NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/travel/17121

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From: [e-mail] (mark.r.leeper)
Subject: Arizona and New Mexico (part 3 of 4)
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Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 16:09:23 GMT
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=======================cut here to print===================



Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 33



     Montezuma Well is really a limestone sinkhole filled with water.
The locale is fairly pretty.  You can climb into the hole (not the
water) and see the caves.  Around it on the far side you can climb down
to see the outlet.

     From there we drove back and got a room at the Rodeway Inn.  Then
we set out to find a decent place for supper.  We passed the Chamber of
Commerce and decided to hold off on dinner while we found out about
activities in the area.

     Finally we passed a restaurant with a crowded parking lot called
Granny's Closet.  The menu was limited but it was good and not too
expensive.  Then we went back to the room.

     October 21, 1992:  (I am almost caught up.  At least I am writing
about today.  I wonder if other people have the same problem keeping
logs.  When James Kirk kept the log of the Enterprise, did he have
problems keeping up to date?  "Well, since the last time I wrote, the
transporter split me into `good Kirk' and `evil Kirk.'  I was totally
exhausted once I got back and opted to go right to sleep without making
a log entry.  Then bingo-bango, the Enterprise gets invaded by an enemy
force sucking the life out of the crew.  So who's got time to write log
entries?  Next thing I know it's a week later and I'm trying to remember
the first adventure and I'm drawing a blank.  Maybe I'll remember more
on the way to Rufus VII.  Who am I kidding?  I just am a little dragged
out and over-stressed.  I won't remember details.")

     So we were unsure what day we should return to the Grand Canyon.
We wanted to be sure we had a clear day.  It turned out this was to be a
good day so this was the day we'd spend at Canyon.  We had buffet
breakfast at JB's and then headed back for the Canyon.  We took a
different route from the one we took last time.  We took the route
through the Navajo Reservation.  The Little Colorado winds through the
Reservation much as the Big Colorado winds through the Grand Canyon.
The Little Colorado makes its own impressive gorge.  There are several
scenic turnoffs.  "Scenic" doesn't seem to convey the idea.  It is much
the same geology you'd see at the Grand Canyon.

     Around the sites the Navajo set up tables to sell jewelry.  It
certainly seems only fair, being that it is their land.  What is a bit
embarrassing is signs like "We take travelers cheques" or "friendly
Indian."  One dealer dubs himself Chief Yellowhorse.  I still haven't
figured one that said, "Big Wind Sale--60-70%."

     We got to the Canyon eventually and took the scenic drive.  It
starts with a souvenir shop with a tower to climb to get a bird's-eye
view of the Canyon.  You have to pay twenty-five cents to climb the
tower.  Now I discovered a secret on how to get a bird's-eye view of the
Canyon: you walk up to the edge of the rim and look down.  The thirty or
so feet the tower adds is nothing you cannot get at one of the lookouts
without having to look through glass.











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 34



     There are a lot of German and French tourists at the Canyon.  On
one of the Indian stores there was the sign "Deutsch Wilkommen."

     But no matter how many people show up, there is still more than
enough canyon to go around.  Just standing looking you see a huge
expanse of stratified rocks and the strata go from one butte to the
next.  Those that are tall enough that they are flat-topped mesas rather
than the shorter buttes are green on top, but on the columns sticking up
everything below the rim is in layers of red rock.

     As we were looking at the view, someone claimed to see an eagle
flying over the Canyon.  I was skeptical that it was an eagle.  I didn't
think it was large enough.  I thought it was something like a hawk that
was smaller, though I admit it is tough to judge size at the Grand
Canyon.  Coronado looked into the Canyon and saw a river at the bottom
which he judged to be six feet wide.  The Indians with him told him it
was three hundred feet wide.  He sent down soldiers to have a closer
look, but days later they gave up, getting only a third of the way down
the Canyon.  As for the bird, well, it did have a white head.  Maybe it
*was* an eagle.

     Next stop was at one of the ranger museums for a half-hour talk
about the Anasazi.

     The ranger was very adamant against saying that the prehistoric
tribes "disappeared."  I'm not so sure that isn't the proper term.
There were five tribes I mentioned previously.  All of them seemed to
abandon their homes early in the 1400s for reasons not currently known
or understood.  Probably the reason either was or was connected with a
series of droughts--one twenty-three years according to tree rings--that
ravaged the Southwest about that time.  The next record we have says
that there were tribes in the area like the Zuni, Navajo, and Hopi.
Very probably the before-tribes were the same tribes, but there is
insufficient evidence at which pre-historic tribes became which historic
tribes.  I might defend the use of the term "disappeared," though.  Ten
tribes of Israel are said to have disappeared.  All that means is we are
not sure where they went or what peoples they became.  To say they
disappeared merely means that the observer cannot trace them.  (And
isn't that what we mean by saying Jimmy Hoffa disappeared?)  The five
tribes of prehistoric Indians did not wink out of existence, but we
cannot trace what happened to them.  The Anasazi, as an archaeologically
traceable people, did disappear.  It is very highly probable they became
some known tribe when they reappeared.  The five names--Anasazi,
Hohokam, Sinagua, Salado, and Mogollon--are really not even names but
descriptions that later people used.  "Anasazi" means "the old enemy."
"Hohokam" means "those who vanished." "Sinagua" means "those who did not
have water."  For all we know, the Sinagua might have called themselves
"Zuni."

     The Anasazi were matrilineal.  They would have a clan house and the
woman would be born there, live there, and die there.  When the men











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 35



would marry, they would go to live at their wife's clan house.  The
husbands at a clan house would be from all different families; the women
would all be from the one or two families that owned the clan house.
Men took care of the kiva (the chapel--sort of), hunting, and the other
man stuff.  The women took care of food preparation, clothing-making,
and playing bridge.

     We also got an explanation of what kachinas are.  Literally, a
kachina is an intermediary between humans and gods, almost like an
angel.  People dress up as kachinas for ceremonies, which is why you see
pictures of brightly costumed kachina dancers.  Children are taught
about kachinas using kachina dolls.  That is why we have the three
different forms.

     At these ruins (called the Tusayan Ruins) the clan houses are large
U's with the open end to the east.  The kiva was at the northeast corner
and a second one was at the southeast corner.  The kiva was the men's
preserve.  If a woman wanted to punish her husband, he would have to
sleep in the kiva or perhaps return to his "true home," the clan house
of his mother and sisters.

     The Anasazi buried their dead with water and provisions for a long
journey.  They had short life spans--averaging thirty-five years.

     On the way back to Flagstaff, we stopped at Wupatki.  What is
Wupatki?  Well, in the fall the ground to the north started smoking.  No
fire, just smoke.  And the ground was warm.  It wasn't too long before
the ground cracked open.  It was a major volcano.  It created a cone of
cinders a thousand feet high.  (Eventually this would be known as Sunset
Crater, incidentally.)  A wind blew ashes eighteen miles to the north to
cover the ground in a place now called Wupatki.  It blew the ash in
other directions, of course.  Eight hundred square miles were covered,
but Wupatki *also* had the right sort of topography for building
pueblos.  The ash fertilized the soil and made it perfect for growing
corn and other crops.  This area now has over eight hundred pueblo
ruins.  The public visits maybe seven or so.  What remains is of varying
degrees of completeness.  The tops of most of the pueblos are gone but
you do get to walk right into the pueblos and get a feel for the size of
the rooms and the size of the inhabitants.  Many of the pueblos offer
commanding views of the surrounding area, either for aesthetics or for
protection.  We got about halfway through when the sundown caught us.
We returned to Flagstaff, catching a quick meal at Taco Bell.

     October 22, 1992:  We had breakfast at JB's again.  Their $2.99
buffet is hard to beat.  These days we are eating for about $11 each per
day.

     Betatakin was our first goal for the day.  It is about two hours
northeast of Flagstaff.  We tried listening to the radio.  It is just
our luck to be in Arizona when every darn public radio station is in
fund-drive mode.  We listen to the news for ten minutes, then it goes











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 36



into begging mode and we have to change the station.

     Evelyn had heard about a Navajo radio station.  Very strange ads.
They were advertising somebody's quarterhorse sale.  "All mares more
than two years old, $300 off.  All mares with a colt on the side and one
in the tummy, $200 off."  The music was about 80% country-western and
20% Indian.  Indian music is just what you think it is.  Most of us have
heard Indian ceremonial music.  It just sounds strange in a mix with
country-western music.

     Betatakin is pretty inaccessible even from the Visitors Center.
You can go on a hiking day trip to get closer.  What most people--
including us--do is walk downhill a half a mile to a stone cliff
opposite Betatakin where you can just get a distant glimpse.  There is a
big telescope there (I estimate something like 20-power), just so you
can see the actual site.  What is the Betatakin site?  It is an entire
village in an alcove in the side of a cliff overlooking a canyon.  These
are people who did not want surprise guests.  The alcove is 452 feet
high, 370 feet wide, and 135 feet deep.  In this alcove is a whole
prehistoric village big enough for a population of 135 people.  The
village seems better preserved than most prehistoric villages.  (Gee, I
wonder why.)  This village was inhabited by the Anasazi.

     On the trail down they as usual identify the plants and what they
were used for.  This one had a sap that could be used as chewing gum.
That one had pads that were used as diaper pads.  One they said was good
to counteract the effects of swallowing ants.

     Now, my question is why would people swallow ants and how the heck
did anyone figure out that this plant is good for swallowed ants?

     We asked the ranger at the Visitors Center why anyone would eat
ants and how they would figure out what plants would be a cure.  He
didn't know either.

     Also on the path was a reconstructed hogan and a sweathouse.  A
sweathouse is like a sauna without use of water.  Only hot rocks were
used.

     After that we were headed for Monument Valley.  As Evelyn drove, I
read from THE BOOK OF THE NAVAJO by Raymond Friday Locke.  I read the
myth of creation and paraphrased it for Evelyn.  Occasionally as I
looked up I saw some impressive rock formations.  But then we were
coming to Monument Valley.

     Now I have to describe Monument Valley to you.  You probably have
seen it in a hundred Westerns; the question is which ones.  This is some
of the most spectacular scenery in the country.  Above the prairie are
shelves of red rock.  And every once in a while you see spectacular
upliftings--I'd guess three hundred feet and that could be low--of
layered rock eroded into amazing weird shapes.  One book calls them











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 37



"majestic sandstone skyscrapers."  Every Western you have seen where the
stagecoach or buckboard is riding to town and just sort of oblivious to
going by a huge tower of stone sticking out of the ground was filmed in
Monument Valley.

     In 1923 Mike and Harry Goulding set up a trading post just outside
the valley.  Their agenda of making money by trading in Navajo goods
soon became a secondary agenda to that of trying to make the Navajo
prosperous also and trying to make their culture work in the 20th
Century.  Harry decided that if the movie industry could come out and
throw some money around, the Indians might profit.  At this point, most
Westerns were shot at places near Hollywood.  The topography lacked
drama.  Harry thought that Western movies needed Monument Valley.  Harry
got some pictures of Monument Valley and headed to Hollywood to see
premier Western-maker John Ford.

     "No, Mr. Ford isn't in.  No, I don't know when he'll be in."  "No
problem," says Harry, leaving.  "I'm back," says Harry a few minutes
later.  "Just wanted to be here when Mr. Ford returns," says Harry,
unrolling his bedroll.  Mr. Ford is irritated.  Mr. Ford agrees to look
at the photos.  Mr. Ford goes to Monument Valley to scout locations.
Mr. Ford shoots STAGECOACH in Monument Valley.  Now I myself don't know
why that film was *so* popular.  It isn't a very good story. It
introduced John Wayne, but he wasn't that good.  Maybe it was Monument
Valley that nobody had seen before.  Anyway, the valley is a real
jaw-dropper.  You can get a guided tour for $15 a person, but there is
very low pressure.  In fact, one of the Navajos who wanted to take us
for a tour later saw us driving the road and waved to us.  Later he saw
our car and invited us to try what he called "Navajo beer."  Actually
it was an outlet of spring water.

     That brings me to an observation.  When I first started traveling a
lot, I put the Netherlands low on my list of where I'd like to go.  Then
flying home from Africa I had a few hours' layover in Amsterdam airport.
I dealt with very few Dutch there, but they all seemed to have bright
dispositions and joked a lot.  They seemed uniformly friendly and
likable.  All of a sudden I wanted more dealings with the Dutch.  I have
dealt with few Navajos, but they have seemed instantly friendly and
out-going.  They have good sense of humor.  I would like to get to know
more Navajos.  Ironically, I probably have (or had) a better chance for
contact with the Dutch.  (When I actually went to the Netherlands, I
found my first impressions were pretty close to being on the money.)

     The roads that have to be driven around Monument Valley are pretty
bad.  They are dry and dusty, often with very high grades.  But the
landscape is genuinely breath-taking.  Riding around takes at least a
couple of well-spent hours.

     Outside the park I bought myself a bolo tie.  I had earlier set
myself a goal of finding one I liked.  I had saved $30 on the guided
tour so I was feeling expansive.  Also I wanted to buy from a Navajo.  I











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 38



found a tie I liked at the first of a row of stores.  After looking at
several stores I went back to the piece I liked.  It turns out Evelyn
had liked other pieces of the same style.  Evelyn has good taste.
That's why I married her.  I think that is why she married me.

     We stopped at a Navajo cafe.  Evelyn saw it recommended in one of
the books.  It was nearly empty but the customers there were Navajo, so
that was a good sign.  I ordered something called a "Navajo taco," one
of the house specialities.  It turned out to be a big piece of Navajo
fried bread (an oval about seven inches by eight inches) covered with
chile beans and beef, then topped with lettuce, tomato, and grated
cheese.  $4.95.  I later realized that on their menu "Navajo" was a
euphemism for "large enough to kill a paleface."  It was good though.

     On the way back I wrote in my log.  We stopped to take a look at
the sky.  I think for the first time ever I could actually see the Milky
Way.

     We did a wash and watched "Alfred Hitchcock" before bed.

     October 23, 1992:  We checked out of the room.  We were there for
three nights, but I did not particularly like the way the motel was run.
(This is the Rodeway Inn in Flagstaff.)  The first day we got there I
had tried to cool the room and the air conditioner was not working.  I
reported it to the desk and they told me that the air conditioning is
turned off because this is the cold time of year.  I told the manager it
was 78 degrees in the room and it was uncomfortable.  He told me if they
turned on the air conditioning they'd have to turn off the heat and it
would get too cold at night.  We weren't going to spend that much time
in the room so I let it go, but in the evening the room was still a
little warmer than it should be.

     That night was the night we were at the Chamber of Commerce and I
saw both a brochure for the Rodeway Inn and another that summarized
motels in the area and both claimed the Rodeway Inn Flagstaff had
heating and air conditioning.

     That night I checked the smoke alarm and found it dead.  The next
morning I told the manager the battery seemed to be dead.  "Oh, that is
all right.  It is on the electrical system."  "You have the smoke alarm
on your electrical system?!"  "I'll check it."

     Again I didn't push it, but it was an out-and-out lie.  At least I
hope so.  The electrical system often goes out if you have a fire.
That's why you have batteries in smoke alarms, so they are independent
of the electrical system.  Clearly standards were slipping below legal
levels and the manager was willing to let things continue that way.
We'd been in precisely two motels where things had been run in what I
think was a slip-shod manner.  Those were precisely the two motels run
by Asian Indians.  Later in nearby Winslow, Arizona, I noticed for the
first time that a lot of motels say on their signs "American-owned."











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 39



They looked a little seedy also.  But I am guessing that Asian-Indian-
owned motels are getting a bad reputation.

     Our first stop was Lowell Observatory up on Mars Hill.  Percival
Lowell is of course the Ross Perot of astronomers.  He was from a
wealthy family--the Lowells of Massachusetts as in Lowell,
Massachusetts--and was given a very rare gift at age seven: a telescope.
This started a life-long interest in astronomy.  He got a doctorate from
Harvard, not in astronomy but in mathematics.  (If you're good at
something, you get a degree in it.  If you're just plain good, you get a
degree in math.  Scientists need the physical world to spur them;
mathematicians can work in the abstract.  Of course, I'm a
mathematician.)  He sent scouts to find a good place in Arizona.  They
picked a hill outside Flagstaff.  He had a particular interest in Mars,
never really discovering a whole lot of interest himself.  He got hung
up on the idea that Mars had canals.  He charted Mars including the
canals; he wrote books on the canals.  Lowell did more than any other
scientist to popularize the idea that Mars might be inhabited.  Probably
Lowell's greatest contribution was to provide facilities to others.

     We were at the observatory about a half hour before it opened so we
walked around the grounds.  Clearly for their day these facilities
represented a nice place to work.  The tour started in a domed building
that might almost have been an observatory.  A student explained who
Lowell was and a little about what was being done currently in astronomy
research.  There was one self-appointed jerk who complained about how
much the Hubble telescope cost and how they couldn't get it right and
how much more it would cost to get it fixed.

     They had a device called a blink comparator that allowed you to
superimpose two star photos, going back and forth to see differences.
It had the two photos that established the existence of the ninth
planet.  That discovery was also made at Lowell Observatory.

     From there the tour went to the actual observatory.  The 24-inch
refracting telescope seemed pretty crude, very much like a home-brew.
Lens covers were made from pans from Mrs. Lowell's kitchen, for example.
It was set on weights and counter-weights so the telescope could be
moved by hand.

     The woman leading the tour tried to keep her discussion at a low
and entertaining level, almost a ditzy level.

     After the observatory, we went back to Sunset Crater and Wupatki.
Earlier I described how this volcano created the good farm land of
Wupatki.  You are no longer allowed to climb the volcano itself, but you
can walk around its lava flows and there is a self-guided tour you can
take.  Most of what you see are strange formations of lava and the
plants trying to take hold again near the volcano.  Of course, a half an
hour's drive away the plants took hold very well.  That was what
attracted Anasazi to the area.  We spent an hour or so on the lava











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 40



fields near Sunset Crater and then saw the part of the Wupatki ruins
that we'd missed two days before.

     The previous cliff dwellings we had to see at a fair distance.  Not
so at Walnut Creek Canyon.  You can actually walk into the cliff
dwellings--such as they are.  They are mostly just rock out-croppings
with a few rock walls added.  You climb down about the height of a
seventeen-story building and are on a narrow ledge with cliff dwellings
on your left and nothing but a nice view on your right.  (Well, that's
exaggerating, but at times you were very near the cliff.)  I explained
to Evelyn that legend said that the milk cows were kept off at one end
of the ledge and that was where the Sinagua of 850 years ago would go
for their milk.  "Really?" she asked.  "Oh, yes.  It was ledge-end-
dairy."  The Sinagua must have had little fear of heights to live this
close to the cliff.

     When we were done, I looked up at seventeen stories of stairs.
"Hmm," I said.  "What are my options?"  "March or die."  I marched.

     We spent the night in Winslow, Arizona, which is very nearly as
ugly as Arizona gets.  It was a small town that got built up because of
a railroad stop.  In the days before dining cars, the train would stop
and the passengers would rush out to try to order dinner.  Usually the
restaurants would be very slow about delivering food.  The conductor
would call "All aboard!" and the passengers would pay for meals that
were never delivered to them.  In fact, they were meals that were never
even prepared.  The restaurants knew ahead of time that the train would
leave too soon.  That was what they were paying the conductor for, after
all.  Very early on, the town had a reputation for overly enjoying the
advantages of having tourists.  Even today, as we drive through town,
the place looks a bit seedy.  Motels that do not look well put-together
have big signs saying "American-owned."  We stayed at a Super 8 Motel
which wasn't too bad.  We ate at a Mexican place recommended in one of
the tour books.  It was just okay.  A fifth-grade teacher in the booth
behind me was telling a friend how fifth-graders had broken into the
library at night trying to steal the book fair money.  Oh well.

     We stopped at the grocery for provisions.  I only mention it
because of a piece of conversation I caught in the checkout line.
"... he said she needed to lie down and take a nap.  She was having a
stressful day.  Isn't that ridiculous?  Dogs don't have stressful days!"

     Back in the room I saw the very tail end of a Perot talk.  Then
there was a half-hour political ad for what sounded like a real crack-
pot party, the Natural Law Party.  One of their plans was to teach all
criminals in prison transcendental meditation so they could overcome
their anti-social tendencies.  This the candidate claimed was a proven
solution.

     After that, there was a good two-hour documentary on the Cuban
Missile Crisis.  I wrote about that in my last trip log.  What I said











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 41



there was based on an article I read somewhere about how the crisis was
resolved.  I'd given my reasons for blaming Kennedy for the crisis.
This program had a lot more information and could easily have
contradicted what I'd said.  Actually, while it did not explicitly come
out and say that Kennedy's adventurism was at fault, that was certainly
a conclusion one could draw.

     October 24, 1992:  We had breakfast in town, then headed out for
one of the local attractions.  Let me tell you about it.

     This is another of those big disasters in history.  Something like
47,000 B.C., there was one of Earth's greatest natural spectacles in
Arizona.  Over a flat plain there was suddenly a very bright light in
the sky.  It silently got brighter and brighter until it more than
outshone many times the sun.  Suddenly the plain exploded with a force
greater than any man-made nuclear explosion.  The sky, which earlier had
been incredibly bright, went black and hot rocks fell from the sky.
Trees were flattened for miles around, their tops pointing away from the
explosion.  No plant or animal survived for many miles around.  A chunk
of nickel-iron eighty feet in diameter had been captured by Earth's
gravity and slammed into the Arizona desert.  It left a hole more than
570 feet deep and better than three-quarters of a mile across and two
and a half miles around.

     Of course, a big hole in the ground is dramatic to look at for
several minutes.  But then what?  Well, a small but rather nice museum
was built around the Barringer crater--as it came to be called after
Daniel Moreau Barringer, who acquired the land and first demonstrated
that it was a meteor crater.  Most science museums, I find, are aimed at
about a fifth-grade level.  The science museum in Phoenix is all pretty
much aimed at pre-junior-high kids, though older people can still enjoy
it.  They don't use big words; they don't try to teach enough so the
visitor might get bewildered.  Not so at the Meteor Crater Museum.  They
use big words--some I'd never heard before.  They have an interesting
computer program to allow you to pick one of a fairly large number of
video programs.  You can say you are interested in knowing about objects
in space, then choose the solar system, then Neptune.  You then get a
program of about five minutes telling you about Neptune, including new
information from Voyager.  They show you footage about the big black
spot and tell you about the storm and a second one they found.  There
are also two video lectures and one audio lecture.  Then of course you
can go out and actually look at the crater.  You can walk around the
crater, but I am not sure what that would get you.  You won't see a
whole lot more.

     I thought everything was done professionally until it came time to
leave and we went to the gift shop.

     One of the employees, A, walked up to another, B, and said, "I hear
you're upset I'm not working the museum today.  Maybe you'd like me to
complain every time you don't clean the whole floor."











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 42



     B a minute later said to another employee, "I'm going to report
that."

     We bought a long strip of postcards showing the meteor impact that
I will be putting in the album fanfold.  We took this to the cashier and
it turned out to be B who starting folding the postcards.  Evelyn
stopped him and had me do the folding.  I started folding from the other
end, the end that would be attached in the album.  When I got to his
folds they were folded just the right way, and I said so.  "I've only
been doing this three years," B told Evelyn in a snooty way.  These are
not very professional people.

     Okay, I waxed enthusiastic about Monument Valley, so just so you
don't think Old Mark is a pushover, let me tell you one of the major
attractions that didn't do too much for me.  I am speaking of the
Petrified Forest.  Over this huge park are tens or perhaps hundreds of
thousands of trees that have turned to stone.  The actual process is
that they were washed into a lake where they were covered with mud and
minerals.  Silica leached into the wood preserving the structure.  Then
the water evaporated, leaving the dry lake bed.  The lake bed eroded,
leaving only the trees--now more stone than wood.

     Now why was I unimpressed?  Well, to see one petrified tree is of
some interest, I must admit.  Two petrified trees are even more
interesting.  Get up to five trees and you are about up to the limit.
Seeing acres and acres of the stuff is just overkill.  And this is
hundreds of acres.  On top if that, you are made to feel unwelcome.  A
great deal of petrified wood has been stolen.  Every time you turn
around, you see more warnings that the stuff must not be picked up.  I
agree with the sentiment, of course, but if you are not a thief, all the
warnings are a pain.  It is sort of like you have already subscribed to
an NPR station but still have to listen to the pledge breaks.

     They even have a case they call "the Museum of Conscience" with
letters from people who have sent them back petrified wood fragments or
pottery or anything else from the park.  Some have the most atrocious
spelling saying that they stole petrified wood and have had bad luck
ever since.  They are obviously trying to create a superstition that
stealing petrified wood is bad luck.  I told Evelyn I was going to take
a film canister and fill it with apple juice and send it to them with a
note that I've had bad luck ever since I drank from their water
fountain.

     On the grounds we saw a pueblo made with pieces of petrified wood.
It is thought to be "a `motel' for traveling farmers."  There are stops
in the forest with walks among the trees.  On the walk to the pueblo we
saw in the distance storm clouds and rain.  The rain may have been more
interesting than all the petrified wood, incidentally.  You see a gray
cloud and what looks like gray curtains from the cloud to the ground,
but the curtains go down at different angles in different places
depending on what the wind is doing.











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 43



     On one of the stops we take a scenic walk and it just seems to go
on and on!  It must have been more than a mile and of course it starts
raining on us while we are walking.

     Most of the rest of the drive we see from the car.  Occasionally we
stop for a picture. The Painted Desert looks pretty drab due to the gray
skies.

     Next we visited the Hubbell Trading Post Historic Site.  Most of
the old trading posts have a bad reputation.  John Lorenzo Hubbell ran
the most successful of the old trading posts and was considered by both
Anglos and Navajos as being scrupulously honest.  He built overnight
hospitality hogans complete with baking powder, salt, canned peaches,
and canned tomatoes.  He gave the Navajos good advice on how to make
their jewelry salable, even to bringing in a silversmith from Mexico to
teach the Navajo how to improve their quality.  He did similar things
with their blanket weaving.  Visiting the trading post was often a
several-day social event.  It was how Navajos found out what was
happening with friends whom they could not visit.

     It was raining when we got to the trading post.  So we knew what we
were looking at, I suggested we go first to the Visitors Center.
Mistake!  A bolt of lightning took out the lights.  We ended up
exploring the trading post by the flashlight in my pocket.

     We made a quick stop in Window Rock to see where the Navajo Nation
has its government buildings in the shadow of the Window Rock.  That's a
cliff with a huge almost-circular hole.  It is a majestic sight.

     That completed our time in Arizona and we drove to Gallup, New
Mexico.  We had barbecue for dinner, then drove away from lights just to
watch the spectacular lightning for a half-hour or so.  Back at the room
we wrote and read.

     October 25, 1992:  Breakfast was a Ranch Kitchen where I had
pancakes and a glass of buttermilk.  People think about buttermilk the
way they thought about yogurt twenty-five years ago.  It is a weird and
vaguely disgusting dairy product.  Actually I have become a devotee of
the stuff.  It fulfills a cheese craving.  Add some pineapple juice and
it makes a nice lassi.  Add some Hershey's syrup instead and it tastes
like chocolate cheesecake.  I think it has real potential as a diet
food, but you almost never see it on a menu.

     The first destination was Zuni, the government center for the Zuni
tribe.  It looks very much like a lot of New Mexico towns.  Occasionally
you do see outdoor domed ovens, but this isn't really a tourist spot.

     The Zunis make it illegal to photograph, audio record, or even make
sketches in their capital.  This is to protect the privacy of their
religion.  I told Evelyn they could sell cassettes of their non-
religious music and call them "Zuni Tunes."  (Of course, jokes like that











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 44



may be the reason they don't like Anglos.)

     Historic grafitti is the attraction of El Morro National Monument.
It was a water hole that travelers, first Indian and later Spanish,
stopped at.  Eroded sandstone made the area visually attractive, but
today as you walk along the cliff base you see Indian petroglyphs as
well as some detailed inscriptions in English and Spanish.  One Don
Francisco Manuel de Silva Neito wrote an homage to himself ("whose
indubitable arm and valor have overcome the impossible...").

     As I told Evelyn, the impossible is easy to overcome.  It is the
things that are real and exist that are tough to get around.  What makes
the cliff enjoyable is the irony.  The inscriptions tended to be pompous
and one way or another they got stone come-uppance.  One general calls
attention to his great victories and talks about what this gentleman
did.  Apparently one of his men scratched out the word "gentleman."
Another general has an inscription on how he passed by and under it one
of his corporals scratched in, "accompanied by Corporal ...."  Another
titled himself the conqueror of the Maqui.  History records that he said
that before he intended to conquer them.  His mission was a total
failure.  Moral: Don't believe it even if it is cast in stone.

     Malpais (Badlands).  It's not a very nice name and it was not a
very nice place, according to the Spanish who named it.  Of course, they
were the ones who had to march over the cracks and fissures of this lava
bed.

     Lava when it cools can have one of three textures.  It can have aa
(pronounced "ah-ah").  That is what you'd get if you wadded up fresh
oatmeal cookies, then let them get stale to the point of turning to
stone.  You don't want to walk on aa barefoot.  Pahoehoe ("pa-HOY-hoy")
is in hollow noodles.  It flowed in streams with the outside hardening
and the inside continuing to flow.  Notice when you burn a candle at the
top you almost get a tube because the outside shell is cooler than the
inside near the flame.

     The third formation is cinders ("SIN-ders").  Then it is in small
pieces.

     As we drove through El Malpais National Monument, we stopped at a
lookout that showed the lava flows, then La Ventana, a huge rock bridge
in the majestic (do I use that word a lot?) limestone cliffs.  It
created a great echo chamber and one large crow just loved that.  He
kept giving loud three-caw caws.  When we showed up he flew over us to
investigate, then back to his rocky soundstage.  We could hear his
massive wings cutting the air.  Some of the sandstone cliffs are
reminiscent of Chiricahua National Monument's formations.

     As we drove, we ate pinon nuts, said to be a favorite of the
Indians.  They are actually pine tree seeds.  I have had them before
under the name pine nuts.  They have a sweet flavor.  They are tough to











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 45



shell, but Evelyn with her sunflower-seed experience is pretty good at
it.

     After driving through the park we returned to about the mid-point
and the Acoma-Zuni Trail.  This is a trail that takes you through
prairie and then across lava beds.

     I will be honest: I don't much enjoy hiking, but I had a lot of fun
lava hiking.  It becomes like a series of puzzles.  They have sticks
stuck in rock piles to mark the path and in theory you can see from one
trail marker to the next.  In theory.  But sometimes it's tough to see
the next marker.  It blends in.  And once you find the next trail marker
you have to figure the best path to it.  There may be a long but easy
way to do it, and a short but complex way to go involving figuring the
right rocks to step on.

     You are stepping all around crevices that are maybe six feet deep,
but they are usually easy to avoid.  You occasionally risk rocks falling
on your foot, but they are light air-filled rocks.  Lava is quite light.
Even when we turned back, the way was not obvious.  Being able to see
B's trail marker from point A does not mean you can see A's trail marker
from point B.  It may be shorter, for example, and hidden by a bush.
Seeing the same topography from A or from B may lead you to different
conclusions as to which path between them is best.  In short, lava
hiking offers a lot higher puzzle-reasoning-to-physical-ability ratio
than most hiking.

     Back in Grants we got a room and got dinner at a "family"
restaurant.  I had chicken pot pie; Evelyn had chicken teriyaki.

     Back at the motel I did some reading about Acoma, our goal for
tomorrow.  Acoma was already a village  by 600 A.D.  That makes it the
oldest (or possibly second oldest) continuously occupied village in the
United States.  It is on top of a mesa 357 feet above the surrounding
plain.

     In 1598 the Spanish arrived in Acoma and the inhabitants made
friends and nominally submitted to the authority of the Spanish throne.
Something went wrong with the friendly relationship and for motives
never recorded the Acoma massacred a nobleman and twelve soldiers.  The
Spanish wanted to express their displeasure so they stormed the well-
protected pueblo (it took three days) and captured it.

     To show their displeasure they murdered seventy warriors.  Then
sixty young girls were taken from their families and sold as slaves in
Mexico.  All the rest of the village over twelve years of age were
sentence to twenty years' slavery.  Each man over twenty-five years old
additionally had a foot cut off.  And the Spanish built a mission in
Acoma to help the Acomas become gentle Christians as the Spanish were.













Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 46



     October 26, 1992:  This is a very high and dry part of the country.
I washed my hair last night and towel-dried it.  In about five minutes
it was totally dry.  We are up about 6500 feet.

     Breakfast was French toast and then we were off for the Acoma Sky
City.

     The "Sky City" is a pueblo on top of a mesa.  This place seems to
have more rules than Singapore.  For taking still pictures the fee is
$5.  Sketching and painting licenses are $40.  Entrance fees are $6 per
person.  Then there are a bunch of donation jars for things like the
school's senior class party.  We got there at 8:40 AM and they said
there was a tour at 8:45 AM.  It is at this writing 8:56 AM and a small
school bus labeled "Acoma Sky City Tours" just showed up.  (It finally
left twenty minutes late.) As we go up the hill there are lots of signs
saying no trespassing without guides.

     When you get to the top of the mesa you see a village that is
probably not atypical of what you'd expect from an isolated Indian
village.  The houses are sandstone but a lot have fairly modern windows.

     About thirty people actually live on the seventy-acre mesa as sort
of a tag team to keep the place inhabited.  Living on the mesa is an
Acoma mitzvah.  While it claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited
site in the United States, the claim is made for two mesas several miles
apart.  When the approach to one of the mesas was washed out, the Acoma
moved to the other.  This makes the claim somewhat dubious.  There are
about 4000 in the tribe now and many have problems of getting through
the doorways of their more economically-sized ancestors.

     For the small-sized community there is a fairly large mission.
That is because it was a fortress when the Indians controlled it.  After
Onate's conquest, a Brother Juan Ramirez was given actual dominion over
the Acomas.  A devout man, Brother Ramirez wanted to instill Catholic
ideas in the Acomas.  He had his mission, but he had a problem.  There
was no mission bell.  How could he bring the heathen to the Catholic
ideal without a mission bell?  Finally Brother Ramirez was able to make
a deal with a Mexican business.  They would provide a bell for no money
if they could have just four Acoma boys and four Acoma girls as slaves
in return.  As far as the good Brother was concerned, there were more
than enough Indians and he could spare some.  God had provided.  So good
Brother Ramirez got his bell and could continue with God's work as he
saw it.

     Today, of course, the Catholic Church is a bit more sanguine and
allows those Indians who want to celebrate the old religion to keep it,
though the guide said that the kiva was where the men had their
religious ceremonies and poker games.

     In the mission there is a painting of Christians burning in flames
in Purgatory being rescued by angels.  There is also the famous painting











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 47



of St. Joseph.  This painting was the center of a court case in the
mid-19th Century.  It was renowned for bringing good luck and prosperity
to the pueblo.  Now the nearby Laguna Pueblo was going through hard
times and asked to borrow the painting for a month.  Unfortunately, it
did seem to turn the fortunes of the Lagunas and they decided
unilaterally to extend the loan.  Eventually the painting was returned
after a good deal of arm-twisting.  A little while later the painting
was stolen and showed up back at the Laguna village under guard.  It
could not be stolen back, so the case went to the courts.  The court
ruled that the painting had to go back.  The Lagunas appealed.  I
suspect they knew they'd lose eventually, but they wanted to forestall
the inevitable.  Eventually the appeals ran out and the courts ordered
the Lagunas to give up the painting.  Runners were sent from Acoma.
Halfway to the Laguna village, they found the painting leaning against a
tree.  It was said that St. Joseph started for home on his own but got
tired.

     The Acoma get their water from cisterns that look less than totally
clean.  Some boil the water; some drink it just out of the cistern
because it tastes sweeter.

     Where there are multi-story buildings there are still outside
ladders leading to the upper stories though when I asked, the guide said
they usually have indoor stairs these days also.

     Some of the poorer homes are made of adobe straw-brick or have
windows of mica layers.

     Tour over, we were given the choice of taking the bus down or
walking the stone steps.  All seven of us chose the stone steps.
Simple, huh?  Actually, no.  It looked scarier than it actually was,
but ....  There was an older couple with us and the woman did have
problems.  I probably felt less than totally secure about the descent,
but said nothing or perhaps joked about it.  A sense of humor has a lot
of useful side benefits.

     At the bottom it was a five- or ten-minute walk to the Visitors
Center.  There we talked with another couple on the tour.  He was from
Santa Fe and looked the part of a cowboy, maybe sixty years old, with a
moustache and beard.  His wife (companion?) looked twenty years younger
and did not look all that Western.  She just looked very boyish, with a
short boyish haircut.  He talked about how he used to come to the mesa
when the only way up or down was by the stone stairway.  He recommended
a local NPR station on which an Indian humorist would talk and who he
thought was very funny.  People around here seem very likable and
friendly.  We talked about the $5 cost for taking still pictures and he
said he thought it was a good idea.  People used to walk right into the
Indians' homes taking pictures without permission.  In Santa Fe people
would ask him, "Are you a cowboy?"  "Yes," he'd say, and then if he
didn't stop him, they'd take his picture.  I'd seen the same behavior in
Israel with boorish tourists taking pictures of Bedouins and their











Southwest U.S. Travel Log         1992                           Page 48



camps.  TOURISTS!

     We then drove to the Indian Petroglyph National Monument in
Albuquerque.  Anyone who claims that Indians lived in great harmony with
nature should see all the grafitti pictures they made on stones.  One
sees animal shapes--four-legged and birds--spirals, crosses, zigzags,
snakes, etc., all etched into rocks.

     From there we drove to Taos, got a room at the Super 8, did some
gift shopping in town, and had dinner.

     Taos is another very touristy town, sort of the Monterey of New
Mexico.  Prices are elevated and things are very touristy.  Through most
of the Southwest and particularly in Taos there is a peculiar reversal.
In New York, French is very chic.  I don't know why, but people think
that the French do things right.  Something French just has to have more
class than something that is, say, Korean.  There are ads saying, why
should you like such-and-such?  Because it's French.  That ad does not
work on me because I don't have any natural predilection for French
culture.  There are signs that France is losing its special place to
Japan.  That may be because Japan is doing well economically.  But two
cultures that do *not* do well economically these days are Mexican and
Indian.  Yet here in the Southwest it is thought to be very chic to be
Indian or Mexican.  The upscale shops sell Indian blankets and concho
belts.  People kill for real Indian pottery.  And it's good to see that
at least someplace Indians and Mexicans have a real upscale market for
their wares.  At least some can be making a bundle.  Of course, some of
that is made by Anglos just dealing in Indian goods, but the Indian
culture does not appear ready to flicker out any time soon.

     In the bookstores in town, just like the book stalls at the
archaeological sites we are visiting, my first question is always the
same.  Where are the Dover books?  Do you have any Dover books?  Dover
is a New York City publisher who deals in reprints mostly of good out-
of-print books.  The majority of their stock is in so-called "trade
paperbacks," but on subjects that there is not that much trade in.

     On the way to the Grand Canyon I was reading in one of the tour
books excerpts from the log of W. J. Powell, who'd explored the Canyon.
That gave me fairly good odds that I was going to be able to find a
Dover edition of Powell's complete log fairly cheaply.  Evelyn silently
drew the same conclusion.

     Sure enough, there among the touristy books that the souvenir
stands sell--picture books of the flowers of the area and that sort of
thing--was a $7.95 Dover of the log of the Powell expedition.  Generally
at least half of the books of real scholarly interest will be published
by Dover.  And of those books they will be the best bound (acid-free
paper and bound in signatures) and they will generally be a bit cheaper
than the others.










            Mark Leeper
            ...att!mtgzy!leeper
            [phone]