Day #8: Cortez Colorado To ‘The Grand Canyon’
Thoughts of Monument Valley, Mexican Hat, and the Grand Canyon consumed my morning, as I quickly repacked the bike to get back to my ride. It had rained during the night, and the windshield of the bike was dotted with the dried residue of raindrops. Not enough to be bothersome, but just visible enough so I knew they were there. The pattern they made across the large plexiglass shield told a story of what had happened during the night while I was asleep.
It was cool this morning, and the temperature on the bike’s dashboard registered only 53 degrees as I pulled out of the motel parking lot onto Rt.#160W. I purposely avoided any breakfast and thought only about the delicious frybread at the 4-Corners National Monument. 4-Corners was where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all met in perfect symmetry, and at its southern end was a rickety old trailer run by a Navajo family that served some of the best frybread between Phoenix and Durango.
To my great disappointment, the frybread trailer was still closed when I arrived at 4-Corners. The jewelry stands were all open and staffed, and the stone parking lot was full, but the old trailer that advertised Navajo Frybread, located in the extreme southwest corner of the memorial, was still dark and empty inside. I asked the friendly Navajo lady in the jewelry stand, to the right of the trailer, what time she thought they would reopen. She said: “It was always hard to tell, because they never showed up on time. They should have opened over a half hour ago, but they couldn’t be counted on to keep to a set schedule.” With that, she shook her head in disgust and said something in Navajo that I didn’t understand. Trust me — it wasn’t good.
It was now past 9:30 in the morning, and my stomach had started to growl. I thanked her for the information and asked her what spot on the radio dial the Navajo Station was coming in on this far from Kayenta. Her name was Rosita, and she told me it was coming in clearly at 6:60 on the a.m. dial.
What was it with multiple sixes in this part of the west? The infamous highway now called Rt. #491 used to be labeled Rt.#666. The locals referred to it as the ‘Devils Highway.’ It got so much bad press that the route number was eventually changed. There was even a Hollywood movie (Natural Born Killers) filmed along its route. At least this radio station had only two sixes, but still the connection was strange, and it made me wonder again about the choice of location. Maybe there was no choice, and 6:60 was the only spot available on the dial for the Navajo Station, or maybe it was something more …
I wanted to believe it was just co-incidence as I headed back to the bike. On my way to the parking lot, I noticed that the monument had changed, and so had my opinion of it. The Memorial itself was fine, but the four rows of shops that surrounded it — forming a perfect square with the flagpole in the center — were much different than before.
Instead of the old rustic wooden stands that used to form the rows, the shops were now a modern masonry (sandstone and adobe) and all connected with one no different from the other. They looked like rejects from an out of work architect’s bad dream. My connection to the Navajo Nation used to be strong here, but today I felt nothing more than a nagging anxiety to get going, and for the first time ever I had no desire to return.
I headed west on Rt.#160 and turned right onto Rt.#191 north until it connected with Rt.# 163 in Bluff Utah. This would take me through Monument Valley and then back in a southerly direction to the Navajo town of Kayenta Arizona. In many ways, the Navajo Nation was frozen in its own time warp. It observed daylight savings time, while the rest of Arizona did not, which always caused me to smile when coming through here in the summer and looking at my watch. This truly was a nation, with its own sense of time and place, and being a visitor was all I would ever be.
Being A Welcomed Visitor Would Always Be Good Enough For Me
The loop north, through Utah, was a longer way to go, but the road went right through the great Valley Of The Gods, and Mexican Hat, and was more than worth any amount of extra time. As I made the right turn onto Rt.#191, I was visually assaulted with the vastness, and awestruck wonder, contained within the sand and rock of the American Southwest. It was unlike anyplace else, and I was reborn in its spirit every time I passed beneath the shadows of its ancient monuments.
I looked off to the west and remembered the first time I came through here back in the spring of 1971. I had had to stop repeatedly, as my spirit breathed in what my eyes wouldn’t accept. It was on that day that I first realized that one of your senses could lie to you about what another one held dear as the truth.
Alone on the road, the miles were again my only companion, as the sand and the rock measured me for who and what I was. Beneath their great shadows, I was but a transitory annoyance in the mega-millenia history of all that they knew. Like the occasional fly or gnat that landed on my face shield, I was something only to be swatted away or ignored, with no real significance, and deserving of no serious thought.
As I passed unnoticed beneath their immortal grandeur, the changes they inspired, and the walls they tore down, would live forever inside my new insignificance. There was nothing symbiotic, or co-authored, about my place in this desert. Monument Valley existed as it always had … welcoming, but with an unsettled message you had to measure yourself against. In the beginning, I thought the message was coming from somewhere deep inside the towering Mesas and Buttes only to discover that it was coming from deep inside myself.
In what seemed like an instant, and without warning, Mexican Hat appeared off to my left. Today it seemed bigger than before, and for that I am grateful. Most things appeared smaller, when revisited, than they were in my memory, but this morning Mexican Hat was larger than ever before. It was nestled against the horizon on the mesa’s edge, far enough away to ensure its own safety, but close enough to remind us of how small we really were.
I stopped the bike on the apron and took pictures while burying in the sand something of myself I never wanted back. I brought small tokens of homage on these trips hoping to trade them for a deeper spirituality. What I left behind was only a tiny symbol of thanks for what they had already given me. It felt good again to say thank you after having worshipped for so many years in their shadow. As I re-crossed the road, with my limitations offloaded, in the timelessness of the Valley’s eternal presence — I headed West.
In what others saw as only desert and rock, I saw as the exposed truth of a landscape beyond reform. It welcomed me back while happily letting me go. It knew I was on the way to see my Spiritual Mother, and it also knew that the great hope chest of her arrival was created here.
I got on the bike as the radio came back on. I heard the Navajo commentator say the word Walmart, as the rhythm of her native words danced through the air. Thank God there was still no native word for that modern symbol of consumerism that so much of our society had become slave to.
‘Lowest Prices Every Day, Lowest Expectations Inside Of Yourself’
The veneer of Native America masked the same problems shared by the rest of our country but with one major difference. In trying to hang onto, and preserve, their own culture, they served to dignify their struggle. Wasn’t a dignified struggle a definition of life itself? Without it, how could a life be truly lived? Without it, one is just being observed or marking time? Marking time had become the catalyst, and the driving force, behind all cultural suicide and the one gift from the Industrial Revolution that we needed to give back. It was where the spirits of the unfulfilled died from reasons unexplained, and all that was left behind was just excuse. The great illusion was that the machines had saved us from everything —everything but ourselves!
Idle Time Was Its Undoing — A ‘Bad Day To Die’
I said goodbye to Mexican Hat as it disappeared over my left shoulder. I was again the only one on the road. It was more evident to me than ever how fond I had become of this motorcycle during the past eight days. It did everything I asked of it, while doing it quietly, and was a reminder that I should be doing the same.
Alone with my thoughts, the spirits of my ancestors — and their ancestors before them —crowded into my subconscious mind. The word subconscious was an anglicized term for those places inside of us that never should have been divided. I bled for all the things in my life still left undone but hoped that by the end of this trip they would not remain unsaid.
The history of the Navajo people lay buried in the sand and would forever hold the spirit of the things they had taught me. As I waved to two Harley riders headed in the opposite direction, I wondered if they ever thought about how we got to this place. Was it an accident or accidental fortune or something words would never know? Ahead, I saw a sign warning of a sharp left turn in less than a quarter mile. When I got closer, the image of the San Juan Trading Post rose like the Phoenix from the desert floor. Sitting low and deep in a knoll by the river’s edge, it beckoned you to stop without telling you why.
Why — was a question I had refused to deal with since leaving the motel. As I parked the bike in front of the Trading Post’s Café, the smell of something wonderful drifted through a window in the back. In the back, and to the left, was where the kitchen was located. The smell was so overpowering that I was frozen in place, and I stood there in the bright sunlight taking in as much as I could.
Why, Being The Question I Tried Most To Avoid
There was usually a reason for why most things happened even when not apparent. The closed Frybread stand at the 4-Corners Monument made more sense to me now. Had I eaten there, I would have probably bypassed the Trading Post altogether. All who have had the good fortune to stop there know that their Frybread is the very best. It’s served in the round, comes with powdered sugar, and is the size of a small pizza. I have always tweaked mine with maple syrup on top.
I asked Sam, the Café’s manager, and an old friend, if they still had the maple syrup that they kept hidden in the back. He said, “Yes Kurt, you’ve been one of the few, if not the only one, that’s ever asked for it. It may not have been out front since the last time you were here.” I liked the thought of being the only one that enjoyed Frybread that way. I thanked Sam again, but I also noticed something about him that seemed disturbing and strange.
Sam was limping with his left leg, dragging it is more apt, as he headed down the forty-foot-long corridor to the kitchen pantry for my syrup. As he started back my way, I could tell from the look on his face that he was in a great deal of pain. Already knowing the answer, I asked Sam what was wrong. He said: “I have an arthritic hip.” At this I smiled, lightened up, and said: “Sam, I had my own left hip replaced just a few years ago. It now feels like the real thing and allows me to do everything I like to do.” This motorcycle trip of almost 5000 miles is no problem,” I told him, as he grimly smiled and looked away.
“How much did it cost?” he asked, as he cleared my table and walked back to the register. With that, I grew sad because I did remember — and it was over $32,000. I did not tell him the cost hoping there was a health plan on the reservation that would allow him to get it done. He looked at me again and said: “I’ve seen three doctors, and they’ve all said the same thing.”
They all told him that there was nothing more to be done, at that point, other than having it replaced. “I could have had it done in Phoenix or Tucson and been back on the reservation in three days, but the cost is what’s stopping me.” “I know Sam, I was in and out of the hospital myself in less time than that”… still not commenting on the price.
I left cash on the table as I paid my bill. Sam and I hugged one last time and he walked me outside to the bike. Before putting my helmet back on, we looked at each other once more in the eye. He knew and appreciated that I understood what he was going through and that his pain would continue until his hip was replaced. It was more likely than not, and something I hated to admit to myself — that his pain would continue.
I asked him, as I was leaving, about any V.A. (Veterans Administration) options. He looked at me through very sad eyes and said: “They told me it was not degenerative enough for the V.A to transfer me to a private hospital, and they don’t perform that kind of operation here on the Rez.”
He had told me inside that he remembered the many years I had limped, and how badly he always felt when watching me leave. The desk clerk at the adjoining motel actually mentioned me to him. She told him that a guy just left the Cafe on a motorcycle and was riding with his left leg completely down (straight) and not on the foot-peg. He told her it was because I could not bend my left leg, and my only choice was to ride with it extended and straight down. He also told her it was not a good option but better than the other alternative of not riding at all.
So Many Times In Life We Have To Live Inside ‘Plan-B’
Sam looked seventy-five, but he was actually ten years younger than I was. At fifty-two, he had far too many years of pain left to endure. With all the money and resources wasted, and given away to countries that hated us, here was a crippled veteran of the United States Marine Corps who was in desperate need of real help. In my mind, no one could have deserved it more. I watched Sam slowly limp back into the Café as I climbed the steep parking lot road back onto Rt. #163S.
As I headed into the great Monument Valley, I thought about all the Native Americans who had served their country and were in dire need of health care. Within a 100-mile radius, I knew there were forgotten thousands suffering in pain. Because of a broken health care system, and the apathy of an ungrateful nation, the only choice available to most of them was to quietly soldier on.
Their Pain And Suffering Continues Long After The Battles Have Been Fought
As I headed east toward the Canyon, I thought about everything that had been so savagely torn away from them. Life on the reservation was challenging enough and the simple elements of life, that most of us take for granted, should not be denied to them. I gave Sam my current cell number before I left and asked him to contact me in two weeks. I was hoping that the great doctors who did my hip might be persuaded to take a pro-bono case like Sam’s. I told him that I would be more than willing to provide the airfare to Philadelphia and back — and he could stay with me. I wish I had had the resources to pay for the operation itself. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend money that, unfortunately, I didn’t have.
Sam promised he’d be in touch but in my heart, I didn’t believe him. Native American dignity has always both inspired and confused me. They bear life’s darker side with an acceptance that few of us could ever understand and even less endure.
I Knew I Would Have To Call Him
The final thirty miles to Kayenta was a tribute to the great film director, John Ford, and his mastery in this valley. I felt his strong imagery call out to me with every bend in the road. His camera was magical, and he truly understood both the mystery, and the majesty, of these sacred lands. The time he spent here, and the stories he told, both changed and shaped our image of the American West forever. It was a romanticized image, yes, but one where the intrinsic beauty of the canyons and desert jumped right off the screen and into our imaginations. He lives inside of me now, as he lived inside me then.
A Five-Year-Old Boy Was Changed Forever By The Images Coming From The Small, Eleven Inch, Black And White T.V.
As the mesas and buttes became larger, my thoughts and feelings did the same. It was a shared epiphany of expansion as I crossed back over the Arizona line, but the sadness that I felt for Sam lingered inside. Even the towering imagery of the distant monuments had not chased it away. I remembered my own hip pain and could feel what he was suffering. Before leaving them, I prayed to the God’s of this valley to enter my thoughts and force these dark clouds to leave — and to bless Sam with good fortune.
It was mid-afternoon, as I entered Kayenta through its northern end. I was both thirsty and in need of gas. As filling as the Frybread had been back at the San Juan Cafe, I was hungry again. After an egg salad sandwich and grape juice out of the cold chest at the Mobil Station, I felt much better. This quick stop would be enough to hold me over until I arrived at the Canyon later in the afternoon.
Kayenta put me back on Rt.#160S toward Tuba City where I would bear left onto Rt.#89 for the short trip down to Cameron. Rt.#89 was one of my two main roads of discovery, and it was always good to see it again — we knew each other so well. Cameron, the low-sitting town on the high desert’s floor, had served as a major trading post for Navajo artists and rug makers for over 100 years. It was also the East Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park.