I was honored to read for the Friends of Flagstaff's Future fifth anniversary celebration, Nov. 11. Despite my mom's instructions throughout my childhood to never talk about money or despair, here is what I read to a room full of my neighbors, co-workers, and kin:

Fifteen years ago I moved from the dying city of Rochester, N.Y. to Flagstaff. I had raised three kids by myself, been a civil rights/anti-war/alternative community/women's mental health worker and activist, consumed more gin than prudent and was thoroughly burned out. A friend nagged me into a visit to the Grand Canyon, which I thought was Disneyland with rocks. He walked me with my eyes shut to the edge. I opened my eyes. And, my old life was gone.

A few months later, I read Edward Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang and knew exactly what I needed to do. I came here with two intentions: to fight for the Earth and to write. I do just that.

This September, minus the gin, yet still imprudent, I burned out again. I was broke, a consequence of the well-trained faith of a good little Catholic girl in the Big Hit, the fat reward for noble behavior. I work hard at writing and teaching writing, and that work has not paid enough. My beloved old truck carried me for 215,000 miles and she burned out. Brakes. Clutch. The final straw, a week before I was to drive to Bear Lodge (Devil's Tower) for a badly needed one-week writing residency - the drive-shaft seized up.

I called a friend to drive me home from the garage. He found me sitting on the back bumper of my truck grinning somewhat crazily.

"I give up," I said. "Plus I'm scared I can't write anymore."

"Talk," he said. I did. He listened. He waited till I was done and then he said a few words that seemed miraculous. About community. About sharing. And, he wrote those words to others.

As a consequence, my community is coming to my aid. With money (sorry, Mom.). A few days ago another friend said to me people thought my pride would be hurt. "The opposite," I said. I thought about how we associate poverty with shame. I thought of pro bono environmental work and how activist pay is often a volcanic wetland left to itself; the big and beautiful "nothing" where a Big Box store was blocked; thunderclouds circling a gathering at which we learn the White Vulcan Mine has been purchased and the Peaks will bear one less scar. How could I feel shame about not having money? All I feel is pride. In my community. In my friends.

I won't exhort you to join Friends of Flagstaff's Future. You know the right thing to do. Instead, here is a gift, a story from the trip I was able to make to Bear Lodge. It happened on the way home. Without my friends' gift of a working drive-shaft, it would not have happened at all:

Journal, Nov. 11, 2000. I've used words to bear witness, to record beauty and atrocity, to honor, to shame, for education and vengeance. I've used and been used by truth to ignite passion. Now, I am charred and yet, still fuel.

There was Badger. Dead on a South Dakota two-lane. Beautiful beyond death, Scarlet blood. Fur the rich brown and gray of Autumn. I pulled over, parked the truck and moved him into the winter-gold grass away from the killing ground. His feet were huge, tough black pads, long claws for digging and defense.

I turned him on his belly, his throat against the earth, the shape of his last anguished cry no longer visible. He might have been resting. I pointed his snout East. I had no corn pollen, no tobacco, forgot I had water from the great basalt tower. I looked down at him. To be sent on his way unanointed,

I had not touched him with my hands. I had moved him with the windshield scraper. I thought of fleas, feared a dozen plagues only a little less deadly than our human trucks and cars. There was that bright black line of fur flowing from his head down his spine, the other fur the color of oak leaves and twilight. And, I had no pollen, no tobacco, no holy water. I had only my touch.

I crouched and set my palm against his big head. I ran my hand down his spine. His fur was thick, less coarse than I imagined. I told him I was sorry, that my kind had killed him and I had almost held back my touch. Through all of this, no car or truck came past. We were together in perfect silence. I looked south, then west, in the direction of my home. "Goodbye," I said, "I need to go."

I climbed back in the truck, carrying his harsh scent on my hand. Musky, of digging and dirt and the stink of terror and death. I washed my hands with Bear Lodge water, dried them on my old flannel shirt, pointed the truck west and left him, silent and still in the frosted grass.

A week later, I still carry him with me. I look up Badger in a book a friend has loaned and find this, by Barry Lopez:

"I would ask you to remember this," said Badger. "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And, learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put those stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves."

Thank you for caring for me. And with the stories I have been given, I will care for you and our beloved home.

Mary Sojourner is a professional writer whose work has appeared in High Country News, Flag Live!, The Arizona Daily Sun, and on National Public Radio, among others.