Looking Back: Histories, Stories and Profiles
San Geronimo Valley
painted sign for the wheel cover. For the next two weeks, these signs proclaimed, “Kate and Utah on Tour.” It was important to Kate to share her home area with Utah, and she wanted to do it in style, though it meant beginning a tour with substantial costs. After returning from the tour, she travelled through the Southwest, performing with the Academy Award winning documentary, The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? The film documents the ecological and cultural costs of energy development on the Colorado Plateau of the Southwest. For years there has been a dispute over the develop- ment of the resources of the Southwest. In 1974, Congress passed a law to forcibly relocate thousands of Navajo from land sacred to them at Big Mountain. Native leaders charged that the relocation was designed to facilitate access to minerals, primarily coal, underlying the disputed lands. Kate returned to this area in August of 1985, drawn to the Sundance at Big Mountain. The Navajo elders had invited the Lakota people to come to Big Mountain for a Sundance in spiritual support of their resistance to forced relocation. For four days, the Sundancers constantly focus their minds, hearts and spirits for the welfare of all life. They dance for all of us. Following the Dance, she joined others to go to a campsite on the rim of the Grand Canyon. A huge owl swooped across the road in front of one of the vehicles. Kate returned home the next morning to find that Phillip Cassadore, a spiritual leader of the San Carlos Apache, had just died. She wrote this song for him. The Shadow of a LIfe
Driving west into the sun where the road runs out to the sea and the night sky paints a picture with the stars Where Spirit Rock stands watching over all the weary souls and the cows and horses watch the passing cars. San Geronimo Valley where the towns are small and sleepy The redwood trees stand silently and the sun and wind play freely I’ve been waiting such a long time for the touch of your hand Take me down by the waters that run on this land. There’s a hummingbird trapped in the house how long I do not know She beats her wings there’s a lot I’d like to ask her. And if I look I might just see that the shadows of my life have faded in the Valley’s morning sun. The hills that rise around me and the peace that fills my heart lead me home to rest when the day is done. San Geronimo Valley where the towns are small and sleepy but her heart is beating faster She looks at me as I wrap her in a soft kitchen towel As I set her free
There is an owl flying from the south heading north from the Superstition Mountains Like the shadow of a life fading in the dark surroundings. While we who travel on the rim seeking love and finding understanding go safely on our way like the river running in the canyon Into this world everything is born All colors come together On the sacred hoop we take our place and when we go, we leave forever. Like the shadow of a life
The redwood trees stand silently and the sun and wind play freely I’ve been waiting such a long time for the touch of your hand Take me down by the waters that run on this land.
In the summer of 1982, Kate travelled to Canada for per- formances at major folk festivals in Calgary and Winnipeg. That fall, she remarried at the Medicine Wheel Gathering in Sonoma. The ceremony was performed by Keetoowah (Cherokee medicine man) with Evelyn Eaton assisting. Kate prepared for a tour of Northern California with Utah Phillips in the spring of 1983. On one of her regular walks in the Valley, she came across a sign maker and had him make a magnetic sign for each door of her van and a
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50 th Anniversary
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