Pretty Eagle School, Crow Reservation. And . . . Morocco!

School Principal Garla Williamson with students Lanette and Tayshaun and . . . THE BALL.

Hello, Wilson.

My latest gift of a One World Futbol took me on a 2,800-mile Road Trip through the Rocky Mountains and across a smidgen of the Great Plains to the Crow Reservation in Montana, where General George Armstrong Custer met his fate. Along the way, I saw some spectacular scenery, including our really stunning first national monument, a  volcanic extrusion in the Bear Lodge Mountains all the more famous for its cameo appearance in a popular 1977 sci-fi film.

Come along with me. The scenery and the legends are worth the ride. For instance, did you ever hear that the Sioux let some of Custer's men escape? You may like that story, along with the outcome of the donation of a single soccer ball.

The trip took me from Seattle to the Sawtooth National Forest, in Idaho, where I camped for the night and realized that I had forgotten how to put up the Half Dome Tent I had purchased just because it was so easy to erect. I slept in my 2005 Honda CRV, then off at 4 a.m., looking for a Starbucks so that I could Youtube a demo. The video showed a girl(!) setting up her tent in 5 minutes.   Doh!

The next night I was going to camp at a national park in Utah, but a big rainstorm was coming so I drove down an uneven two-laner  that followed a ridgeline, looking for better ground, while lightning bolts struck the earth and shot across the entire sky as a side wind tried to push me off that miserable road. I awoke the next day in a Vernal UT motel, pleased that I wasn't trying to pack my Half Done under the rain that was pouring down.

And into Colorado I drove, seeing some spectacular landscapes and foliage along the way. The road from Steamboat Springs CO to Granby took me over Rabbit Ears Pass. You'll understand the name when you see the photo, a ways down this page.

New England has nothing on Colorado's aspen. Is that why they named the city "Golden?"

It looks like birch, but that's actually the trunk of an aspen.

The marker for the high pass between Steamboat Springs and Granby.

It was an overcast day and I had to wait for the sun and a breeze to liven up the aspen. 

The rock formation that gives Rabbit Ears Pass it's name is starting to fall apart.

Here's one more glorious photo of the aspen, taken when the sun was just right I drove east from Rabbit Ears:

Kudos to the Colorado Highway Department for placing this scenic mountain next to the road. 

Granby is a nice small town in the Rocy Mountains and a wonderful spot for hiking and winter sports. I and my hiking companion started off at 10,000 feet for a 1,000 foot ascent to the bottom of Mount Neva, whose backbone was part of the Continental Divide. (I don't quite understand that, because I thought I had left the divide behind me at Rabbit Ears pass.) We discovered that all those rocks on the path coming up weren't a lot of fun on the way back when you're tired at altitude. She said some rather unladylike things about the trail  so I can't use her name here, but she's in the photo of Columbine Lake, below, looking at Mount Neva.

Everyone has a mountain lake photo, so this is the only one I'm going to provide.

Stupid lazy deer

On Oct. 1, I left Granby and headed for that national monument I was talking about, which is situated in Wyoming, east of the Black Hills, where the antelope play, but the stupid deer just lay really still on the shoulder of the road. Seems like a silly place to take a nap, right there in all that blood.

. . . and the skies are only partially cloudy all daaaaaaaaay.

Here's what I saw the as I exited that national monument:

That bovine that looks as big as the bison is a real Texas longhorn.

And here's what I saw going in:

If it looks like Devils Tower reaches beyond the sky, you might want to read the explanation below.

Speaking of climbers:

I shot this photo close to sunset, just before the night climbers arrived. How do they do that?

Devils Tower is formed from phonolite, a stone most commonly found in East Africa. Over millions of years, erosion has cleared away more than 2 vertical miles of sedimentary rock to expose the 867-foot tower, and the process is continuing. Here are some other shots of, or relating to, this iconic monument, which was featured in the 1977 film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind:"

According to National Parks Traveler, Devils Tower has 400,000 visitors every year and has sacred meaning for about two dozen tribes of the northern Great Plains. In 2008, the 12-foot white carrara marble sculpture pictured below was installed there, a donation to the National Parks Service by Japanese Artist Junkyu Muto "as the third in a series of seven 'peace sculptures' planned for significant sites around the world."  It is called the "Wind Circle sculpture" and also  "the Sacred Circle of Smoke." The intent was to evoke the image of a puff of smoke from a sacred pipe.

Junkyu Muto's peace sculpture at Devils Tower.

Devils Tower at Sunset

Devils Tower at sunrise--it's a great greeting as you climb out of your tent.

One of Devils Tower's many prairie dogs watches as my camera takes some parting shots.

Time to donate

Time to finish what I set out to do. Some time ago I received a request for donation from the St. Xavier School in Montana, a school for Native American children of the Crow tribe. they looked like they could use a One World Futbol or two, so I left Granby on a northwest trajectory to the Little Bighorn, and the Crow Indian Reservation, with my first destination being the Custer battlefield.

I was in for a couple of surprises. First, the graveyard shown below:

Tombstones at the cemetery at the Custer Monument.

Crow King

Note the tombstone in the foreground. James Walsh was in the 1st U.S. Cavalry. But Custer commanded the 7th, and when the battle was over, the Sious had spared no-one -- or so I thought. The graveyard is also open to soldiers others than those who fought at Little Big Horn.

My second surprise: The Sioux allowed some soldiers to flee, according to Crow King, a war chief quoted on the Web Site, "Custer Lives." Here's a portion of the story:

"Then we went back for the first party. We fired at them until the sun went down. We surrounded them and watched them all night, and at daylight we fought them again. We killed many of them. Then a chief from the Uncpapas called our men off. He told them those men had been punished enough, that they were fighting under orders, that we had killed the great leader and his men in the fight the day before, and we should let the rest go home. Sitting Bull gave this order. He said: "This is not my doings, nor these men's. They are fighting because they were commanded to fight. We have killed their leader. Let them go. I call on the Great Spirit to witness what I say. We did not want to fight. Long Hair sent us word that he was coming to fight us, and we had to defend ourselves and our wives and children." If this command had not been given we could have cut Reno's command to pieces, as we did Custer's."

Crow Scouts served Custer because the Crow and Sioux were on the outs at the time, and several Crow died that day. Yet the battlefield is on the Crow reservation.

Crow facts:

• 85 percent of the approximately 10,000 enrolled members of the Crow tribe (figures vary) speak Crow as their first language. and there are three variations on the name they call themselves: Apsaalooke, Absarokee, or Absaroka. It means "children of the large-beaked bird," which non-natives interpreted as "Crow," the name tribal members have come to use as well.
• The crow have enormous coal deposits under their 2.2 million acre reservation, and they maintain a herd of 300 bison.

I went looking for the Pretty Eagle School, which is a Catholic elementary school so far off the beaten path that my GPS stopped working after I got there. Fortunately, the lonely road I took had  long, straight stretches and landmarks like the sign at the left, which made it possible to find my way back.

A waitress at the Custer Battlefield Trading post dug up the phone number for the principal at Pretty Eagle School at St Xavier, and Garla Williamson, welcomed me without an appointment. The concept of a ball that never goes flat got her attention, and we agreed to have them try out one ball to see whether that would work in their situation. She rounded up two youngsters, and in the school library we shot the photo at the top of this blog. As we were walking to the library, she asked Lanette about balls on the playground.

"They go flat," said Lanette.

I figured I might be a pioneer for introducing One World Futbols to reservations in the U.S., but One World Play Project soon relieved me of that notion. Then, when I followed up with Garla, I found out I wasn't even the first on the Crow Reservation. After I had left. she discovered that someone had already delivered two cartons of One World Futbols to the reservation and they had been in storage. They are now in use.

Morocco Delivery

I mentioned Morocco in the headline. I still haven't told you the rest of the story about my Vietnam trip, but meanwhile, here's the lowdown on Morocco, where another medical team from Seattle Colleges traveled this summer.

The team held rural health clinics and worked in orphanages in four locations: Agadir, Asaka, Ighill, and Toldi Beach. When they saw the balls, "the children's faces just lit up, reports Andrea Insley, head of the Global Impact program that sends out the medical teams.

The teams not only enrich the communities they serve, they are also enriched by the experiences they have. Here is some information about the locations where they distributed the balls:

• Agadir: a major city in Morocco, located on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean near the foot of the Atlas Mountains and 508 kilometers south of Casablanca. The first language for a majority of the inhabitants is Shilha/Tashelhit, a Berber language of the Atlas branch.
• Asaka: Just go to the link: Asaka. You won't understand the language, but the graphics are superb.
• Ighill:  small town and rural commune in Al Haouz Province of the Marrakesh-Tensift-El Haouz region of Morocco. In  2004, the commune had 5619 people living in 858 households.
• Toldi Beach: Morocco has great beaches. 'nuff said.

After reading up on these places, I've decided I want to go to Morocco. Anyone want to come along?

Well, Wilson, that's the latest distribution update. There's more to tell about Vietnam, and that will be the subject of my next post.

Love,
Robert