| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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I am not an enthusiast of beads and ornament, but whatever floats Evelyn's boat.
As we moved further north, there began to be more pine trees. We passed through Flagstaff and continued on to the Grand Canyon. We parked at the Visitors Center and walked to the rim.
Now a lot has been said about the effect of seeing the Canyon for the first time--how it dwarfs a person's ego. The movie GRAND CANYON talked about that. So do some of the guidebooks.
So I got to the edge and looked down and ... nothing. What I see is a very big geological formation. It is interesting that it is so big. It is an interesting fact that at the base the rock is older than life is on this planet. Does it shake my image of myself that it is so big or covers so much time? No. I think it is like the age-30 crisis. Sometime around when you hit age 30, I have heard, everybody suddenly hits a crisis when they realize that life is finite and that they are going to die eventually. They realize a big fraction of that life is already over.
Perhaps I have a different psychology than other people, but even when I was ten I knew that I was through with at least an eighth and possibly a sixth of my life.
As a mathematician and perhaps as a science fiction fan, I am used to thinking of very large numbers, if great expanses of time and space. The Grand Canyon does not give me any new perspectives. It is a big piece of geology and geography and that is all I see in it.
As a mathematician I have discovered a piece of new mathematics. I discovered facts that were true before the Big Bang, long before the Canyon was formed. They are facts that are true as far as the universe goes, not just across the Canyon. And I was there, the first of my species. I was the first to know these things. No, I am not lacking in sense of wonder when I see the Canyon, but there is more wonder in mathematics.
This is not to say the Canyon isn't impressive. Even a squirrel who was passing by stopped and for about three minutes just looked out over the Canyon. Even a squirrel is impressed.
How do I describe the Canyon to someone who hasn't seen it? You have a huge crevasse seventeen to twenty miles wide and a mile deep. It is full of mesas with flat tops level with the rim walls. Then there are other columns that started the same but were worn down to points. When you can see a mile down, there is the bright green Colorado River.
One thing really mars the natural beauty. I think consciousness has been raised to the level that nobody drops candy wrappers or film boxes. The trail is pretty clean except .... Smokers just seem not to believe that cigarette butts are litter. There are butts on rocks and on paths. There are signs, but to no good. On one lookout point there was a crevice going down a foot or two. At the base was a solid square foot covered with cigarette butts.
We followed a trail three-quarters of a mile to Yavapai Museum and lookout point. The Canyon is so vast that the view is very little changed after a three-quarter-mile walk. The museum tells you a little local Indian lore. One of the creation legends (I assume it is Hopi) is that there were two gods: Tochopu (who was good) and Hokoma (who was evil). Now Tochopu had a daughter PuKeh -eh. Tochopu wanted his daughter to be the mother of all humanity. Hokoma tried to prevent it by creating a flood to destroy the world. But Tochopu knew from Ronald Reagan that a rising tide lifts all boats, and put his daughter in a floating tree bark. Thus Pu-Keh-eh was saved but was alone in the world. There was, however, the Sun and she conceived with it and had a baby boy. That worked so she conceived with a waterfall and had a girl. From them all the people are descended.
We drove to Hopi Point for sunset. It is hard to tell if sunset should have been spectacular, but it really wasn't. Well before sunset the entire canyon was in shade. Given that, it was no more spectacular than sunset is anywhere else. Of course, there was a raincloud directly above that might have caused some of the shading. Off to our right it was actually raining. As the sun cleared the overhead cloud, the sky turned yellow and the raincloud and rain to our right turned bright yellow. The effect was quite beautiful, but the presence of the Canyon was irrelevant.
It was a long drive back to Flagstaff, about ninety minutes in the dark. We grabbed the first motel we could, then dinner at El Chilito, a Mexican restaurant. The food was just okay, but the bottled green chile sauce was powerful.
Across the street was a grocery store converted into a huge used bookstore. This we had to see! Evelyn and I had agreed we would not go to used bookstores and buy books irrelevant to the trip. One of us kept his word and one of us broke hers. It would be indiscreet to say who each was.
Back at the room we watched the CNN replay of the final Presidential debate.
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We were up early and packed up. We wanted to stay in Flagstaff for a few more nights, but not at the Starlite Motel.
We had a light day planned. After breakfast we headed for Tuzigoot via 89A and Oak Creek Canyon.
It starts out as piney forests and suddenly My God! you're into breathtaking landscape. It is absolutely beautiful. Some locals have called this 'the Grand Canyon with a road.' Huge cliffs by the side of the road, red and yellow from the oaks, red rocks, dramatic formations, grand scale. Driving is slow because we keep stopping to take pictures. There have been some Westerns shot in this area and the town it leads to, Sedona. But movies cannot do it justice. I can think of other parts of the world that have a beautiful look, but the American Southwest has the greatest average beauty over the greatest area of any place I have visited.
I was telling Evelyn I'd love to live in this area, just as she was pulling into the driveway of a real estate agent. 'Hold it. Aren't we being a little hasty?' I said. Actually, she was just pulling in so we could get a picture of a nice rock formation behind the office. As we drove, we were listening to Jerome Moross's score for the film THE BIG COUNTRY. That was actually set in Texas but had a lot of big canyons like this ride did and it fit just perfectly. Sedona itself knows that it is in some of the most beautiful country in the world and makes the most of it by being very touristy. It is somewhere between what they do in Tombstone and what they do in Monterey.
There were five prehistoric peoples in the Southwest. Nobody knows what they called themselves, but we called them Hohokam, Anasazi, Sinagua, Mogollon, and Salado. In the Grand Canyon area the predominant tribe was the Anasazi. Around Flagstaff the tribe was the Sinagua. Unlike the Hohokam, who did amazing engineering of irrigation canals, the Sinagua farmed, as the name indicates, with almost no water. In 1065 the Verde Valley near what is now Sedona was populated with Hohokam. That year the Sunset Crater in the north near the Grand Canyon erupted. The ash fertilized the surrounding area and made it particularly good for crops. Many of the Hohokam moved to the area and Sinagua moved into the Verde Valley and about 1150 the Sinagua started building the pueblos in the valley. The Sinagua stayed in the valley until the early 1400s and then left--nobody knows why.
Tuzigoot is an entire village centered on a pueblo two stories high built on a hill a hundred and twenty feet high above the Verde Valley. While the ceilings are now gone, entry to rooms was via the ceiling and ladders. There were seventy-seven ground floor rooms in the pueblo. Found at the site were axes, bowls, grinding stones, baskets, and jewelry.
The Sinagua believed there are six directions, each ruled over by an animal. Up is the eagle, down is the mole, north is the mountain lion, south is the badger, east is the wolf, and west is the bear. Travel in some directions would require supplication to the right animal. Eagle rarely got anything out of this. Life at Tuzigoot was hard for the Sinagua. 42% of the bodies found buried at the site were under nine years of age, 24% were nine to twenty, 29% were adults under forty-five, and less than 4% were older than forty-five.
We stopped at a grocery for some odds and ends, then continued to our second site, Montezuma Castle. The name came from a wrong initial guess that the Aztecs had build it.
The Castle is five stories and twenty rooms built right into a cliff face. Nobody is quite sure why they built into the cliff. Perhaps it was more defensible; perhaps it just gave a good view. The creek that ran by it was an added inducement.
While we were walking I saw some movement on the ground and zeroed in with my binoculars. Evelyn saw me and zeroed in also. There was a head coming out of the ground the size of a squirrel's, but a golden brown and with teeth like a beaver's. I was pretty sure the size, color, and habits were wrong for a beaver. Evelyn thought it was a baby. I described it for a ranger. It was a gopher.
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.
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(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. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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