2012 - unseen images, part 1: Margie, Mom and family search for stones along Carrizo Creek in White Mountain Apache country

I decided to sum up the year 2012 not by selecting a "best of" or a month by month review or anything like that. Rather, I thought I would run a few of the many things I photographed, wanted to post, but for reasons of time, logistics or whatever, did not.

One such event happened on February 26, when I joined my wife, daughter, mother-in-law and several other in-laws and headed up Carrizo Canyon for a cookout at the family's special place. Carrizo Canyon was made by Carrizo Creek, which joins Corduroy Creek at Margie's home village of Carrizo, Fort Apache Indian Reservation, Arizona - home of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

Before reaching the village, Carrizo Creek meanders through its own narrow flood plain, a place where Margie's family have for generations grown corn of many colors, hunted deer and turkey and the occassional wild javelina pig, kept some cattle and have left their horses free to roam and graze as they please, until those times when they want to use them.

So we drove up the canyon for the cookout, passing this horse as it stood on the edge of the road. I don't know whose horse it was. All the families of Carrizo keep their horses in this canyon. The family once gave us a horse they had named "Billy," but we left Arizona for Alaska right after and neither one of us ever even got to ride Billy.

Over the decades, we would hear reports of Billy and how he was doing and who might have ridden him at one point or another, but Billy is gone now. Maybe this is one of his descendants.

I don't know.

Some young children joined us. I knew their names at the time but now I have forgotten them. I showed the pictures to Margie, who also knew their names at the time, but she has forgotten the names too, but it is for certain they tie into the family tree somewhere.

If we could spend more time on the reservation, maybe we would remember.

Coffee brews on the hot coals. Steak, sausage and hot dogs will be cooked on the home-made tennis racket grills.

Aunt Dolly Guy, sister to Margie's late father, Randy Roosevelt and a retired nurse. She is the only sibling left on Randy's side of the family. Somehow, I need to find time, spread over a few days, to sit down and talk with her about the life she and my father-in-law knew as they grew.

I hope I succeed in doing so. To be quite honest, I am not sure I will. These kind of things are always harder to do than you think they will be in advance. I did try with my own parents. It proved impossible and they are both gone now.

Little Niece, at play.

Just as Margie loves to gather stones from creek and river banks, so too does her 82 year-old mother, Rose Roosevelt. After we ate, we set off on a short walk from Rose's camp to the creek, to look for pretty rocks. Melanie walked with her grandmother.

We drew near to the creek.

My wife shows a pretty stone to our daughter as my mother-in-law seeks stones for her own collection.

These are among the stones Rose found.

More than stones were found. This tennis racket grill frame was fished out of the very low Carrizo Creek with a stick.

The picnic group was bigger than this, but some stayed back at Rose's camp and others who came wandering had wandered elsewhere by the time I took this group photo. Otherwise, it includes all of our group except for me.

A jet passed overhead, between us and the moon, in utter silence. Back when we lived on the reservation during the Cold War, a B-52 bomber, said to be armed with nuclear weapons, often passed by overhead, flying low. I haven't seen the B-52 in recent times. I don't know if it still flies over or not.

Our nephew, Cole Craig, son of Margie's sister Janet and husband Emerson Craig, brother to the late Vincent Craig whom I first met at a church social in Fort Apache and who quickly became my best friend. We buried him in May of 2010.

Cole was one of those who had wandered off at the time of the group picture, but then he wandered back.

Periodically, Carrizo Creek floods, washes out sections of road, bridge and culvert and changes its track a bit. I can't really say for certain, but it seems likely that in one of those floods this section of culvert pipe must have been torn out from the beneath the road and relocated to this place.

After we gathered the stones, we walked back to Rose's camp. Margie and I have talked about the possiblity of adding some minor improvements to the cabin there and then coming down every winter to spend a couple of months living there. It would be great fun, but in all honesty I think it is one of those things you talk about, but never do.

We might, though. Not likely - but not impossilbe either.

It is time to leave. Rose makes certain the fire is dead.

Little Niece and her doll.

Little Niece runs off with her doll.

On the drive back down the canyon to Carrizo village, we passed beneath a pre-historic painting of a kind found at various places on the reservation. Apache ways teach that these paintings were left by the Gaan, benevolent mountains spirits as patterns for the ceremonial head gear worn by Apache crown dancers.

When she was small, Margie would often travel through here with her grandmother and a donkey. As they passed beneath the paintings left by the Gaan, her grandmother would pray.

Gradually, erosion in the form of falling rock and slides is wearing the cliff side down. 

Comments

[ruth deming]

what wonderful family photos, bill! i esp. love the one of aunt dolly guy - all those different patterns - a matisse!

[Mrs Gunka]

Thanks for sharing this!

[landa303]

Beautiful pictures, reminds me of home (Two Grey Hills, NM).