Dispatch #38 - A Valley Called Bahsahwahbee
A pot of elk chili was on the stove when we arrived, simmering, gurgling, steam rising like campfire smoke. Corn bread baked and cooling. Salad bowl filled, tongs resting on lettuce. The cabin smelled of onions and toasted butter, the scent of a kitchen that’s been working all afternoon. We shook hands with our hosts, handed over bottles of wine and champagne, and the four of us sat by the wood stove in rocking chairs, our glasses clinking to good weather and the mounted bull elk hanging off the wall, the same elk we’d be having for dinner.
Cheers, we said in unison.
Bahsahwahbee is a valley in eastern Nevada, on public land managed by the BLM, where water rises unexpectedly from the ground, feeding a rare grove of Rocky Mountain juniper whose roots braid through wet soil in a landscape otherwise defined by aridity. Springs surface and disappear again, sustaining the grove through years of drought and heat. For the Newe, these trees are not simply old; they are alive with meaning, a gathering place where ceremony, memory, and relationship have long taken root…
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