I awoke to a
cold ground blizzard,
the chill factor well below
zero, the traders had made
trips to the woodpile, the warmth
of the crackling fire thawed my eyelids, 
I saw her on traders row in the San Juan,

kokanee salmon lying
on her table, Jim Bridger,
the first white man to set eyes
on her, stopped his wagon filled
with gunpowder, balls, flints, bear
traps, and whiskey, asks Kit Carson,
who she is.  Bridger takes off his beaver
hat, turns it up, throws inside it a bottle of
whiskey and sets it on her table, "Raise a little
Cain, Animas River Woman of Durango," he said,
picked up one of her kokanee salmon and walked
off to his wagon for a cast-iron skillet and cooked
his fish trade over the crackling fire,

The buckskin tipis
weaved through the vertical
trunks of the tightly-packed dog-hair
lodgepole, the sounds are intimate, the
grunts and snorts of the elk where rut has
come, the ground near the Animas river muddy
with elk prints, the big bull tearing up the sod with
his antlers, I make my way to Animas River Woman
of Durango before the men get to her in rut season,

I set my bubbling
cauldron of homemade
soup and a special flint on
her table, and picked up one
of her kokanee salmon, "Raise
a little Cain, Animas River Woman
of Durango," I say, Jim Bridger I laid
eyes on her first, you see, it's all how you
do your trading and your priorities, the errant
tomahawk sliced my trade fish I am holding, Kit
Carson's throw way off course in the men's
competition trader's row games, black powder
shooting, bow and arrow, trap setting, skillet throwing,
and the like,

"bring the whiskey, 
Animas River Woman of
Durango," I motion her to my
tipi not about to find myself empty
handed after months of isolation and
hardship, I demonstrate my primitive
fire starting technique, our rendezvous
hot, the flint scintillating our naked flesh,

Mesa Verde cliffdwellers
arrive with their pots, a very
welcome sight on trader's row,
Jim Bridger offers Animas River
Woman of Durango and I, Sweetwater,
a hand in taking down our tipis and took us
off in his wagon journeying on to the The Four
Corners through Ignacio, Cortez, and Mesa Verde
where we met Stone Creek Woman who pointed up
to a bird in the sky and said, "It is up to the pinon jay 
where to fly next, but there is no reason not to observe
its flight."


Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist