Spirit Run

by Noe Alvarez

  “All right, little man. Mexica, tiawi!” Tlaloc shouts out the passenger window of the gray van as it drives ahead of me. “Mexicans, onward!” in the Nahuatl language. The gray minivan disappears, leaving me with Trigger scanning me from the bigger van. He drives slowly beside me, one hand on the wheel, the other under his chin. He glares at me.

  “Everyone pulls their own weight around here. Got it?” he warns me.

  I nod. To him, I am extra weight. A rookie needing to be put in his place.

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “Got it. I’m here to work. Really. I’m eager to learn,” I say between running breaths. He smirks and speeds up, the vehicle’s wheels further stripping the earth, and it quickly disappears down the tree-lined road. It’s clear to me now that, at least unofficially, Trigger has a role managing PDJ. He acts like a leader, or perhaps a bully.

  I punch my arms into the air and beat my chest like I did along the Naches River—reviving this human flesh into action. The wind cracks branches around me like a whip whipping me into shape. In this isolation I take the opportunity to shout it down, to scream at the ugly things inside of me as loudly as possible. I yell to make my speech physical, to give my words muscle, and to build the strength necessary to speak the things I never could.

  I run to follow as closely as I can the path of those who came before me—migrants who knew suffering and deprivation. I run to find fragments of my own parents sprinkled over the earth, artifacts, their stories of hope and desperation. In facing these things, I try to finally bring an end to the suffering that has haunted me in childhood. I want to learn how to embrace my past, where I came from, and to love myself again.

  I am finally, I feel in this forest, on a path toward becoming free.

  8

  Tree Noodles

  While other people’s fingers trace over maps on the hood of Pacquiao’s jeep, on a hill overlooking Alkali Lake, in Canada’s British Columbia, I open my tin of Tiger Balm muscle ointment. I lather it over my knees, letting it prickle. The smell alone is resuscitating. Before me, the lake’s pristine waters are wedged between shards of steep mountains. Pacquiao, Andrec, Chula Pepper, and Trigger are in a huddle with a local elder from the small town of Clinton. They’re charting a route through the mountains via an old trader’s road. It is said that only a few elders know how to navigate it by heart. The elder from Clinton is one of them.

  Among us since Prince George has been another mysterious figure who has appeared more comfortable in the shadows than in the sunlight. A man by the name of Marx, dressed in black, with clothes imprinted with the red star of anarchy. A person, I would later learn, who is former military. He, in his thirties like most of the others, often postured in the company of Trigger and Tlaloc, a clique of alphas keeping everyone in check. I have heard that he has had run-ins with women and Cheeto since Alaska. People he has cut down with insults, provocations, and intimidation.

  “Whatever you do, stay away from that guy,” Cheeto warns me. “Dude’s not well.”

  A new girl appears: seventeen-year-old Crow. She has piercing black eyes and long black hair tied into a ponytail. News of the run had come to her through her sister’s husband, who ran in 1996. The night before, she had gotten cold feet about joining. Crow had informed her parole officer of her plan to join the run, and had persuaded the officer as well as herself that it would be a good thing for her. But fear overtook her, and she hid in her favorite hiding spot in the woods. A cousin who knew where to find her caught up with her and convinced her to leave home for the sake of her mental health. It’s been nearly a year since the death of her baby, and a year of living off the land in the woods, healing among elders who were helping reacquaint her to the old ways—fishing, hunting, and gathering medicine.

  We gather around for Circle, where Pacquiao gives final word and direction. Like a sports team huddled around a coach, soldiers at attention, or worshippers at a church, Circle is a time to check in, talk general logistics, pick up staffs, dance, sing, and bring minds together in sacred reflection. They can last anywhere from half an hour to several hours. It is a time when the feathered staffs are picked up in the morning and put to rest at the end of the day. Circle is also a time for conflict resolution, a place for all to have a say, often lasting for hours and passing well into midnight.

  “Brothers and sisters, today we run through the Lillooet and Mount Currie territories—beautiful and tough territories,” he says. They are communities along the Fraser River, situated among deep gorges about 150 miles north of Vancouver.

  “Before we move on, let’s remember why we’re here,” Pacquiao continues. “We’re here because we’ve made a pact with the land. To live in nature in a way that is not disruptive.” An act that is done through running and that takes time to develop, he says. It takes time to plug into the land. “When you plug into it, it is strong, beautiful. But in many ways we’re still not there, not strong enough to be there.” That’s why we run. I worry he’s considering eliminating some of us from the run.

  “Many communities are still trying to bring up their spiritual strengths, unearth themselves from the traumas of the past,” he says. “That is why we use staffs.” The staffs are works of art. They symbolize prayer. “They are instruments so powerful that sometimes it takes several people to wield them.” Pacquiao points to the large paddle staff of Washington State, gifted to the run four years prior, and representative of the Canoe People.

  After Circle, Chula Pepper tells me about her connection to the run. “If I hadn’t met Pacquiao, I wouldn’t have participated in PDJ,” she says. “He pulled me in.” They had both done philanthropy work in San Francisco, organizing for the PDJ. Chula Pepper was turning thirty years old, and, she tells me, “I was getting out of a relationship with a woman.” She had nowhere to go. No job. Everything seemed to converge on one option. PDJ. “I identified as a gay woman in a Mexican community, if you can imagine,” she says. Her words give me relief. People’s paths are unique, beautiful.

  “I really trust Pacquiao,” she tells me. “He knows my own issues around being a second-, third-generation Mexican. My anxiety about fitting in—‘Not white, what are you? Not really Mexican, what are you?’” She struggled with identity, had difficulty transitioning into Chicanx/Latinx communities and had a breakdown over it, and the meaning of Mexican, she says.

  “I was raised Catholic, went to private school, and my dad was part of Knights of Columbus. I played sports,” she will outline for me. “I had two younger sisters. I was part of the smallest Mexican family in my neighborhood,” she laughs. “My parents divorced when I was eight years old and my mom became a single mother. After that, I went to public school mostly among Portuguese and Mexican classmates who didn’t include me because I had grown up sheltered. I didn’t have much cultural awareness,” I will learn, and she will tell me about her first encounters with Mexican cholas, gangsters who chased and beat her up in junior high for growing up in a suburban white area. “‘What are you anyway?’ was people’s favorite question,” she will say.

  Like in many of our communities, there is certain stigma associated with one’s appearance. “My grandmother would always pinch her nose in the mirror,” Chula Pepper says. “One day I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was missing cartilage and wanted to give herself a pointier nose.” Chula Pepper pushed against this narrative. “She was ashamed of her looks.”

  She trusts Pacquiao and believes in what he is doing and his vision of what PDJ should look like. Finally, there is a place for her.

  Pacquiao, Andrec, and Trigger finally organize the runners into action, including our new team member, Crow. As they gather equipment and load up the van, someone from Crow’s community catches up to her and hands her an object: it is a small feathered staff, in honor of her lost baby.

  We drive a short distance to where the old, dusty trailhead is—the start of today’s run. Pacquiao and the elder from Clinton have driven ahead to meet runne
rs at certain intervals on the trail and to steer us in the right direction since we are in tricky territory. The elder, I overhear, is one of Crow’s teachers. He’s a man born of this land, Crow says. He lives in a cabin he built himself, with no electricity. He taught Crow everything about drying and cutting meat, hunting grouse, and getting medicine from the land. He taught her about “tree noodles.”

  “They’re harvested in the spring by peeling the inner bark,” she tells me. “You run your knife down the side and you fill up your bucket.” They’re found in jack pine trees and balsam firs. “In old times, they were used as markings—for establishing direction, like the north. For when Indigenous families traveled on trails, migrating, to know where they were.” She talks about how this elder from the Clinton area liked to put noodles on his plate like spaghetti and that, though he’s still very traditional, he eats a lot of sugar. “He dips all those noodles in the sugar. Hangs them over the poles over the smoking rack until they dry hard. They’re used for when you’re out hiking. Survival food.” But, she warns, eating too much of them causes stomachaches because the noodles expand in the stomach.

  I am among the first people to run today, and I’m eager to expand my spirit and prove myself. When possible, I try to volunteer for extra mileage, trying to take in as much natural beauty as possible. It’s better than being cramped inside the vans. I try tagging along with Tlaloc and Refugio—strong runners who seem deeply in touch with the spirit of the land. They talk openly to it, sing to it. I am eager to learn from them, to see what others see, and be fearless in nature.

  I follow Refugio and Tlaloc’s lead, into trails that are steep, windy, and rocky, trails that are like deep gashes in the earth. They move expertly through tunnels of foliage, ducking around boughs that brush and mark me. Our feet kick up earth that probably hasn’t been disturbed in ages. We maneuver through overgrowth and over rolling rocks, our movement increasingly taking the form of the wild animals writhing within us. I try taking it one manageable step at a time, doing my best to focus on the ground before me and banishing any fears: Will I get lost? Can I surpass ten miles? Will I encounter predatory animals?

  The land opens momentarily, where Pacquiao and the Clinton elder wait inside the vehicle. I welcome the sunlight warming my shoulders.

  “Keep going,” they instruct us, giving us further direction, then driving away, leaving me to trail behind the faint sounds of Refugio and Tlaloc’s singing.

  9

  “Indian Time”

  Lillooet Nation, British Columbia, Canada.

  Zyanya Lonewolf, who is becoming a good friend of mine, wraps a bandana around her wrist for collecting sweat, ties her hair back, and puts on a visor cap that she picked up from a donation pile somewhere. She, along with Kara, Crow, Chula Pepper, Chenoa, and others, leads the run forward in a collective pace for a mile or two before hopping back into the vans and continuing the run individually, in the order of relay at about ten-mile intervals.

  The path is perilous here. We run along winding highways, where trucks accelerate dangerously close to runners, causing Zyanya Lonewolf to hop to safety in the brush, or skirt dangerous precipices.

  “Drivers are trying to hit me,” Zyanya Lonewolf says to me after hopping into the van. “I jumped to get out of the way.” She catches her breath. “I can tell it was on purpose. Damn truck sped up.”

  It is here that Zyanya Lonewolf starts to have doubts about continuing on the run. There’s a long history of violence against Indigenous people here, high tension between tribal members and locals, dating back to displacement, the abusive residential-school systems, the string of murders spanning from the 1970s, and the missing and disappeared Indigenous women along the Highway of Tears. She tells me how racism is rampant in these parts of town and that it’s frustrating that the women need to be especially careful. “You, too, eh,” she concludes. “Getting hit by a car here would be no accident.”

  I knew that running wasn’t going to be easy.

  In the bathrooms, in her tent, and in the privacy of the trees near our camps, Zyanya Lonewolf does what she calls, “mirror work”—having motivational talks with herself in a mirror: “I love you, Zyanya Lonewolf. I love you, Zyanya Lonewolf.” It is a belief among her people, she says, that intense fear can take away one’s spirit, to the point of death. In such cases, it is important to call it back: “Come back, Zyanya Lonewolf, come back.” All of a sudden you feel warm, she says. “I love you, Zyanya Lonewolf. You’re doing the right work. I can do this. I can keep going.”

  Finally, after many long hours, the run comes to a huddle on the outskirts of the Lillooet Nation. It is a land that opens onto a great canyon valley of wildflowers and horses near the Fraser River. Bulbous clouds filter the sunlight. The finish line to Lillooet is near, the elder from Clinton tells us. Only ten minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty, he says, and almost everyone hops out of the vans to attempt this last stretch into town together.

  “Those who want to run the rest of the way into town should get off now,” Trigger announces, and it’s here that I learn the hard way what people call “Indian time”—an unreliable estimate in time and distance that often doubles, triples our runs.

  “We’ll drive ahead and set up camp,” Andrec adds.

  It’s the natural order of life, to run together. Carrying our communities forward, people run in one tumbling ball of high spirits behind the women, in a formation that restores my energy. We charge over land where horses graze, some of us singing. Tall grasses and a rainbow of wildflowers sway in the wind, turning the land into a kind of ocean of floral impressionism. I hold back, watching Nature’s brush strokes at work even upon its spotted horses feeding and observing me from behind wooden fences. I’m downwind of them and can smell their hides.

  Later, applauding families, little children, and hand drummers line the streets of Lillooet for our arrival. In a throng of singing women with their fists held high into the air, traditional music all around, we are led to a sacred hill for Closing Ceremony. There, where the air smells of sweetgrass and food, the community gathers in a large circle. My stomach grumbles.

  I learn there that the song the women have been singing is called the “Woman Warrior” song, written by a local Lil’wat woman who was imprisoned for defending Native lands.

  “Like our sister who endured years of imprisonment for defending her homeland, we stand here today in similar cause. Now, more than ever, our mother needs us,” a community leader says. Some people hold their staffs to the sky. Others kneel down to the earth. They talk about what plagues our communities—poverty, substance abuse, displacement, and oil extraction. “It is women who have sustained our communities, and it will be women who will bring back life into our lands,” one speaker concludes.

  My mother—referred to by her sisters as la Chiva Güera, “the White Goat,” due to her light complexion, was born in Coahuayana, Michoacán—living there some forty days, before her father moved the family to El Paderón, then to La Placita, where they lived until she was ten years old, and finally to the neighboring state of Colima. Colima was where she put down roots before leaving for the U.S. at the age of fifteen.

  She lived in a rancher’s and businesswoman’s household—her dad dealing in cows, and her mom selling whatever she could, mostly food, out of her house. From a young age, my mom went door-to-door selling her mother’s tamales, breads, and candies.

  “I was good at this,” my mom often said proudly. “I could sell everything my mom gave me to sell.”

  She talked happily of living in her quaint home down a cobbled street, within turquoise walls, with her two sisters. They lived there as domestic help, were taken out of school to work in their mother’s shop, cooked the dinners, retrieved the tortillas, bought the produce in the markets, and washed the clothes.

  Her mom had put her on a bus in Guadalajara for Tecate, Baja California, to then be taken to a brother living in Cowiche, Washington, thirteen miles from Yakima, where he lived in an o
vercrowded ranch house, decrepit and rat-infested, on the property of the orchard owner who worked them long hours. Her job, it was determined without her consultation, was to care for her brother’s two children, while she lived among strangers in one corner of a living room partitioned with blankets.

  My mom rarely spoke of Mexico with me. It was probably too painful for her to talk about how she immediately regretted coming to Yakima, having had a happier life with her family in Mexico. It would be many years before she disclosed to me her labors planting pines in the mountains near Yakima and having all her wages taken by her brother. After about two difficult years of struggling this way, she left her brother’s house while he was away at work, to live with a cousin and his wife, people who helped her raise and save money picking apples. Despite her brother’s threats to send her back to Mexico, my mother stayed, and survived.

  Thirty years later in Yakima, when I see my mother sit in church, her parents now deceased, her milky white hands clasped together in prayer, I kneel beside her, wondering if she thinks it was worth it all.

  In Lillooet, the community distributes corn, fry bread, and buffalo. I fill my stomach. The children play and look upon us inquisitively. It will be their turn one day to run. As it grows dark, and the festive meal carries on, Zyanya Lonewolf of the Wolf Clan People shares a moment with me. She tells me why she decided to join the run. Her cousin, Ramona Lisa Wilson, a close and dear friend to her, was murdered along the Highway of Tears. Ramona was sixteen years old and one of twenty-one women whose lives were taken on that stretch of highway. This death haunted Zyanya Lonewolf. It is for her family and her cousin, the disappeared women, that Zyanya Lonewolf runs. It is a stand against the injustice, violence against women, and a move to take back the streets.