S+B Creative Essay

Winters are long here in the Uncompahgre Valley. Haze from chimney smoke blankets the nearby mountains, making them seem further away than they really are. These mountains, these Shining Mountains, as the Utes called them, are now, as the season drags on, tarnished like a silver platter, and growing more so. Just as one no longer even notices that dimming diorama to the south, lightning cracks the sky like a stone cracks the windshield. For far too long there is no sound. A pounding then, even though overdue, rolling, growing, then huge. That long silence broken like a bone.

The Utes would listen for that first thunder of spring; listen for the Voice of the Bear and ceremoniously dance the Bear Dance to celebrate the beast’s awakening. During this celebration, which lasted for several days, the women were allowed to ask the men to dance. Oh what a party that must have been!

The Utes have moved on, displaced by my forefathers, my government, my country. Me. I wonder who even thinks about the first thunder of spring now? Or if it even registers? If heard, does it only warn of an approaching storm? Hey, did you roll up the car windows? Did you save your work in case the power goes out? Do you think they will cancel soccer practice?

I read a fascinating National Geographic magazine article about lightning. The photographs, of course, were nothing short of miraculous — in one, a huge, thick bolt halves an enormous tree. The science of lightning was almost incomprehensible. For instance, a single flash can have hundreds of millions of volts, more electricity than could be produced by all this nation’s generators combined during that instant. The temperature of that single flash weighs in at a whopping 55,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The old Utes had their thunderous, growling bear. We have our thunderous positive and negative ions. All the while the land, the clouds, shake fists at one another. The land rages jealously up to the clouds that boil and fly across the skies freely, appearing, disappearing, melding with others gregariously or floating away in sulking isolation. The clouds rage darkly, jealously, down at the land for its firmament, its green and its beautifully collected waters, its impunity from the whim of wind. Cloud and earth strike each other, become one in a moment of violence, tethered by a huge rope of volts, a moment of unbridled madness like wild things mating or big dumb men fist fighting: two things become a monstrous third thing. Unleashed in that coupling is the rage and power of wind and water and land and fire and all the forces of nature so powerfully inhuman, so very far beyond flesh and muscle and bone. So very far beyond.

The Bear Dancers danced at that first growl from deep in the den, that thunder-bear voice of spring. The Great Spirit, like the bear who gives us a wide berth but could kill with one swipe, is merciful. Having ambled passed, the storm pounds like Friday night drumbeats from the football stadium on the outskirts of town. And from this fresh, wet distance there is comfort as the drummers beat on. Like bedded sheep rising at the passing of the long night prowled by lion, or like soldiers standing fully erect in the wake of the enemy’s sudden retreat. The soul regains its footing, wipes the grit from its hands, as far away now, the Great Bear, waking with its small vengeance, rumbles across the land.

It is time to celebrate, old gone Ute Bear Dancers. You have earned your springtime. Wipe the grit from your hands. Wipe away that patina of winter. Build a ring of cedar branches and build a good fire in the middle. Dance at the ladies asking. Dance in the new dark. Dance in the old dark. Dance with her, round and round and round.

First Thunder