| October 27, 1996 A Foray before Snow
We'd planned this camping trip for some time: Thursday night in Hopiland, the next two in Chaco Canyon. Going this late in October was dicey but it was as early as we could get five schedules in synch. The week of the trip opens with a storm front moving in and dropping the daytime highs to twenty five degrees below normal. Steve and I begin to compare notes by phone, to consider our options as the storm system sets over the Four Corners area and then another begins to develop in the Northwest that will follow it. We'd planned to travel in my truck with our equipment in a rented trailer. We'd pick up firewood in Flagstaff and then head on up to Old Oraibi and then spend that night at a campsite on Second Mesa. We'd then go on to Chaco the next day. The forecast though was for a fairly decent day Thursday as this storm cleared out, then a very nice Friday followed by the second storm on Saturday bringing snow and even colder highs. So camping was out since we're five urban poets with summer camping gear. So Steve and I confab, what if we don't take the trailer, motel a night, what is left of the trip? What if we stay at the motel on Second Mesa and day trip over to Canyon de Chelly. Somewhere in the day of the trip, we realize that with no trailer we are within striking distance of Canyon de Chelly the first night, could perhaps do a day trip to Chaco on Friday, the good weather day, and then back toward Hopiland on Saturday. That puts the Hopiland leg at risk depending on the weather but gets us to Chaco. So we've headed out, Jeff guides us to a wonderful cafe in Flagstaff for lunch and then we are off for Canyon de Chelly. We head off on I-40 to Chambers and then north to Ganado which is where the famed Hubbell Trading Post is. We check it out and then head on to Canyon de Chelly. We get there about four in the afternoon, the sky is overcast and we're racing back to Spider Rock, to gaze out over that expanse before dark. We can see a dot of a person on horseback riding the two-rut road past the base of the rock. The depth is washed out with the sky overcast, there is little to give a true sense of scale without shadows. And it is quickly growing dark. So we head out. We quickly decide to forgo staying here, if we head on to Gallop we will cut a couple of hours out of traveling tomorrow, a couple of hours more to spend in Chaco instead. So we drive on. We pass through Window Rock in the dark and come into Gallop where we struggle to find a place to eat. We are a group consisting of two vegetarians and three with varying degrees of attachment to meat. We are in a town catering to Navajo, cowboys and tourists. It's late at night. We drive the entire length of the town to find the one place all five of us are comfortable eating in. We'd skipped the place with only one car in the parking lot. Fortunately this place is next to a decent motel and at the right end of town to promptly head off to Chaco in the morning. In the morning there are dark snow clouds covering the sky. But as we get ready to head out, they lighten, it is still a cloud filled sky, it is still cold and windy but it isn't as dark. So we head along the interstate over to Thoreau and then north on two lane asphalt. The last twenty miles are clay road with a sign that says you drive at your own risk when it is wet. There are deep ruts in the ditch just past the sign to remind us why. We stop, rotate seats. Five guys in a truck. In this truck, somebody sits on the split between seats in the back. It is a brief break, we are twenty miles from what we have driven five hundred to see. There are a few washboard places, OK several, and some rocky spots but we make good time and we're at the visitor center by about ten-thirty in the morning. We pay our fee, register for hiking on one of the backcountry trails then we go see Pueblo Bonita. The main ruin which had been four stories high in the later section of its development. Many kivas. A rancher and amateur archeologist lived in the ruin and excavated 190 rooms in the 1890's. It is still overcast, windy, we are a thousand feet higher and, compared to Phoenix, it is cold. We fix lunch in the parking lot, either climbing into the truck to be warm or standing in the wind shadow of it. The trailhead to South Mesa is across the canyon. We drive over to the south trailhead which is at another ruin. I'd hiked this trail six years ago and remember the wind then (May) and decide I really don't need to do it again today. I know the mesa top is flat and populated with high desert scrub. There is one main ruin to see and too much open space to walk into the wind and cold. Today I'll pass. I'm to wait here for an hour, in case someone decides to turn back, then move over to the exit trailhead a mile or so back up the road at another ruin. I wait, reading some Donald Hall essays in a book I'd brought along. The sky begins to clear. It begins to get warm, I even roll the window down half way. I'm thinking what a great day to be up on a mesa. I wait out the hour, knowing no one will be heading back. I continue to read, watch people come and go here at this ruin site. The hour is up and I head for the other trailhead. It's nice enough to pop the sunroof open on the truck. The road here is one-way so I have to travel back past the visitor center and loop back. I'm thinking I can salvage some of this hike for myself. It's a three to four hour hike, so, if I get to the trailhead quickly, I can head in and then hike back the last third or so with the other guys. By the time I get to the trailhead, less than a half hour, the clouds are back. These are snow clouds, moving in, dropping the temperature. The hike was started out with the temperature in the low fifties, this is upper forties and dropping. And I'm thinking about four urban poets hiking across the top of a mesa toward these clouds. I wonder if they'd decide to take a shortcut, only to find themselves looking down a cliff with a snowstorm behind them. I set out figuring that we'll get out faster if I go meet them, if I discover this part of the trail as they discover that part. The base of the mesa is a half mile away from the trailhead and as I approach, I'm surprised that the trail curves and travels along the north base of the mesa rather than meandering up. In fact the trail runs for two, two and a half miles along the north side of the mesa before making a hard turn toward and up. They'd just made that point when I catch up with them. It'd been spritzing as I hiked. Now we head back and it begins to sprinkle, a mile from the truck and it is sleet, and coming heavy before we get to the truck. It is steady snow fall by the time we are in the truck and moving out. We stop at the visitor center. Nature calls even at times like this. The snow is already sticking. We rush to get out. We don't know how wet that clay has become and there are twenty miles of it. We find firm clay. But slowly, as we move toward the highway, it is getting slicker. We notice someone's tracks that slide all over the place, we wonder at this, the clay seems firm enough if you pay attention. And finally, a mile and half from the highway, we come up on this van sliding about. We can't figure out why she has so little traction other than that she oversteers, hasn't grasped the zen of driving on mud and tries too hard, overcorrects. She pauses, we pass. She looks at us with a look I can't quite grasp: dismay, envy, fear, does she seek help, advice? I'm not sure. We go on by. I watch to be sure she gets to the road. She does. And later I realize that Steve was watching too. We head for Farmington. North. Not knowing if there is a blizzard that way. That's just the way we wanted to go. We'd decided to go back over to Canyon de Chelly for tonight and decided we'd get there via Farmington and Shiprock. Snow or not, that's the direction we head. A couple of miles later Steve and I watch a coyoté cross the road ahead of us. He is in good shape, winter fur, and purposeful. Now some say a coyoté crossing in front of you is a warning. And sometimes it is. But this was coyoté saying hi as he headed home. It was good to see him, to see him doing so well. A couple of miles further on and the storm clears. We have moved north of it. Here it is cold, windy and overcast but no snow in the air or on the ground. A voice from the back seat wants to reconsider. Why are we going north? When will we get coffee? Isn't it faster to loop through Gallop? The reply is that the difference in time, if any, is slight. And we were on that road this morning, we've traveled that way, this is road we haven't been on, this is fresh. Grudgingly, knowing coffee was an hour and a half away in any event, there is agreement. We reach Farmington by evening, it is overcast, cold and we lose any sense of what is the main drag in this town, where we need to go if we are hunting for a place to eat. We are road weary, three men in a back seat weary and there hasn't been coffee since breakfast. We begin our hunt. We are a group consisting of two vegetarians and three with varying degrees of attachment to meat. Finding meat is easy around here. There are rumblings, distant thunder, in the back seat. We find a place, eat, joke and argue. Sorry, we don't argue, we debate. We come out to light rain. We head for Shiprock in the dark. We'd only gotten glimpses of the mountain known as Shiprock. Now we would pass it in the dark. I don't see any roadsigns as we head out of town. I'm pretty sure we are on the right road but I missed whatever roadsigns there were. After a bit I ask if anyone knew if US-64 is the road to Shiprock. Steve says, "Yeah, I think so." We keep on driving in the dark and rain. Map unopened. Assuming that sixty miles or so ahead was Shiprock. We get to Shiprock without ever seeing a sign. Almost drive through and onto the wrong road. I'd come up on a fork with us in the left lane and the right lane headed off to somewhere. We were suddenly on US-666 not US-64. So we stop, look at the map, everyone piling out to stretch. The rain had stopped. We want to be on US-64 to just this side of Mexican Water then south toward Canyon de Chelly. We get gas, Steve heads us out and onto US-64. Past the shadow of the mountain known as Shiprock. We're clipping along a half hour or so past the town of Shiprock when someone in the back seat says, say wasn't that…? and we turn around drive back a hundred yards or so and pick up the route south. The rain has stopped, it is dark, cold and I'm trying to fall asleep in the back seat. We're headed for Chinle which is at the entrance of Canyon de Chelly where we plan to see more stuff in daylight the next morning. Then we'll head for Hopiland. Assuming there hasn't been a blizzard over that way. I'm awakened from my nap by, Russ, Russ, does the road to so-and-so or the road to Ganado take us to Chinle? Perry is in the front passenger seat peering at the map in the half light of the overhead light. It's the road to Ganado. We turn around, head back a half mile and head west to Chinle. It begins to snow. It begins to snow more. After a time there is no line on the road, then there is no edge to the road, there is the shape of a road. We travel on toward Chinle guided solely by shapes in white. Steve's happy as a kid on a school-called-because-of-snow day. I hate snow, I go back to sleep. When we get to Chinle, we find fewer motels than expected. None on this route from the north that we hadn't been on the day before. None west of the Y. We come back to the Y and head toward de Chelly. We pass a Best Western thinking we'd seen a couple of cabin type places past there and before the road into the canyon. The motel at the canyon was out of our budget. We find nothing else, head back to the Best Western. It is closed. This motel has about eighty rooms, perhaps a dozen cars parked in front of them and it is closed at ten PM on a Friday night. So we're sitting here in front of this closed motel in Chinle. In twenty seven hours we have traveled over the eastern two thirds of the Navajo Nation. Full circle. We head on toward Ganado planning to go on to Window Rock if nothing there. Gallop again if need be. But as we enter the motel-less Ganado (we really knew better) I'm thinking about the time it took to get to de Chelly the day before, the time it will take to get into and out of Hopiland, the time to get from Gallop (the likely spot on this path) back to de Chelly, the time to look around. The math runs against us. So I suggest we head back to Chambers, go southwest rather than southeast, skip going back to de Chelly in the morning. Hopiland is sixty miles in, sixty miles out. And we don't know road conditions. So we stop, stretch, in this parking lot of a closed convenience store in Ganado at 11:30 PM local time. It is snowing, we are five guys standing around a truck with the doors open. The local dogs come out, bark, circle at a distance. We move, talk, half ignore them, they go away. We settle in that oddly natural way of getting consensus without hardly anyone really saying what they think let alone taking a vote. We agree, somehow, more or less. It is done. We get in the truck, head back a block to the turn to the southwest, to Chambers, to another motel, warmth. As we get out there, I damn near fall on the ice in the parking lot. You have to go looking for ice in Phoenix. I don't. I hate snow. The next morning I'm the first up. I get around, get my notebook and head for the restaurant for coffee. The upcoming issue of Working Papers has to do with nature and geography and I have an idea. Something that linked a discussion that Karen Bowden and I had been having via email about speaker, listener and context. Somewhere in that discussion I came to understand my own constituency. We literary types are forever grouping and regrouping; poets split into academic, street, performance, and on and on; we separate ourselves into those that read literature and those that don't. Those that study or workshop and those that don't. Those that read and those that don't. It is easy to become smug, self-righteous. I do it all the time. And yet, if I persist, if I push that aspect of myself too far, another aspect comes to the fore. I think about my family and friends who are functionally illiterate. I think about those who do not read many books. I remember, I renotice the glimpses of shame when there is admission of not reading, or simply fearing being discovered. I know that look. I know that shame. We all know. There is always at least one moment when we feel incomplete, illiterate, unlettered. There is always at least one person who knows we are not well-read. There is also, always, at least one person who knows we know they are not well-read. I begin a poem that morning: There are strata
and there are fissures fissures separate build distance and silence as a wall centering all that we are from other strata are more subtle or at least more patient there is also distance built in noisy familiarity in becoming close and intimate in pushing up against and down There is also always at least one person who knows we know they are not well-read. They show it in the face, the hands. And we can only let it be. Yet, does it need to be so? I choose to believe in hope. Slowly the morning warms, the others gather, we have breakfast, load up and move out. We take I-40 west toward US-77 which will lead to Keams Canyon. It begins to snow. We turn off on US-77, Michael queries if this is a good idea. A good question. But we have invested too much to consider it for long. "It's a calculated risk," I say. "Calculated risk?" is the query back. Steve says "Well, not really. There is snow here. There will be snow there or not. There really isn't any extra risk." I reply, "There is the question of ice. That is the calculated risk." We drive on, each silently considering, wondering what is ahead. Calculating with incomplete data. After a few miles, it quits snowing. The sky shifts from snow cloud dark to overcast gray. We continue north. The day warms up. By the time we reach Keams Canyon and stop for gas, it is nearly clear. It is cold. It will be cold. But it will be a good day to visit mesas. We pile in and head on. We turn in toward First Mesa. At the stop sign at the base of the mesa is a sign: "There is a dance today. It is closed to nonNatives. There are no tours today." We turn around, head on toward Second Mesa, stop at the Cultural Center, look about, head on to Old Oraibi. The gallery that I'd wanted to stop at is closed. Probably at the dance, I know their clan grandmother lives up on First Mesa. We turn in and park at Old Oraibi, get out and walk past the small gallery. Perry is reading something and stays at the truck. We look about. Jeff and I soon feel uncomfortable and walk back toward the gallery. Steve and Michael continue and disappear down a side "street." Jeff and I talk about how it is changing, the plaza isn't a plaza anymore. The old stone walls are slowly being replaced with concrete block and plaster board, the buildings are beginning to cluster into "blocks" with "streets." There are solar panels on some roofs, TV antennae. We have mixed feelings. We seek renewal in imagined sacred spaces and find people struggling to hold on to a life of old in a world of new. We retreat in respect and sadness. We inspect each item in the gallery. We talk to the two women there about the weather. The snows to come, the snow that doesn't come to Phoenix. We thank them and step back out to cold and silence. Time is different here. At least for now. Perry comes around the corner, we talk and after a bit he and I step out and down the "street" a little ways past the gallery. We look at the piles of rock and material amid the houses. This reminds him of Kentucky, of poor farmers, of those struggling. We talk of shame, of those feeling trapped, those not knowing how to move beyond where they are and feeling lessened by it, feeling shamed by it. This has a feeling of home to Perry, but not of homecoming. So we three, uneasy, begin to wonder what the other two are up to and they come around a corner. We all walk back to the truck, get in and leave. The gallery is still closed, there is a group sense of not needing to see more. There is some awareness of the snow clouds beginning to move in again. A tiredness of cold and of riding in the back seat. It is time to decide the path home. The original plan was to go on to Tuba City and southerly to Flagstaff. But we are back toward Second Mesa and at the junction with the road to Leupp which heads more directly to Flagstaff. Knowing there is nothing toward Tuba City and beyond that would interest this group today, I suggest the Leupp route. Besides I've never been that way. They agree, we turn down that way and promptly come upon a sign saying road construction next eleven miles. It isn't bad though, some stretches of gravel but they are smooth and we move along. Right after the sign, it begins to lightly snow. It slowly picks up but never heavy. About a third of the way to Flagstaff there is a lot of snow on the ground, the road is clear, there are still flurries. And up ahead I see two ravens circle and land on adjacent fence posts to our left. This is interesting, snow, black ravens landing on adjacent posts. And as we get closer, I see something back from them moving toward the road. As we pass, I look and there, half way between those two ravens, is a coyoté watching us pass. He is large, winter fur making his head look large and wolfish. It is an image too good to be true, if you saw a picture of it, those two ravens and that coyoté, you would logically think it staged, unnatural. To me it was a … a what? This is hard to word. Coyoté is kin. There isn't any other word. That implies things to city folk that isn't true. Even most farm folk have only a sense of what this is about. But Coyoté is not Other. Coyoté is not self. Coyoté is, well, kin. One who comes to visit, to say hello sometimes, to give advice, to say goodbye for now. Ravens are more complex than that. They are, I guess, neighbors. Sometimes helpful, sometimes indifferent, sometimes chastising. They always have advice. You have to sift through it. So for me, two ravens and a coyoté, that is a good sign. This is family land. There are cousins here and they have good neighbors. We drive on. Finally come to a junction just before Leupp where we stop, stretch. Just before we got here, Steve pronounced, "I've got it! The truck is the trip!" We know the truth of that. Now we rotate who is sitting in the center of the back seat and move on. Past Leupp, just twelve miles or so out of Flagstaff, we come to snow. There is little in the air but much more on the ground than we'd seen. The closer we get to town, the more covered everything is. We move through a scene of mountains, volcanic and black, shaded by fog, the ground white with patches of black showing here and there. We begin to see land for sale signs. Something we had not seen before on this trip. We stop for lunch in Flagstaff. Same place as Thursday. Different waitress. It is Saturday afternoon, a casual crowd, a mix of local and passing through. So we sit and unwind, talk. Jeff is doing glass etching and thinks Flagstaff would be a great place to work in the summer. He wonders about the artist community there, it's size and energy. I mention the fact that Rose has moved to Flagstaff and is doing sculpting there. Michael and Perry know her as well, we talk a bit about what she's doing, how she might be able to answer Jeff's questions about the scene. Even remark on a woman in the restaurant looking like her. Finally we head on, the trip to Phoenix is much as any trip from Flag to Phoenix. We are tired, ready to be home. We come into town with rain on the far horizon. Drop Steve off first, it's beginning to sprinkle, then drop off Michael, heavier sprinkle, then Perry and then Jeff. I get home to mildly heavy sprinkle but not so much I can't unpack. I get the mail. There is a note from Rose: Hey Russ,
Found this and thought of you. I love the line that reads - "Coyoté made me do it." Have a great day. Rose She includes a copy of an essay. It's titled: coyoté and the wild. It begins with a quote from Stanley Kunitz, "A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him." It is an essay by Susan G. Wooldridge. Actually it is a chapter from her book, Poemcrazy - freeing your life with words, published by Clarkson N. Patter, Inc, 1996. When I lived in
Turlock, California, I felt trapped. Every inch of land for miles
around was either paved or planted and fertilized and sprayed. Only
when it rained did the air get the fresh, green smell I needed. I
remember sitting in our backyard on Yosemite Street with my two
toddlers while my mind flew over rows of back fences trying to find
even one native grove of trees. I wanted to leave Turlock partly
because I sensed there was no wilderness - not a river or stream or
lake or even a large park for miles and miles.
I was totally caught up in the role of good wife and mother. It's stifling to be good all the time and it's ingrained in most of us. My mother used to end many of our conversations innocently with the words Be good. Always being loving, gentle and good is deadly. I recently heard myself tell a friend, Don't be too good! I wish my mother could say that to me. In a way she has. She's always told me all she regrets is what she hasn't done, nothing she has done…. [Wooldridge goes on to describe coyote's role in Native American terms: trickster, antihero, animal delinquent who is both naughty and heroic at the same time.] It's often the coyote in us that gives our poems life. The strangest, most far-out renegade part of ourselves can be expressed in a poem while we sit quietly in our kitchen or bedroom. This can save our lives. There's nothing appropriate about coyote, nothing dutiful or responsible, and that's why he/she is so important in poems. If we're appropriate or dutiful in our poems, they'll have no spark. Our poems will become predictable, along with our lives, our dreams, our hearts. The coyote in us doesn't give a hoot what anybody thinks. In an early journal I copied down what Andre Malraux said about the artist Goya, "He discovered his genius the day he dared to give up pleasing others." For me that day hasn't quite come. But I'm inviting coyote into my life more often lately and we'll see what happens…. There is truth to Steve's saying that the truck is the trip. Yet it is, I think, not quite the case, the whole of it. There is a circle around the five of us, there is a container, and for these three days, the circle has had a tangible shape. It was there before, it is still here. The journey to Chaco was a journey within a journey, the truck was a circle within a circle. A foray of coyotés before snow. |
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RD Savage
10/27/96 © 1996 |