Almost cut my hair today

1st draft

Sometimes on stretches through the splendid Pennsylvania woods I start thinking of imaginative and improbable things. On a recent barefoot stroll my intuition started niggling about ticks and I worried about my long hair. Soon several found my skin and as I flicked them off, my arm hair rose in tingling dismay; remembering how insidious a hurt an untreated tick-bite can become. 

This reminded me of a passage in The Spiritual Nature of Hair by Deva Kaur Khalsa: https://www.quantumbalancing.com/spiritualhair.htm

 

 “Hairs are the antennas that gather and channel the sun energy or prana to the frontal lobes, the part of the brain you use for meditation and visualization. These antennas act as conduits to bring you greater quantities of subtle, cosmic energy.”

Indeed, hair works as sensory antennae, feeling and rigorously feeding mysterious dimensions of our sixth sense or minds-eye. During the Vietnam War a secret psychological institute recruited long-haired Native American trackers and tested them on multiple field and perimeter-intrusion tasks. Then the psychologists paired two men together at a time who had received similar test scores, letting one keep his long hair, while administrating a crew-cut to the other. In each case, the equivalently skilled trackers retook the same tests and invariably the long haired men earned high scores, while the short haired men now failed the tests in which they had previously scored high. 


Much later, an unnamed psychologist involved in the tests revealed a government document which recommended that “all Indian trackers be exempt from military haircuts.” In fact, it required that “trackers keep their hair long."


Suddenly the thought of my needing to pay for a shortwave crew-cut vanished. Instead, like an attuned 60’s hippy (yes, I’m about sixty!) I believe I’ll rely on my long-hair augmented tingling Spidey-sense to track and trap the treacherous ticks for summertime’s remainder.
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Honor Indigenous people with a Camas Lily license plate.

Kudos to Tony Evans for his four-part broad ranging Express series on Native Americans, and their close connections to our valley. Not only should every Southern Idaho Historical Society consider permanently linking to the series, but also, as one local scholar observed; it could be upgraded into a pamphlet or small book and made mandatory or recommended reading as part of local school curriculums.

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Particularly interesting in Tony’s story are the parts about Native Americans powerful relationship with the Earth through the camas plant. It was refreshing to read about the annual Camas Lily Days Festival featuring “Indian dancing, arts and crafts and the traditional baking of camas bulbs in rock-lined fire pits covered with wet grass and earth.” As well as June’s energized Fairfield festival, something else nice that I would like to see is a tribute to the Native American / camas root connection through our Idaho DMV specialized license plate series. An artist rendering of the camas celebration, based on the popular Sacagawea dollar coin template would make a good fit.

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For years, I’ve been a proud displayer of Famous Idaho Potato plates on some of my rigs, but as camas roots are four times more nutritious than our average russet, I would be happier than a sunny camas bluebird to upgrade to such new customized plates.