Jaguars and Star Wars

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Panthera_onca_-Amazona_Zoo,_Cromer,_Norfolk,_England-8aThe Navajo poet guns the engine of her jaguar, engine roaring and purring.  The tail of the jaguar is adorned with a Navajo nation license plate, picture depicting the stone landmarks of Monument Valley.  I love that there are still jaguars which roam Arizona, even if this one is automotive. 

  The thought of giant cats from the tropical jungle roaming these barren high deserts of the American southwest is not as ludicrous as it seems.  When the conquistadors first explored what they thought of as the Mexican northern frontier long before it became known as the American southwest, jaguars were found as far north as Utah, as far east as Tennessee.

  In this painted desert, I think the jaguars would have stayed away from the open stretches of slick sandstone but would have preferred to travel along the narrow ribbons of riparian green which adorn the slot canyons.  These deep canyons are embraced by the protective arms of cliffs towering hundreds of feet above.  These canyons are adorned with trickling streams, waterfalls and fruiting trees.  These canyons hide eight year old abandoned pueblos.  There are petroglyphs and pictographs depicting ancient stories and ceremonies.  Sometimes there are even fossilized dinosaur footprints embedded in the bedrock.  Dinosaurs are just one more fearsome and magnificent creature who once walked these lands but does so no longer.

  I am still holding out hope for the return of the jaguars.  They were listed as extinct in this country for many decades.  Then in the 1990s a rancher near the triple borders of New Mexico, Mexico and Arizona, was mountain lion hunting when his dogs became unusually excited.  He and his horse rounded a corner and discovered the dogs had treed a jaguar.  The rancher reached into his holster… and removed his video camera.  Those images of the giant jaguar in the tree became the basis for his book Eyes of Fire and Warner Glenn is now a leading jaguar conservationist. 

  Confirmed reports of jaguars in the United States have been limited to the border region, but unconfirmed eyewitness sightings place them much further north.  So far cameras have only discovered male jaguars in the United States, even if some of them were recorded over periods as long as twelve years.  The last confirmed female jaguar in Arizona was shot by a hunter at Big Lake in the White Mountains in the 1960’s.  The last wild jaguar kittens in the country were recorded when their mother was shot at the Grand Canyon in 1898.  There was no mention of what happened to the orphaned kittens.  I like to think the kittens escaped and that somewhere in the folds of the Grand Canyon silent shadows of giant spotted cats still roar amidst the brightly colored striations of painted rock, leaping and hopping among the waterfalls of crystal clear hidden oasis.

  I imagine the Navajo poet gunning the engine of her sleek sports car, flying along the winding curving canyon roads, like a soaring raptor, living only for the thrill of being alive, in this isolated patch of earth where echoes often remain unheard.  A Navajo friend posts on her Facebook page about the new movie theater on the reservation and that it will be showing the newest Star Wars movie.   Star Wars has a large following on the Navajo reservation.  A project was recently undertaken where the first Star Wars movie was translated into the Navajo language.

  A large drive in movie screen was erected next to the bleachers of the rodeo grounds.  The benches were filled by old men in denim and cowboy hats, grandmothers in skirts, and metal head misfits.  Rowdy children chased each other, mud staining everything except their smiles.  Giggles and gossip filled the air.  Tiny bits of breeze rustled the American flag.  As twilight faded it became storytelling time and a flickering light suddenly illuminated the large blank screen.  The rodeo bleacher audience gasped as the words scrolled across the screen in that familiar way, “In a galaxy, far far away…” except this time the words were written in Navajo.  They call the movie So’ Tahdi Nidaabaa which doesn’t translate directly as Star Wars but more like “A Battle in the Land of Stars.”

  The movie creates a bond between grandmothers and grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Being in Navajo, the movie creates a reversal of roles.  It is the children who have difficulty with the language and are forced to ask the elders for a translation.  These new stories can be a tool to keep an ancient language alive.  Is there really such a difference between the adventures of Luke Skywalker and those of Slayer of Enemies?

  I imagine the Navajo poet driving her jaguar under the moonlight, headlights refracting off the eroded sandstone spires, engine growling as it rides the winding ribbon of asphalt.  She tells ancient stories in modern settings.  Stories shift and move, revolve and evolve, and yet somehow stay the same, like ripples in a pond spreading outwards, reoccurring echoes of a concentric pattern. 

  What is important is that fierce feline ghosts of spot and shadow still roam this southwestern high desert.  What is important is that when these jaguars scream, roars echoing up and down these slot canyons, everything alive is terrified for miles around.  It is important that there is still wildness in our wilderness.  That wildness is the spring which feeds our genetic mythology.

Shooting stars streak across the night sky.  I watch one meteor race across the horizon, fireball burning brightly for the briefest of moments.  The word for meteor in Navajo translates as “stars raining down in fragments,” as bits of history, mythology, geology, language and landscape rain down inside my skull, echoing inside the big cavernous spaces and searching for bits of spiritual resonance.

  Biziilgo ni tsinkees

  May the force be with you.

Gary Every (45 Posts)

Gary Every is an award winning author who has won consecutive Arizona Newspaper Awards for best lifestyle feature for pieces “The Apache Naichee Ceremony” and “Losing Geronimo’s Language”.  The best of the first decade of his newspaper columns for The Oracle newspaper were compiled by Ellie Mattausch into a book titled Shadow of the OhshaD.  Mr. Every has also been a four time finalist for the Rhysling Award for years best science fiction poetry.  Mr. Every is the author of ten books and his books such as Shadow of the Ohshad or the steampunk thriller The Saint and The Robot are available either through Amazon or www.garyevery.com.


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