By MJ Pramik
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Transformation category
Many deserts have a shaman’s cave. Or, at least, the rumor of one. The speculation that one exists brings with it a sense of anticipation. The wilderness expanse of sand, rocks, cacti, pokeweed and chaparral at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California’s Palm Desert is no exception.
In the gray December of 2022, ending the third year of Covid, I made a pilgrimage to a friend’s desert hideaway that served as a retreat from the usual family holiday hullabaloo. We lingered over the year end tradition of butter cookies, hot chocolate, board games, Yahtzee and tinkling Frank Sinatra yuletide songs in the background. A dark night howled outside the small house huddled against the chill as winter winds slid down the San Jacinto Mountains into the valley.
My friend and her local guests discussed the ancient desert lore about Snow Creek, an enclave of thirty-seven dwellings about twelve miles from Palm Springs. They whispered about a “shaman’s cave” as we celebrated New Year’s Eve in close knit community.
“A shaman’s cave?” My voice revealed in excitement. I’m always up for a magical spiritual adventure. “I’ll get up early and pack the food. How far is it from here?”
“A short distance up to the base of Mt. Jacinto,” said Maddy.
“Then a few more miles,” said Alex, her boyfriend.
“How many miles is a few?” I pushed for a more definitive answer.
“You won’t need your hiking poles,” said Bobby.
Maddy’s seven-year-old niece Char grumbled about being “too tired.” Her nine-year-old brother Hen stood up and touched his toes. “I’ll be ready to climb that mountain,” he said. “Come on, Char, five to ten miles is not far. And it’s downhill on the way home.”
“Do you know the location of this fabled grotto?” I asked.
“No, we don’t,” said Maddy. They had lived in the area for about two years, but as yet had not visited the shaman’s cave.
“So how do we find this shaman house?” I asked as we tidied up the dishes.
The adults all nodded at the dark window, out there toward the mountain. We set our plans for early morning, eight o’clock in the chilled air, ready for hard-frozen soil and the wind blustering invisible over the uneven ankle-turning surface.
The call of wilderness pulled us like a compass needle at the thin crack of dawn. Soaring mountains lured toward the snowcapped peaks to the south. A hawk’s circling flight beckoned to follow it up the cragged boulders. San Jacinto Peak loomed above at 10,834 feet. Fog smoke puffed from all our mouths. It…was…cold.
Beneath the buzz of our world roars a hum of the underground, the songs of those who once walked over the same rocks we stepped upon rise up each day. The desert on which we trod had housed many thousands of human and nonhuman animals, all of which had crunched the pebbles and bones of those that came before us. I believe we all have a need within us to feel past spirits as we step on the desert floor. Whenever I visit the Mojave, these spirits seem to walk with me and my friends, as they did in our quest for the rumored shaman’s cave.
On a paper map, this stretch of the Coachella Valley sweeps along the eastern border of the San Jacinto range. Touching several towns and cities with famous names—Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Coachella, Indio, Rancho Mirage—it borders the Salton Sea and trespasses Mount San Gorgonio to the north.
But we didn’t have a paper map this January 1. Char and Hen charged out toward the mountain. I’d wrapped our sustenance tight and asked the stronger hikers to carry the bundles.
I did bring my collapsible hiking poles. And learned this was not a good idea. Tumbleweeds and low-lying vegetation snarled my progress. Collapsed, the poles fit into someone’s backpack.
“Whose cave is this?” I asked.
“We don’t know. Someday we’ll check out the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in Palm Springs. They’re supposed to have archives, a library, even a film festival,” Maddy said against the wind.
We had hiked up a slight rocky incline from the house where we holidayed. Ponderosa pine, white fir, incense cedar and manzanita pocked the altitude above us. As we trudged through rock-strewn grasslands and chapparal, brittle spikes of witch grass, horsetail and other plants caught at our pants legs, causing several stumbles over the desert floor. Bushes and sagebrush reached up at our legs and slowed our pace. It was as if the desert did not want us to discover the shaman’s hideout.
After an hour’s climb, we spied what looked like a structure, although it was not exactly a cave. Two ravens convened high on the rocky peak of an edifice constructed of several granite slabs randomly leaning against each other. It looked as if an earthquake from long ago had adjusted the “walls” of the structure. Recent humans (I suspected county safety staff) had closed off the three openings with red reinforced steel bars to protect hikers like our band from squeezing into the haphazard space.
I stepped lightly around the slabs of stone leaning against each other. The shallow structure stood strewn with desert debris. The towering emptiness of the cave supported my hope that the desert can return a person to her true self. Cold, rough-hewn wedges and hunks of granite testified that surviving in a desert cave would grow a person’s inner strength. I leaned against the outer wall and considered a night spent here—it would certainly toughen my spirit.
As our group began the descent home in the rapidly freezing winds, I squinted into the shaman’s cave one last time, squeezing the frigid rebar. My gaze wandered over the desert that had once served the legendary shaman and his Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Dusk enveloped us as we became shadows to each other. Out of the darkening cave an enormous bird swooped over our heads. I felt the wind from its outspread wings sweep past my cheeks.
I stood on the barren, rocky ground, my hiking boots clinging to the planet’s surface. Turning southward toward the opening of the shaman’s cave, I saw shapes in the coming dusk and felt the spirit beings whirling in the darkness.
I would later learn that for centuries the Cahuilla people (pronounced ka-WEE-ya or KAW-we-ah) have inhabited the desert where we stood. Many of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians now live on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation near Palm Springs. After returning from the hike to the shaman’s cave, I read Temalpakh and Mukat’s People, the authoritative books by scholar Dr. Lowell John Bean about this tribe.
In Mukat’s People, Professor Bean recounts that the Cahuilla honor Mukat as their creator god. According to their creation story, creator god Mukat and another spirit god Temayuwat, birthed from the union of twin balls of lightning, Amnaa (Power) and Tukmiut (Night). Mukat reigns as the basic energy source from which all things were created.
One legend in Mukat’s People recounted a cannibal living in a glass cave near Tahquitz Peak on Mt. San Jacinto. This creature—both animal and human—spent its days eavesdropping and snooping on the inhabitants of the desert near current day Palm Springs. The spirit would return at night with his kidnapped prey to eat them alive then would hold their souls for eternity. Another tale claimed the creator spirit Mukat slowly became corrupted like many desert inhabitants around the San Jacinto peaks. Mukat turned from being a moral creator to using his mighty powers to harm others.
Professor Bean’s latest book, Time Immemorial: The Traditional Ways and History of the Members of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, was published in 2020. In this volume, he writes, “For the Cahuilla, the religious and political leaders and shamans within any particular group are highly creative people who enter into ‘dream states’ from which new ideas emerged and would then be incorporated into the culture of that person’s group…”
The Cahuilla shamanic puvalams, or priests, had many roles. They practiced desert medicine, and underwent ritual training and initiation. A member of a secret society within the tribe, a puvalam had to possess supernatural power and be called to the life of a shaman. He had to risk misfortune or death. He had to create and own his specific songs and dances. He had to show his true spirit guardian. He had to be up to tasks like predicting rain, forecasting big weather events, or warning of seismic shifts in the mountains and desert. He had to know how to cure snake bite and predict a falling star. His group within the tribe often acted together and influenced the political structure of the settlement. He had to innovate, create, and cope with unexpected events. The Cahuilla shaman was a diviner, a dreamer.
I peered into that cave. I imagined one of Mukat’s shamans might be watching my moves. It took little active imagination to sense that this high priest still guarded the rocks and cave.
As the wind whistled over the desert surface, I imagined the echo of the shaman’s songs. Perhaps the rattlesnake and bobcat hiding among the crevices and overhangs also felt the power of his dances.
I looked up. A meteor streaked across the sky.
An owl screeched in the distance.
~ ~ ~
Mary Jean (MJ) Pramik is the author of Travels on the Edge: One Woman’s Journeys on a Runaway Planet, a collection of adventure travel stories wrapped in meditations on the climate crisis. MJ earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in biological sciences, completed an MFA in Writing, and has taught writing at San Francisco State University. Her articles and essays have appeared in Nature Biotechnology, Good Housekeeping, San Francisco Chronicle, Odyssey Magazine, and the National Enquirer. She’s contributed to Travelers’ Tales “Venturing in” and Wanderland Writers anthologies and has won several Solas Awards. A member of the Community of Writers and the American Academy of Poets, she’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Communicating with screeching penguins in Antarctica and swimming with South African sharks remain high points of her sojourn on this planet.