Background

The Tribe: In the border of Arizona, a small, tight-knit community huddled together to welcome a new arrival in their local clinic to their tribe. Born to a small-town tribal police officer and a school teacher, Goyaałé was christened Geronimo and raised with love, affection and community. The conglomerate of tribes that made up the Navajo Nation were small in the grand scale of the world, but to the child, it was everything. He grew up surrounded by the institutionalised complexity of his tribe, often impoverished and uncomfortable, but never alone and never abandoned. Whilst he enjoyed the company of his friends and family, he was a quiet child, often preferring to skulk out into the wilderness for hours at a time. Taught by tribal leaders of their past, their stories and the expectant realities they will be facing in the future, and the importance of giving back to their community, he developed a strong bond to his people’s history. Chafing in the typical small-town antics and isolation of his community, under the auspices of his eccentric uncles, who took it upon themselves to tutor the young boy in their ways of Spiritualism and Shamanism, much to the chagrin of his mother. Whilst his uncles encouraged him to foster his interest in preserving their culture by making him an apprentice Shaman, the realities and difficulties of life pushed the young man to join his father as a Reservation Officer. The Brave: As soon as he was old enough to join the local Arizona police academy and graduate with passable results, Geronimo was sped along to join the Navajo Nation Police Department. There, he experienced the harsher realities of reservation life. Drugs, rampant poverty, domestic violence and friction between the Nations and the local Arizona bureaucracy quickly soured his initial optimism. After working alongside his father and the Arizona Rangers in a particularly harsh case, his disillusionment was finalised with a quiet transfer to the Arizona State Parks Agency as a Parks Ranger. Despite his father’s disappointment, Geronimo took well to working on the land, ensuring that the lands he grew to appreciate were respected and protected from the ignorant or belligerent. To make ends meet, and with some helpful strings pulled from his father and his community's networking, he took seasonal work as a Livestock enforcement officer and ranch hand in between his duties. Yet he clung to his profession as a Park Ranger with deep appreciation and passion, finding his work a middle ground between the spiritual and the sublime. After one harsh winter and one unusually verdant spring, he witnessed firsthand the effects of a virulent bloom outbreak on his return one day. Whilst the signs of flowers springing from the dry Arizona grasses were not unheard of, the effects of the pollen were quickly understood when he participated in the evacuation of his home and his Tribe’s ancestral lands. He watched helplessly as the dry grasslands of Arizona were turned into eerily beautiful but haze-covered blooming wastelands. He felt a profound sense of guilt for not somehow helping to prevent or notice the effects sooner, but by then, everything they had was gone. With what little they had, many ventured far away from the growing epicentre of Arizona. He resigned himself to ensuring the protection and safety of what few friends and family he had left once again, alongside his father, as they soon adapted to a nomadic form of life, staying always at an arm's length of the growing plague of flowers. The Nomad: It had been a harsh 7 years since the outbreak of the Bloom for the nomadic tribe. Geronimo accompanied his father and the others of his band in the care and protection of their group on their trek around the border of the Drylands Deadzone. Trading, hunting and establishing a network with other wandering tribesmen and minor factions around the state of Arizona. They moved around and settled often around the Nevada and Wyoming Gap, watching helplessly as the Deadzone grew day by day, avoiding the zealots of Salt Lake City. They made a name for themselves as outriders and guides for pilgrims and travellers who needed passage through the now treacherous grasslands and prairies of the Midwest, skirting past the Deadlands, to flee west or south. Yet, their people insisted on staying close to the borders of Arizona, hoping one day that the Deadzones would miraculously retreat and they could reclaim their land. Geronimo decided for himself that it was his turn to leave the tribe and head eastward, despite the protests of his family. After years of silence, from the other outriders and the toil of paranoia and guilt, still clinging to his mind, he left with the resolve to return with something to bring back. An innate and deep feeling of purpose and resolve, rather than waiting for death to come for them. After a bittersweet farewell, he made his way past the lands of the Green Hands, then managed to ride his way past towards the borders of New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. In the hotbed of the Midwest, he worked various small jobs for smaller factions or gangs from minor farming, herding, building and escorting, usually avoiding violence and attention. His thoughts and motivations, however, still clung to the thoughts of home, and his desperation for more impactful work or information to bring back kept him driving further and further east. The Arrival: After 3 years of crisscrossing and working through the Midwest, he finally made his way to the border of Kentucky and outer Knox County after getting lost in the vast pine-filled wilderness where roads have long since overgrown. Landing by happenstance in a new state with new people and new opportunities, the weathered but spirited Park Ranger would drive forward, hoping in the back of his mind that perhaps he may be the one to bring back home something profound after all this time.