Climbing San Ysidro peak

    Robert Levi Cahuilla elder and bird song teacher died September 2007. I dedicate this poem and piece to him. I asked Robert Levi when I met him in Borrego Springs, CA in 1990 if it was OK to talk about Mukat and Temayawet, he said it was and so I do. I heard him shake the rattle several times and sang the songs he taught them so they wouldn't die. I think about them today like wise so I won't die. I want to live and living is a song.


     Mukat and Temayawet were brothers, twin brothers, so I a Gemini also found affinity for them. They like my brother and I fought and struggled to gain dominance. Coyote of course was involved and stole Mukat's heart, the red sand, the red rocks all these places we know and love are his doing. The Cahuilla believed in dreams and song and stories as I do. I likewise beleive and have found to be true that power, which they called ,""?iva?a" is vital to health prosperity and balance. How I can find it of course is a struggle and challenge, one that often eludes me.

     Ruth Murray Underhill wrote books about the desert people, she lived 1883-1984, 101 years, good years with many changes.In her books she communicated the importance of song, power and balance.

Climbing San Ysidro Peak



by Paul Manski



Robert Levi said it was ok

To tell of Mukat and Temayawet fighting

arguing and struggling their own

In that these mountains born

Shaking, trembling they rose up

To meet the blue

Now they block the wind-with-rain

Coming from the ocean



Um'nah'ah, with golden eagle circling around

They circle boundaries, up there Um'nah'ah

You feel it strong, clear meeting sky

Making rain



Dark and cool before first light

Creosote, cheese bush, burro bush, indigo

with croton and buckhorn cholla

You people the desert floor

Making home with mesquite and ironwood in the wash

A swept out depression in the sand

Cleared with soft grey red white fur

This is Jack Rabbit's bed

Seeing with big ears waiting listening for the last moment to run

Coyote's partner and friend



Along the dry wash snaking the canyon

desert willow and lavender follow

Covey of Gambel's quail scatters up the slope

Varnished desert boulders



Up the ridge into ocotillo, agave, barrel cactus

First ray of sun reflecting off Salton Sea

Getting into jojoba, cat claw and juniper

Mule deer and desert Big Horn share a spring

Drips and seaps below the flat

2000 feet below Fan palms green the bottom

with long brown skirts never burned



I lay down on a bed of pinyon needles

For four years I watched the sun disappear behind San Ysidro

Single leaf pinyon nuts crunch between my teeth

Sticky yellow pine sap all over my fingers.