Sunday, September 18, 2011

'Western Interiors'

Last week, as I was driving to Phoenix from my Boulder home, I stopped at Marble Canyon for a couple hours of sleep. Marble Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, and Cedar Ridge are all places on the Navajo Reservation in extreme Northern Arizona. I've been traveling across this reservation since I was about five years old, traversing back and forth from Southern Utah to Phoenix and other places in Arizona and Utah. It's one of my favorite places, a place I feel like time will stop if you have the courage to let it. The giant wall faces of the Vermillion Cliffs create the border to the North of the reservation, majestic and mystical, appearing to be the guardians of the reservation. There is a small motel build out of gray stone there, the halfway point of my trip. To the East of the motel and the cliffs is the great Colorado River, and further North on the river, Lee's Ferry, where I learned in my thirties to be the ferry which my Great-great grandfather once managed until he fell and drowned in the great river, another in my collective ancestory whose body was never found.

For several years, before I knew this story of my grandfather, I used to drive up to Vermillion Cliffs and spend New Year's Eve. At night, I would walk inside the small bar and restaurant, where they would let me play my guitar on a barstool in the corner for tips and dinner. Sometimes, the night would turn very long if I was having a good singing night. The restaurant crew would take me to their dilapidated trailers behind the restaurant, and we would drink whisky straight from the bottle and I would listen to the talk of the long season of winter on the reservation. On New Year's Day, I would make the drive to the ferry, and then down stream by the river and sit on the bank most of the day, sometimes taking a fly rod and fly fishing where some of the world's largest rainbow trout make their home. After one particular New Year's, I was telling my cousin about my trip and she told me the story of my Grandfather's demise near the very spot I would visit. I was amazed that I was drawn to this place all on my own, as if I was somehow caught up in the search, four generations later. As the story goes, after he fell into the river and disappeared, his son, my great grandfather, formed a search party to look for his body. The second night of the search, as my grandfather sat around the fire after crudely dragging sections of the great river, a voice spoke to him and said, "Search no further, you will never find me, I am fine, go home." (This story was told to me by my ninety-year old aunt one day in our many family history conversations).

So, the search for him ended, and his body was never found. Who could have imagined that three generations later, a similar fate would accompany my own father a hundred and fifty miles to the North West? Sitting there on the bank of the river one year after my father disappeared, I made this connection between the two men. I also started thinking about the many who have been swallowed up into the western landscape, never to appear again. Looking at the deep crevices in the great cliffs, and the dark green depth of the Colorado River, it's easy to see how men could walk into its majestic allure, never to be seen or heard from again. Perhaps this is the reason I find great comfort there.

Instead of stopping at the motel of the Vermillion Cliffs, I drove the eight miles to Marble Canyon, where I pulled my truck into a rocky parking spot and laid out my sleeping bag in the front seat of the truck. The monsoon clouds, lightning, thunder, and rain were swirling in front of the giant cliffs, and I opened the windows halfway so as I slept I could experience this great conflict between earth and atmosphere. The red dust of the reservation was kicking violently around in little dust devils, it was almost midnight, and I felt the pull of the collective kinship, comfortable and melancholy.

As I lay there in the front seat, I began listening to the wind, and catch the thunder roaring across the vast landscape of sandstone and desert prairie. Suddenly, across the street, I began to hear two or three men speaking in Navajo in front of the last place that seemed to be open, a restaurant bar amongst the several buildings of Marble Canyon, the small cobbled gateway village leading to the bridge that crosses the Colorado. At first, the men appeared to be laughing and pointing something out, like a wild dog or even a horse. It was only several seconds before I realized the men were extremely drunk, and then I could hear the shrill sound of chairs being dragged across uneven sidewalks, mixed with the ancient language the men were speaking, with bits of anger beginning to rise in the laughter. It was if suddenly sky and cliffs were bound to these men, whose ancestors had probably stood in the same spot, three hundred years before, when there was nothing to explain the way the violent sky moved.

I sat up from the truck's seat and turned my head to look across the street where the anger was turning into a strange staccato of Navajo words spitting out threat, bodies grabbing one another, and chairs and tables crashing together as the men began to fight. Looking across the highway, I could only make out the images, pushing against each other, the great cliffs rising in the background, and then one final crash. Then I could hear another man, beginning to speak in English and Navajo, the English words were cursing the men, the Navajo words urging them to stop with all the nonsense. It was only seconds after that I could hear the shuffling of the men heading off into the night, silent in their native tongue, probably going to a place a lot like mine, the front seat of a pick-up, or perhaps a motel room up against the wall of the cliffs.

I lay back down in the seat as the shuffling of the men's boots disappeared, and then it began to rain, with one thunderous clap of the sky. I kept the window down halfway, letting several of the drops make their way into the cab of the truck and onto my face and arms. I thought about the great river, a couple of hundred yards to the east, and the rain falling down into its canyon, hitting the surface of the water and joining the journey down towards the grand canyon. I thought about the motion of a human body in the river, tumbling over the rocks in the shallower parts after its spirit had returned to the sky. I thought about the way that luck it seemed, had no part of a life on the reservation, that all of it was just an endless repetition of violence between earth and sky. I thought about erosion. I wondered about the Navajo men, their relationship to each other, and how they would appear to each other at the rise of the sun. I thought about my future, the present past, and the thousand times I'd crossed this reservation. I thought about the great expanse of the reservation I'd yet to drive, down the center of Arizona, and the miles and miles of small houses and hogans of the Navajo nation.

It was two o'clock in the morning when I finally started the truck and headed south, the monsoon storms still looming in the distance, their great arms of lightning pointing out the way. I turned on the radio, checked the gauges and began to drive, listening to the radio voices mixed with the wind, the thunder, and the sound of plastic tarps beginning to rip as they attempted to cover the small little pile of possessions I had left after the fire. I was halfway to my destination, but at that moment, it seemed as though I would never arrive there, the night had taken everything from me, even though the sky was attempting to give something back. After I crossed the bridge, I was tempted to drive down one of the many dirt roads leading away from the highway, perhaps, to a trail that led down to the river, or maybe to a slot canyon that looked like it disappeared into the other canyons. I slowed the truck down as I approached one of the roads, and then at the last second, I changed my mind. I had miles to go before I could lay down again, and I couldn't help feeling that there was all something cruel and beautiful in my latest driving purpose, that it would be alright, that I would be alright, even though life seemed a little unfair. I leaned into the pain of leaving, leaned into the anxiety I felt as the wind pushed the truck back and forth on the road and pressed on towards the city, Phoenix, and made my plans to rise again from the ashes. It was at that very second I saw the wolverine in the middle of the road, I swerved gently to miss it. It was my first wolverine sighting, perhaps now, not my last. I pressed down on the accelerator, and started to listen closely to the radio.

4 comments:

Gerry said...

I have, of course, crossed the Navaho Reservation many times, both with you when you were young, and without you, although not taking the route over the Kaibab Mountain as often as you do. I usually go through Page so I appreciated this description of your latest trip over it. I would always think how the Navahoes still lived much as we used to live back when I was young. I recall a BF from Escalante taking me to the Navaho Reservation and exclaiming about how the Navahoes were still living in hogans, some of them. I was amused because he camped out many months out of the year to logging camps, so I didn't see how they could be be going any more primitive living than he had to during this time. In fact, when we stopped to talk to some Navahoes, the young son of an older Navaho woman said he had been going to college. My Escalante BF had never been near a college. However, he offered a drink out of his little whiskey bottle to the woman and she took it and drank so much, my BF looked to be in pain. He asked her if she would not let me ride her horse. She said yes, so I got on this horse which was wonderfully sensitive to the touch of the reins. I thought this was a rare experience meeting such a wonderful horse. That told me a lot about the owners.

kanyonland King 2.blogspot.com said...

aOut there in that wonderful expanse of desert was where Tom and four other truckdrivers all stopped to watch a spaceship with lights flickering through round windows, there and then gone in a flash right straight up into the sky. Every time we went by, he showed me where the hugh spaceship was. I did not see the spaceship, but I do appreciate that mighty expanse of desert. It's beauty is stark.

Chanelle said...

Beautiful! I love that stretch of country. So many stories, so much history. It is intoxicating and terrifying to me all at the same time! You have made me home sick ...

V. said...

Very fine, my friend. Here I was all stressed out about moving all my shit into a tiny apartment, and I take a break and read this, and I can hear it in your voice, like you're reading it, and what I get is: if you want to see that wolverine, you have to be able to carry all your shit under one tarp. It's old wisdom, I know. The kind it's hard to write about without feeling self-conscious. But you did a helluva job painting it plain and true and reminding me how crazy I can get. Thank you!