Lightning in the Hand: An Apache Leader Hunts for the Past to Nourish the Future
Twila Cassadore rescues old Apache foods on the cusp of extinction.
02Phoenix New TimesLongform Features2019
The opening
In a New World grown old, near the end of the eastern Arizona winter and under a giant sky, the 1.8 million acres of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation spread into outer Sonoran Desert, alpine forest, and grassland. They suggest no history at all. No history but of plants and animals, rocks and seasons.
A scene
The young Apache deftly raises his stick, aims with his eyes, and strikes, strikes, strikes, strikes, strikes. Crunches of dead sticks, dry cactus. The skull caves.
And then the land will be, this wild part of it at least, but for global warming, quiet stories, and loud ghosts, just as it was 1,000 years before.
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