Audio

Phillipine War

Yosemite National Park

Transcript

This is Sergeant Alizy Bowman. I'm in Hetch Hetchy, just north of Yosemite Valley. It's June, June of 1903. The sun is high in the sky and the sky is bluer than any blue I've ever seen in my life. And it's quiet, so quiet. I can hear myself think. I can--I can hear myself breathe. And I'm out here in this little cabin, this patrol post. And I'm writing down everything that happened along the way here. But I can't write down that quiet that seems to come from nowhere, seems to come from nothing, seems to be nothing itself. And that quiet has been seeping into my bones everyday I've been up here in this high country. The wind has blown it into me and the cold has let it seep into my bones, into my soul until I don't know if it will ever get out, if I can ever get this silence out of me. What do you do when you're in a country this quiet, this still? How do you get it out? And it makes me nervous because before we were here in Yosemite, we were in San Francisco. And before we were in San Francisco, we were out there in the Philippines, in the jungle. And those Insurrectos, those Filipinos were fighting, fighting for their freedom. And we were there, the 9th Cavalry was there, Troop K was there trying to take it away. What kind of duty do you call that when you take a colored man from South Carolina who's never tasted freedom himself? And there he is, taking it away from people whose skin is as dark as his own, as dark as the soil, as the dark as the earth itself, taking away something he ain't ever had. And the last time I felt quiet, like the quiet here in Hetch Hetchy was that quiet in the Philippines when we were walking and riding and walking some more and riding some more, fearing some bullet come whistling out of the dark, out of the green, out of the heat of those trees right into us. It was that kind of quiet. And when we were there, I was afraid. Now there ain't nothing here to make me afraid. There's only silence around me. But something's happened to me. Being in a war has made me fearful of silence, fearful of stillness. And there's all these visitors here who are happy, who are laughing, who are singing, having a good old time. They hear that quiet and it brings a smile to their lips but I hear that silence. And it makes the sweat come off my brow. It makes me chill to the bone, wondering what piece of metal is going to come firing, flying out of the trees at me. Huh, you can take a soldier out of the war. You can take a soldier out of battle, but you can't take the war out of that soldier. You can't take the fear out of them. And I'm up here all by myself, and something that should be soothing should make me feel comfortable. But I'm as tense as a wire that's been strung too tight. And any moment, I'm either going start singing or I'm going to snap in two. And they call it a valley. And they call it a waterfall. And they call it granite. But all of that adds up to something that I can't see. And what I can't see is making me nervous, is making me scared. That's what Hetch Hetchy means to me; a place so quiet, it reflects what you've been through and what's been through you. And any moment, there's a bullet about to come, about to end all your days and all your nights. And the last thing that you're going to remember is the sound of that waterfall spilling over the edge of the world, the sound of your own breathing, the sound of something that's been not in this world for months but is in my mind for the rest of my life. And it mingles with a spray of Wapama Falls. It mingles with the light of Kolana Rock. Huh, how do I write that down into this ledger here on this table? How do I write down the feeling I had a day in a day a long time ago? A day that I thought was forgotten, but all it needed was a key to open it up. And that key is the silence in this wind, in this stillness, in this place called Hetch Hetchy.

Description

Sgt. Boman reflects on the impact stillness has had on his life. Within that quiet he remembers the time he spent in the Philippine War, and how it lingers within him and with him on his patrols through a valley called Hetch Hetchy.

Credit

Shelton Johnson

Date Created

03/13/2013

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