The Story behind "Fetishes—Medicine Wheel"

Abstract

Photo The Story behind "FetishesMedicine Wheel" by Mark Olencki The tale started innocendy enough. John Lane, one of my oldest friends, asked if I wanted to go out West to visit a mutual friend and drive to as many national parks as we could manage in a week. I eagerly agreed. It would be my first trip west ofthe Mississippi. We flew into BiUings and headed southeast to Buffalo,Wyoming, where our friend Uved. After spending a few days in that small ranch town, John and I took our rented Chevy into the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming. For a photographer from the South who had only experienced the weathered Appalachians, the rugged peaks of the younger Big Horn Mountains were Uke Ansel Adams prints stretched across the windshield. The lucid quality of western light can only be experienced on a few spring and fall days in South CaroUna. UsuaUy the humidity down South is so high it softens the light and makes many photos have that soft-focus quality ofthe turnof -century Pictorialists. That day as we drove higher into the mountains, every turn brought new vistas and opportunities to bring out my equipment and capture in süver nitrate a bit of the awe I experienced. 199 200Fourth Genre As our first day in the mountains closed, we saw and passed a sign for the Medicine Wheel National Monument. John's topo maps told us we were crossing Medicine Mountain. Quickly we turned around and started up the oneand -a-halfmue gravel road to the site. Halfway up we passed a very unusual site, a NASA observatory like a metallic mushroom on the horizon. How odd I thought, but quickly reasoned, why not? In the middle of nowhere, at 9,000 feet, this mountain would be a perfect place to suck the sky with radar. We found out very soon that ancient peoples had the same idea. Arriving at the crude parking area and gate,John and I assembled our respective equipment. I took several cameras—35mm and 120mm format—and John sUpped his notebooks and pens into a daypack. The Medicine Wheel was stiU a half-müe up a dirt path. With theWheel in sight, and the NASA faculty behind us, the trip departed from the norm. As I walked the narrow ridge path to the MedicineWheel, I could see faces in almost every rock formation! They seemed to be silently watching and guarding the thin ridge that led down from the observatory to what we soon saw was a cloth-covered, fenced circle ofwaist-high rocks. I walked the rock edge where it feU off into what was known as the Five Springs Basin. The sentinels were everywhere. I was struck with the feeUng that we were on holy ground. When we met back up, John admitted that he sensed it too. By this time it was late in the day, and I was privileged to get some of the last of a sunset that had long passed in the vaUey below. I walked around the Wheel with my medium format camera in hand. I didn't shoot much because the Ught was quickly fading and so was my film supply. (I had exhausted most of my film on the faces along the ridge below.) Composition as weU as Ught drew me. I walked around theWheel with my medium format camera in hand. I didn't shoot much because the Ught was quickly fading and so was my film supply. (I had exhausted most of my film on the faces along the ridge below.) Composition as weU as Ught drew me—the simple geometry ofbits ofcloth and bone tied to the fence, the mystery of the Medicine Wheel's ornaments. Fetishes, that was the name given to die objects tied on the fence, a ranger told me later. They had been left as favors, reminders to the spirits during private, individual ceremonies ofdianksgiving and praise that occur there daüy. These fetishes were bits of one's unique and powerful individualism, scraps of T-shirts, bandana remnants, coins, jewelry, and smaU animal skuUs. The faces in the rock and the fetishes tied to the...