They return to Earth every seven or eight hundred years from another region of the Milky Way. Or maybe it is a parallel world. To prepare for their return, they send dreams and visions to artists of all kinds all over the planet so they will begin to make images of the Star Beings. In this way the poor slow-witted humans might be somewhat prepared for the reappearance of the Star Beings.
It is a natural tendency of humans to interpret the large mouths of the Star Beings as “smiling” and “inviting” or “friendly”—we all want to believe that because these beings project such power. But the mouths are big, and not so much smiling as showing their sharp incisors.
I was so enthralled by Comet Hale-Bopp in 1996 that I watched it for hours on end outside my west door. It was the single most beautiful and seductive visitor to this solar system in my lifetime. I felt an odd affection for the comet and looked forward to gazing at it night after night. I lived alone here. The comet was my evening companion. As the comet began to recede I experienced a strange desire to go along, to never let the comet’s beauty out of my sight.
When I heard the news report I understood how it happened that the Heaven’s Gate cult members committed suicide to board the giant space ship they believed was hidden behind the comet.
CHAPTER 26
The unique geology of the Tucson Mountains makes the place a rock hound’s paradise. There are a number of anomalous formations and rocks that indicate metamorphic activity, but geologists still argue over exactly what happened.
Some sort of volcanic activity took place that formed a number of round dark hills of basalt and prominent ridges or hogbacks of basalt. The rounded dark hills or cerros are not volcanic cones but rather the remains of volcanic structures; some geologists argue that leaks in faults allowed the molten rock to extrude and form the cerros and hogbacks. Other geologists think the great explosion of a giant volcano left behind only the volcanic ridges that form the Tucson, Tortolita and Rincon Mountains.
When I walk the big arroyo I pass a large flattop boulder of dark gray basalt. Years ago from my vantage point on horseback I saw the top of the boulder had been worked by human hands to form a rainwater cistern. Someone had patiently carved the basin by removing only small amounts of stone at a time. To do this the carver had to use a stone harder than the dark gray basalt — maybe a fist size chunk of the meteorite iron like the one I found in the big arroyo. It appears to have been used as a hammer.
I don’t often pick up or carry back very large rocks because most days it is all I can do to carry myself up the big arroyo and home. But one day I saw a rock I couldn’t resist: a chunk of gray basalt the shape and size of a book — a perfect altar for my turquoise ledge stones. But by the time I got home with the rock, the muscles of my right shoulder and arm were so sore I had to visit the acupuncturist.
Now I don’t try to carry back the tempting rocks I see; instead I check on them each time I walk and I imagine how I might get them home without crippling myself in the process. Gunny sacks, backpacks, a wheelbarrow, even a burro might be what I need.
There is a flat smooth white quartzite, very hard and fine-grained, that is about two feet long and six inches wide. The water carried it to the side of the big arroyo where it snagged against other rocks and now the white stone is almost vertical. I don’t know what attracts me to this white rectangular stone; is it because the stone would work well for grinding corn?
If I put my hand on a rock and it does not come loose from the earth the first time I try to pick it up, then I leave the rock where it is. It reminded me again how the old folks used to admonish us children to “Let it be!” To leave things as they are, all things in this world — animals and plants and rocks. Human things had to be respected too and the special places where the ancestor spirits resided.
Turquoise is the ritual color of Tlaloc, the Nahua God of Rain. In the surviving codices of the Nahua people, Tlaloc usually appears dressed head to toe in feathers, clothing and adornments all the color of turquoise.
The Hopi language is closely related to Nahuatl. Many words are identical; the word for “ear” is one. The old Spanish maps that label northern Arizona and northern New Mexico “Aztec territory” are not fakes. All this territory is the realm of speakers of the Nahuatl-related languages, thus those Indians and mestizos who travel or migrate from Mexico need no permits or visas to be here — this land is theirs too.
At the beginning of the eleventh year of the drought, in 2006, a group of Hopi traditionalists decided to make a run from northern Arizona all the way to Mexico City to the carved stone monolith of Tlaloc, to ask for the rain and snow that were desperately needed. Tlaloc is Lord of the Rain as well as one of the Nine Lords of the Night. He is often portrayed wearing goggles formed by two live rattlesnakes.
To bring their prayers to Tlaloc, the Hopi runners followed an ancient ritual trail from Hotevila village in northern Arizona through New Mexico, El Paso and Ciudad Chihuahua to Mexico City. Along the way, they made stops at certain sacred springs and rivers where the runners and those who accompanied them offered prayers and pollen or corn meal to the water before they collected small amounts of it which they carried in a ritual gourd canteen.
The sacred run ended at the fork of two small rivers not far from the Anthropology Museum in downtown Mexico City. A Hopi elder prayed and poured some of the water from the gourd canteen before the great stone statue of Tlaloc that stands outside the museum; then the elder went a short distance to the fork of two small rivers. The small rivers were as polluted as the sky above the great city but no matter — the elder poured the water into the river fork and just as he did, a big eagle appeared out of the smoggy sky and circled overhead calling loudly before it flew away.
The Mexican people who joined the Hopi group in Ciudad Chihuahua as interpreters saw the eagle appear in the sky that day. As they described it to me six months later, they were still excited about what they’d seen and what then happened later. They’d been educated, as we all have, to expect no miracles from Tlaloc. But in the Americas, the sacred surrounds us, no matter how damaged or changed a place may appear to be.
Three months after the Hopi group completed the sacred run, on June 16, 2006 the rain clouds began to roll in from the eastern Pacific, to Sinaloa, then the clouds moved up the lovely backbones of the Sierra Madre and the Sierra Madre Oriental all the while pouring the precious rain that brought relief from the drought.
In Tucson where the drought had lasted so long even the desert vegetation was beginning to die, the rain smell was intoxicating — I couldn’t work on this manuscript. I stood outdoors on the porch and watched the rain shimmering from ridge to ridge in the wind; sometimes in the mist I thought I saw tall figures of rain beings. I put out buckets and tubs to catch the rainwater for my plants and then I tried to videotape the rain until my hair and clothes were soaked.
For the next six weeks, the rain clouds gathered every day from Mexico City to as far north as the Hopi villages. El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico were flooded again and again. Chihuahua got more rain than anyone had seen in eighty years. Over and over the storms followed one path, the reverse of the path the Hopi runners took in March, from Mexico City through Ciudad Chihuahua, El Paso and Las Cruces. I noticed that oddly, Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City got no rain at all during that time.