Orion > Thoughts on America

John Armbruster, a scientist at the Observatory said, "An earthquake is something that gets out of the Earth and into a building. But this event began with a building and a subsequent effect leaked into the Earth."

II.
We watch the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center struck by our own planes, then collapse under the weight of terror. 110 stories. Thousands of life stories. Gone. Collapsed dreams. Compressed sorrows. Shattered innocence. Blood. They say what they need from us now is blood.

Blood knowledge. What will we come to know that we did not understand before? Who knows how this has entered our bloodstream?

III.
Washington, D.C.: Yellow police tape is wrapped around city blocks like its own terrorist package. I cannot get back to my hotel. For hours, I walk the streets of our nation's capital, alone, never have I felt more alone, far from my home in the redrock desert of Utah. I cannot reach home. All phone lines are jammed.

In my bag, I remember I have a small piece of sandstone that I brought from home, a talisman from the banks of the Colorado River. I stop in the middle of the sidewalk, find it, and hold it tightly in the palm of my hand like a secret and then continue walking in the steady stream of people, dazed, distracted, and scared.

Looking into the eyes of individuals on the street as they are fleeing by foot, by car, by anyway possible, I see a gaze I have never encountered among my fellow citizens. It isn't fear exactly, closer to disbelief, not yet panic. The only comparable eye strain I have witnessed before is something a kin to a herd of sheep being circled by coyotes in the windy sageflats of Wyoming.

Fighter planes scream overhead, flying low, so low, I can see numbers painted on their bellies, F-16s wheeling right, then left over the Mall, the People's Commons where Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, "I have a dream." Where is our dream? Is this a dream? In this collective nightmare, I keep walking, watching, listening, observing, no place to go, where can I go?

A Palestinian kneels in the middle of the intersection on I Street and Seventeenth, crying, "I didn't do it, you Americans did it." Traffic is halted, creating a barrier. A crowd gathers around him. I feel the stone in my hand. And just where do we go now to believe the myth of our own making, that there are places on this planet immune from suffering?

IV.
It is Saturday morning, September 15, 2001, 4:00 a.m. I call for a cab to take me to the Dulles Airport, where I hope I will finally be able to fly home.

I am standing in front of my hotel. In darkness, a yellow cab arrives. The driver gets out, his head bowed.
"I am from Afghanistan, perhaps you would feel safer in another car."
Our eyes meet. I burst into tears, the tears I have not shed all week.
Inside the cab, he tells me his mother has called twice begging him to stay home.
"I cannot stay home, even if I am afraid, I have children to feed."

V.
Home in Utah. The Wasatch Range has never looked more formidable, rising beyond 11,000 feet from the valley floor. The spine of the central Rocky Mountains becomes my own. I check in with my family to see how they are feeling. My niece, Diane, who is eleven, tells me she has been spared.
"How so?" I ask.
"I was at camp in the mountains. I haven't seen what everybody else has seen."

VI.
My husband and I, with a friend, walk down to the river to say prayers. Looking up at the granite peaks, one can almost believe the world has not changed. Perhaps we are looking for guidance, perhaps we have been brought to our knees out of a new vulnerability, desperate to know that there is a world older and wiser that remains unchanged.

I close my eyes. After listening to the voice of rushing water, clear and cold, I open them and rock back on my heels. Instinctively, I pick up a stone. There is blood on the stone. I recoil, immediately placing the stone back in its own bed on the riverbank. There are no other blood-streaked stones around me. This is not what I was looking for, not the answer I was seeking. My mind turns to logic. Fish blood. A cutthroat clasped in the talons of osprey. A fisherman who sliced open the belly of a trout. Surely there is an answer. I did not want this answer.

I leave the river and privately carry the stone in my hand so I will not talk myself out of what I have seen.

VII.
Airstrikes over Afghanistan begin. President George W. Bush has announced he will rid the world of evil.

Osama bin Laden-- Osama bin Laden-- Osama bin Laden. His name has become a mantra for all Americans and Muslims, alike. We are now learning a new vocabulary: al Qaida; Taliban; Quran; Haraket-al Mujahedeen; Mazar-e-Sharif; Kandahar; Kabul; Al Jazeera; jihad; hijab; burqa; anthrax; Cipro; bioterrorism.

Meanwhile in a Peruvian newspaper, The Statue of Liberty collapses into the arms of a peasant, a tear streams down her cheek, her torch is pointing downward.

VIII.
A friend, Maya Khosla sends me a poem written by her mother whose husband was the Ambassador to Afghanistan from India during the Russian invasion:

Guns thundering
in the distance
at regular intervals.
Unthinking messengers
of pain and death.
And in sharp contrast,
I absorb
the full bloom of roses
through a darkening dusk
while a single shrike
sits, swaying on a stalk.

-- Gouri Khosla

IX.
Vernon Masayesva, a Hopi elder, speaks to a community gathering inBoulder, Colorado, on the topic of Indian Sacred Sites. He speaks of loss, how the Hopis sold their water rights under extreme pressure to Peabody Coal in 1966, to fuel rapidly growing cities in the American Southwest like Phoenix. 3.3 million gallons of water a day is being pumped out of the Hopi Aquifer.

"We've lost over 40 billion gallons of water." he says. "Now we are trying to buy our water back. If we cannot reverse this trend, the aquifer will be dry in another decade and we as a people will be displaced."

Vernon explains to the audience, largely non-Indians, how it is the belief of the Hopi People that we are now living in the Fourth World and the transition to the Fifth World has already begun.

"It doesn't look good right now, " he says. "But that's why we are here to turn the tide, to make things happen. The river is going this direction. We can make it go the other way, each with our own gifts. This is our obligation." He then asks, "Do you want to participate in the shaping of the Fifth World?"

Afterwards, I meet with Vernon and another Hopi named Leonard Selestewa. We continue to share stories, how they had visited the Twin Towers a few weeks before the attacks.
"I'm so glad I was able to meet The Twins before they were killed," Leonard says.

Over tea and in time, I share with them my encounter with the river and the blood-streaked stone.
"The Earth showed you the future --" remarks Leonard.
The terror of September 11 returns to my body as every hair on my arms stands on end. The darkness I feel inside is a hollow I cannot find my way through.

Vernon sits still for a long time. "Blood is life --" he says. He pauses. Smiles.
"This is what I have been taught."

X.
Mayor Guiliani reports that the City of New York will be presenting, to each family of the dead and missing, an urn filled with soil from Ground Zero. Each handful of Earth will be gleaned from members of the Police Department's ceremonial unit, in full dress uniform and white gloves.
"This is now sacred ground," he says.

XI.
What does the Earth feel but cannot say?

XII.
Seismic shift. A shift in consciousness. Is this too much to imagine? Do we have the strength to see this wave of destruction as a wave of renewal?

XIII.
I am home in the desert. There are steep canyons before me carved away by water, by wind. I see an opening in the Earth. I feel an opening in my heart. My hands cradle red dirt and I watch it slip through my fingers creating a small rise on the land. To be present, completely present, in these tender and uncertain days. This is my prayer: to gather together, to speak freely without judgement, to question and be questioned, to love and be loved, to feel the pulse, this seismic pulse - it will guide us beyond fear.

Terry Tempest Williams is the author most recently of RED: Passion and Patience in the Desert, published by Pantheon.

Scattered Potsherds by Terry Tempest Williams

Scattered Potsherds
by Terry Tempest Williams