A few days in Joseph, Oregon

I didn’t rinse off my paddleboard after this trip. I wanted it to absorb and hold the water molecules of Wallowa Lake. This water is sacred. I think all bodies of water are sacred, but this lake seems acutely so.

I paddled to the middle of the lake. I laid on my back, face to sky, hands and arms dipping in the cool, clear water. I floated. There was no wind.

This blog is mostly for sharing pictures of Joseph and the Wallowas, though I wrote some words and stuck them between photos.

Old chief Joseph was young chief Joseph’s dad. We are more familiar with the young one because he was central to the intense part of history when the Nez Percé were chased off their land. Old chief Joseph explored Christianity for about 7 years, and his son was schooled in English and Christianity as a young boy. But, they left the church after it didn’t make sense anymore. It didn’t help that the minister would whip people who weren’t doing it right and asked the Nez Percé to whip each other for the same reason. So, Joseph senior and junior went back to being Dreamers, the spirituality of their people.

Young Joseph, by 10-years-old or so, went out alone with no food or water to sit and wait to meet his Wyakin, which is a spiritual helper. This is the time when people have a vision, learn their song, and the power attached to their song. Joseph’s real name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, which means “thunder rolling down the mountain.” Once pre-teens met their Wyakin and learned their song, they had the rest of their lives to dance the song at celebrations or when they needed to channel that power. Sometimes it took a while to understand what it even meant.

It is amazing to walk where the Nez Percé lived and thrived for so many centuries. I wanted to talk to someone who knew them, but that mainly left rocks, maybe a few trees, and they weren’t saying anything.

Nez Percé were given their name by French fur traders, a comment on their nose piercings. Their real name is Nimiipuu, which means “the real people.”

Go to Iwetemlaykin state park. It is about a mile from town and a lovely place to walk a gorgeous and easy-going trail.

I call this path the trail of 1,000 grasshoppers; the grasshopper popcorn path. Nothing happens until you walk through, and then- it’s a grasshopper popper!

Now I am going to go on a rant.

I read most of a book about the plight of the Nez Percé. I didn’t read every battle toward the end as it was too much. I got the picture. It was terrible. I couldn’t process people treating people this way. So, while walking atop Mt. Howard, I figured out how to understand it, in terms of nature.

Asking native people to leave their practices and places of a thousand years and relocate to smaller places they have never been is like:

1. Asking pine needles to drop from a 1,000 year-old-tree to blow into the wind to attach to a new smaller tree, several hundred miles away.
2. Requesting fire to move into an air-tight steel drum.
3. Asking jellyfish to relocate to summer pavement in Texas.
4. Cutting off tree branches, putting them through a chipper, and blowing onto a freeway, to reseed.
5. Expecting dirt thrown into outer space to continue to hold its shape.

It was against nature, that’s how I see it. During talks, the white people tired of hearing about the earth as mother blah blah blah stuff. It was too earthy. It was too emotional.

There were white people who did not want to take the land from the natives or move them, but they were outnumbered or outmaneuvered. There was gold to be found too, so that changed everything.

Now back to the happy fun scenic stuff.

I rode the Wallowa Lake Tramway. It was totally uplifting! Literally!

The tram is the best way to travel. You swoop up like a bird. It’s way better than hiking.

Near the top!

At the top, one viewpoint.

There are several clearly marked trails at the top as well as a restaurant.

On the long drive to Joseph, I listened to Lessons From Lucy, by Dave Barry. I remember this line: “Be grateful for what you have; it’s probably more than you think.”

I looked into what is the correct way to refer to Native Americans, as we often say. When asked directly, these were the most common answers from, shall we say, the indigenous people themselves:

1. Specific tribal name, for example Nez Percé, Quinault, Lakota.
2. American Indian, or Indian.
3. Native, or indigenous.
4. Native American.