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我认为，在人的一生中，他总该有一次集中思绪去回忆那些过往的地方，总该有一次把自己毫无保留地交付给某个曾到过的地方，多角度地观察它、凝思它、为它惊叹。他应想像自己用指尖触摸每个季节，用耳朵倾听土地的声音。他应去揣摩生物们的行踪，应该用心灵去感知风的舞蹈。他应去拾取日间太阳的光辉，也要采摘那黎明、黄昏的绚烂。
我爱把她想像成一个孩子。她出生的时候，切沃瓦人正处在最后的辉煌时期。一百多年来，他们统治着那片旷阔的山区，这山区从烟山河延伸到红河，从加拿大河的源流延伸到阿肯色河与锡马龙河交汇的地方。与科曼契人一起，他们统治着整个南部大平原。战争是他们神圣的事业。他们是世界上迄今所见过的最优秀的骑手。然而，战事之于他们显然不是为了生存，而是出于天性。他们怎么也不能理解美国骑兵那坚韧不拔、不屈不挠的进攻。最后，四分五散、供给不足的切沃瓦人，在凄冷的秋雨里被逐到了埃斯塔卡多平原。他们陷入了焦虑之中。在帕洛杜拉峡谷，他们赖以活命的一切储备落入了强盗之手。当时，除了命，他们什么都没了。为了活命，他们在西尔堡向美国骑兵投降了。他们被囚禁在古老的石牢里。外婆虽免去了十年八年的高墙之辱，但她一生下来就饱尝了失败的哀苦。那是老兵们凄黯的仇怨。外婆的名字叫阿奥。她属于北美所孕育的最后一种文化。她的先祖，大约三百年前从蒙大拿西部的高地来到这里。他们是山民，是一个神秘的游猎部落。他们的语言永远无法确切地归入任何类族。17世纪，他们开始了漫长的东迁和南迁。这是一次通向曙光之旅，他们被引入了一个黄金时代。在迁徙途中，切沃瓦人受到了鸦族人的友好礼待。鸦族人把大平原的文化和宗教传给了他们。他们得到了马。他们那古老的游牧精神顿似腾空而起的鸟禽，在平原上自在地翱翔。他们还得到了神圣的太阳舞偶像“太密”。从此，太密也成了他们的崇拜物和偶像。他们沐浴着太阳神性的福光。他们多少还接受了命运观以及英勇的自豪感。当他们进入南部大平原的时候，他们已彻底脱胎换骨，不再是纯粹的衣食的奴隶。他们成了一群骄横和危险的斗士、盗贼、猎人，同时又是太阳的祭司。据他们起源的神话说，他们是从一根空心木头里来到世上的。从某种角度看，他们的迁徙正是一个古老预言的结果。他们确实来自一个没有太阳的世界。
外婆虽然在雨山的阴影下度过了她的一生，内陆绵绵无尽的山景却像记忆一样融进了她的血液。她能够娓娓述说鸦族人的故事，虽然她不曾见过鸦族人；述说黑山的故事，虽然她不曾到过黑山。我想亲眼看看外婆用心灵的眼睛看得那么真切、那么完美的所在。于是，我长途跋涉了一千五百英里，开始了我的朝圣之旅。我原以为，黄石(即黄石公园)就是世界的峰巅。那里有幽深的湖，黑鸦鸦的参天古木无边无际，峡谷、瀑布穿梭其间。然而，那地方美则美矣，却令你无端生出悠闲之感。无论你面对何方，天边都近在咫尺，伸手可及。高耸的林墙上浓阴蔽天，偶尔有几道深邃的裂缝。山中绝对地自由自在。但这自由只属于鹰、獾、熊、麋。切沃瓦人凭他们目力所及估摸着自己的地位。在荒野之上，他们坚定而迷茫。从东面下山，高地的草坡楼梯似地伸向平原。7月，洛基山脉内侧的山坡上，亚麻、荞麦、景天、飞燕草葳蕤繁茂。土地露出脸儿，平地的边界向后退缩着。远方的树丛和正在吃草的动物吸引着我们的视线，令我们禁不住在心里幻化着种种奇观异景。白天，太阳要走老长老长的路；天空无限旷远，没有穷尽。空中翻腾着滚滚云涛，硕大的云影水波似地从农作物上悠悠游过，把阳光切割得支离破碎。更远的前方，鸦族人和黑脚人生息的平原上，一片橙黄。草木樨占据着山山岭岭，一心一意要把泥土盖个严严实实。切沃瓦人在大迁徙的途中，在这里歇了一阵。他们一到这儿，立即感觉到必须改变一下自己的生活方式了。太阳在平原上悠游自在地照着。正是在这块土地上，有着某种神性。切沃瓦人踏上鸦族人的土地时，望见岩羊河对岸，群山背阳的地方浸沐在黑森森的曙色里，而种着作物的梯田上阳光充沛。夏至一过，太阳这位最古老的神灵开始晃晃悠悠，踟蹰不前。此时，切沃瓦人还不想折向南面山下的洼地，他们必须让他们的热血从北方的隆冬流回自己的体内。他们再一次望一眼群山，便带着太密踏上了东进之途。
中文翻译~~
可可-
A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil"s edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire. Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.
I returned to Rainy Mountain in July. My grandmother had died in the spring, and I wanted to be at her grave. She had lived to be very old and at last infirm. Her only living daughter was with her when she died, and I was told that in death her face was that of a child.
I like to think of her as a child. When she was born, the Kiowas were living the last great moment of their history. For more than a hundred years they had controlled the open range from the Smoky Hill River to the Red, from the headwaters of the Canadian to the fork of the Arkansas and Cimarron. In alliance with the Comanches, they had ruled the whole of the southern Plains. War was their sacred business, and they were among the finest horsemen the world has ever known. But warfare for the Kiowas was preeminently a matter of disposition rather than of survival, and they never understood the grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry. When at last, divided and illprovisioned, they were driven onto the Staked Plains in the cold rains of autumn, they fell into panic. In Palo Duro Canyon they abandoned their crucial stores to pillage and had nothing then but their lives. In order to save themselves, they surrendered to the soldiers at Fort Sill and were imprisoned in the old stone corral that now stands as a military museum. My grandmother was spared the humiliation of those high gray walls by eight or ten years, but she must have known from birth the affliction of defeat, the dark brooding of old warriors.
Her name was Aho, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America. Her forebears came down from the high country in western Montana nearly three centuries ago. They were a mountain people, a mysterious tribe of hunters whose language has never been positively classified in any major group. In the late seventeenth century they began a long migration to the south and east. It was a journey toward the dawn, and it led to a golden age. Along the way the Kiowas were befriended by the Crows, who gave them the culture and religion of the Plains. They acquired horses, and their ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly free of the ground. They acquired Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, from that moment the object and symbol of their worship, and so shared in the divinity of the sun. Not least, they acquired the sense of destiny, therefore courage and pride. When they entered upon the southern Plains they had been transformed. No longer were they slaves to the simple necessity of survival; they were a lordly and dangerous society of fighters and thieves, hunters and priests of the sun. According to their origin myth, they entered the world through a hollow log. From one point of view, their migration was the fruit of an old prophecy, for indeed they emerged from a sunless world.
Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood. She could tell of the Crows, whom she had never seen, and of the Black Hills, where she had never been. I wanted to see in reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind"s eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage.