Cinder
—Susan Stewart
We needed fire to make
the tongs and tongs to hold
us from the flame; we needed
ash to clean the cloth
and cloth to clean the ash's
stain; we needed stars
to find our way, to make
the light that blurred the stars;
we needed death to mark
an end, an end that time
in time could mend.
Born in love, the consequence-
born of love, the need.
Tell me, ravaged singer,
how the cinder bears the seed
Photos above and below: the site of the 1867 Battle of Infernal Caverns, near Likely in Modoc County CA. Note: Restricted access through a private ranch. (Click photos to enlarge.)
Above, left: click to enlarge, on far left eight tombstones.
Below: Bob, who served in Viet Nam in the 1st Cavalry, notes several of the dead soldiers were 1st Cavalry in 1867. The graves of the dead are not actually at the location of the memorial; 6 were buried about a mile away, and later when a reburial was attempted, the bones could not be located. That's another story.
As is the story of the approximately 14 to 20 Native Americans that were killed in the narrow canyon during the two-day battle in September 1867. As far as I know, there's no memorial to them.
This intense battle, forced by Lieutenant Colonel George Crook, proved to be a pivotal one concluding, in 1868, what is known (by the whites) as the Snake War when the remnants of the Native Americans battling for their homelands were forced onto reservation
Above: The horseshoe and the U.S. Army emblem are located on the concrete to the right edge of the memorial. A horseshoe from a horse of a soldier of the 1st Cavalry?
Below: John Madigan, the only officer killed, was buried near Alturas. This stone was added later at the memorial site. The other seven stones include Christian crosses as an emblem. If you zoom in, you'll see a Celtic cross; Madigan was Irish.
Below: Looking west over the Likely Plains from the Springs site -- in the distance the hills of the Infernal Caverns. Foreground: petroglyphs on boulder below spring. (All photos by DB, October 2026
"Until we can hear the cries of the world and let them pierce through to the undivided place in ourselves, we can't realize the cries of the world and the angry groaning of the Earth as our own.
"Until then, we're prone to be ghosts to ourselves and to one another, ghosts to the Earth. A cry completely heard can shatter the dream of any gap between self and human or creaturely others, self and the living Earth. Intimacy appears, all beings are close, and the way is very wide."
—Susan Murphy in A Fire Runs Through All Things
