Reaching that age where I am deeply thankful for personal freedom

I have this framed print of Geronimo hanging on my office wall at home and as I stared into those piercing dark eyes I saw him a little differently than I have since I hung the piece on the wall.

I wrote about acquiring him in the fall of 2018 and I told of his exploits in that column, but I didn’t tell the whole story because perhaps I hadn’t aged enough to understand it fully.

The portrait shows him posed with a rifle supposedly on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona before his last breakout and raids. He had a little left in the tank but he would have been in his 60s at that time. That’s a lot of years for a raider like Geronimo to have lived. He had to be feeling his glory and freedom slipping away each time he was recaptured and sent back to the reservation.

Finally, the last time they caught up with him they didn’t send him back to San Carlos, they put him and his warriors in a boxcar and shipped them off to the strange land of Florida. Eventually, they sent him back west but to Fort Sill, Okla., where he would live out his life, mostly under federal guard and never allowed to return to his homeland, even for burial.

I don’t really know the character of the man Geronimo or how his own people judged him during his heyday. I do know that he was rebellious in his younger days and thrived when he was free to do his own thing.

That changed for him as he aged in prison and it changes for all of us who are aging and looking at that last battle, that last professional accomplishment or that most recent job and wondering if it’s the last.

Have I hit my peak or is there one more breakout left?

Geronimo relegated to traveling with Wild West Shows to make a few extra dollars, selling the buttons off his shirt and the hat off his head as souvenirs to an eager public. He was fleecing them but he still wasn’t free.

He went to a presidential inaugural, but he still wasn’t free.

He died of pneumonia after getting drunk and falling off a horse at night but he wasn’t free to buy the whiskey that contributed to his death.

I’ve read that among his few regrets was surrendering to American soldiers that last time instead of fighting free to the death.

I’m not saying I want to run from the American military across a desert. But I think I’m reaching that age where I understand, embrace and am deeply thankful for personal freedom.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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