The best-selling lesbian author navigates us to her Native American roots

by Joe E. Jeffreys

Known for her milestone 1974 gay novel The Front Runner, with an estimated 10 million copies in print in 10 languages worldwide, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Nell Warren is one of the best-selling out authors in literary history. An activist for such causes as gay youth and freedom of speech, Warren's latest non-fiction book, The Lavender Locker Room, traces 3,000 years of gay athletes. In the book, one of the sports she writes about is the gay rodeo circuit—an outdoor culture close to her heart, having grown up on a cattle ranch in Deer Lodge, Montana.

"When you try to look at the world through the eyes of native people you can see what they thought was beautiful and powerful about a particular place."

The ranch's surrounding landscape and people served as inspiration for Warren's 2001 novel One is the Sun, an intertwined story of two young women, one Native American, the other German, in Montana Territory in the 1860s. Writing the book led Warren deeper into her own mixed blood heritage, with Cherokee lineage on her father's side. Her extensive research for the novel saw her traveling to study Native American culture on a first hand basis. At the urging of her Native American relatives she built her own travois, a sled-like transport rig. She also explored the West from the Mexican border to the Canadian line, "visiting places and meeting people, doing things, making things, and living through ceremonies."

South of Montana, Patricia also recommends visitors sojourn to Wyoming's Bighorn Medicine Wheel —a Native American ceremonial stone circle where "prayer ties flutter in the wind today. It is very much alive and cherished by native people and non-native people who wish to offer a prayer." Eighty feet in diameter, it functions as both a calendar and ritual ground.

Patricia also points travelers to New Mexico's Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, which represents one of the most outstanding and extensive ancient architectural complexes to be seen in the United States. The tiered pueblo village of two- to five-story stone dwellings and ceremonial structures is built around a central plaza and served about 1,200 people. There are an estimated 800 rooms in the still standing two acre complex, many joined by T-shaped doors. The canyon's magnificent and intricate settlements were abandoned around AD 1150 due to drought. While known to the Navajo, it was only rediscovered by the U.S. Army in 1849.

High on many Western travelers' itineraries are the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park. Patricia urges travelers to consider these sites sacred and inspiring to the native peoples. She points out that Yellowstone was special because of its healing hot springs. Both were "places of vision quest, away from everyday life where you could get into and find your own space."

"Traveling," Warren concludes, "is all about take, take, take. You need food, gasoline, lodging. It's always important to give back something. I will leave birdseed for birds or salt for deer or scatter a bag of non-evasive wildflowers. I always give something back when I travel." It's a marathon strategy that all travelers win from.