Epiphany 2.0

Yep. That did the trick. Much better than Saturday.

Started the day off with the jeep tour, which took us partway down the northern branch of the canyon. We saw several sets of ruins and I got a ton of pictures, but I must admit — the best part of the trip was the ride itself. Imagine this: you’re in a safari-style jeep, which sounds like an old schoolbus and creaks worse than your grandmother’s rocking chair, and which has a temperamental transmission that only goes into first gear after much jerking and cajoling (or cursing; I couldn’t tell ’cause it was in Navajo) on the part of the driver. Load it up with three tourists, two of whom speak German and have to pantomine most of what they’re saying to the rest of us, one wisecracking Navajo driver, and me. Now take it into a canyon that’s largely flooded due to unexpected spring snow melt, and drive that sucker as fast as possible under the laws of physics. As Tim (our driver) explained it, the canyon is strictly 4 wheel drive territory at the best of times, but days like this one were special.

To my utter astonishment, we didn’t get mired, stall out the engine, or drown. And on the few dry parts of the trail, we didn’t roll over or break the axles. I did get pretty wet. But aside from that, I walked away more or less intact.

And I had the TIME OF MY LIFE. I kid you not — it was more fun than the Coney Island Cyclone and the Six Flags Freefall rolled into one! Except for that whole serious risk of death thing. But I’m alive so who cares? =) Even got souvenirs — two little girls from a family that lives in the canyon came up to the jeep during one of our stops, selling necklaces they’d made. How much more authentic can you get than that? I bought two. (Along with a bunch of other necklaces and tidbits I’d already bought… really spent too much money on stuff like that, this trip.)

Turns out I would’ve had to ride through all of that if I’d gone on the horseback tour — and on a chillier day, when there would’ve been less sun to help me dry out. That would’ve been pneumonia on four hooves to me, so it sounds like fate was on my side in conspiring to keep me off horseback. I still wish I’d gotten the chance to do the horseback ride; it’s awfully hard to be a fantasy writer who’s never ridden a horse. Suppose, by some distant chance, the urge to write something in a medieval European setting overwhelms me? =P Or more likely (since I’ve been plagued with ideas since starting this trip), something set in the American Southwest? It’s helpful to check articles like this one for reference, but nothing beats actual experience. Still… I’ve now discovered that it’s not that difficult to find ranches that offer horseback rides. I guess I’ll just have to track one down and try it on some other occasion.

After I got back from the tour and dried out, I had some lunch and then — feeling all gung-ho — decided to tackle another challenge: the White House Trail. There are many trails into the Canyon de Chelly, but most are hidden, for the sole use of those families who live in the canyon. The White House Trail is the only one available to the public. It’s 1.4 miles from top to bottom — easy, right? But what gets you is that it’s 1.4 miles which wind very steeply down a 1000-foot wall of the canyon itself. It’s a stunning way of putting yourself in the literal footsteps of the ancestral Puebloans, because as you travel the trail and climb over rocks and glance over to notice the looooooong way down should you slip, it occurs to you that they did this every day. They slept on ledges which weren’t much wider than the one which makes up the trail. They lived on those ledges, built damn sturdy houses, fought enemies, held ceremonies, stored grain, had babies, you name it. Some of the ruins in the canyon are 800 feet above the canyon floor! And aside from a few basic concessions to safety (e.g., the doors on all of the ruins are set in the middle of the wall, not on the floor, to prevent toddlers from going outside), they didn’t use safety ropes or railings or anything.

Neither did the White House Trail. I’ve been on less scary trails which bristled with guard rails and mortared ledges; here, nada. But I can’t really bring myself to complain about it too much, because as I sweated my way down and up the trail I saw little kids, parents with babies in strollers, and little old ladies — I kid you not — outdistancing me. (Which made me feel reeeeeeeally good. Yeah.) I’m not in stellar shape, but I do work out and ride my bike. Clearly that’s nothing compared to people who’ve been doing this, every day or frequently, literally since infancy. The little kids were the worst/best — they didn’t even bother with the trail, just scaled the bare walls. I couldn’t see any handholds, but somehow they found them. I wanted to applaud, but I was too scared to let go of the rock I was clinging to at the time.

In any case, I made it. I was tired afterward, but felt great — accomplishment-wise, health-wise, and every other way. On the way up the sun began to set, and I got a chance to witness the canyon’s greatest time of beauty. The deep red walls, the stark black shadows, the layers of color in the sky… ::sigh:: That alone made the trip worthwhile.

Also, I am now in love with my new hiking boots, and determined to use them again frequently. I’m told there are a lot of good trails in New England; it’s time to check them out. (Any of you who are in Massachusetts and interested in joining me, drop me a line.)

So that was it for my last day in Canyon de Chelly. All in all, a productive trip; I’ve got a half-dozen ideas for short stories and enhancements to my novel already. Tomorrow I’m off to Vegas, where I’ll look up some family members and explore an entirely different speculative-fiction-inspiring landscape. But since that’s not part of the SLF grant trip, I’ll end this travelogue here.

Farewell, Canyon de Chelly. Thanks.

Notes and Thoughts

To finish up, going to list some random observations/story ideas/deep thoughts I’ve had along the way. This list is mostly note-taking for myself, but I figured I’d share them for the curious.

• In New England, you have to ask for hot sauce, and they rarely have the good stuff (usually it’s that nasty vinegary Tabasco crap). In Arizona, restaurants give you hot sauce without waiting for you to ask. Occasionally they might ask you what brand you want, or whether you’d prefer habanero-based or jalopeno-based.
• Speaking of jalopenos, don’t eat them. No matter how pretty and inviting they look when they’re served fresh with every Southwestern dish. Especially not if you’ve spent the past 5 years living in Boston and gradually losing your tolerance for spicy food.
• It is incredibly fun to drive down a winding mountain road, unless some asshole in a pickup truck is tailgating you.
• Dust devils, in the desert, are terrifying to behold. Like gigantic red-gold, tentacled tornados. Harmless physically, but not psychologically.
• In Chinle and other towns throughout the Navajo nation, they hold storytelling contests for schoolkids. The contests are judged by adult master storytellers. My thought: how much better a writer could I be if I’d been trained from early childhood in storytelling techniques? If I’d had to compete, from age 7 as these kids do, for recognition? And why the frell isn’t the American literary world dominated by Native American writers, as it rightly should be?
• Driving and theoretical physics. There are places in Arizona where the roads are like a sine wave — a steady, sinuous, steep up and down for miles to see. It’s very unnerving sometimes, because as you crest the hill, there’s a brief period when the heat-haze from the road makes it appear as if the next hill is growing out of the earth before you. Oncoming cars vanish in the valleys, and when they reappear it’s as if they’ve come out of nowhere. What if they really have?
• Navajo frybread, a traditional food, is the exact same thing as New England fried dough, New Orleanian beignets, and probably half a dozen other regional favorites. Who did it first? Or is this simply a case of parallel evolution — after all, it’s all just fried flour.
• It is incredibly fun to crush tumbleweeds beneath the wheels of a car.
• Throughout Chinle, people who don’t want cows in their front yards have “cow grates” set into the ground at any break in the fence. These are deep grills, like railroad tracks set only a few inches apart, which hooved animals don’t like to step on because of the danger of getting caught in them. This is because the people in Chinle rarely corral their animals; they let them wander freely and graze where they will.
• “Canyon de Chelly” (canyon deh shay) is a bastardized hybrid term that means nothing, yet reveals fascinating layers of history. The real name of the place is “Tsegi”, phonetically pronounced “cheh-gyi” (my approximation of the way the guides pronounced it). The Spanish screwed it up and called it “cheh-lli” (remember that “ll” sounds like “y” in Spanish). The Americans screwed it up further and called it “chay-ee” and eventually dropped the second syllable altogether. “Tsegi” means, simply, “canyon.”
• Circles are of great importance to the Navajo, as with many other Native American (northern and southern) peoples. All hogans — which are part home, part temple — are roughly round in shape. They must be, according to the Navajo belief system. Although I saw representatives of Christian Western religion everywhere (Baptist churches, Jehovah’s Witness halls, you name it), I also saw signs that the original belief systems haven’t vanished. Most of the family compounds that I saw had several square buildings — and always one conspicuously round one. More interestingly, I noticed that some of the Western Christian houses of worship had been built in a rounded design. Those all seemed to be the biggest and most successful of the Western churches in the area.
• A “wash”, in the Southwest, is a dry streambed, which doubtless is where water runs off whenever there is a flood or something. I saw several, which at the time were filled with liquid, flowing golden sand instead of water. River bones.
• I noticed that most of the teenaged boys I saw had similar tattoos around the backs of their necks. At first I suspected a gang; not much else for the kids to do in this town. But none of these kids had the typical gang vibe, or at least not the raw, wannabe-hard, “WTF are you looking at?” vibe I’ve sensed from kids in city gangs. Most of these kids seemed to have jobs. Quite a few seemed actively involved in community service. They felt, to me, more like the Black Panthers, or a fraternity. Research check.
• There is evidence — and the Navajo themselves refer to this — that spiritual ideas from South American native cultures (such as the Inca or Maya) may be in part what caused the original inhabitants of Canyon de Chelly to leave. Combined with the famine, these ideas essentially “infected” most of the southwestern native groups and caused social upheaval on a continental scale. Research check: ideas powerful enough to destroy a society? Find out what they were.
• There is a reason why this region is called “the painted desert”. It is.

That’s it!