Leslie Silko - The Turquoise Ledge - A Memoir

Cemamagi, Tumamoc

Babad Do’ ag, Santa Catalina Mountains

Cew Do’ ag, Rincon Mountains

Cuk Do’ ag, Black Mountains, Tucson Mountains

“There are places where the clouds are formed”—I recalled Ofelia’s poem of that title last summer when I felt the rush of the cool air from deep in the Earth and heard the hum; overhead I saw tendrils of newborn clouds rise into the sky.

In 1983 a hurricane came out of the east Pacific and went into the Gulf of California, headed straight for Tucson. The summer had been wet, and the earth was already saturated, and the arroyos and creeks had water. By the time the hurricane came by Tucson only a brisk breeze remained of the wind, but the churning masses of gray silver clouds poured rain from the sky for two nights and two days. The Tanque Verde, Rillito and the Santa Cruz rivers rose out of their banks and washed away condominiums and sections of interstate highway as well as three high voltage power transmission towers and two steel bridges that crossed the Santa Cruz River.

The mountains call the rain clouds; the mountains gather the rain clouds; later the rain clouds emerge in the rushing wind from caves and crevices hidden deep in the mountain peaks.

Now the sky is packed with blue clouds as in a great flood or high tide. Sometimes the storms circle around the Tucson Mountains. I hear thunder to the west in the Altar Valley where the rain clouds travel from the Gulf straight to the farms and villages of the Tohono O’Odom.

Now the clouds look like bundles of long silver tail feathers from a great silver blue macaw that gracefully curl down to meet Earth, dissolving into mists of silver over dark blue violet.

A cool afternoon in the high eighties lured me out for a walk. I decided to go look for unusual rocks along the bank of the big arroyo. The quartz, flint, jasper and chert rocks scattered about differed a great deal from the underlying basalt and light soil; the ancestors were on the lookout for unusual rocks and brought them back to their home. Sometimes I find a small stone with only one or two chips taken from it; maybe the ancestors experimented to see if the rock would permit them to flake a blade or point without crumbling or shattering.

I noticed it at once. This crystal quartz was translucent; it caught the sunlight like magic. It would catch the light of the moon as well. Crystal quartz is infrequent in the Tucson Mountains because the seismic activity and powerful volcanic explosions shattered the quartz crystals.

The quartz crystal I picked up had been carefully chipped to enhance its natural resemblance to a great horned owl. When I hold it under my desk lamp I can see the crystal was worked in the middle of the transparent end to make the slight triangular groove on the owl head between the ears. The eyes and beak can also be seen on the incised surface, and another incision on the right side forms the beak, neck and left wing. The quartz that forms the feet is not quite transparent and was also carved in front to separate the feet from the breast. On the owl’s lower left an incision also helps form the feet.

I found another smaller clear quartz crystal not long afterward. One end is transparent, the other end translucent just like the carved owl crystal. Both crystals caught the sunlight so brightly, I wanted to see if they will catch starlight.

Today the wind was blowing from the northeast but felt good because the afternoon sun was strong and the air humid. The wind was blowing hard enough that some sounds were muffled, while others were louder: the wind through the needles of the saguaros made a loud rushing sound; the twigs and branches of bushes and tree branches clattered. I walked around the ancestors’ place looking at their scattered chips of stone, and I thought about them. Did they know the last time they were here that they would not be returning? What happened? Where did they go?

Right then in the wind I heard a haunting sound that I remembered from childhood, the distinctive jingles of the ka’tsina dancers’ ankle bells, the tinkle as the dancers approached. I looked northeast in the direction of the sound which seemed to come from the big arroyo near the boulder with the petroglyph. The ancestors didn’t go anywhere; they are still here, right now.

A long time ago I picked up a small flat piece of white quartz with a sharp edge and the moon shape of a scraper. When I found the piece of quartz I looked for any marks left by chipping, but noticed none at the time. Today I reexamined this white quartz piece, and lo, a belated discovery. Closer examination with a magnifying glass revealed the quartz had been carefully worked with great precision. The ancestor had removed delicate tiny flakes that were almost invisible, with a very small tool that must have required much concentration and patience to prevent the quartz from shattering.

On my walk home with the wonderful crystals in my pocket, I came upon the circular imprint in the sand left by a small snake, and in the center of the circle I found a tiny turquoise stone.

I can’t forget the jingle of the ka’tsina’s ankle bells I heard yesterday in the wind at the ancestors’ place. I will not visit there again for a while.

Late in the morning my son Robert called me outside. He’d just seen the biggest grasshopper ever in the front yard.

Chapulin. Was it Lord Chapulin himself?

What did he want?

I hadn’t made many copies of his book, Portrait of Chapulin , because I was trying to complete the manuscript. He might be concerned with the delay, so he sent an emissary this morning.

But by the time I got to the front yard, the big grasshopper was gone. In the days and weeks since, I’ve gone back to that late morning when I missed my call from Lord Chapulin’s messenger. I believe he came to tell me his people were coming to stay in my yard awhile to rest and to eat.

This morning I found a big grasshopper in the front yard eating the leftover vegetables I put out for the wild birds. He seemed unconcerned about me but later when I looked for him, he was gone. I found two big grasshoppers together near a pot of rain lilies, but they walked away from me rapidly. They didn’t seem as friendly as Lord Chapulin and the others who visited last year. I seldom see them jump; is this because predators might spot them if they jumped?

This afternoon another white hurricane deluge here — a cloud burst as if a giant water tank ruptured in the sky. The fat gray cloud unrolled itself then fell in a shimmering white veil against the dark basalt hilltops. A warm moist wind out of the southeast drove the clouds rapidly away so the heavy rain did not last.

Before sundown Robert went to see how much rainwater had collected in the cistern and found a desert tortoise on the path by the old windmill well. Summer rainstorms bring out the rare desert tortoises, and one must drive carefully and help them across the road if need be.

The tortoise was the size of a dinner plate, large enough to be sixty years old, as old as I am. I kept my distance out of respect; humans are an ugly sight and a shock to shy wild creatures. I used a soft voice because I didn’t want to frighten the tortoise. I said, “Oh you are so beautiful.” Then I slowly withdrew to get out of the creature’s path. In more than thirty years living here, we’d not been visited like this before by such an old tortoise. Truly we were blessed.

The tortoise came to the bottom of the wire fence by the path and stopped. At first I thought the tortoise wanted inside the front yard so I took the old pit bull dog indoors. I took the wire cutters and opened a hole in the wire to allow the tortoise to pass through; he got closer to the fence and to the edge of the aloe plants but he came no farther through the wire.