In Keeping with Hopi Tribal Tradition, the Word "Ruins" Disappears From Homolovi State Park, Arizona - 2013

 

In Keeping with Hopi Tribal Tradition, the Word "Ruins" Disappears From Homolovi State Park, Arizona

In May 2008, when I first visited Homolovi Ruins State Park near Winslow, Arizona I enjoyed it for what it lacked. There was no visible water, only a few parched trees and an RV campground with few amenities. With water and electricity brought in from underground to each campsite, the place was more pleasant than it first appeared. In the heat of the day, I could retreat into my air-conditioned coach to read or watch the old analog television signal that emanated from a tower in the nearby town.

Developed decades ago as a unit of the Arizona State Park System, Homolovi seemed teetering on the brink of extinction. Rangers no longer staffed the entry booth, although a campground host did arrive to collect my money and answer my questions. Few of the campsites had occupants during my stay, yet I loved the place for its solitude and lack of activity. Later, in 2010, the park did close for a time.

As a metal sign indicated, only half a mile from the campground was “Homolovi Ruin I”. Throughout the southwest, travelers often see the remains of grand edifices created by the ancient tribes we call the Anasazi or pre-Puebloan. Unlike the great Kivas of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico or the Twin Towers at Hovenweep National Monument, Utah, only a few foundations of a once-great civilization survive as the “ruins” at Homolovi.

 

Watch the desert sunset at Homolovi State Park, Arizona

What destroyed the great buildings of Homolovi was water, rushing in the desert. Early in the Second Millennium CE, the Great Disappearance took place throughout the northern reaches of the Colorado Plateau. Most scientists agree that the ancient peoples fled south, first to places like Homolovi. At that time, with reliable flows of water in the Little Colorado River, Homolovi seemed like a peaceful and abundant place to settle and farm.

As with so many landscapes on Gaia, or Mother Earth, appearances can be deceiving. For years, and perhaps decades, the balance of nature prevailed. The new arrivals from the north built structures near the river and used irrigation ditches to water their corn and other crops. Then, similar to Superstorm Sandy flooding the subways of Lower Manhattan Island, New York, the formerly benign Little Colorado flooded much of ancient Homolovi. Without warning, the river became a torrent, liquefying the adobe dwellings and washing them away.

When twentieth century archeologists dug in the area near the river, they determined that ancient Homolovi was flooded and partially destroyed at least twice. Whether repeated flooding or an intensifying drought led the ancient residents to abandon Homolovi is unknown. What Anglo archeologists concluded, however, is that the place was a ruin.

In May 2011, when I again stopped to enjoy the solitude of Homolovi, some things had changed and some had not. Although still a unit of the Arizona State Park system, at their own expense, the Hopi Tribe now managed the park, including its museum and the campground. Among their first acts, the Hopi eradicated the word “ruins” from the park. This was an easy task, requiring only the painting-out or taping-over of the offending words.

To some, it may seem insignificant to expunge the word “ruins” from Homolovi State Park. To the Hopi it was a sacred act, honoring their ancestors and other ancient dwellers of the area. Contemporary Southwest American Indians believe that the spirits of the ancients still dwell in the areas like Homolovi. “May the spirits be with you”, is the unspoken greeting of current tribe members.

In the various legends of the Southwest, there is no other character as ubiquitous as Kokopelli, the flute playing minstrel and god of fertility. Both anecdotal and archeological evidence points to Kokopelli first appearing as petroglyphs on Hopi tribal lands. For that reason, I invited Plush Kokopelli to accompany me on my May 2013 visit to Homolovi State Park.

Upon arrival at Homolovi campground, Plush Kokopelli wanted to see the river. It was late afternoon, so I set up camp and told him that we could visit the river in the morning. As evening approached, I took still-camera shots of the setting sun. Unlike my 2008 visit, with its colorful skies, my 2013 sunset was clear and dry. The video shows the progression of the 2013 event, followed by the vivid colors of the 2008 sunset.

Some may think it is strange or eccentric to travel with a Plush Kokopelli who is about the size of a two-year-old human, but I find him quite entertaining. For the most part, he minds his manners; plays his flute and watches the scenery go by as we travel. Still, when he wants something, he somehow makes it known. Early the next morning, I awoke to the visage of Plush Kokopelli staring at me. “OK, OK, we can go to the river right after breakfast”, I said.

Viewing the Little Colorado River at Homolovi can be a risky thing. As you approach the Homolovi I trail, there stands a sign reading, “Danger Keep Out. Unstable Bank, Quicksand, Strong Current”. Plush Kokopelli was undaunted, urging me on past a washed out chain-link fence and then to the riverbank. From experience, I knew that the Little Colorado River no longer supported a perennial flow. When the snows of winter melted upstream, there was a rapid and intense flow for only a matter of weeks.

By our visit in mid-May, the flow was sluggish and diminishing rapidly. Soon the running water would become pools of standing water surrounded by quicksand banks. Having experienced the quicksand during an earlier visit, I entreated Plush Kokopelli to stay on solid ground. Almost before I knew it, there he sat, on a snag overhanging the Little Colorado River. Like a parent scolding his child, I placed Plush Kokopelli on an old railroad tie that rested on dry land near the edge of the riverbed.

When I offered to take his picture sitting on the railroad tie, Plush Kokopelli leaned forward and made a run for the river. If I had not captured his movement with my camera, few readers would believe my story. By then it was getting hot along the quicksand banks of the Little Colorado River, so I swept Plush Kokopelli up and carried him back to my truck.

If you ever want proof that the spirits of the ancients still dwell at Homolovi, just invite your own Plush Kokopelli along for a stroll by the river. If you do, be prepared for his tricky behavior while visiting the unstable banks, quicksand and strong current of the Little Colorado River.

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By James McGillis at 01:24 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

An Evening in Moab with Author, Adventurer, Naturalist and Poet, Craig Childs - 2012

 

An Evening in Moab with Author, Adventurer, Naturalist and Poet, Craig Childs

Each year since 2005, I have visited Moab Utah in the fall. For my taste, the summers in Moab are too hot and the winters too cold. In the spring, the wind blows and the dust kicks up. In October 2006, I experienced almost fifteen inches of rain, but this fall the weather was as dry as a bone.

In October 2007, I was in Moab for a week and wanted to learn more about the town and its culture. Checking the events calendar, I saw that Craig Childs was in town, introducing his then new book, “House of Rain”. Until then, my only connection to Craig Childs was hearing him speak on the NPR program, Morning Edition. Not having read any of his books, I decided to go and hear him speak.

That evening, I arrived early at the Moab Information Center. With an auditorium that holds no more than seventy-five people, I was happy to sit in the front row. In the left-front corner of the room stood a stocky man dressed in clothing from the trail. As the attendees filed in and took their places on chairs or the floor, the man softly played a wooden flute. Only when he moved to the podium did I discover Craig Childs was the flautist we had just heard. Craig’s lyrical flute had created a mood for the slideshow and discussion to follow.

Demonstrating how important the book, “House of Rain” was to the career of Craig Childs, his personal website still goes by that name. Never using the phrase, “Great Disappearance” in that seminal book, his subject was the displacement Native American cultures from the Colorado Plateau around 1200 CE.

With painstaking academic research and fieldwork, alone or with paleo-scientists, Craig charted a course of migration that defined the culmination of the pre-Puebloan era. With Craig’s written guidance, I later visited and wrote about many of the places mentioned in that book. From Homolovi to Hovenweep and Mesa Verde beyond, Craig painted word-pictures of each sacred place.

In October 2008, I had the privilege of attending Confluence: A Celebration of Reading and Writing in Moab. Among the many guest authors, Amy Irvine, Jack Loeffler and Craig Childs each taught classroom and field seminars. The class was limited to forty budding authors, each paying $450 for the honor of close work with three authors. For his part, Craig Childs took our group a few miles north of Moab to a place called Seven Mile Canyon. There, among petroglyphs and sacred sandstone grottos, Craig encouraged each of us to feel the canyon sands barefoot before writing that day.

In October 2012, Craig Child’s latest book, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth arrived at Back of Beyond Bookstore in Moab. With a crowd of about 250 at Moab’s Starr Hall that opening night, Craig Childs proceeded to electrify the audience with stories of catastrophe and redemption. From a campsite on the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet to the still warm lava flows of Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii, Craig elucidated the constancy of violent change occurring all over the Earth.

Not wanting to use an electronic flash that night, I tried to photograph Craig Childs in a still moment. Gesturing to his own image on the screen behind him, I watched as Craig’s animated motions transported him into his own photography. Craig on the stage merged into Craig, sitting on the front porch of the doomed Greenland camp. Later, as he swept his arm toward a small patch of island greenery surrounded by an active lava flow, Craig Childs could have been Moses, pinpointing the place where he had found the stone tablets.

Although I had videotaped parts of the presentation, I later erased all of my video from that evening. Electronic media cannot do justice to the poetry of Craig's words and voice. Standing barefoot on stage that night, reading excerpts from his new book, I saw and heard the essence of author and naturalist Craig Childs.

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By James McGillis at 03:45 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link

Hovenweep Road Disappears & Reappears Near Hovenweep National Monument - 2012

 

Hovenweep Road Disappears & Reappears Near Hovenweep National Monument

In late April 2012, I departed Moab, Utah, heading toward Hovenweep National Monument, 120 miles southeast. My first 89 miles were on U.S. Highway 191, transiting through Monticello and Blanding, Utah. Fifteen miles south of Blanding, my Magellan GPS directed me to turn east on Utah State Route 262.

Although Magellan was on course, I was not. Blanding rests at 6000 feet in elevation. As you descent into the desert, each hill begins to look like the last one. Near the bottom of the third long hill, I approached the UT-262 East the turn-off. Making that turn with my travel trailer in tow required unusual discretion. Carrying a speed of 55 MPH over the top of the hill meant that I was doing 65 MPH near the bottom, and all without touching the throttle. I applied the brakes and downshifted out of overdrive. Friction creates heat. With my truck and trailer brakes engaged, I hoped that the brakes on my rig would not fade.

With over five tons of metal accelerating downhill, I downshifted into third gear and let the engine roar. While applying my brakes, I dropped the shifter into Second and watched the engine rev up to 4200 RPM. Having had the good sense to preset my trailer brakes for highway speeds, I felt them work in unison with the big disk brakes on my 2006 Nissan Titan. My rolling rocket ship responded in kind, slowing to about 45 MPH.

The only problem was that I needed to be below 25 MPH in order to make the turn. At that point, it was “do or die”, so I applied the brakes even harder and hoped for the best. My “bail out” was to release the brakes and roll on past the intersection, but no one wants to hear Magellan say, “When possible, make a legal U-turn”. As I safely made the turn, the abundant skid marks and stray gravel on the road spoke to me. They said, “Jim, your successful outcome here and now is no cause for celebration”.

When I found myself facing east on UT-262, I took a deep breath and then looked for a place to pull over. This was at least the third time I had traveled from Moab to Hovenweep National Monument. Unbelievably, this was my best job yet negotiating that crucial left turn. Please remember that your perception of time, distance and vertical motion are different in the High Southwest. As Jim Morrison so aptly sang, “Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel”. Watch closely for the highway signs and keep your downhill speed below the posted speed limit. Otherwise, you too might miss your turn toward Hovenweep.

Soon, Utah Hwy. 262 began to show its age. Almost from the start, there were almost no shoulders on the sides of the road. For the first nine miles, the road was narrow, harsh and unforgiving. At that point, Highway UT-262 turned to the south, leaving me on old Hovenweep Road, which is also designated Indian Route 5099. Although my Magellan GPS had performed flawlessly until that point, its digital mainspring was about to uncoil.

Although Hovenweep National Monument is remote from any settlement larger than a trading post, it is a targeted destination for many motorists. With her database in full failure mode, Magellan’s siren-sweet voice tried to lead me astray. “Turn left at the next opportunity”, she declared. Such tactics may have lured Ulysses onto an ancient, rocky coastline, but not me. Her voice intended to deceive me. “Ha!” I said, “This is like déjà vu all over again”. This was my third trip to Hovenweep along this road. Had I learned anything?

Slowly, my thoughts came back to me. Long ago, in Navajo land I had learned to disbelieve Magellan’s driving directions. Just try to drive from Gallup, New Mexico to Chaco Canyon with only Magellan as your guide. Twice in the past, Magellan had failed me there. Smugly, I concluded that no one at Magellan or its database creators had ever traveled these roads. If they had, they would not suggest a shortcut that starts at the washout of Montezuma Creek and then winds for miles over rough terrain.

The first algorithmic rule for GPS databases should be, “If there is an alternative route over paved-roads, suggest it.” In order to do that, one must know firsthand if a road exists. If so, is paved or gravel? Only by placing the mapmakers’ eyes in the real world will such things ever change. Meanwhile, the Spirit of the Ancients sits around a celestial campfire, looking down at us and having a good laugh. Come on, mapmakers; none ever died wishing that they had spent more time in the office.

After Magellan suggested a hard left turn up a steep and curving gravel road, I stopped to consult my trusty DeLorme Utah Atlas & Gazetteer. Later, while looking at Google Maps, I could see why Magellan got it wrong. From Hatch Trading Post to Hovenweep on paved roads requires a roundabout tour to the south, via Reservation Road 2416 and San Juan County Road 413. Just south of Hatch Trading Post, that paved route crosses Montezuma Creek on a contemporary highway bridge. Just south of that bridge is where Magellan suggested a make a hard left turn.

Had I taken that route, it would have soon connected me with a graveled extension of “Hovenweep Road”, also called San Juan County Road 212. If one follows that gravel road, it is indeed the original and shorter route to Hovenweep National Monument. With its “Hovenweep Road” moniker, that gravel route is only ten miles long, but takes thirty-eight minutes. The paved route to the south is longer, but takes only twenty-nine minutes.

If you are familiar with Google Street View, you know that Google camera cars have traversed almost every paved road in America. Magellan, for its part, has outsourced its database to either the incompetent or the knowledgeable. The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American tribe in the U.S. Although their reservation abuts the Four Corners on three sides, Magellan treats it like a no-man’s land. Rich with cultural heritage, it behooves Magellan to provide accurate directions throughout the region. Magellan’s users need to know that they can follow paved roads to such treasures as Hovenweep National Monument.

Once I got past the Magellan database errors, I had a pleasant ride to Hovenweep. To the sides of the road I saw occasional Navajo dwellings. Whether any one of them was occupied or abandoned, I could not say. Were these empty houses awaiting their owner’s return or were they the abandoned relics of a time before the Dine’ (Navajo) moved to the cities. Other major features on the land consisted of natural gas wells and occasional water wells. The gas wells utilized propane fuel to spin their flywheels, while the water wells featured Aermotor windmill pumps. Although windmills usually indicate that cattle will be grazing nearby, the only wildlife in view that day consisted of wild horses.

Even in April, the desert was extremely dry. Little water ran in the major watercourses and there were no waterholes visible on the mesa. For the wild horses, finding sufficient forage and water defines their constant battle for life over death. Few of the horses looked well fed or well watered. In order to conserve energy or to beg a meal, many untamed horses stay close to the road. Although they were clearly wild, most of the horses barely moved when I stopped to photograph them.

One exception that day was a palomino stallion that I startled as he crossed the landscape. In order to photograph the horse, I had to make a U-turn and then stop on the gravel apron of a desolate crossroad. With all of the noise and commotion that I had caused, the palomino caught wind of me. As he galloped across an arroyo, I had time to capture only one image of the horse. As I later zoomed in on that image, I realized that his ribs were showing, indicating severe environmental stress. If I could rewind and redo my actions that day, I would not have pursued and further stressed that beautiful animal with my vehicle or on foot.

As I approached Little Ruin Canyon at Hovenweep National Monument, the grand Sleeping Ute Mountain appeared to the east. Although many of the place names throughout the High Southwest are fanciful in their origins, Sleeping Ute Mountain lives up to its name. With his head in the north and his feet in the south, the ancient spirit of the mountain appears to be at rest. As I approached the campground at Hovenweep National Monument near sundown, I held my breath, hoping to find an open campsite large enough to accommodate my rig.

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By James McGillis at 06:52 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

A Visit With Lizard Man, The Spirit of Pueblo Bonito - 2011

 

A Visit With Lizard Man, The Spirit of Pueblo Bonito

When I arrived at Chaco Canyon in May 2011, it had been two years since my previous visit. That two-year hiatus represented one five-hundredth of the time since the crash of Chaco’s Pre-Puebloan culture. From the perspective of Chaco Canyon history, my time away was insignificant.

Arriving at the park after nightfall, I had searched the visitor’s area for water to fill the tank on my RV. To my chagrin, the old water tap lay capped-off and hidden behind the temporary park headquarters. After searching for a while, I found the new water tap in a far corner of the parking lot. Whoever placed it there was not thinking about RV service. The only way to use the faucet was to fill containers and then transport them by hand. The new manual system encouraged conservation, but mainly through inconvenience.

After investigating Gallo Campground, I visited a large yurt that serves as the temporary visitor’s center. Across the parking lot, the old center had disappeared, almost without a trace. Early that morning, I had seen a large cement truck rolling in. Where the old center had stood, construction workers were busy pouring a concrete slab for the new one. Based on the remoteness of the worksite and progress to date, I estimated summer of 2012 for the opening of the new center.

After paying my park entry fee, I purchased the book, “ Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession”, by author and naturalist Craig Childs. Early twentieth century archeological exploitation at Chaco Canyon had left it barren of in-situ artifacts. In the name of twentieth century archeological science, every human-made object found at Chaco Canyon disappeared into private or institutional collections. Today, many of those treasures linger on dusty shelves at various museums and universities. That void leaves Chaco Canyon as a place with insufficient context. For current visitors, putting the ancient puzzle together from only its architectural ruins can be daunting.

At the northwest end of Chaco Canyon lies Pueblo Bonito, the largest and most elaborate of the park’s great houses. At its zenith, as a gathering place of the ancient world, Pueblo Bonito was still centuries away from European contact. Seeing its similarity to historical Hopi, Zuni and Pueblo Indian dwellings, early Spanish visitors named it as such.

Early European visitors found Chaco Canyon deserted and destroyed by its ancient inhabitants. It was that event, about 1100 CE that we now call the Great Disappearance. Within less than one hundred years, Chaco Canyon, Hovenweep and Mesa Verde all fell to disuse and abandonment. Until the ancestral Navajos arrived centuries later, most of the Colorado Plateau remained uninhabited.

Why did the Pre-Puebloan residents of Chaco Canyon build their grandest structure in the shadow of “Threatening Rock”, or tse biyaa anii'ahi (leaning rock gap) in Navajo? Archeologists say that early reinforcement of that fractured sandstone slab indicates ancient knowledge of its peril. Was their choice of location an example of ancient risk-taking behavior, or was something else involved?

Seeking answers to this ancient mystery, we may wish to look at contemporary human behavior. If you visit Pueblo Bonito in the late afternoon, you will find others awaiting sundown from within its walls. With few exceptions, those pilgrims wait in reverent silence. Was ancient Pueblo Bonito also a place of silence? Once twentieth century archeologists began studying and excavating the ruins at Chaco Canyon, automobile traffic became ubiquitous in that area. Accompanying those vehicles were new and louder sonic vibrations, thus ending one thousand years of silence in that place.

In January 1941, Threatening Rock, which stood 97 feet (30 m) high and weighed approximately 30,000 tons crumbled on to the northern section of Pueblo Bonito. As it fell, the once intact slab broke into untold numbers of jagged boulders, both large and small. Like a flood of stone fragments, the rock fall released its energy over a large part of the great house ruin. Since the fallen rock and the building blocks of the great house are similar in color and texture, only their haphazard angles of repose help an observer to differentiate the natural elements from the constructed ones.

Threatening Rock stood both before, during, and for a millennium after habitation at Pueblo Bonito. Why, within forty years of modern rediscovery did the great stone slab crash down upon the ruin? Did the sound of human voices, the vibrations from their machines, or time alone topple and shatter that monolith?

During my recent visit to Pueblo Bonito, I made a clockwise circuit of the ruins, observing in turn, the south, west, north (rock fall area) and finally the east. Although there is much to see and feel within the walls of the great house, I was intent upon finding and visiting with an old friend that day. With any luck, I would find him hiding among the broken boulders of the rock fall. Was he still there, or had he vanished in the two years since my last visit?

As I walked along the path leading to the rock fall, there was no trace of my friend. Then, at a sharp left turn, I saw him under the overhang of a large boulder. He stood in profile, as if part of a natural frieze, sculpted and then released from ageless bondage in stone. Freed from his bondage in stone after one thousand years of silence, I offered my silent words of greeting to Lizard Man, the spirit of Pueblo Bonito. Although his wise countenance stared back at me, he remained silent.

It was not until I edited the photos that accompany this article that I noticed a vertical slab of stone framed in my first photo of Lizard Man. In the gap between boulders, behind where he stands a tall fin of sandstone stands away from the canyon wall. Was Lizard Man nonchalantly asking us to observe more of this scene than just him? Indirectly, was he pointing to the new Threatening Rock?

After taking several photos of my friend, I continued on my circuit of Pueblo Bonito. While taking the longer, temporary path to the parking area, I turned to look back. From there I could see the wavelike pattern of broken stone left by the 1941 rock fall. Turning my gaze to the canyon wall, I realized that I was now on the far side of the rock fin that Lizard Man had pointed out to me. It was indeed a new Threatening Rock, which had sliced away from the canyon wall. Narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, this slab was far smaller than the original Threatening Rock. How much longer that second Pillar of Hercules might stand, I cannot say. Only Lizard Man knows, but he is not talking.

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By James McGillis at 05:44 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Navajo National Monument - Harmony With the Natural World - 2008

The Magic Gate - Part 5

Living in Harmony With the Natural World

 

Navajo National Monument

 

In Northeastern Arizona, fifty miles south of Kayenta, we stopped at the lightly visited Navajo National Monument.  Even today, with the lure of free camping, it rarely draws a crowd.  Leaving Highway 160 during our 1965 visit, we encountered a newly paved road covering the thirteen miles to the monument.  Like most National Park Service (NPS) roads of the era, the engineers designed it for minimum impact on its environment and for speeds of less than forty-five miles per hour.  Upon arrival at the monument, we found a new visitors’ center and a campground with about thirty spaces.  The older, more rustic campground remained unimproved.

 

Navajo National Monument is a misnomer, honoring the fact that early Anglo-American visitors associated its ruins with the Navajo Nation, within which its boundaries lie.  Craig Childs, in his 2007 book, House of Rain, identifies the area’s early occupants as the “Kayenta Anasazi”.  By 1300 CE, after only fifty years of occupation, the Kayenta Anasazi abandoned these, among the last of their alcove dwelling sites.  Thus, the monument’s Betatakin and Keet Seel ruins rank with Mesa Verde and Hovenweep as the last redoubts of a vanished culture.  The spring-fed, relict forests in the monument’s canyons attest to the relatively recent drying of a once abundant environment.

 

In 2008, I again visited Navajo National Monument.  While camped there, I reflected on Edward Abbey’s words about the place, as written in, Desert Solitaire.  At the time, Abbey decried what he identified as the destruction of primitive areas throughout the Southwest.  This he blamed on the U.S. Department of the Interior, which had opened many new areas to automotive visitation.  Here are his words:

 

“Navajo National Monument.  A small, fragile, hidden place containing two of the most beautiful cliff dwellings in the Southwest – Keet Seel and Betatakin.  This park will be difficult to protect under heavy visitation, and for years it was understood that it would be preserved in a primitive way so as to screen out those tourists unwilling to drive their cars over some twenty miles of dirt road.  No longer so: the road has been paved, the campground enlarged and modernized and the old magic destroyed.”

 

Times change, people change, but after his death in 1989 at age 62, Abbey's consciousness on earth evolved no further.  Abbey was both a naturalist and a sometimes naturist.  His gift was an ability to describe for his readers the natural wonders of America’s deserts and the Colorado River.  As a self-proclaimed anarchist, he waxed poetic in his fight with the federal government, which he saw as either disinterested or incapable of conserving those unique and unspoiled natural resources. 

 

Although his only documented anarchistic act was to pull up some road survey stakes at Arches, Edward Abbey often receives credit for inspiring such troglodytic and destructive groups as the Earth Liberation Front.  The counterculture energies of the 1960s coalesced around protest, as exemplified by the movement against the Vietnam War and “tree-spikers” in the Northern California Redwoods.  It was an age of “pushing against”, whose legacy is with us still.  Our “wars” on poverty, terror, drugs and teenage pregnancy are but a few examples of our vain attempts to fight against that which is intangible.

 

That morning, I sat quietly in the campground that Abbey decried as a modern abomination.  There, I opened a channel to Abbey’s non-physical consciousness.  Feeling that angst and anger at the time of his death may have trapped him in the near-earth realms, I asked his spirit to accompany me on a tour of the area.  Although there was no verbal or visual communication between us, I like to think that I allowed his spirit to see Navajo National Monument as I knew and loved it.

 

Bypassing the visitors’ center, we walked along the pathway towards the Betatakin (ledge house) Ruin, about a mile away.  In an attempt to protect these fragile alcove dwellings, the NPS placed its only Betatakin viewpoint on the rim of the canyon opposite the ruins.  If you visit, remember to take your field glasses.  Since Betatakin’s natural amphitheater amplifies sound energy, signs admonish visitors not to make loud noises.  As with the Walls of Jericho, a single loud noise could weaken or destroy this well-preserved pre-Puebloan settlement.

 

Returning on foot to Abbey’s despised campground, we found its thirty spaces artfully sited near the western edge of Sunset Mesa.  From its 7500-foot elevation, the terrain falls away gently for fifty miles, all the way to Lake Powell, Arizona.  The aptly named Sunset Campground provides among the longest views in the Four Corners.

 

Even today, the campsites accommodate rigs no longer than thirty feet, so the larger RVs must go elsewhere.  Tap water is available, but there is no store, public shower or RV sanitary dump.  During his two summers at the old Arches National Monument, Abbey lived in a thirty-foot house trailer.  I smiled in disbelief that his spirit might wish to deny others a brief but similar physical experience in this beautiful place.

 

Later, as I drove away from Navajo National Monument, I reflected on the term “arrested decay”, coined to describe preservation activities at Bodie, a ghost town in California.  By limiting direct access to these sites, the NPS has done what it can to arrest the decay of ruins at Navajo National Monument.  From its visitors’ center to the roads, trails and campground, the NPS seems to have listened to Edward Abbey’s spirit.  After its 1960s improvements, the monument has changed very little over the past forty-five years.

 

As I departed Navajo National Monument, I found myself in agreement with Abbey on one thing.  Despite its supposed ruination in his time, I hoped that this serene and beautiful place would enjoy its current state of arrested decay long into the future.  Thank you, Edward Abbey for the true spirit of your work

 

The Magic Gate

 

In 1965, after two weeks in the Four Corners, my father and I again crossed through the magic gate, represented by the Santa Fe Railroad grade crossing at Flagstaff.  From there, we retraced our route back to Los Angeles.  After returning home, I entered my senior year in high school, then on to college and work life.  For the next forty years, as did our old snapshots, memories of the Four Corners faded from my mind.

 

Each year since 2004, I have made it a point to travel and live for a time somewhere in the Four Corners.  While writing this personal history at my home, near Los Angeles, I could feel the Four Corners calling to me.  Three months from now, I shall pack my belongings and enter again through the magic gate to what some call Indian Country and others call the Four Corners.

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By James McGillis at 01:05 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link