Remembering Meredith Magoosh Begay

 

Being with Meredith Magoosh Begay

 For my sharing this week, I came across this short video of my dear friend and mentor, Meredith Begay, who was the first "documented" member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe to embrace Baha'u'llah.  As a new Baha'i youth, I had the bounty to stay with her and her family in Mescalero a few times.  She shared a number of native prophecies that talked about a promised time of unity that corresponded to the time of the Baha'i Faith.  In her later years, she suffered from kidney disease and was on dialysis, but still cheerful as always.  Attached is a photo of my last visit to her with my parents and Roshan. And her dear husband, Keith, is in the photo, too.  Keith as Dineh (Navajo).  

The first morning after a restful night sleep, I had some coffee and fried bread, then went out to check out the area.  Meredith told me that there was a fairly new Baha'i living near her and suggested I might want to visit her and her family, which I did.  Then I found a nice flat rock in front of Meredith's house that had a nice view of the area all the way to White Sands in the desert far below.  Out of nowhere a man jumped out in front of me and exclaimed, "I'm Apache, aren't you afraid of me?"  Before I could answer, he was already laughing, and we had a nice visit.  He was a neighbor of Meredith, and, yes, she had told him about Baha'i. 

 On another visit in 1970 I was invited to accompany her family to search for trees to be used to make a tepee.  The tepee was to be used at the 1st Mescalero Baha'i Council Fire in the early 1970s. The choice of the trees had to be fairly perfect for straightness, height, etcetera. I was impressed how quickly the right trees were found in the forest, cut down, branches removed, and the trees loaded into a truck and taken to Head Springs where the tribe had given permission for the Council Fire to take place.  Later we went to a special site in the mountains for a healing ceremony for tribal members who were serving in the military in Vietnam.  It was held after sunset on a clear, starry night, as the Mountain Spirit Dancers moved and chanted around the large fire. Sparks shot upwards from the flames in the crackles of the fire.  

 A young Mescalero man stood by me and told me to look at the incredibly old woman who was dancing alone by the fire very solemnly.  He told me that that old woman remembered Geronimo and others from when she was young.  He said she knew many things about the culture that were being lost, but she was not sharing them because she felt that her people had lost respect for the old ways.  

 He told me also that there is a belief that an old Apache spirit couple still roams the area, and sometimes people feel them close by. That gave me chills, because a few weeks earlier I had been returning from a trip to Arizona to visit Baha'i friends. I used crutches back then and I was hitchhiking and made it to Carrizozo having been lucky to have caught a couple of rides. One was with a Christian youth worker who took me from Mesa, Arizona to Socorro, NM.  Then a guy in the Air Force offered to take me to Carrizozo with a stop at the Stallion Missile Range near White Sands (that he emphasized was off limits to civilians like myself).  At Carrizozo, my driver dropped me off at an all-night truck stop at the south end of town on the highway that went to Alamogordo where I was staying at the time.  I had a poncho and a shoulder bag with a change of clothes, and essential bathroom supplies and a few Baha'i pamphlets to give out along the way. 

 It was in the middle of the night when I left the truck stop to catch a ride on the highway, but seldom did a car pass, and I kept walking until the lights of Carrizozo were far behind me.  The sky was so clear that night with enough moonlight to make the land seem to glow. I must have walked several miles and only 2 or 3 vehicles had passed either way, none stopping for me.

 I was not worried, yet I did not want to think about walking the entire 59 miles to Alamogordo. The highway went along the western edge of the Mescalero Apache Reservation. At one point I heard what sounded like a baby crying and after listening intently realized it must have been the moan of a cow.  The highway crossed a dry culvert, and it was there I had a strong and strange sensation that an old Apache couple was nearby.  I stopped on the bridge over the culvert listening. I got brave enough to bend over the guard rails on the bridge and look below to the gulch. No sounds, just a very real feeling of this couple close by.  I may have called out; I don't remember.  I prayed silently and then started walking again.  It seemed the couple was gradually drifting toward the mountains.  It was eerie, but not in a fearful way. 

 When I could no longer feel the couple nearby, a car coming fast from Carizozo sped by me and then stopped, backed up and asked me to get in.  He had been at a party and had been drinking and his driving felt a bit too fast for comfort, but I had a ride home and felt relieved.

 I kept the story of the old Apache couple to myself, dismissing it as my imagination.... until that night in Mescalero around the fire with the Mountain Spirit dancers dancing to protect Apaches fighting in Vietnam, and the old woman keeping the secrets of her people, and the young man next to me by the fire telling me that there is a belief that an old Apache spirit couple still roams the area, and sometimes people feel them close by.

 Mescalero Head Springs Council Fire 1970
            Holy people from the mountain, Spirit people
          Coming near the fire where we pray and talk.
          Mountain people, Holy people from before the horses’ time
          Approach like vapors, like lucent spirits touching us.
          Holy people, Medicine people from legend days
          Who live with shadows amongst the pine.
          Two spirits, one old couple, who knew streams
          Now dried to gulches, watch from the shadows
          Of piñon and Ponderosa pine