255.  a favorite tribal tale of Dr. Lorenzo’s

Loud Slap’s Route to a New Life

(A Blackfoot Tale of Glacier Park)¹

Now, Loud Slap was White Fur’s favorite son, and next to himself the best, the wisest dam-builder in the beaver gens. The chief wanted to keep him at home, for going on discovery was very dangerous. But for very shame he could not order him to remain and let some other take the risk. So, with sinking heart, he said: "You spoke up first, my son, so you shall be the first one to look for a new home for us. I have had a dream, and I want you to find out if it told me truth: Go down this river a little way beyond the edge of the pines, look west, and you will see a big ridge with a low gap in it. Go up through that gap, and down the other side, and you will soon come to a small branch of a good-sized stream; look at all the branches of that stream for a good home for us, and come back and tell us all about it. Make that crossing through the gap in the daytime, for then the most of our enemies, the mountain lion, the fisher and the wolverine, the wolf and the coyote, are generally asleep. Night is the time that they do their murdering work."

"As you say, so I will do," Loud Slap answered.

And the next morning, some time before daylight, he started down river on his dangerous trail of discovery. Below his pond there were other ponds; and as he swam through them many of the beavers living in them asked him where he was going.

"Out on discovery; our food trees will last us only this coming winter; we have to find a new home," he answered them all.

On he went, through the last of the ponds, down the river, swimming fast, so very fast that his big webbed hind feet, swiftly kicking, made the water foam past his breast. He had started out too early; when he passed the last of the pines, daylight was still some time off, so he dived under a pile of driftwood, then crawled up into it, found a good resting-place on one of the logs and went to sleep, sure that none of the prowlers could reach him there.

The sun shining down through the little openings in the driftwood pile awakened him. He slipped down into the water, made a dive, and came up, out in the middle of the river. Near by was a high, sloping bank bare of trees and brush; he swam to shore, climbed it, looked west, and saw the big ridge and the big, low gap in it. He looked all around; no animals were in sight except a few elk, and he knew that they would not harm him: he began waddling toward the gap.

The sun was hot. Loud Slap’s legs were short: his body fat and heavy; there was no water; he soon became very tired and thirsty, and the top of the gap seemed to be a long way off. More and more often he had to stop and rest, but he kept saying to himself: "I will not give up! I will not give up!" – and at last he arrived at the top of the gap. Close up to the top on the other side were thick, cool groves of quaking aspen and willows; as far as he could see, the valley below him and its far side was one green growth of trees, and he knew that somewhere down there was water, plenty of it.

Down he went, oh, how easily, on the steeper places just pushing a little with his hind feet and sliding along on his belly. He soon came to a small stream of running water and drank and drank of it, rolled over and over in its shallowness until wet all over, and then he followed it down. Other little streams came into it, and at last it became so deep that he could swim. After a time he came to where this stream joined a much larger one, and he turned and went up it, and away up in the timber found where a dam could be built that would form a very large pond, and best of all the quaking aspens and willows were everywhere there growing so closely together that they formed a food supply that would last a number of winters.

That night Loud Slap slept in a hole that he dug in a bank of the stream. This is the one which we long ago named Ki-nok’-si Is-si-sak’-ta. I understand that the white people have another name for it.

………………………..

What the Blackfoot storyteller neglected to mention, Rev, and Dlune never clarified for guests at Peyto Lake either, when she told them the story, was that Loud Slap had crossed the Continental Divide at a low spot where later, in 1884, they would route the Canadian Pacific Railway by a series of tricky tunnels and switchbacks that today are tourist attractions. Having followed a tributary of the Columbia from its trickling source on the Divide, he turned left and south up Cataract Brook to the region that white men have since named ‘Lake O’Hara’.

A dam built by Loud Slap and his tribe when they migrated there caused a part of what is now the lake to form. Lake O’Hara is in Yoho (‘awe and wonder’ in the language of the Kootenay tribe) National Park in British Columbia.

Lake O’Hara is a sacred place, as you know, Rev, a heavenly place where every drop of water from the sky and melting snow and glaciation, from the earth thawing in the sun, and from the dew-filled orchid mouth of every pink Calypso in the valley makes its natural and un-shunted, unviolated way eventually stateside down the cascading Columbia River and into the Pacific.

So wrote mj to his parents about this Blackfoot tale.

And the reasons Dlune never mentioned these points during her storytelling sessions with mj for Peyto Lake guests were three: first of all, Loud Slap was a boy from further south, a Glacier Park beaver from south of the Montana border and would have kicked the bucket waddling two hundred miles from Glacier all the way up north to Yoho without backpack, boots or the barest bikini briefs.

Secondly, just simply and plainly, everything in mj’s paragraphs addressed to Rev from the words ‘had crossed’ to ‘what is now the lake to form’, he had fabricated for the sake of his word-mandala. He wanted to transition geographically somehow from Peyto Lake to his upcoming dramatic climax at Lake O’Hara. The whole notion of ‘Loud Slap’s route’ was a harmless hoax he figured some future readers would find hilarious while others sat with their credulous mouths wide open, entertaining him, mj. He was pulling his readers’ legs as he did on practically every page of The Remaking, almost, and hoped Rev and Jo, at least, would get the joke, since they knew that particular part of the world intimately from honeymoon days on.

Thirdly, Dlune and the tale’s Blackfoot narrator, when they told tribal tales, were straight ahead storytellers, whereas mj was a shape shifter and a clown, like Coyote, a crazy magician who told a story in a certain way with a definite healing purpose.

Mj played with people’s minds and emotions for specific healing reasons.

In this case he wanted one tiny part of his audience laughing at the rest. Why, only he knew. But he could be trusted to have good reason, as everyone but his critics said.

Plus he liked the Blackfoot tale’s story outline, for it paralleled his own story line: someone in the tribe dreamt about a better life. A member of the tribe felt called to the dangerous mission of looking for one, volunteered openly and then had to listen to a spelling out of the mission while the entire tribe listened along: “You shall be the first one to look for a new home for us.”

256.  how the Dr. used 'Loud Slap' in later years

Consequently: Dr. Lorenzo, by the year 2000, had developed an interesting format for his little presentations to groups of every kind around the world. More and more he would start by having people read this tale. It paid off especially well, he said, when audiences were full of people that were caught up in lifestyles that removed them from nature – especially their own human nature – and the simple, most basic things of human life.

As people entered, they would receive the story as a one-page handout. He would wait quietly until all had read it, then invite them to react via floor mikes. To any responses admiring the tale he would merely say a disinterested thank you, while to critical responses he would offer encouragement and animated agreement. He would watch the inevitable momentum toward audience consensus for trash-canning such a ridiculous Indian Boy Scout tale so ‘silly’ and ‘juvenile’ and ‘worthless’. And then, once the tale of Loud Slap had been relegated to infamy by every member of his (victimized) audience, Dr. Lorenzo would reveal its worth in shocking abundant detail.

In Las Vegas in 2001, for instance, when a huge convention hall full of computer geeks fell head first into this crazy trap, right down to the very last nerd geek, Dr. Lorenzo informed the poor geezers that the Blackfoot tale of Loud Slap was an incredibly beautiful illustration of a simple and powerful truth that was not only useful, but essential ‘in a time like ours’, and ‘for a civilization like our own’ which had gotten ‘ever more extremely technologically advanced’: namely, the simple and powerful truth that nature-based experiences which appeared to be of the very most simple and fundamental kind on the surface, which even appeared hopelessly banal and dismissable as valueless, were virtually guaranteed to conceal soul- and humanity-enriching gold, universal mental health balm. Basic nature-based and quintessentially-human experiences such as family dinners; funerals; births; marriages; jaunts to help a friend find a new home; an afternoon spent ‘hangin’ out’ with a friend or some little kid or old person; ‘hugging trees’; and similar kinds of generally ridiculed and underrated activities; all: were healing balm for Western civilization. The list could go on forever. ‘Raking the lawn’ was another good one. Raking leaves off the lawn with your father. Or with a friend.

“You know what I mean,” he would always say to his audiences. “Raw nature. Basic stuff. Raw human nature. Getting to know a native-people tale and sharing it with a friend. Kissing the very next woman you see.” And this always caused a riot, of course, but he wanted his audience listening from the gut, not with their computer-like Socrates-programmed grey matter, so he liked a little hysteria in his audiences at times.

“Peeing behind a bush with a friend. Telling a story about how nature healed a stupid American geek shrink sexually. And so on.”

In other words, he said, this Native American boy-scout tale, which seemed supremely forgettable at first, actually contained a goldmine of council. He himself, as young mj, when Dlune had first told him the tale at Peyto Lake, had immediately felt reminded by it that anyone taking a dangerous trip through raw nature, or through any of human life’s raw dangers, for that matter, should pay close attention to trustworthy and knowledgeable guides.

Mj would soon be seeking a vision while very high up on the razor’s edge of the Continental Divide. And the mission would be dangerous physically and psychologically, both. The ordeal would involve climbing a sheer mountain cliffside and staying there exposed, waiting for dreams and visions, then handling those powerful discoveries when they came to him. Without losing his balance and falling off into an abyss, either physically or mentally. And finally, he would have to crawl his way back down to normal everyday earth intact, even though wobbly from dehydration and aching exhaustion and even staggered by his vision. It behooved him or any similar volunteer, therefore, to revere mindfully the details of the various beneficent guides that were available.

What guides had been available? some high schoolers from the Colorado Springs chapter of the state’s Mountain Club asked him on one occasion.

Well. Maybe there were others, but for starters, as he said in local lingo, the tale itself had reminded young mj, at the time when he had first heard it, of three guides that were already ‘busily assisting’ him: (1) his own dreams and visions prior to the climb, like the Triptique and personal memories of previoius hikes in the Rockies; (2) instructions from elders and mentors like Chipewyan and Dlune, who knew Rocky Mountain high peaks and knew vision quests and had told him a lot of what they knew; and (3) ancient Native American tales describing similar past missions, especially those tales that overflowed with rich and pertinent data, like certain Petitot tales and especially this tale about Loud Slap.

In the case of young mj’s climb and vision quest, said Dr. Lorenzo, useful and pertinent details gleaned from just this one guide, a Glacier Park Blackfoot tale, comprised an amazingly long list and included the wisdom of: starting a long and dangerous climb very early in the morning, maybe even before dark; not dilly-dallying along the way; remembering specific well-known landmarks and following them; remaining constantly mindful of a list of the most likely dangers and ever prepared to meet them if they arose; resting on a log in a very safe location, if ahead of schedule; preparing mentally for having to climb up a very long and steep, frustratingly slippery, scree-filled slope; resisting thirst, weariness or other excuses to pack up and go home to Mommy; crossing any ‘big ridge’ through the lowest negotiable gap or high pass; and, toward the end of the mission, rolling around in the water, even, i.e., playing around in an earthy way if time permitted; partying with nature, you could call it; and, lastly but not leastly, spending the night in ‘a beaver hole of your own making’ which Blackfoot Indians called “Ki-nok´-si Is-si-sak´-ta,” and some white men called the “Knock´-it Sock´-et.”

Then finally, said the Dr., there was the chief’s instruction which wrapped up physical trip and non-physical mission both: “Come back. And tell us everything about it.” That was the most important thing of all because without that final step the trip remained a private and self-centered adventure.

No wonder mj and Dlune loved Native American lore so.

257.  the kind of lore needed for saving humanity according to Dr. Lorenzo: an easily shared guide to the future for the whole human tribe

Such very human lore as the Loud Slap tale was every bit as useful as the Bible or Koran and ‘maybe even more useful’, as some pundits insisted: ‘especially for a human race on the brink of rendering itself extinct simply because it lacked a shared guide to the future for the whole human tribe’.

Or, as the Dr. put it once to Sammy Martinez, what the world needed was a writer, a thinking person – a woman or man – with a vision that could unite humanity behind an easily endorsable dream of a common shared future. Whereas what humanity kept getting instead, to its chagrin and detriment, were Jews writing as Jews to Jews, promoting Judaism, Muslims writing as Muslims to Muslims, promoting Islam, and Christians writing as Christians to Christians, promoting Christianity; etc., etc., each local interest group around the world promoting its own narrow interests. To save every man, woman and child of the human race as a whole, he said, all members of the race had to rise above their local and selfish egotistical sectarianisms.

Loud Slap was a model beaver scout because he thought and acted for the whole tribe, not just for himself, as the Dr. said. Had the beaver as a species used up all valleys and all trees, Loud Slap and his father would have thought beyond their own gens and sought a solution for all beaver, not just for those in their own valley, for that was their character, as created by the inventor of the Loud Slap tale, who showed them to be respectful and caring toward all whom they met. And had all of the various animal species of Glacier Park been threatened, Loud Slap and his father would have gone to bat for all of them, even for the wolverines who occasionally ate beaver, not just for the beaver, for that was their character. They were universal in their concerns, not sectarian. If they had been human they would have been called humanitarian leaders.

What the world needed, said the Dr., especially once again during the years after 9/11/2001 when sectarian sword-rattling and warmongering grew to a frenzy, was tale spinners who spun tales for the whole human tribe, storymakers who created characters in their tales that modeled behavior that inspired all of humanity, not just a particular local selfish and self-centered segment of mankind.

In 2005, therefore, the Dr. suggested a tale might be written about three brothers living and working in Jerusalem who loved each other very much, one brother a secret suicidal Al Qaeda operative, one a secret Israeli intelligence agent and one a right-wing neo-Calvinist Bible-banging secret agent of the USA working under cover of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Company, all suddenly thrown together to protect the sacred heart of their holy city from imminent annihilation by some external threat that the writer of the tale would have to choose, like Iran’s open promise to ‘wipe the state of Israel from the face of the map’. In order to save those sites which were sacred to all three religions, of course, each brother would have to surrender his own selfish limited agenda and start working toward the new shared goal along with tribal family members previously thought of as obstacles to his sectarian goals.

The Dr. publicized his challenge in an ad in The New York Times Review of Books, offering a $500,000 reward, provided by foundations, to the first writer in the world who accomplished the feat to Dr. Lorenzo’s satisfaction.

And for this act of creativity the Dr. again won a MOISTR² at the annual ceremony in New York: ‘for the best interpretation of Loud Slap anyone ever IMAGINED’.