Resilience on Rattlesnake Mountain

I’d like to start remembering an essay by Ursula Le Guin called “Fact and/or/plus Fiction”. She explains how human memory works, and that any claim to non-fiction is as made-up and constructed from disconnected facts as fiction is. Taken to the extreme in maybe a systems sense where there is no such thing as failure, there is no such thing as non-fiction.

She explains that when humans recall events, they are not recalling events. They are using slivers of fragments of sensory impressions that the brain has decided to commit to long-term storage, for whatever reason. Our creativity and imagination make up the huge majority of what we say when we tell a story about something that really happened.

It is rare we have a choice over what is committed to memory, most of the time the situation makes that decision for us. That remains true for times we experience trauma. Human minds do things we don’t believe they have the capacity to do. Some people have photographic memories, they can recall images with exacting precision, as if they were there at that moment. Trauma has the ability to turn this on.

So while I can say this is all a true story, it really happened, it’s not all that unique… but I have an especially clear picture in my head of that day, sometime on the upside of the 1980’s, when I failed to become a Little Chief.

The Camp

#

It is dark. Very dark. Everyone knows, the tapping is tonight. Everyone involved already knows, I am being tapped. We are told this at a ceremony meeting the day before, but the proceedings are kept secret from the rest of the camp. Nobody has any idea who the new Little Chief taps will be.

But I still sit there in the darkness, doubting. Will they actually come at the door at 4AM? Tapping lightly on the screen door of our shared boys cabin, signaling that it was meant to be? There are rafters above me on the top bunk, close enough to make out all the different graffiti markings and carvings and inkings from dozens of years where campers had installed their names. Mine is right there, under my gaze. I start to think about drawing a Pink Floyd Dark Side prism next to it, maybe in color? —

tap.

tap tap tap tap tap.

“Matt Davis?” in a hushed whisper feels itself through the screen door.

I was already dressed. They had prepped us. I bolt up too fast, leaving behind a strawberry blonde hair sample next to my name carved in the wood rafter, and jump off the bunk as silently as I can.

Nobody is asleep. They know.

Outside we make our way to the lakeside boathouse, Camp offices upstairs and a big lounge on the first floor that campers are not generally allowed to use. We congregate, maybe a dozen of us, waking up around the surprising coldness of a midsummer morning.

The charge is given. Our group challenges await. And as soon as we step off the stone patio of the boathouse, our lips must remain sealed and our voices silent.

This is the Big Deal about this ordeal. The vow of silence. There are reasons given for it I don’t really pay attention to, I’m just obsessively focussed on not saying a word. I can do stuff like that, I learned, and believed the mute part was the easiest part.

And really strictly (not) speaking, it was, considering the physical exertion I faced. There are all kinds of parts along the challenges where people either bow out or they “lose the game” at that point, for sometimes arbitrary reasons.

Challenge 1: Build a Fire and Keep it Going until Dawn with Only Two Matches

#

Our mode of transportation is in the back of one of those huge 8-speed diesel flatbed trucks and a couple of pickups. My curly hair gets in my face again, pulling against the wind. We are all consumed with what’s to come. Some look ahead, some down, some everywhere, but nobody at each other. Eyes did not meet.

We are competitors. To be a Little Chief is a dream.

One of the counselors I idolize takes on a Robert Plant vibe that I can’t pull my eyes away from whenever he’s around. He is a Little Chief. I want to be him. And he’s there! Running parts of the challenges.

I smile as he passes to open the tailgate, not sure if he sees me. We file out of the truck. They’ve driven us through the long dark chambers of rhododendron tree cover that lead to the edge of Camp. We pass here a lot, on our way out doing a day hike along the ridge where we could find fresh blackberries, or off to a weekend campout in Catawba Falls.

They say campers come out here to smoke, but nobody’s been caught (yet).

I get my two matches and am sat in the middle of what I think might be a dirt road, but could also be a prominent clearing among the trees. I’ve practiced this, not worried. Finding wood is why I am worried. Staying awake maybe once I get it started. Because if you fall asleep and the fire goes out, you fail.

Within minutes I have one, I build it up to semi-roaring and head out into the leafy wilderness to find more wood. It is very dark. Rhododendrons have large, oblong, opaque leaves. Which doesn’t leave a lot of moonlight either. But fires are coming up in scattered areas all around me, bodies are shuffling around the crunchy large leaf underbrush, trying to find good deadwood.

A couple of guys haven’t been able to start their fire, the yellow pickup parked close to me drives them back to Camp. I get a little frantic and go to find more wood, making sure I have enough to last the two or three hours I need to keep it going until the sun is up. One of the problems with sustaining a fire in a heavily rhododendron forest is that the thick leaves are toxic. The Camp is practically floating in forests of the craggy tree, so we are told every summer about the poison leaves and to never burn them.

Fire cackles on beside me. I get hypnotized by fire. Looking through the flames that aren’t really there. I want to touch them, hold that shape in my hands. I bathe in the smoke. A cigarette would be nice right now. Fire is what Camp is all about. It’s why Little Chiefs are who they are. They operate our sacred Sunday Tribal Council, and the whole camp is there. Everyone knows the LC’s. They get to have their own cool lounge office thing underneath the dining hall, forbidden for anyone but them. I think we’ll get to see it today. If I make it that far.

Before long, as I’m staring at the forest, masses of dark objects and unlighted corners of emptiness slowly form tree shapes.

The sun is up. Dawn means we’ve passed.

Challenge 2: The Rattlesnake Mountain Run

#

Heading back to Camp on the big truck, it doesn’t feel that hard that I got through the fire part. People say mostly some who fall asleep and let it go out are the ones who fail. Or like the two this morning, need more than two matches.

The part I really think will take me out is coming right now. I’m not an athlete. But I know this trail like the back of my hand. We’ve hiked to the top of this mountain countless times and camped up there. The trail up is hard. There are practically vertical cutbacks on the winding path to the summit. Short-cuts that are huge leaps.

The top is this complicated network of rocky bluffs and cliffsides. It looks down into Pisgah and Black Mountain and it’s my favorite place just for that view. I love watching the traffic disappear down the valley on the highway, or a freight train headed in the same direction. The adventurous paths and chance to do some rock climbing to explore the summit, the stars at night shining like crystal eyes staring back at me. I loved it when we camped up there.

But right now, we are running up there.

Less than a dozen now, we’re lined up. I’m not seeing much of anything past my feet. They let boys in front of me go, one at a time… I’m going to be near the end. A Little Chief I know taps me on the shoulder, kindof like a grab to show me support, and then pushes me up into the first rise of the trail.

I’ve seen him working before with Robert Plant, doing the things that LC’s do to prepare the pyrotechnics for the Tribal Council. In addition to Sunday, at the end of each session there’s a big “public” version of it down by the lake lodge. But in any version, the LC’s are in charge of setting things on fire, sometimes with big fuses run through buried pipes that mysteriously and magically start the big Log Cabin style central blaze of the Tribal Council at the beginning of the ceremony. A symbol of the great Wakonda is called here to light our fire!

It is so magical to be a Little Chief. I do not want to fuck this up.

This trail starts off slow, as most do. Long meandering paths that are well-worn from all the summer camps in this area, not to mention just regular hikers. I’m not really in very great shape. I used to sprint a lot in track and field though, it was something my big thick legs are really good at. I can do this.

The morning fog is still resting along the edges of the trail as the incline is starting to work against us. Not shallow wide turns anymore, they’re becoming steeper and the cutbacks are more dangerous to navigate at running speed. But I’m going. I know the shape of things, nothing is surprising. It is as recognizable as the paved interstate below us. Just way more … up.

And up. Shorter paths. Someone right in front of me stumbles, I barely pass with a skip and a jump. I keep passing people who have stopped. One. Two. Three. Three more. The mountain is taking us down like flies. Robert Plant is there, taking up the rear of the column because he is the limiter: if you get passed by him, you’re out. Which also means that knowing him, maybe, he slows down a little bit for me. I’m almost at the very end of the pack.

I’ve been at Camp for several years. Started when I was like seven I think, very very young. The “Apache Tribe” is what I was in back then. Now I’m in “Arapahoe”, which is typically where you gotta be to get tapped for LC.

Some people got into this Indian Crafts thing pretty heavily, and it was something I kinda started liking a lot, mostly because Robert Plant did too. And he doesn’t wear underwear with the fancy hand-decorated loin cloth and calf-high boots with laces and beaded ribbons hanging off in all directions. He would dance wild, athletic, spinning Indian dances at Tribal Council to only the beat of a native drum. His muscular legs would carry him skipping across dirt and colored powder in front of a blazing bonfire.

My legs, though, right now, are in pain. I’m starting to feel a really bad shin splint coming on, too. My breath is getting shallower, more difficult to get good air as we rise. I can hear Robert’s legs trudging not far behind me.

That’s right. I’m last now. I can’t let him catch me or I fail.

Things are going black in spots. I can’t really make out who is in front of me. I start to swerve, but I know this trail. Solid steps, pushing splintering pain through my tibias, tearing at my calves, stomping and huffing and wheezing for air, I’m light headed. I’m not going to make it. I’m last. Robert Plant, he’s right —

At the top. Behind me. At the top.

Challenge 3: Physical Labor and The Grunt

#

We are taken back to the boathouse. My body is heaving and convulsing in the chill from the wind on the interstate until we turn up the hill beyond our closed gates and into our protected rhododendron sanctuary. It’s much later in the day now, doing the mountain race took longer than I thought. Lunch is here.

Only it’s not here, we have to go eat it beside our fellow campers. As a test, keeping our vow of silence the entire time. Easy for me, I’m something of a loner. I have a few acquaintances, but I’m not old enough to really be in Robert Plant’s circle of LC’s and other older teenagers. There is one counselor that takes me in a lot though, he’s really nice to me, smiles at me a lot.

He has that John Denver kind of haircut but it’s brown, and he wears the same kind of glasses. He knows Robert Plant really well because he teaches the Indian Crafts classes, which I always make sure I sign up for. And I hang out in that cabin a lot, too. Finishing my own costume pieces for Tribal Council, learning to do beadwork. I’ve been making some bracelets that are six beads across on the loom, which is pretty big, but they take a lot of beads.

Robert Plant’s costume, other than the magnificent leg dressings, has a fake bone chestplate and he wears his long curly blond locks under a beaded headband with a single eagle feather, pointing to the sky. Little Chief contestants are all awarded an eagle feather to wear at Tribal Council. Only the winners - the Little Chiefs - can wear it up. Those who failed had to wear it pointing down, hanging on a beaded string.

I do not want that. No thanks.

I’m almost done eating. Lunch finishes without episode, everyone staring at the silent Little Chief recruits. And finally, we head downstairs to the Little Chief Lodge. It isn’t a building like a lodge, it’s a section underneath the dining hall, among the pillars that lifted its first floor a full story up. So next to a pad of ping pong tables underneath the dining hall, behind a thick blanket that looked like it belonged in M*A*S*H, the Little Chiefs stored all their pyrotechnics.

This is the secret stash. The colored, flammable powder that they use to build Indian designs as fuses, the multiple big barrels of bags filled with colored sand for decorating Tribal Council, torch making materials laid across improvised workbenches and multiple cans of kerosene. I take a moment and sniff the air deeply. It smells beautiful to me, under the cafeteria. Almost a forbidden smell, the fixings of grandeur.

In fact, everything around Camp smelled like kerosene. Since the Indian theme means we do stuff at night on the side of a mountain, there are torches and fire pits everywhere. I will probably never forget the smell of kerosene at the Camp as long as I live.

There are only six of us left, loading heavy work supplies onto a pickup truck. Several chainsaws (which I hope I don’t have to use, I don’t want people to know how afraid of powertools I am), other rakes and heavy wood tools like axes. I jump in the flatbed and we speed off to another edge of Camp. Our job is to find big, thick logs for the Closing Ceremonies Tribal Council fire, which is built much much bigger (but not on the top of a mountain) for all the parents who come to pick us up when our session is over.

I learned how to meditate on that lawn. It was the Indian Crafts teacher who taught us, laid us all out on the big grass knoll under a huge oak, not far from the trampolines that were built into the ground. He told us to start from our toes and we relaxed all of our muscles. He told us to listen to his voice, and he took us through this story of what we saw ourselves, where our imaginations took us in this little journey through the clouds of our minds. I started to think maybe he listened to the same Pink Floyd albums I did.

We roll up to an already somewhat cleared field. It doesn’t look like we have the equipment to cut down such enormous trees, but there they are, tousled in a huge mess against each other, already felled. Powerlines rise up above us in the clear strip, moving off into the mountain on its own blazed trail.

I get jerked down off the truck. Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like a challenge anymore. Commands are being barked at us to move enormous logs around. I’ve still got the same clothes on from the morning fire, I can still smell it. We don’t have any gloves or anything, so I start grabbing the ends of logs with others and try to coordinate moving them into the trucks.

Without uttering a sound.

Scrapes run down my legs from the trail on Rattlesnake. The footing here… is really bad. The detritus from cutting down all these beautiful pine trees… it’s piled up so high, it is really easy to step through a foot or more onto more layers of criss-crossed branches and pine needles. I could break my foot or something. The sun in the powerline clearing is blinding against the fresh yellow-beige of the logs. Everything smells like sap. Sweat flows into my eyes, and I squint across the clearing.

A boy close to my age, I think in my tribe even, nods me over to the end of a log, and pulls it up, but I’m not ready. So he stops, but I’ve already started to grab the log and pull up. This log feels like it’s longer than both of us laying end-to-end, it would be one of the bottom rungs of the log cabin fire for sure. I think it’s thicker than my forearm in diameter, but it is rolling over, and the other boy lets go as the huge piece of pine slams down to that undercarriage of other logs, branches, and freshly cut edges. Taking my bare hand with it.

Pain rings up my arm and through my body. It is worse than running Rattlesnake. Worse than waking up at 4AM. I grit my teeth and tightly exhale through tightened vocal cords, my exasperated voice –

“rrhg”

Everything stops.

Confusingly, I hear… “What did you say?”

I can hardly believe my ears. I shake my head back and forth vigorously. But the other boy, he looks at me, and at the Little Chief, nodding in confirmation. I definitely made some kind of vocal sound.

Robert Plant isn’t here. I don’t know what to do. I stand oddly agape, silently mouthing the word “WHA?” as I look unbelievably at the Little Chief who is visually dressing me down.

The local group of LC’s concluded this grunt of pain was avoidable.

With only one hour left in the ordeal, I had talked.

Afterward: Homeward

#

They pack me into the back of the yellow pickup, no wood in it yet. Just some tools and scraps. And a loser. I watch the power lines roll into the distance above the other boys in the clearing, not believing what just happened. They all made it, but somehow I had been pushed out.

I could not move. The failure felt like it stuck out of me sideways.

So I ride, still silent, back to Camp. Alone in the back of a pickup truck, on display for all to see as I am delivered to the lodge too early for someone who had made Little Chief. Pats on the shoulder from a few counselors and I’m sent off to the showers, well before the other contestants would.

I strip naked in the cabin, gather my things and head to the shower building. Concrete and tile in the center of our circle of rustic wood buildings, looming like a locker room. But today I have the entire shower building to myself. Everyone else is in their craft classes and afternoon activities.

Later that evening, I can find no energy to complain. I can only sulk. I had let everyone down. Those other five remaining, the Little Chiefs themselves, campers who I didn’t think knew who I was, the Indian Crafts teacher, most of all Robert Plant. My heart broke. I lost. No decorating the sand with painted fire, no making magic with an appropriated culture.

The years of summers I had spent there, creating my own version of Robert Plant in myself, building my costume, putting on face paint that would now never be the reserved “white and blue” of the Little Chiefs. Tonight I am not getting a bowie knife with my name on the sheath, but five other boys will.

Anger about what I saw as an unfair circumstance colors everything I do for the remainder of my time at Camp. I can’t think about the ceremonies that I had come to love, that goal for me was crushed. My own failure to keep my stupid mouth shut and suck up the pain like the other boys can keeps coming back to me. That I am not good enough. I cannot be in the inner circle. Maybe I don’t deserve friends at all.

Because once I had failed, I lost my only chance. I stopped being a camper.

Epilogue

#

That was my final summer at camp. I returned two years later as a “junior counselor”. This is a weird halfway role between being a camper and going around and doing the things campers do, and being in the cult of the camp counselors.

So for instance, I could walz right into the Little Chief Lodge whenever I wanted. I used the boat house lounge all the time. And I didn’t have to nearly kill myself to get in. The entire mystique of what went on there had completely vanished.

It only took me a year to see that the Little Chief ordeal was not only traumatic for me, the entire context where it happened was hopelessly racist, performed by a huge white majority of pampered kids sent to a Christian summer camp to be brainwashed. I don’t know what I did with those old Native American crafts I made, but I stopped pretending I was some kind of “native dancing genius” taught by the one and only Robert Plant.

With learning different perspectives the year before I rejoined as a “staff” member, I found my entire worldview had changed. I was going to be halfway through high school, and my US History teacher had opened my eyes. I learned a lot more deeply about the Trail of Tears than they ever really taught us at that Camp.

Our teacher (David Victor Alexander Ambrose Kohburn, his real name) was really good at providing global context and how that drawn-out massacre really went down. Not the sugar-coated great outdoors theater reenactment they took us to watch in Cherokee as a field trip from Camp.

And besides, pubescent boys are more interested in gift shops than preachy education.

My final act of rebellion at that Camp was to take it down. I needed to rip it from my psyche and put the face of something a lot more real on the whole operation.

I had become a flaming hippie overnight (at least to them), so what did I do? I rebelled. I refused to sing the National Anthem at our morning assemblies, and I made a pretty big deal about it. I got in trouble for singing Stairway to Heaven and was told not only could I not sing it, I wasn’t allowed to play it without singing. So of course I kept doing that.

Ultimately I was now a behavior case, and they had to get my father to fly up from Florida and talk to me about all the shit I was pulling. He gave me the advice that there are times when you need to not appear like what you really are around people. But it wasn’t the National Anthem or Led Zeppelin that made them request his presence.

I got caught smoking.

With campers!

Abetted by a friend I had from home, who was there for his first time. They were his smokes. In that very same trail, up the mountain and to the right, close to where we did our firekeeping.

My punishment?

I couldn’t go to Cherokee with everybody else. I had to stay behind, at a beautiful rhododendron and pine covered summer camp in the middle of the North Carolina wilderness with nothing but my imagination and a guitar.

Appendix

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There I am! Eighth in from the left on the first row. This was taken a couple of years before the events in the story took place. I was much younger, but unfortunately not as naîve as I would have liked. My expression in the picture seems to be one of fear.