my fingers turn from numb pain to burning fire, and pressing them into the crease of my arm and chest. And still I followed, as if entranced as we walked deeper into the canyon, and as the sun rose I lost him. In panic I ran around the clearing, how had he gone? He had left no tracks that I could see, and the sun was just pinking the sky and clouds with its murmuration of light. The coming glow revealed a stately Pinyon tree with its aromatic and ever-green limbs, gazing at me, seeming to murmur, I have a story for you. I went up to the tree and breathed its scent and allowed it to breathe in mine, while the old girl chuckled at my young soul. I had come seeking treasure. She knew where it hid, and pointed me across the clearing to a cave hidden in undergrowth and vines. I parted the foliage as gently as I could, still breaking some of the tender capillaries. The scene before me filled me with inherited shame.

A family had fled here, I could still see the beads that embroidered their young one's moccasins, just a baby, murdered in it's cradleboard, the mother's skeleton was draped across it. I vomited and wept. I let my shame fill me and as I wept I begged for forgiveness from the land, from the rocks, from the family before me. I took out the notebook of my forebear, who had hidden his treasure here, and had written of the 'savages' he had killed with pride. What pride was there in murdering children in their beds? I found the chest easily, filled with notes amounting to $20,000, a fortune to be reckoned in 1820. He had never lived to return and collect it, felled by dysentery.

I laid the family's bones to rest and sang above them, what little I knew in Nuciu, 'the people' called Ute by the Spanish. I spoke of old man Poko who made the world and welcomed them back. I went out of the cave towards the glistening Pinyon, I collected her bristled firs. I set a small fire kindled from her gifts. I was still singing, words that I didn't know the meaning of and songs that I had never heard, and wailing in a voice that was not my own. The rocks remembered, the ice remembered, the Pinyon and the Aspen knew. I burned each one of the bills collected for my forebear's murders, each dollar earned in blood. And with the murdered mother's knife I cut a piece of my own scalp, and tore the flesh, golden hairs long and fresh dripping with blood and I threw it to burn. I took a burning stick and cauterized the wound, blood still dripping down my chin with tears. And with a final wail and beating of my chest, I laid that cursed black book to rest and let it burn.