Getting our kicks on Route 66 and staying in Motel 6's, we felt like we were tempting fate. It was hot, dang hot, in the Southwest and although the aircon was working, we didn't want to overheat our delicate Scandinavian ride. So we rode on with the windows down until we started climbing into the mountains around Santa Fe. The adobe buildings in Santa Fe were groovy, although the lack of parking and the abundance of tourists convinced us to move on.
We stopped quickly at an outdoor shop to inquire about climbing in the area. The guy who helped us turned out to be a R.I. ex-Patriot from East Greenwich who had hitchhiked out in the '70's to be a ski bum for a year. We told him about the time we were driving between Dallas and Ft. Worth on the interstate when a guy in a huge red truck yells at us to roll down the window (we thought we saw a gun rack). Hesitantly I do, and he asks. "Where y'all from in Rhode Island? My wife's from Warwick!!!" The Lil'Rhody diaspora. That was us. Little did we know just how far away from Rhode Island we were about to feel.

I did finally consult our Let's Go USA book because we wanted to stay somewhere, well, cheap. A hostel in the Sandia Mountains! The book says the owners are nice, and something about donkeys. So I talk to the owner, yes, they have a cabin, it's semi-private, meaning, someone may be sleeping in one of the rooms or he might not. With or without his girlfriend. Well we really just wanted to cook our own food and chill and the guy said the dude probably wouldn't show. So we booked it. We get there and there are the donkeys, big ones, horse-sized ones, that the owner catches somewhere in wild donkey land and breaks in so you can ride them around the mountains. They are wandering about the yard, paying us no mind. Good, we think, we are going to go cook our steak and pretend this is our cabin with our donkeys in our yard. After dinner, we decide to hook the laptop up to the phone line so we can check our e-mail. It's pretty late and we think we are safe from having to share our cabin with a stranger. Then we see headlights through the kitchen window.

In comes this formidable long-haired Japanese guy who belts, "Hey, that's my phone line you're using!" and disappears into his room, girlfriend in tow. It was late so we started cleaning up...and getting ready to retreat to bed. They came out to make sandwiches and Eddy took the opportunity to turn on the charm in Japanese...you can only be so polite in English. He was intrigued by what the hostel owner had told us about this guy: a self-appointed cultural attache between the Navajo Nation and Japan. It didn't take long until everyone was quite warmed up, Tsuyoshi and Eddy being bilingual and me and Michio needing constant translation, but it worked. Tsuyoshi had been a regular guy working in media in L.A. and had gone on vacation out here. He met a Navajo who offered lodging in his hogan (traditional octagonal log hut used now for ceremonies) indefinately and Tsuyoshi stayed for a year, living sans electricity and water, and earning their trust and respect. Tsuyoshi began to see parallels between native american beliefs and some of the ancient shamanistic beliefs of Japan. He began to go to dances and other events, singing and drumming. His beautiful girlfriend Michio who attended sweat lodges in Japan before coming to the U.S., also sang and in this way they got invited to events all over the west. They invited us to the next one they were attending, the day after next, in a small town about 40 miles outside Taos called Angelfire.

We were thrilled at the prospect. He told us this was not something that tourists got to see, it is for the dancers and their families and the host tribe. There were rules that we followed to a varying degree of success. I was instructed to wear a skirt and shawl. (the shawl I picked up for a song in downtown Taos was not what they'd had in mind...it was the $300 ones they were thinking of) Absolutely no photography. I couldn't be on my "moon time," something that seemed to me quite random but he explained it was a cleansing ceremony, and women on their moon times are having their own little cleansing ceremony or something.

The day of the sundance, Angelfire was having its annual air show, with hot air balloons setting off ahead as we drove from our absolutely shagadelic honky-tonk hotel
in nearby Eagle Nest. We met up and followed Tsuyoshi and his unintelligible directions to a locked gate on the outskirts of town. Beyond the gate was an uneven meandering dirt road leading into a fir forest, from which the sound of drums and chanting were emanating. We knew this is what we were coming for but it didn't keep me from imagining at the end of that dirt road was a boiling pot of water waiting for me. I was blazingly white at that instant. I kept telling myself, "tell them you're with the band..."

When we arrived, there was a beautiful circular birch arbor partially roofed with fir boughs in a wide clearing. In the center of the arbor was a very tall birch trunk with colored strips of fabric and ropes hanging off of it from the very top down to head-height. The dance had already started and as we approached we saw this guy running around in the circle dragging something. He was shirtless and had a headband of twisted red fabric. He was wearing a red sarong, and looked, I swear, like Jesus. People were chanting, louder and louder as he ran faster and faster in the circle, then he dropped the thing and everyone started to cheer. We got close enough to realize he was bleeding out of two holes in his back. Those things he was dragging were seven cow skulls hitched together attached to his flesh with sharpened bone. Then he lay down and a medicine man put a poultice on the wounds. Woo-hoo! More chants. And another guy comes out and the medicine man does something to his chest and he's hooked up to the pole. It occurred to me that although we had been physically prepared for attending a sundance, technically, we had not been prepared intellectually. What exactly was going on? The guy leans back, the two ropes attached to him tighten. Chanting. Leans again. Other sundance participants are around, encouraging him. The two medicine men are encouraging him. Everyone under the arbor, the "supporters," are chanting. I was asked to dance and chant too, for the sundancers. One rope goes. Pop! Everyone sings louder. Finally the other one pops and someone is there to catch him if he falls back. I sensed through all this masochism a love that was just not making sense to me.

Tsuyoshi explained the dancers had been at this for four days and this was the last day. They had been fasting, and entering a sweat lodge every morning. They danced all four days under the sun or rain and quite a few of them were sunburned (this particular tribe welcomes whites as long as they are serious about being members...and this is a good way to show you are serious!) In order to be a sundancer, you have to have gone on at least four vision quests in as many years and you have to be told by the medicine man that you are ready. We met a Hopi/Navajo named Robert who filled in more of the story. This was a flesh sacrifice for the betterment of the world. (aha! not only the Japanese have some similarities to native american religion) It was also worship of the sun god, hence sundance. The supporters (mostly comprised of the dancers' families) had to keep looking up at the sky/towards the top of the pole and singing praises. The ribbons were prayer flags people attach before the pole gets hefted into the air, so their prayers will be closer to god.

This was a long 12-hour day and I didn't even have to give a flesh sacrifice (it was offered...they take a tiny bit of your flesh as a prayer then give it back to you on a little square of fabric). Eddy got picked twice by the medicine man to be peace pipe officiator. The medicine man said, "Big Heart, come with me," and Eddy looked at me like, "where am I going? please don't make me go!" But by the second time he was feeling pretty special. At the end the participants lined up and thanked the sundancers for their great sacrifice and then we all lined up for Buffalo stew.