Conservationist, rattlesnake handler, activist? On the trail with an increasingly angry, gun-toting loner.
“I’ve got over a dozen rattlesnakes in my trailer,” the man with the gun told me.1 We were high up on Pusch Ridge overlooking the gridlined roads of Tucson and Oro Valley. He went on, “I live far out, east of Oracle. I tell folks around there, if you see a snake, don’t kill it. They want to, you know? Kill it. It’s what they’re taught. But I tell them, call me and I’ll get it.”
Note 1
This story tells of my time hiking with a man I met in Oro Valley, Arizona. The footnotes lay out my process for trying to understand the experience.
“Very kind of you,” I replied. The guy looked mid-60s, grey under a mesh-backed cap, tucked in t-shirt, camo pants. Tall and fit. His gun was a big .45 pistol, desert tan, maybe a Smith & Wesson. Not a revolver. The holster clipped to his belt. Many hikers carry guns in the mountains around Tucson, but not really on Pusch Ridge, a short, popular ascent in the western reaches of the Catalina range.
“My neighbors’ kids come around the place and I show them the snakes,” the guy squinted at Baboquivari Peak to the southwest. “I tell them, snakes aren’t out to bite people. Snakes just want to eat rats. That’s a good thing. And, you know, snakes have the same right to be here as we do. More right really.”2
Note 2
The man’s humane attitude toward snakes put me at ease. Bites are uncommon for how many rattlesnakes there are in the U.S. The Forest Service reports about 8.000 bites per year, with ten to 15 deaths. I don’t know if this is appropriate or not, but I use a person’s attitude toward snakes as a gauge of their overall rationality and I take a low view of people who kill them. According to the Forest Service: “Most snake bites occur when a rattlesnake is handled or accidentally touched by someone walking or climbing. The majority of snakebites occur on the hands, feet and ankles.” Rattlesnakes are always on defense, never on offense. Many bites are dry, which is when the snake strikes, but doesn’t inject venom.
“That’s great,” I said. He spoke easily, not overanxious like some lonely retirees get. Nothing about his clothes or accent pegged him as a snowbird. His neck was dark from desert sun in a way particular to year-round residents, more Cabela’s than REI. I told him, “I don’t know any people who’ve been bit by a snake, but a couple of my friends’ dogs got hit. Both dry bites, luckily.”
“Well, yeah,” the man agreed. “My daughter reminds me to watch the dogs around the rattlesnakes. She read something on rattlesnake avoidance training cause she’s in vet school.”
Mind if I walk with you? You can lose me if I’m too slow. Won’t break my heart.
“She must have dealt with a few rattlesnake bites around here.”
“She’s out east, actually, at Tufts.”3
Note 3
Tufts University Veterinary School sits in the green maples of Grafton, Massachusetts. It’s where my parents took their fox terrier for neurological symptoms. Tufts deals with complex veterinary issues and wildlife rescue. Some of the buildings formerly belonged to Grafton State Hospital, an “asylum” for the mentally ill, where my grandmother worked in the 1930s. The man’s connection to a place familiar to me made him feel more familiar, too.
“Grafton, Massachusetts! That’s right by where I’m from.”
“How about that? What brought you to Tucson?”
“Work,” I told him. I didn’t get more specific. We drank water and made small talk about the horizon. He could name all the peaks, all the ranges, all the mountain passes and roads. Finally, I said, “Well, I’m headed down. Got chores this afternoon.”
“Mind if I walk with you?” the man looked westward. “You can lose me if I’m too slow. Won’t break my heart.”
“Sure.” I said. I often fell into conversation with other hikers. It adds a variable unlike elevation or route finding, a social element that I enjoy. By that point, I’d more or less forgotten his gun.
He went down first and I followed. The trail followed a series of switchbacks zig-zagging like a fire escape down the mountain. We discussed the plants we passed. He called the long, thin ocotillo “buggy whips.” He said you remove thorns from prickly pears by grinding them between flat rocks, then you roast the pads. Acorn-like jojoba berries look palatable, but are too astringent and the native people only processed them into food in extreme shortages.4
Note 4
Native people in Southern Arizona have other uses for jojoba. For example, the Tohono O’odham make a jojoba salve to treat skin issues.
The man’s knowledge of the desert was accurate and I could tell he genuinely liked to share. I love discussing plants and critters, so he and I had that in common.
Phillips, Steven J.; Comus, Patricia Wentworth, eds., A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. University of California Press, 2000, pp. 256–257.
The guy also talked a lot about his veterinarian daughter. She grew up with her mother in another state but she shared her father’s love for animals. He told me how she performed surgery on horses, met fainting goats, splinted a bald eagle wing. She made him proud.
We rounded a turn. The point where the trail tips onto the summit vanished above. The trail had felt quick going up, but then I was listening to Aphex Twin in my headphones and examining the sides of the mountains for future routes. Now the guy walked in front of me, stopping to talk and shake out his stiff knees like a marionette.
A rock squirrel casually chewed an unripe cholla pear. I pointed it out.
“Do you know about red squirrels on Mt. Graham?” the man asked over his shoulder.5 His small pack carried two liters of water and maybe a snack. I pictured the gun on my hip, wondered if it threw off his balance. It didn’t seem worth its weight.
Note 5
The Mt. Graham Red Squirrel is a subspecies of red squirrel unique to the Pinaleño Mountains in Southern Arizona. The small, isolated pine forests atop desert peaks are called sky islands and that’s where the lively red rodents live. People thought they went extinct in the 1950s, but the squirrels were later rediscovered. They are recognized as endangered. The Frye Fire of 2017 almost wiped them out. Their population grew 4 percent in 2019, but that means only about 78 squirrels remain.
“I’ve been up Mt. Graham,” I said. “My wife and I drove to the telescopes. Didn’t notice any squirrels, though.”
“I got arrested for protesting those telescopes. Me and some others. Mostly on account of the squirrels.” It was upbeat, how he said it.
“Whoa. No shit.” My voice conveyed surprise. He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“Yeah. It was a big deal, but you don’t hear much about it now.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind…”
Ambitious people have a hard time sacrificing their plans for things like squirrels.
“Oh man, it was real shady. They were clearcutting the top to make room for the telescopes. The U of A was the main group doing it. They had gone around the regulations and ignored the environmental reports about the red squirrels.” He shook his head. “They’re not just any old squirrels. They’re a sky island species that only lives in the Pinaleños. Been evolving up there since the Pleistocene!”
“And telescopes are bad for them?” I asked.
“They seriously disrupt the squirrels’ habitat.”
“Ambitious people have a hard time sacrificing their plans for things like squirrels,” I commented.
“Yeah, I guess,” the guy’s head sunk. He paused and took a sip of water. I did too. While I was still drinking, he went on: “It wasn’t just about the squirrels. A bunch of San Carlos Apache folks protested, too. The government agencies who approved the telescopes refused to recognize that Mt. Graham’s sacred to the Apache people, I guess because the tribe never built anything up there. I don’t understand why people have to alter nature to make it sacred.”6
Note 6
The mountain known as Mt. Graham on USGS maps is called Dzil Nchaa SiAn by the San Carlos Apache. The name means “Big Seated Mountain” and it is sacred. In 1991, the Vatican investigated the sanctity of Dzil Nchaa Si An and determined (by their standards) the mountain was not sacred because it did not host religious shrines.
I thought about what he said as I stepped over protruding boulders. Why should you have to alter nature to make it sacred? I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be an environmental activist or that he’d be invested in Native people’s rights, maybe because of the camo pants and the gun.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“We blocked the road with logs. Some people chained themselves to gates. The clearcutting crew had to stop. Of course, we were terrified. The lumber company guys were standing around. At least as many of them as there were of us. If it hadn’t been for the court case drawing attention, I think they would have kicked our asses, maybe killed somebody.”
I asked him more about the courts. That’s when I felt things turn. It was like a glitch came into his voice, something between embarrassment and hatred. A wince at an old but unhealed wound. I remember wishing I was alone with my music and thoughts.
“The Sierra Club and the Apache sued,” he explained, growing more excited as he spoke. “It wasn’t just the U of A that was forcing the telescopes onto the land. It was Pope John Paul, the Vatican. And the Max Planck Institute. A full international affair.7 Politicians cheated all the environmental reviews, ignored the Indian’s rights. I was mad about stuff like that back then, you know. Like, how dare you pretend to be enlightened?”8
Note 7
One of my hiking partner’s most baffling statements was that the Vatican was involved with the telescopes on Mt. Graham. He mentioned the Pope and the Vatican more than once as powerful forces trying to plant telescopes in the Pinaleño Mountains. He also mentioned the Max Planck Institute. The University of Arizona, Max Planck, the Vatican, all conspiring against red squirrels and Apache protestors and hippies sounded to me like some Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy.
I later learned that the Mount Graham International Observatory features three telescope sites, one owned by the University of Arizona, one owned by the Max Planck Institute, and one owned by the Vatican called the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.
The telescopes have been opposed by the San Carlos Apache since the 1980s. Environmentalists were concerned over the destruction of red squirrel habitat and joined with the Apache’s protests. Though the observatory’s legal counsel claims the tribe did not start opposition until several years after they were notified, the San Carlos Apache did take clear action, through both legal and political channels, going so far as sending an envoy to the Vatican. Ola Cassadore Davis became the spokesperson for the resistance until her death in 2014. Through her work and the work of others, resistance continued throughout the 1990s and moral opposition persists today, even as those giant eyes peer off the sacred mountain, deep into space.
Welch, John R. “White Eyes’ Lies and the Battle for Dzil Nchaa Si’an.” The American Indian Quarterly, no. 1, 1997, p. 75.
The guy stopped and did the leg shaking routine. I hadn’t gotten a good look at his face while he was talking until that moment. He was red, but not out of breath, not tired. The anger still simmered in him. I became aware of the gun again, now an exclamation point to his face. I was interested to hear more about the protests, but not if it got him worked up.
“Don’t mean to change the subject,” I smiled and took a swig. “How many times have you seen a desert tortoise?”
“All the time!” he beamed. “But that’s because I know where two of them live.” As he told me about tortoise hibernation cycles, we lost elevation and found ourselves winding around a brushy inlet on the mountainside. I did wonder what happened on Mt. Graham, how he got arrested, but maybe I would ask him later, after he calmed down a bit. Maybe I would ask closer to my truck. Or not.
But my hiking partner found his way back to Mt. Graham on his own, “Oh yeah, anyway, they called the Graham County Sheriff on us. Cops showed up. A few people took off running. A few more surrendered. I don’t blame them. I didn’t leave, so I got arrested.”
“What’d they charge you with? Trespassing?”9
Note 9
My search turned into hours of reading on the protests against the telescopes and the fight to preserve the red squirrel. A news article from October 3, 1990 reports that seven protesters were arrested. It states, “The legal obstacles have been removed, but crews heading for the top of Arizona’s Mount Graham to begin work on a controversial telescope project faced barricades of logs and rocks and angry environmentalists.” The article features a spokesperson from the Sierra Club and the Graham County Sheriff. Three of the activists gave their names, but four did not. People chained themselves to gates and trees. They delayed logging for two hours. Another article added that, “During the university’s construction of a road to the mountaintop, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! chained themselves to bulldozers and were arrested in protests. ‘’Mountain rapers’ was spray-painted on the road. Other university telescope sites have been vandalized.”
Protests continued. In 1994, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph ran these opposing viewpoints:
“The University of Arizona is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this event alone to deal with a bunch of nonviolent environmentalists,” Earth First! spokesman Paul Johnson said. “I feel confident we can hold enough people up here to cripple the university financially.”
The Mount Graham International Observatory, sponsored by the university and other investors, is on 10,700-foot Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona. Law-enforcement agents have posted a 24-hour guard on the telescope project since the Earth First! gathering began June 27.
“We’ll keep as many people here as long as possible in an effort to bankrupt the University of Arizona or until they call off the telescope project, and then, of course, we’ll leave,” Johnson said.
University officials do not seem worried, however.
“They have an inflated sense of their own importance. With an observatory up there, we’ll have certain security costs whether this particular group stays or goes,” school spokesman Steve Emerine said.
In the end, the telescopes were built and now scientists from all over the world use them for astronomical research. Emerine’s confidence seems justified. I cannot be sure which protest my hiking partner attended, or if the red squirrels are really in danger from the construction of the observatories. The University of Arizona keeps a census of the squirrel population and reports no impact from the telescopes. Sadly, in 2017, the Frye Fire devastated the squirrel’s numbers. That fire was caused by lightning.
As is so often the case, the San Carlos Apache were overruled by systems that considered themselves too powerful to acquiesce to the historic and cultural claims of native people. At some point in that struggle, my hiking partner confronted systems of power—universities, religions, governments, and law enforcement. He found that laws, treaties, arguments, and protests are the ideological structure of society, but violence is the foundational reality. Power lies in having the resources to enlist the police.
Hindman, Harriet. “Work begins on controversial Arizona observatory.” UPI, October 3, 1990.
Woestendiek, John. “Red Squirrel Plays Principal (sic) Role in Scientists’ Mountaintop Battle.” The Philadelphia Enquirer. June 18, 1990.
“Officially? Yeah, trespassing. Got probation. But that’s not all…”
I looked downward toward the base of the mountain. The tone of his “But that’s not all” gave me vertigo. My mind raced for another diversion, but he spoke again quickly.
“Once you get caught protesting, they put you on a list. They tap your phone. They send people to check on you. Even now, they drive by my trailer at night. I live way out on a dirt road. There’s one trailer a mile further in than mine, that’s it. At like two, three in the morning, there’s a vehicle turning around in my driveway. Or a black SUV parked in mesquite off the road when I get home from the post office. They go through my mail, too.”[10]
Note 10
Because he was arrested and Earth First! was involved, it’s reasonable that the man’s name could come across the desk of an FBI agent. Between Ted Kaczynski and other acts of so-called “eco-terrorism” in the 1990s, environmental protests were a federal concern. Local law enforcement shares information with federal agencies all the time. Was my hiking partner somehow trapped in the long memory of government intelligence, a subject of permanent surveillance? Or was he a man suffering from paranoid delusions, perhaps as a result of trauma?
His description made me think of “organized stalking.” Claims of organized stalking, sometimes called gang stalking, certainly come off as delusional. Watch a YouTube video by someone claiming to be a victim of organized stalking and their paranoid interpretations of ordinary events provide evidence of pathological thinking. Online, paranoid people who believe they’re victims of organized stalking connect and reinforce one another’s fears, a tragic example of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.
The guy I met didn’t say anything about online groups. He mentioned vehicles near his remote home at inexplicable times. His paranoia was earned through direct action, his response to what he believed was an attack on nature and the sovereignty of native people. His paranoia was not racist and it did not come from AM radio. It parked outside his house in a black SUV.
People close to Ernest Hemingway saw the author’s paranoia about FBI stalking as a sign that his mind was unwell. When a Freedom of Information Act request later released information on FBI activities, it showed that Hemingway had been followed, his phones tapped, his mail opened. As Joseph Keller wrote, and Kurt Cobain later sang, “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.”
“Holy shit,” was all I could say. Did I believe this? Whether I believed him or not, he was creeping me out. The next time he stopped to take a break, could I keep going? I could say I had some place to be at a certain time. What time was it? I wasn’t wearing a watch. I left the trailhead at 8:30. It was probably 10ish. If his claims were true, no wonder this guy carried a gun. I mean, environmental activists, at least in stereotype, are hippies, not the NRA crowd. But how had we gone from the red squirrel, to Pope John Paul and the Max Planck Institute, to surveillance haunting his trailer at night?
“What happens if you travel, like go visit your daughter?” I’m not sure why I asked.
“I went to go see her graduate from high school and they detained me both ways. They searched me, searched through my things, asked where I was going a bunch of times. No, I don’t dare. I’ll come back and find the trailer burned to the ground. I got a lot of animals there I don’t want anything to happen to.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I tried to say it conclusively, then I pointed to what I knew was a Christmas cholla and asked, “Do you know what this is called?”
“That’s a Christmas cholla. Aren’t those neat?”
“Looks tasty.” Christmas cholla grow fat little red fruit.
“You can eat them but you got to look out for the spiky hairs.”
We walked without talking for a few minutes. Maybe he sensed that I was diverting him and decided to take a hint, or maybe he felt he said too much. He didn’t know me any more than I knew him. We rounded an outcropping and I could see where the trail broke away from the mountain and out into the desert. That point was still far below, but close enough that I could discern crooked antler cholla in detail. In spite of the intensity of his stories, and that one moment of anger, the guy kept up a pleasant front. I thought about his daughter, off in the green hills of Grafton. Why would he tell me about her? Why didn’t he suspect me of being with the FBI, CIA, NSA? Why did he trust me? I watched the gun rise and fall with his steps.
They’ve been listening to everything we’ve been saying. Hello! I know you’re listening! I don’t care!
“You know what else?” he paused in the middle of the trail. “They’re watching me all the time. They got satellites. They know who you are, too. They can track you by your DNA. They took mine when I was arrested. You’re young, so they took yours when you were born.”11
Note 11
The man’s perceptions were similar to people who consider themselves “targeted individuals.” T.I.s believe they are subject to covert surveillance, including by satellites and microwaves. T.I.s may or may not believe they have been implanted with devices, such as microphones in their teeth or cerebral microchips, that communicate with satellites or microwave systems. The perpetrators of the surveillance/torture are usually considered the FBI, CIA, NSA, or some other intelligence agency. Mental health professionals believe that T.I.s are experiencing paranoid delusions, while T.I.s believe diagnosis of a disorder by a psychologist/psychiatrist is part of an intentional conspiracy to neutralize and discredit them as whistleblowers. The man I met did not use the term targeted individual, but when I came across online discussions by T.I.s, their experiences corresponded significantly with what the man believed about the satellite surveillance.
“I was not aware of that…” I awkwardly backed up a bit, scared. Time dilated. I was forever away from my truck. My wife crossed my mind.
“They’ve been listening to everything we’ve been saying,” he almost shouted. He was smiling, but his nose was snarled. “Hello!” He waved and yelled to the wispy clouds. “Hello! I know you’re listening! I don’t care! I don’t care!” He lurched abruptly on.12
Note 12
My documentation has thus far affirmed the man’s claims about nature and the protests. The satellites present an exception. When the man shouted at the satellites and claimed that they listen to us and track our movement, I thought, “This is delusional.” He even believed the satellites identified us by our DNA. I was certain satellites couldn’t do what he claimed and ready to disregard his other seemingly paranoid claims based on this error. Research confirmed me correct, but also tempered my urge to dismiss all aspects of the man’s story.
Futurist Thomas Frey predicts satellites capable of tracking people via chemical signature in the future, but not today. A Washington Post article about searching for the downed MH370 flight explains satellites can photograph something ten inches across, but not video. Most conversations around the privacy risks of satellite surveillance focus on governments’ abilities to gather photographic and electronic (radio, TV, etc.) intelligence.
In Scientific American, Camille von Kaenel writes, “Satellites are increasingly able to capture better information on ecosystems using different types of sensors. Active sensors, which emit signals and interpret what bounces back, can paint 3D pictures of what’s happening on the ground, including measures like canopy height. Spectrometers can detect the biochemistry fingerprint of each type of plant. Imagery technology has progressed to the point where individual tree or animal species, like whales or buffalo, can be identified.”
How far of a leap is it from “They can identify a buffalo from space” to “they can identify a person from space” to “they can identify me in space?” It’s not irrational, though IDing a buffalo by spectrographic signature is different than tracking a particular individual at all times. For now, I believe that satellite technology is limited to taking pictures from space and that my hiking partner and I were not moving along under a watchful electric eye.
Frey, Thomas. “Evil Menace or Silent Companion.” Futuristspeaker.com.
I spotted a triangular stone and considered picking it up and carrying it with me in case I became a bogeyman who needed to defend himself, but walking behind the guy with a fist size rock would seem threatening. I visualized what it would look like if he went for the gun. Could I kick him forward down the trail before he could turn on me? Should I walk closer? Could I get behind something? Could I jump off the side of the trail, through the dense cholla and prickly pear spikes, and get to a place I could run? Could I overpower him? To the last question, the answer was no. The man was larger than me and strong enough to easily climb Pusch Ridge.
A few long minutes later, we reached the base of the mountain where it flattened out into the chaparral. The man slowed way down and turned, sighed, and told me, “They want us to be afraid, but they’re so afraid of us they can’t see when they’ve won. Maybe in the long run, what’s right will come out on top, I don’t know. But I lost. We lost. The telescopes are up there. Can’t I just sit in the desert with my snakes?”
“You stood up for something,” I said. The man was looking at my face now and I hoped he’d see my honesty. “Of course, nobody should still be bothering you. Tons of people feel like you about nature. About justice and power. They’re just really afraid of the consequences.”
He might have mumbled “thank you” as he resumed walking. His shoulders slumped forward and his boots fell less forcefully. At first, his deflation unnerved me and I became aware of the gun again. I let him get further ahead of me. Then, from that distance back, he looked more relaxed. Maybe telling his story gave him peace, if only for a few minutes of trail.13
Note 13
We ended the hike with some small talk and parted ways in the parking lot. He left a religious pamphlet on a fencepost before getting into his truck. After he pulled away, I picked it up. I still have it somewhere.
I wish I could say that I fully satisfied my need to understand, but much remains conjecture. For example, I cannot be certain our shared love of nature encouraged him to confide about his activism, arrest, and subsequent harassment, though I suspect that is true.
I researched paranoia to justify my uneasiness around him and his gun. I learned that paranoia can be a symptom of trauma. A study by British psychologists Daniel Freeman and David Fowler found, “A history of trauma was significantly associated with both persecutory ideation and hallucinations.” I could, if I chose, use a presumed diagnosis of mental illness to dismiss troubling elements of the man’s story. I could justify my fear of my hiking partner and his firearm.
Perhaps, to a degree, I have justified my fear. However, my research has mostly validated the man’s stories. The protests over the Mt. Graham telescopes, the groups involved, and the arrests proved as true as his knowledge of snakes and succulents. Though I remain ambiguous about the government stalking and doubtful of satellite surveillance, I don’t question his sincerity.
Why did I need to investigate his story? Maybe it was a selfish endeavor driven by curiosity, but I also heard things I felt compelled to share. I am passing on the account he gave me of the protests at Mt. Graham, about Native rights disregarded and protestors endangered, so we can better understand the prices we are paying for knowledge and discovery.
This story tells of my time hiking with a man I met in Oro Valley, Arizona. The footnotes lay out my process for trying to understand the experience.
The man’s humane attitude toward snakes put me at ease. Bites are uncommon for how many rattlesnakes there are in the U.S. The Forest Service reports about 8.000 bites per year, with ten to 15 deaths. I don’t know if this is appropriate or not, but I use a person’s attitude toward snakes as a gauge of their overall rationality and I take a low view of people who kill them. According to the Forest Service: “Most snake bites occur when a rattlesnake is handled or accidentally touched by someone walking or climbing. The majority of snakebites occur on the hands, feet and ankles.” Rattlesnakes are always on defense, never on offense. Many bites are dry, which is when the snake strikes, but doesn’t inject venom.
Tufts University Veterinary School sits in the green maples of Grafton, Massachusetts. It’s where my parents took their fox terrier for neurological symptoms. Tufts deals with complex veterinary issues and wildlife rescue. Some of the buildings formerly belonged to Grafton State Hospital, an “asylum” for the mentally ill, where my grandmother worked in the 1930s. The man’s connection to a place familiar to me made him feel more familiar, too.
Native people in Southern Arizona have other uses for jojoba. For example, the Tohono O’odham make a jojoba salve to treat skin issues.
The man’s knowledge of the desert was accurate and I could tell he genuinely liked to share. I love discussing plants and critters, so he and I had that in common.
Phillips, Steven J.; Comus, Patricia Wentworth, eds., A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. University of California Press, 2000, pp. 256–257.
The Mt. Graham Red Squirrel is a subspecies of red squirrel unique to the Pinaleño Mountains in Southern Arizona. The small, isolated pine forests atop desert peaks are called sky islands and that’s where the lively red rodents live. People thought they went extinct in the 1950s, but the squirrels were later rediscovered. They are recognized as endangered. The Frye Fire of 2017 almost wiped them out. Their population grew 4 percent in 2019, but that means only about 78 squirrels remain.
The mountain known as Mt. Graham on USGS maps is called Dzil Nchaa SiAn by the San Carlos Apache. The name means “Big Seated Mountain” and it is sacred. In 1991, the Vatican investigated the sanctity of Dzil Nchaa Si An and determined (by their standards) the mountain was not sacred because it did not host religious shrines.
One of my hiking partner’s most baffling statements was that the Vatican was involved with the telescopes on Mt. Graham. He mentioned the Pope and the Vatican more than once as powerful forces trying to plant telescopes in the Pinaleño Mountains. He also mentioned the Max Planck Institute. The University of Arizona, Max Planck, the Vatican, all conspiring against red squirrels and Apache protestors and hippies sounded to me like some Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy.
I later learned that the Mount Graham International Observatory features three telescope sites, one owned by the University of Arizona, one owned by the Max Planck Institute, and one owned by the Vatican called the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.
The telescopes have been opposed by the San Carlos Apache since the 1980s. Environmentalists were concerned over the destruction of red squirrel habitat and joined with the Apache’s protests. Though the observatory’s legal counsel claims the tribe did not start opposition until several years after they were notified, the San Carlos Apache did take clear action, through both legal and political channels, going so far as sending an envoy to the Vatican. Ola Cassadore Davis became the spokesperson for the resistance until her death in 2014. Through her work and the work of others, resistance continued throughout the 1990s and moral opposition persists today, even as those giant eyes peer off the sacred mountain, deep into space.
Welch, John R. “White Eyes’ Lies and the Battle for Dzil Nchaa Si’an.” The American Indian Quarterly, no. 1, 1997, p. 75.
My search turned into hours of reading on the protests against the telescopes and the fight to preserve the red squirrel. A news article from October 3, 1990 reports that seven protesters were arrested. It states, “The legal obstacles have been removed, but crews heading for the top of Arizona’s Mount Graham to begin work on a controversial telescope project faced barricades of logs and rocks and angry environmentalists.” The article features a spokesperson from the Sierra Club and the Graham County Sheriff. Three of the activists gave their names, but four did not. People chained themselves to gates and trees. They delayed logging for two hours. Another article added that, “During the university’s construction of a road to the mountaintop, members of the radical environmental group Earth First! chained themselves to bulldozers and were arrested in protests. ‘’Mountain rapers’ was spray-painted on the road. Other university telescope sites have been vandalized.”
Protests continued. In 1994, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph ran these opposing viewpoints:
“The University of Arizona is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this event alone to deal with a bunch of nonviolent environmentalists,” Earth First! spokesman Paul Johnson said. “I feel confident we can hold enough people up here to cripple the university financially.”
The Mount Graham International Observatory, sponsored by the university and other investors, is on 10,700-foot Mount Graham in southeastern Arizona. Law-enforcement agents have posted a 24-hour guard on the telescope project since the Earth First! gathering began June 27.
“We’ll keep as many people here as long as possible in an effort to bankrupt the University of Arizona or until they call off the telescope project, and then, of course, we’ll leave,” Johnson said.
University officials do not seem worried, however.
“They have an inflated sense of their own importance. With an observatory up there, we’ll have certain security costs whether this particular group stays or goes,” school spokesman Steve Emerine said.
In the end, the telescopes were built and now scientists from all over the world use them for astronomical research. Emerine’s confidence seems justified. I cannot be sure which protest my hiking partner attended, or if the red squirrels are really in danger from the construction of the observatories. The University of Arizona keeps a census of the squirrel population and reports no impact from the telescopes. Sadly, in 2017, the Frye Fire devastated the squirrel’s numbers. That fire was caused by lightning.
As is so often the case, the San Carlos Apache were overruled by systems that considered themselves too powerful to acquiesce to the historic and cultural claims of native people. At some point in that struggle, my hiking partner confronted systems of power—universities, religions, governments, and law enforcement. He found that laws, treaties, arguments, and protests are the ideological structure of society, but violence is the foundational reality. Power lies in having the resources to enlist the police.
Hindman, Harriet. “Work begins on controversial Arizona observatory.” UPI, October 3, 1990.
Woestendiek, John. “Red Squirrel Plays Principal (sic) Role in Scientists’ Mountaintop Battle.” The Philadelphia Enquirer. June 18, 1990.
Because he was arrested and Earth First! was involved, it’s reasonable that the man’s name could come across the desk of an FBI agent. Between Ted Kaczynski and other acts of so-called “eco-terrorism” in the 1990s, environmental protests were a federal concern. Local law enforcement shares information with federal agencies all the time. Was my hiking partner somehow trapped in the long memory of government intelligence, a subject of permanent surveillance? Or was he a man suffering from paranoid delusions, perhaps as a result of trauma?
His description made me think of “organized stalking.” Claims of organized stalking, sometimes called gang stalking, certainly come off as delusional. Watch a YouTube video by someone claiming to be a victim of organized stalking and their paranoid interpretations of ordinary events provide evidence of pathological thinking. Online, paranoid people who believe they’re victims of organized stalking connect and reinforce one another’s fears, a tragic example of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.
The guy I met didn’t say anything about online groups. He mentioned vehicles near his remote home at inexplicable times. His paranoia was earned through direct action, his response to what he believed was an attack on nature and the sovereignty of native people. His paranoia was not racist and it did not come from AM radio. It parked outside his house in a black SUV.
People close to Ernest Hemingway saw the author’s paranoia about FBI stalking as a sign that his mind was unwell. When a Freedom of Information Act request later released information on FBI activities, it showed that Hemingway had been followed, his phones tapped, his mail opened. As Joseph Keller wrote, and Kurt Cobain later sang, “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.”
The man’s perceptions were similar to people who consider themselves “targeted individuals.” T.I.s believe they are subject to covert surveillance, including by satellites and microwaves. T.I.s may or may not believe they have been implanted with devices, such as microphones in their teeth or cerebral microchips, that communicate with satellites or microwave systems. The perpetrators of the surveillance/torture are usually considered the FBI, CIA, NSA, or some other intelligence agency. Mental health professionals believe that T.I.s are experiencing paranoid delusions, while T.I.s believe diagnosis of a disorder by a psychologist/psychiatrist is part of an intentional conspiracy to neutralize and discredit them as whistleblowers. The man I met did not use the term targeted individual, but when I came across online discussions by T.I.s, their experiences corresponded significantly with what the man believed about the satellite surveillance.
My documentation has thus far affirmed the man’s claims about nature and the protests. The satellites present an exception. When the man shouted at the satellites and claimed that they listen to us and track our movement, I thought, “This is delusional.” He even believed the satellites identified us by our DNA. I was certain satellites couldn’t do what he claimed and ready to disregard his other seemingly paranoid claims based on this error. Research confirmed me correct, but also tempered my urge to dismiss all aspects of the man’s story.
Futurist Thomas Frey predicts satellites capable of tracking people via chemical signature in the future, but not today. A Washington Post article about searching for the downed MH370 flight explains satellites can photograph something ten inches across, but not video. Most conversations around the privacy risks of satellite surveillance focus on governments’ abilities to gather photographic and electronic (radio, TV, etc.) intelligence.
In Scientific American, Camille von Kaenel writes, “Satellites are increasingly able to capture better information on ecosystems using different types of sensors. Active sensors, which emit signals and interpret what bounces back, can paint 3D pictures of what’s happening on the ground, including measures like canopy height. Spectrometers can detect the biochemistry fingerprint of each type of plant. Imagery technology has progressed to the point where individual tree or animal species, like whales or buffalo, can be identified.”
How far of a leap is it from “They can identify a buffalo from space” to “they can identify a person from space” to “they can identify me in space?” It’s not irrational, though IDing a buffalo by spectrographic signature is different than tracking a particular individual at all times. For now, I believe that satellite technology is limited to taking pictures from space and that my hiking partner and I were not moving along under a watchful electric eye.
Frey, Thomas. “Evil Menace or Silent Companion.” Futuristspeaker.com.
We ended the hike with some small talk and parted ways in the parking lot. He left a religious pamphlet on a fencepost before getting into his truck. After he pulled away, I picked it up. I still have it somewhere.
I wish I could say that I fully satisfied my need to understand, but much remains conjecture. For example, I cannot be certain our shared love of nature encouraged him to confide about his activism, arrest, and subsequent harassment, though I suspect that is true.
I researched paranoia to justify my uneasiness around him and his gun. I learned that paranoia can be a symptom of trauma. A study by British psychologists Daniel Freeman and David Fowler found, “A history of trauma was significantly associated with both persecutory ideation and hallucinations.” I could, if I chose, use a presumed diagnosis of mental illness to dismiss troubling elements of the man’s story. I could justify my fear of my hiking partner and his firearm.
Perhaps, to a degree, I have justified my fear. However, my research has mostly validated the man’s stories. The protests over the Mt. Graham telescopes, the groups involved, and the arrests proved as true as his knowledge of snakes and succulents. Though I remain ambiguous about the government stalking and doubtful of satellite surveillance, I don’t question his sincerity.
Why did I need to investigate his story? Maybe it was a selfish endeavor driven by curiosity, but I also heard things I felt compelled to share. I am passing on the account he gave me of the protests at Mt. Graham, about Native rights disregarded and protestors endangered, so we can better understand the prices we are paying for knowledge and discovery.
Ola Cassadore Davis’s July 28, 1999 Testimony to the United Nations’s Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Working Group on Indigenous Peoples
United Nations – Commission on Human Rights Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities Working Group on Indigenous Peoples Seventeenth Session July 26-30, 1999 July 28, 1999
Item 5: Principle Theme: Indigenous Peoples and their Relationship to Land
Madam Daes, Chairperson:
I am Ola Cassadore Davis, an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, located in western Arizona. We Apache people most earnestly seek the protection of this august body of the United Nations from the destruction of our culture and human rights by U.S., German, Italian, and Vatican astronomers and their sponsoring governmental agencies focused upon a most sacred Apache mountain Dzil Nchaa Si An (Mount Graham) in Arizona. They are now building three telescopes on this most holy and ancient Apache place.
We Apache wish to preserve in perpetuity our rights as secured under Indian treaties and agreements with the United States, including the Constitution of the United States, including the First Amendment, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the National Historic Preservation Act, U.S. Executive Order 13007, and any other laws, including but not limited to the federal trust responsibilities of the U.S. government to Indian people. We Apache wish to bring to the people of this world a better understanding of Indian people, in order that we are able to preserve and freely live by our traditional culture and religious beliefs.
The landform Dzil Nchaa Si An (Mount Graham) in Arizona is a central source and means of sacred spiritual guidance and a traditional cultural property of the Apache people, and a unique place on Earth through which Apache people’s prayers travel to the Creator, and Dzil Nchaa Si An is presently being desecrated and harmed by the cutting of ancient forest, digging, and road building, and the installation of telescopes sponsored by the University of Arizona of Tucson, Arizona, various Max Planck Institutes of Germany, the Arcetri Observatory of Florence, Italy, the Vatican Observatory of Rome, Italy and Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Apache spiritual leaders and medicine men and women have previously signed a petition opposing that desecration and such harms; and the San Carlos Apache Tribal Council has voted four times to oppose the installation of the observatory, most recently on June 13, 1995; and documents and testimony in the archives of the University of Arizona and U.S. government confirm the cultural and religious importance of this land. We Apache were greatly encouraged by the information gathering here in Arizona, and the findings and report of United Nations Special Rapporteur Mr. Abdelfattah Amor in 1998 and 1999. Dzil Nchaa Si An (Mount Graham) should be considered as a World Heritage Site.
On May 24, 1996, the President of the United States issued Executive Order 13007 requiring that all U.S. land management agencies shall “protect the physical integrity of Indian Sacred Sites” and all unrestricted access by Indians thereto. So far, that Presidential Order has not been enforced on our Sacred Mountain. On June 16, 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service sent a letter to officials of the San Carlos Apache Tribe acknowledging that Mount Graham “is very important to the Apaches,” and that “The Forest Service has, already, enough information to consider the mountain sacred under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the First Amendment.” But the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service has taken no positive action on those words. To this day, they have worked hard against us traditional Apaches.
Section 16 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Special Use Permit for the observatory on the mountain, which was signed by the University of Arizona and the Forest Service, states that “If… the Secretary of Agriculture… shall determine that the public interest requires termination of this permit, this permit shall terminate upon thirty days’ written notice…”
That permit provides for a payment of up to U.S. $10,000 to the University of Arizona by the U.S. to help defray the costs of removing the observatory from the mountain.
In conclusion, we Apache would respectfully urge this body of the United Nations to recognize and acknowledge that the disrespect and suffering caused by the nations and governments mentioned above be terminated forthwith. We Apache petition you for a resolution consistent with the National Congress of American Indians of 1993, 1995, and July 1999. They stated that the public interest in protecting Apache culture is compelling, and that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture should accordingly require the prompt removal of the telescopes from Mount Graham.
Thank you for your continued attention to this matter.
Respectfully yours,
Statement and Petition to the United Nations To Protect the Indian Sacred Site, Dzil Nchaa Si An (Mount Graham) by Ola Cassadore Davis.
Statement/intervention read out on July 29, 1999 by Daniel Zapata, Peabody Watch Arizona.
Ola Cassadore Davis, Chairperson Apache Survival Coalition San Carlos Apache Reservation P.O. Box 1237 San Carlos, AZ 85550 USA
Eric Aldrich’s recent work has appeared in Manifest West, Euphony, Weber: The Contemporary West, and Hobart. His novella, “Please Listen Carefully as Our Options Have Changed,” was included in Running Wild Press’s 2020 novella anthology. You can find more about Eric’s various projects at ericaldrich.net.
Header photo by Pritha_EasyArts, courtesy Shutterstock.
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Eric Aldrich’s recent work has appeared in Manifest West, Euphony, Weber: The Contemporary West, and Hobart. His novella, “Please Listen Carefully as Our Options Have Changed,” was included in Running Wild Press’s 2020 novella anthology. You can find more about Eric’s various projects at ericaldrich.net.
