Chief Thunder's Place

[mnaz]

I head south toward Reno, into a Great Basin sage kingdom, two hundred miles of tawny ridges flowing into distant smoky others, south along the Humboldt River, and where does the river go? It goes nowhere. None of the few rivers in this realm make it out of a vast Great Basin sump. They coalesce out of snowmelt and unseen springs, remote streams on bare hills that rarely flow with names like Burnt Creek, then collect and flow a few hundred miles, dammed and diverted on the way, only to die in some dusty flat, denied their simple ocean return. On this road I'll follow the Humboldt all the way to its demise.
......It's a stretch of road that induces fatigue, four lanes dead-straight to a vanishing point in golden-toast emptiness. Near some old stamp mill ruins I stop for gas at a truckstop with a ten story tall sign, and then I pass a spoofed road sign near a few idling semis: "Entering Puckerbrush, NV"-- a few goofs holding out in a ghost town. Then it's a dirt track south along the highway. Always try another way when faced with Boredom Highway. It's a bad, slow trail, nearly abandoned.
......A green blot appears in the distance; Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder's compound is just one more nebulous blot on the far horizon at first. But strange things start to appear as I get closer, like a fence made of huge American cars-- a '65 Impala, '63 Coupe de Ville, '66 Thunderbird and such, all tilted sideways. Then I come to a fence of bedsprings and old Schwinn bicycles, the girls' models with curvy little tubes that swoop down from curvy handlebars, and metal scraps painted with smudged sayings and tenets of the Chief's odd realm. And as I approach closer, the mystifying complex of passion and pathos beyond the fence begins to sink in . . . An unfathomable vision, only four miles from just another truckstop on the highway.
......I unhook a gate and step into a strange, unsettled wonderland, but I don't get very far, stunned by the sight of a rambling three-story painted concrete house built up in many layers on layers; it must have taken decades to build. It's called Thunder Mountain, but I know nothing of the place, nor of the Chief's story, which I'd learn later. At first I'm simply overwhelmed, stopped in my tracks . . . Painted concrete tubes twist up around the edifice like a banyan tree jungle, and I'm being watched, maybe by ghosts flashing in chambers behind small outlooks cast in thick walls, and certainly by a host of stationary ghosts all around me, human figures of all sizes sculpted in concrete.
......Their eyes are everywhere: stoic Indian heroes watching over visual anarchy; little sprites in frozen frolic balanced on twisting tubes; long, doleful faces formed in concrete blobs; death masks popping from a concrete table; gaping mouths carved in tree trunks; faces of solemn ancients carved in stumps; and a seated, defeated concrete man, head down, hunched over-- The Thinker, after he's seen the futility of his thoughts. And the weight of all these eyes on me becomes too heavy; I make a slow retreat. I have no idea what happened in this place, but I sense an air of pervading mad sadness.
......And that sense, as I would learn later, is mostly true; this was a place of sadness. And wild creation. And dreams portending the coming Apocalypse-- the main reason that the Chief settled out here and built this unfathomable place, as it was revealed to him in a series of dreams.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/th ... -12997050/

[Arcadia]

and where does the river go? It goes nowhere. ahh... the different river´s faces! when you are familiar with one river´s way is difficult to even imagine other possibilities, yes !!!


.Their eyes are everywhere: stoic Indian heroes watching over visual anarchy; little sprites in frozen frolic balanced on twisting tubes; long, doleful faces formed in concrete blobs; death masks popping from a concrete table; gaping mouths carved in tree trunks; faces of solemn ancients carved in stumps; and a seated, defeated concrete man, head down, hunched over-- The Thinker, after he's seen the futility of his thoughts. And the weight of all these eyes on me becomes too heavy; I make a slow retreat. I have no idea what happened in this place, but I sense an air of pervading mad sadness.


yeah, fuck Rodin!! gracias for sharing it!!!!!!!

[dadio]

And dreams portending the coming Apocalypse-- the main reason that the Chief settled out here and built this unfathomable place, as it was revealed to him in a series of dreams.. Glad you shared this. Enjoyed it.

[mnaz]

Thanks Arcadia and dadio. The "doleful faces," I learned, were to watch over and protect children. And among the many American Indian statues at the site were Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute Tribe) and Standing Bear (Ponca Tribe)-- both of them activists and/or peacemakers/negotiators for native peoples in the latter 19th century.

It's a fascinating (and in the end, tragic) story, really. Apparently, when he was on a vision quest in 1959 near Star Peak in nearby Humboldt Range, the Chief found a canyon where sacred meetings had occurred for thousands of years. And somehow he found himself back there in 1968, pulling an old trailer with an old truck, 47 years old, a World War Two veteran, "adrift" again with his new wife after "bouncing around" for many years working many different jobs (after being run off from his family back east in his teenage years by internal rifts and tensions).

He started building a place in the mountains near this sacred site, but it was tough going (both labor-wise, and the fact that he was "squatter"), so he packed up and left the place behind-- or tried to. His truck sputtered and started dying near Reno, and since he had no money for repairs, he turned back north-- and suddenly his truck ran okay again. When he got back to Thunder Mountain, the land's owner was waiting for him, and offered to sell him 5 acres along the Interstate for $25 a month, and that's where he settled, for over 20 years, and built up his monument... The story had a sad ending though. After his wife and kids moved away in the late '80s, he took his own life with a bullet.

[mnaz]

Wrote (interpreted) a little more for this story..

I'm being watched, maybe by ghosts in stone chambers, and certainly by a host of frozen ghosts around me, the eyes of human figures sculpted in concrete. Eyes are everywhere, peering out of visual anarchy: life-sized Indian heroes; little dancing sprites balanced on twisted tubes; long, doleful faces formed in concrete blobs; death masks emerging from a concrete table; gaping mouths carved in tree trunks; solemn ancient faces carved in stumps; a weary concrete man sitting on a stump, head down, hunched over-- The Thinker, after he realizes the futility of his thoughts. The weight of all these eyes on me is heavy, so I make a slow retreat. I don't know this place, but I sense pathos along with its creative passion.
.......And that sense, as I'll learn later, is true. This fantastic, eerie display began in 1968, when Chief Thunder ditched his European name and rolled into Nevada with his new wife in an old truck towing an old travel trailer. He was 47 years old, a World War Two vet who survived severe burns in a fierce tank battle, who'd held many jobs since then, among them: Methodist pastor trainee, deputy sheriff, cab driver, forest ranger, even private eye, following a restless path since leaving his troubled family as a teenager, all those towns and jobs until he finally went back to Nevada.
.......He had walked Humboldt Range a few years earlier, into a canyon leading to a dramatic craggy peak, where he found a place of sacred meetings that had been held for thousands of years, long before the Paiutes arrived. And he'd seen this place in a lucid dream as well, as a man with eagle wings flying toward his sacred canyon destiny. But it was rough going in 1968 when he returned; he started building his place near the canyon, but it was hard, remote labor, and he drew the ire of locals as a squatter on land he had no claim to. So he and his wife packed up and went back to the highway. He quit-- or at least tried to.
.......His truck started dying near Reno, and since he lacked enough money for repairs, he turned around, back toward his place . . . And suddenly the truck ran perfectly, and when he got back, the land's owner was waiting for him, and offered five acres by the highway for twenty dollars a month. He said yes, and for the next 21 years, Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder and family settled in to build their astounding world on this flat strip of dry land beside a stream of restless eighteen-wheelers and lonesome fade of singing tires.

"There's nothing out there" . . . Yet I found another mad desert monument on another dirt track off the highway. And like the jumping mountains or the most bizarre rock formations, you couldn't make this up if you tried; your imagination couldn't top this bewildering, unsettling scene. I have no idea how it came to be, but I'll piece together bits of the story later on.
.......It began when Thunder parked his travel trailer in the sage, then encased it in concrete and rocks. And from this humble core a great concrete and stone house emerged, spreading outward and upward, its walls strengthened by salvage pipe and iron, inlaid with wine bottles, helmets, televisions, typewriters and other refuse from a junkyard up the road. Then the Chief built fences in the yard of various porosity, mixing in car hoods, wagon wheels, steering wheels, toy trucks, rust-smeared refrigerator doors, some with hard messages painted on them, and even a gas pump . . . the detritus of disposable culture, given a second life.
.......But it's the eyes everywhere, the human statues all around that get you-- the stately figures and war-possessed, naked revelers and the betrayed; and you're surrounded, you don't know their intentions. Thunder sculpted these beings for years on iron and chicken wire skeletons using lean-mix concrete, but when you learn who they are, most of them aren't as menacing as they seem at first.

[mnaz]

Okay, picking up on the last 3 paragraphs, onto the end of the story...

......."There's nothing out there" . . . Yet I found a another mad desert monument on another dirt track off the highway. And like the jumping mountains or the most bizarre rock formation, you couldn't make this up; your imagination couldn't top this bewildering, unsettling scene. I have no idea what this place is, but I'll learn later on that it all began when Thunder parked his travel trailer in the sage, then encased it in concrete and rocks.
.......And from this rough, humble core a great concrete and stone house emerged, spreading outward and upward, its walls strengthened by salvage pipe and iron, inlaid with wine bottles, televisions, hubcaps, wheels, typewriters, railroad ties, helmets and other rubbish. Then Thunder built fences all through the yard-- some made of cemented stone, and some quite porous, with car hoods, wagon wheels, steering wheels, cow skulls, toy trucks, boilers, pipes, a gas pump, a coke machine, rusted refrigerator doors painted with hard-edged messages-- any kind of junk imaginable, all worked into the mix . . . detritus of a disposable culture fully on display, all salvaged inside a sixty mile radius, including piles of boards from old mining ghost camps.
.......But the statues are what get you. You're surrounded by war-possessed hellions and stoic peacemakers, revelers and the beaten, elation and calm, defeat and rage. Thunder sculpted these myriad beings for many years with lean mix concrete on chicken wire and steel (inspired by sand sculpting), and they're watching you, all around-- perched up on stages, dancing on high hoops and poised to leap, posed serenely beside walls or bursting from them, falling into them, fierce figures and faces, scenes of betrayals dealt American Indians by the US government in the last 150 years . . . It is, among many purposes, a memorial of war and suffering, and a haunting air of strife and pain hangs over the place.
.......Yet once you know these beings, understanding replaces raw trepidation. In the silent gallery you'll find Sarah Winnemucca, Paiute negotiator and educator, and Standing Bear, a Ponca chief who, after a series of broken government promises caused famine and disease on the reservation his tribe had been forced onto, was imprisoned for leaving the reservation to bury his son in his tribal homeland, and successfully sued the government for habeas corpus. Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent Aztec god, is a riveting presence adorned with multicolored feathers. And Thunder himself is a fiery figure on the roof, wielding a lightning bolt to fend off intruders, but he also appears as a gaunt, bent-over figure with a downcast face out in the yard, among the long, doleful faces he sculpted into concrete blobs-- to watch over the children. The children watchers.
.......Yes, several young children grew up here, playing with salvage toys, milking goats, splashing in a concrete wading pool. At its peak, Thunder Mountain's six buildings housed forty people-- various drifters who stayed to work on the project. Anyone could stay if they had the heart for it. Thunder was truly an outsider from day he arrived, but that simply meant a citizen of raw earth, not of any particular people, race or Church. The Mountain mattered most-- creation out of dust and mud, something from nothing, faces brought out in rock that were already there, waiting. Word of Thunder's prodigious exhibit eventually reached the statehouse, and in 1983 he won Nevada's Artist of the Year award.
.......But by then the end was near. People moved on, and an arsonist wiped out the wood buildings. But the stone house endured; it was built to last a thousand years. After his wife and children left and his health failed, I imagine Chief Thunder drew strength from his grandmother's peaceful figure gazing from the roof; she was a prayer woman, his spiritual guide. Maybe she's also the medicine woman who told him that in the last days, only those who live at Thunder Mountain will survive the apocalypse. Or maybe that was a dream, depending on who tells the story.
.......But the end was certainly on Thunder's mind as his last days fell to illness and depression, until one day he'd had enough; he wrote a note to his son, then shot himself in the head. High in the Humboldts, east of his astonishing monument, a mountain named after him towers over his sacred canyon. Pathos and passion. I sensed them both in this place even before I knew anything about it.

[mnaz]

It's too much to take in suddenly, coming off the highway, the fantastical stone house, the silent, frozen painted legion of watchers, warriors and sufferers, the craziest human place I've found in the desert, a baffling, screaming labor of love wrought from mud and stone. No one's around it seems, though the place has a million places for hiding and watching, and Nevada paused again, no breath of air, even the highway is dead, a heavy quiet, the weight of eyes all around me, and I need to leave it alone. I roll slowly back to the highway.

[mnaz]

Note:
I removed Thunder's name from this story. I just call him "the Artist." I'm guessing a few regular interstate travelers will recognize this place immediately from my descriptions, and might be amazed that I'd never heard of it before I found it, but that's exactly what happened-- I "stumbled onto it." I had no clue what it was, until later.