After Picacho: The Road Trip Begins

Instead of heading straight to Utah, we decided to spend two more nights in Arizona to wait out the cold temperatures further north. We found a free campground in the Tonto National Forest just east of Phoenix called Oak Flats (for English speakers, otherwise called Chi’chil Bildagoteel). Chi’chil Bildagoteel is an ancestral home and sacred site of the Apache. We learned that there is an ongoing battle to save this land from mining. You can learn more about the site and the conflict here. And also here. Essentially, an international mining company wants to blast this site to open it up to mining. The area was protected in 1955 by Eisenhower when it was put on the National Registry of Historic Places. Unfortunately, Senator McCain erased that protection in 2014. Now, it has been going around and around in the courts for years and the site is still in danger of being destroyed.

“When you don’t have a connection to the land, when you don’t know the history of the people, is when that doesn’t matter to you. Just being out here you can feel how beautiful it is and see the scenery and feel the wind, you can see the clouds. All those things that establish a connection, and when you don’t even take those moments and all you see is how you can profit off of things, when it’s that money and power and greed — it’s an illusion… if you call America your home, how can you just destroy it that way?” -Quote from article by By Brandi Morin (read here)

We spent part of our days walking through this area and seeing the beauty for ourselves. We saw people visiting the sacred site at the top of the hill and a group of people who have made permanent camp in an effort to protect the place. We also could not ignore the existing mine a few miles in the distance looming over Chi’chil Bildagoteel.