by Noe Alvarez
“Tienes que comer bien.” Eat well, my mother says.
“Te va ir bien. Te va ir bien,” my father repeats to me. “It’ll go well,” but really he says it as if to himself.
Later that day, after my parents have left, I brave the dining hall for the first time. The buffet lines are full of confident eaters who seem to have arrived knowing what to do. They seem like connoisseurs of food culture and taste as I watch them serve themselves delicate portions, their plates colorful with evenly balanced food groups. I look nervously at the nutritional details and descriptions of foods I’ve never seen, smelled, or tasted before. Words like, vegan, toxins, paleo, organic, grass-fed, and soy-based don’t help clarify for me what the foods actually are. I notice some people glancing at me and my confused plate—a mess of different diets: tofu on top of ground beef on top of tempeh and cheese. With two mounds of food finally gathered onto two plates, I stand scanning the intimate tables for people who look more like me. There’s witty, comedic, rapid-fire exchanges among people who appear to understand one another’s ways. People crosshatch around me. Hardly a person of color to be seen. It is one of the many spaces where I have a lot of catching up to do. A place where people knife and fork their pizza slices and dab napkins over the edges of their mouths. The kind of place where no one slurps bowls of soup or eats with their hands. Tortillas are something else in college. They’re burrito wraps and not finger food. I can’t eat normally here. Out of nervousness, I take multiple laps around the buffet stations, buying time, collecting myself while I read and study my environment—rehearsing in my mind for that moment when I will summon up the courage to squeeze myself at a table between friendly strangers.
On the following nights, I sit in my room, my stomach growling, staring at my clock and waiting for that crucial fifteen-minute window before closing time to enter the dining halls to eat alone.
College is a difficult transition. I scramble out of bed, dash late to classes, fall behind on my readings, and process lectures and conversations in a mental fog. It takes its toll. Whenever I talk to my family on the phone, I feign happiness. “No te preocupes, Amá,” I say. I try to reassure my mother that I’ve made many friends, that I fit into the culture just fine, that I’ll graduate in no time, and that I will come home to her a better and stronger person. And of course, that I’m eating well.
“No te quiero flaco, mijo.” I don’t want you skinny, she says.
My family does not know that I spend entire days hiding in my stuffy room, downwind of my roommate’s humidifier, looking out of my window and punishing myself with impossible expectations and the pressure to make my family proud. To come up with smarter comments and questions in class. To act on campus in ways that don’t out me as poor and ignorant. I conceal my sadness from my mother when we talk over the phone. On my desk are piles of homework and professors’ notes requesting to discuss my substandard performance. I fear confronting the world outside my room, because it is so intent on reminding me how unprepared and unintelligent I am.
Ancient Philosophy is the one class where I find a needed groove. There I discover Socrates and Aristotle, under a professor who speaks passionately and fearlessly about things like happiness, violence, ethics, and, “The unexamined life is no life for a human being to live.”
When I’m at my worst, I run into wheat fields, where my outline melts into the night. I never forget what my father said to me: “It’s either college or the fields, Noé.”
I have confused the negative Latino stereotypes for my own story, like an earwig burrowing into an ear, and internalized them for truth. I have second-guessed myself every step of the way, becoming ashamed of who I am and who my parents are.
Running helps vanquish these feelings. It reminds me that I have been telling myself the wrong story—that I don’t really belong, that we Latinos are an inferior people, that I am incapable of mastering the English language and moving confidently through the English-speaking world. And as long as I keep repeating these stories to myself, I will never escape their realities. In order to become someone else—achieve the full potential of my being, I have to engage in new imaginative acts. Running is one such act for me, a bonding with the world through the soles of my feet.
This chance to live a different and meaningful life, to confront my fears, comes to me in April of 2004.
6
Cold Feet
In April 2004, I attend a student-activist conference two hours south of Whitman College, at Eastern Oregon University. Before a workshop on Native American spirituality, presented by Pacquiao, a brochure catches my eye, about a run through North America, it says. North America? That can’t be right, I think to myself. The brochure announces a marathon of Indigenous runners that will commence in Alaska one month from now, in May, and finish at the Panama Canal six months later. I read more of the literature:
Peace and Dignity Journeys occur every four years and start with Indigenous runners on opposite ends of the continents (Chickaloon, Alaska and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina). They run for six months through hundreds of Indigenous communities where they participate in their respective spiritual practices and traditions; spark dialogue on the issue of peace and dignity for Indigenous peoples; model their responsibility to Mother Earth, Father Sky, communities, and themselves; and receive the community’s prayers. These prayers and conversations are then carried to proceeding communities until the runners reach the center of the hemisphere. When the runners meet at the Kuna Nation in Panama City, Panama, it will symbolize all Indigenous peoples joining together in a spiritual way to manifest the prophecy of the Eagle and Condor.
This was the year PDJ dedicated itself to the women. Four years before, it dedicated itself to the elders, and four years from now it will be for the seeds.
It hits me. This is what I want to do. My paternal grandfather, who I know only through my father’s stories, is of Purépecha Indigenous descent in the southern mountains of Michoacán, Mexico. I roll the itinerary in my hand and sprint to the classroom where Pacquiao holds his lecture.
I arrive to his class and find a seat—low attendance—in time to watch a video of people in Aztec headdresses wafting people in copal smoke, playing rattles, flutes, singing, drumming, running, and I’m immediately drawn in.
“We’re learning how to be human again,” a deep voice narrates over the flash of images of Native American men, women, and children, running with feathered staffs in their hands through different landscapes and countries—through deserts, jungles, city streets, and remote villages. Their ankles rattle with shells while they dance and run.
In all my excitement, I’m transported to Toppenish, Washington—home of the Yakama Nation—and tucked twenty miles south of my home in an equally dilapidated, dust-washed setting, beside junkyard lots, downwind of chicken- and cattle-farm odors. It was there, as a young boy, in a town of roughly nine thousand people, that I first developed an interest in Native American culture. A place WHERE THE WEST STILL LIVES, according to the town’s billboard. I have family there, which meant regular drives through the historic downtown where wooden saloon structures line the streets like the Wild West. Saloons depicting roughly seventy historical murals of Native Americans, bison, plains elk, gray wolves, and bighorn sheep that roamed the open plains. As a child, these images—the long-haired tribesmen racing spotted horses, the tipi encampments on the horizon, the majesty of wildlife, all called to me on a spiritual level that I didn’t fully understand at the time. I looked to these paintings of the Yakama Nation for hints of some direction in my own life—people who, like me, lived on the peripheries of society.
Pacquiao explains what running means. “To our people, running is our connective tissue and a form of prayer. But it is not for everyone and the run will quickly teach you that.” There are many obstacles to conquer, mountain slopes to overcome, emotions to rein in. The bad weather, physical pain, and living with scarce comforts. All in order to invoke the spirit inside of us in the ritual of runn
ing.
I learn that PDJ has its origins in the United Farm Workers of America’s 1966 march from Delano to Sacramento, California, to protest the working conditions of Latino and Filipino grape workers. It was a strike that lasted five years.
“In 1966, the people marched with an image of something that resonated with them—the religious symbol of the Virgin Mary—and in a way, that is how we lead the PDJ run today,” Pacquiao says—“under the symbol of the feathered staffs—symbols of a people’s struggles. In the end, a march is about learning how to work with the staffs, what it means to carry something like that, the stories and prayers of people.”
Running renews our responsibility to community, he says, our feet being like drums that “if listened to long enough, can alter the human heartbeat.”
He tells us that the run, though led by Native American communities, is open to everyone willing to put in the work. It operates in relay form—two vehicles help drop off and pick up runners in intervals of at least ten miles a day. Runners then cycle through two, sometimes three or four drop-offs, or stretches of running, a day—depending on the destination. Meaning, runners often surpass the daily minimum-ten-mile-run requirement, running up to thirty miles.
“We need people who can run,” he says. People who don’t mind running twenty or thirty miles a day every day for the next six months. People with a great deal of self-discipline. People who can survive on little food.
People in the audience look around at one another. This is crazy, we’re all thinking. But, my heart can barely contain itself.
Orchard life has contaminated my relationship to the land. I saw the land assaulted with pesticides, uprooted with shovels and tractors, overharvested with apple trees, and bordered with animal traps. Animals caught in these traps were then dumped into a pond by the owner. I grew to hate the land for what was done to it, and for what it had done to my parents, whose calloused hands I can never forgive, nor forget.
Students start trickling out of the classroom while Pacquiao starts to pack his bag. In a few minutes Pacquiao will walk out of my life forever, and I wonder if I’ll ever get another chance at something so majestic. There’s no clear answer. But my life as it is offers me nothing better. College is not the answer. My parents’ hearts will break if I do this, and that hurts me.
But on the run is where I need to be. Out there, fully immersed in a new kind of chaos, in the wild, alongside Native runners, and relearning to be myself. A place where I can learn to be a better and a stronger son to my parents, a journey where I can push myself to the limit and begin to approach the pain of migration. I want to honor my parents’ journey to the United States by embarking on my own adventure, and run on my own terms.
On a friend’s suggestion, I walk to the office of the president at Whitman College, up the winding stairs where a nice receptionist escorts me through a set of large doors to greet a tall man in a white, long-sleeve shirt, and a great smile. My pitch: funding assistance for a one-way airplane ticket to Canada. I try to explain, but all I can manage is, “I need this.” He takes one good look at me, turns to his desk, and writes me a check for $500.
“Now, are you sure that this is going to be enough for you?” he asks.
I assure him that it’s plenty, thank him, and we shake hands.
With only one month to get into physical shape and make arrangements, I purchase a one-way airfare to Canada, and I drop out of college. I keep the brochure close, to remind myself why I am doing this:
In 1990, over 200 representatives of Native Nations throughout Turtle Island [South, Central, and North America] met in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss, strategize, and take action on issues affecting Indigenous People. Elders discussed the prophecy of the Eagle and Condor. This prophecy to unite Native people supports the goal of all Indigenous People and Nations uniting after centuries of colonization.
Inspired by this prophecy, elders proposed Peace and Dignity Journeys as a way to realize this unification. Through spiritual running and networking, Indigenous Peoples as a united force, from all over Turtle Island, can reclaim peace and dignity by honoring Indigenous values, ways of life, and current struggles of resistance to modern civilization.
Peace and Dignity Journeys aim to organize spiritual runs to heal our Nations through prayer from the effects of colonization; honor our elders and traditional people; honor Indigenous children, womyn, and future generations; remember all of our ancestors; continue the struggle of those that resisted invasion and colonization before us; promote peace, justice, respect, and dignity between all people; honor the sacredness of Mother Earth; create vehicles for cultural exchange between Indigenous Nations in which art, dance, music, and ceremonies can be shared and respected; celebrate the strength, survival, and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and our ability to preserve our languages, cultures, and spirituality for over 500 years. (Peace and Dignity Journeys 2004, Oakland, California)
On my nineteenth birthday, May 26, 2004, over dinner at the El Sombrero Mexican Restaurant in Walla Walla, I inform my parents of my decision to join the Peace and Dignity Journeys runners in Canada in three days’ time, on May 29.
My father remains quiet, as if already having anticipated this moment many years prior—aware that we are not yet free of our family’s restless conditions. Survival is what compels us to move. He eats quietly as I continue to explain to them the specifics of Peace and Dignity Journeys—only the parts that don’t seem too scary. I don’t tell them that I will live outdoors, that I don’t intend on returning to school, or that I don’t have much money. Instead, I tell them that I’m going on a little vacation, with friends. That I’ll be housed in hotels and fed gourmet food. I don’t tell them that I have no idea where I’ll be, who the people I’m joining are, and that, in reality, I don’t quite understand the logic of the run and that I’m scared shitless. My father can see through me, but says nothing. My mother scolds me for giving up college.
“No quiero que te vayas, mijo,” she argues.
We finish our meal in silence, and in three days’ time, my father and little brother drive me to the Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle. It is my time to explore the world on my own.
RUN
7
The Arrival
I come to Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, by a small airplane that flies above green mountains so unlike the desert browns of my Yakima. It’s the twenty-ninth of May, 2004, and it has already been one month since the runners departed Alaska on May 1. The small plane lands in an airport closest to the camp of runners.
Two women from the run, Ipana and Kara, greet me, and I follow them outside, one bag over my shoulder. I inhale this new air deeply. It’s icier, crisper, almost sweeter than anything I have inhaled before. The surrounding mountains are massive and green.
“Thank you for coming for me,” I say. “I was worried that no one would be here to pick me up. Pacquiao hadn’t returned my calls.”
They tell me that communication with the outside world is difficult on the PDJ run, especially in the woods, where the runners have set up camp. Pacquiao—the only one equipped with any real technology, which is to say, a basic phone, camera, and laptop used strictly for his work—is often away from the camp coordinating with communities for supplies of food and accommodations for runners to sleep. His equipment is off-limits to runners.
“At first we didn’t know if you were our guy. But then we knew,” Ipana says, smiling from the passenger seat while Kara drives. The car rolls onto a gravel road and rocks over potholes that start to make me nauseated. I crack open the window for relief. The air is wrapped in an aroma of wildflowers and sap warming in the sun.
“How’d you all know?” I ask. “My gear?”
“Your shoes. Could see them a mile away.” They laugh. My shoes are neon yellow. The brightest objects in this part of Canada.
In addition to those shoes, I have a change of clothes, a journal, and a 1,600-page dictionary that, I argued to myself when I packed,
contained all the books in the world.
The camp smells of cedar smoke when I finally step out of the car and, with my shirt, wipe the light rain fogging my glasses.
Slouched and huddled around the thin coils of smoke rising from a dying campfire are people who look as if they’ve just come back from battle. They have a hard look on their faces, ones that weigh heavily from all the running—their spirits low from one month of intense marathoning. They’re tired. Tired of eating and sleeping too little. The discomforts of the outdoors, and their wet, molding clothes. Tired of the daily adjustments, setting up and breaking down camps, runners bailing out on them, and tired of newbies like me coming and leaving, invading their space, eating up all their food, causing problems, proselytizing ideologies, and not pulling their weight.
Around them, garments hang from clotheslines between a trailer home and various trees. In the distance, the faint sounds of a radio playing rap music. I notice a jeep—Pacquiao’s—and two vans—a large brown one and Andrec’s gray minivan. A man wearing large headphones—Cheeto—is cleaning the inside of the vans, sweeping the upholstery, and tossing out trash bags.
Under the hood of the brown van is a former gangster by the name of Trigger, from East Los Angeles. He’s wearing a tank top, has a shaven head like me, and has swirls of tattoos on his arms. He walks up to me, wringing a dirty rag with his oily hands.