One year with the elders

"This one you can tell by the leaves and the color of the plant. You have to grind it down and rub it all over your face and leave it on overnight for acne. This one is for keeping a baby clean ... and this for the sheep when they have stomach trouble."

This is medicinal botany and I am forever the student. My grandmother is talking to me about all this rich unwritten knowledge in a single session and I can only hope to retain a portion. She goes on and on about this plant and that and I am still stupid-pet-trick trained to record it on paper and take notes. I think about how professors, colleges and government would kill for this stuff - and some of them already have. Mostly, I think that for a day I get an awesome education and the tuition is nothing other than priceless.

This isn't college and I am not in a classroom. I am in southeast Utah in the land of the Navajo people standing on a rock ledge of rust-red formations reminiscent of Mars, attempting to absorb a lifetime of information and a library of culture. The wind blows making it hard to listen in the summer noonday sun and I guard her against pesky tourists who may try to capture the "real Indian" immortalized in a picture.

These are tidbits of information that cannot easily be accessed on a day-to-day basis. The only reason I am an instant pupil is because our car overheated and we have time on our hands. She teaches me the medicinal properties and applications of what I thought were simple weeds. When I was 10, she showed me a complex series of roots and herbs in the middle of nowhere I could survive on if I was ever lost. Blazed into my brain is the natural remedy for cuts on hands, which National Geographic recently discovered, but we knew for centuries. I need to be on this land to learn more, master the language further, practice the applications and see my grandmother for the knowledge.

How many of you know what intellectual delights are stored in the minds and hearts of loved ones? I am sure others can relate to having elderly relatives tell stories until everybody is sleepy. Some realize that these are learning experiences that school curriculums can't teach and take them for what they are worth. I wonder about the diverse people on campus from all over the world. Perhaps there are elderly people who have stories of the Cold War, related to Russian students; Chinese herbalists who have not yet shared their secrets with family; South American students yet to learn their language from before the arrival of the conquerors; U.S. families who carry European names and recipes. There is truth, honesty and reality behind every story in every family in every land telling what the world was like and how it easily can be again.

How much is a year worth? This question makes me sound like an average American analyzing the value of something in a context of time. My people don't have a price tag and aren't relegated to time but to the order of the earth and its seasons. A year of tuition is a costly ordeal especially when the people who run UW see fit to take dollars out of your pocket to make their wallets fatter. Imagine if everyone pulled out with their money. Where would the Board of Regents be then? In a year people can be born or die, countries can fall, lives change forever. We don't have forever so take time to learn that which is important now.

I am willing to bet that a season with my grandmother and her people will teach all I need to know. In America, we are taught that college is the way and the light and without it we cannot be saved. Take a walk in downtown Seattle on a late night by yourself and you will get educated on what life is really like. Your time, money and life are on the line, so make it good. What is a year worth to you?