Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

darkness, a bear cub came up beside me. I
remembered what someone had told me about bears
being “face-to-face creatures,” so I leaned towards
the cub, and he bumped noses with me quite civilly
and walked on.
It was all wonderful. But then—
Then I looked over and saw the rocks in the river.
“The ranch was right on the river, I saw that from the
map I found,” I whispered to Louise, and that was
sacred, significant.
And that’s when I made a break for it. Till then I’d
been content to just go wherever the guides told us
to go, view whatever they had to show us, but when I
saw that spot in the river—rocks—and one large,
strangely shaped, light-colored rock out on an island
of smaller rocks in the river itself—I suddenly began
to run toward it. I wasn’t supposed to. I got the
feeling it was something the guides were sort of
withholding from us—but I knew, I knew this was
the thing that had been pulling me like a magnet this
whole time, this whole search for El Potrero. Fully
clothed, with my shoes on, I ran right into the river,
waded through the clear warm waters to the little
rocky island, and Louise was right behind me! We
were crying again as we approached the large rock