June 1977 Family and Glacier Park

I have often thought of my life as being divided into many different worlds. I have my family world. My growing up world in Cleveland Heights, Ohio (you know, the place where Taylor Swift’s fiancé grew up), my college world, my graduate student world, my reservation world, my working world, and my Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association world. All these worlds are neurotically organized, like my desk. Each world is loaded to the gills with many life experiences and with different people. When people from one of these worlds show up in a world to which they don’t belong, my head usually blows up. It isn’t a negative explosion; it is merely an experiential explosion.

I experienced this phenomenon when my brother, his wife, and my sister came out to Hays to visit Susie and I in June 1977. What the hell are people from my family world doing in my reservation world? It made for an interesting month. While none of this shows up in my field notes, we shlept them all over Hays to meet and visit with all our good friends. They spent time with our friends at the mission. We hiked with them through the canyon and into the mountains. They were with us for the Catholic Indian Congress. As I was responsible for organizing, preparing and serving the meals over the three-day Congress, they helped Susie and I a lot with this effort. They were overwhelmed and fascinated by all of it. And of course, Edith dressed up my sister like an Indian princess.

While this has nothing to do with the price of fish, one of my great regrets is that I didn’t record stuff that was going on in mine and Susie’s personal lives. My field notes were my observations from my research and my interviews. As a result, so much of the personal experiences we had were lost. They are in my brain, but so many of the memories are inaccessible. Many of the photographs I took help to access some of these memories … but I know that a lot was lost. Such is life.

I spent the weeks they were with us with my head blowing up.

With all of the work that was involved in my research, all our responsibilities at the mission, my teaching at Urban Rural, and everything else we had going on, Susie and I didn’t take very time away from Hays. June was such an unusual month for us because we made a couple of trips away from the reservation. Our first trip was to Glacier National Park with my family. It was also Susie’s and my first wedding anniversary, which we spent in a tent with my sister! We drove to Glacier, and we spent two days driving and hiking around the park. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The Little Rockies were the only mountains I’d spent time in before we went to Glacier. The park had a very different variety of mountains. It was spectacularly beautiful.

I still own and wear that shirt.