Day 33: Nuevo México - “Land of Enchantment”

Day Thirty-Three: Nuevo México - “Land of Enchantment”

7/12/11:

My dad soaks up information like a sea sponge. At fifty-seven, he’s fairly bloated with knowledge, which is generally a good thing, although rarely results in straightforward or simple answers to any question. In full professor mode (he’s been teaching for twenty-nine years), Dad unearthed a string of colonial adobe churches for us to visit as we explored New Mexico. On our way to Taos from Santa Fe on July twelfth, we made three side ventures to El Santuario de Chimayó, San José de Gracia, and San Francisco de Asis churches.

These three adobe churches are some of the only examples of North American indigenous architecture still in existence. Decried as “primitive” in the nineteenth century, many adobe churches in the Southwest were remodeled in the New England clapboard style. It wasn’t until the twentieth century when a number of artists—among them Georgia O’Keeffe—popularized these adobe structures that many realized the beauty and worth of this early architectural style.

Walking onto the plaza of El Santuario de Chimayó was like entering into a little piece of Mexico. A row of colorful, seven-foot tall crosses stood out against the backdrop of the T’si Mayoh Mountain; little ribbons, papers with prayers, and crosses wrapped themselves around the links of the entryway fence; a shrine to La Virgen was hung with flowers and brightly beaded rosaries. El Santuario de Chimayó was, and remains, a place of healing. Before the construction of the church, this site had been sacred to the Tewa Native Americans. According to Tewa tradition, a spring had bubbled from this site and given the nearby earth strong healing powers.

In 1811, Spanish settlers to the area also found this site to be extraordinary. As lore has it, a large crucifix was unearthed from the ground at this spot and carried eight miles to the nearest church in Santa Cruz. However, the next day the crucifix returned, and again the settlers brought it to Santa Cruz. Yet, after the crucifix’s third reappearance, the settlers took heed and built El Santuario de Chimayó. A six-foot crucifix is now sheltered under thick adobe walls, and El Santuario de Chimayó remains a place of healing to this day. Beside the church, a long wall stands with a heavy coat of prayers tacked to it.

Passing through an area of thick forest and sweeping mountain roads, we lost elevation and came to the San José de Gracia church in Las Trampas. Built in 1780, San José de Gracia is ringed by a short adobe wall, clumps of golden straw visible within the dense, dried clay. The church was closed and, as told by the shopkeeper across the way, much less visited than El Santuario de Chimayó. The gentleman’s shop boasted an odd array: baubles and postcards and small figurines. Flipping into Spanish, he told my dad that he was a direct descendant of the family that had founded Las Trampas in 1751. The shopkeeper’s friend chimed in, and sitting in the haphazard and crowded shop lawn, they told me about their sixteen years working together on a hotshot firefighting crew in California. Season after season of incredible heat had caused permanent nerve damage to the shopkeeper’s friend’s feet, and he spoke nostalgically of the day when he was forced to retire his nail-studded firefighting boots.

We rounded out our morning with the San Francisco de Asis church in Ranchos de Taos. This church, with its smooth buttery buttresses, has inspired many an artist and was most famously depicted by Georgia O’Keeffe. Built in 1771 and completed in 1816, “it is understandable why the apse of this mission church has been so often photographed and painted: it proclaims geometric satisfaction mixed with naive forthrightness.” San Francisco de Asis, along with San José de Gracia and El Santuario de Chimayó, all remain active churches to this day.

Our adobe-church-tour thus sated (for the day, anyway), we commenced onward into Taos for a bike ride. Risking life and limb alongside the highway, we shot eleven miles out to Arroyo Hondo, edged six miles to Arroyo Seco on back roads, and finished out with a stormy eight miles back into Taos. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains ringed the skyline around us as we wove through the countryside, flying down long stretches of sharp descent and peddling furiously up short but insanely steep hills.

Driving back to our Santa Fe KOA after the bike ride, I cruised down some remarkable mountain roads and got to navigate lower gears for the first time, feeling disproportionately pleased with myself as I got the hang of downshifting. Passing the Rio Grande as the sun set, I watched the cloud-heavy sky throw itself in purples and blues across the water.

Arizona may have stolen my heart, but New Mexico was undeniably carving itself a place of its own there.

Photos: 1. San José de Gracia 2. San Francisco de Asis 3. Taos to Arroyo Hondo 4. Arroyo Seco to Taos 5. & 6. Rio Grande from Taos to Santa Fe

The Sixth Week - Day 32: Santa Fe Nights + KOA Lulling = New Mexico Sleep

The Sixth Week - Day Thirty-Two: Santa Fe Nights + KOA Lulling = New Mexico Sleep

7/11/11:

After being ripped from the warm belly of my bed in the cruel predawn hours, I settled into my folks’ car for a six-hour drive to Santa Fe. This was to be my first foray into New Mexico, the dwelling place of my Grinnell roommate, Eleanor. We barreled forward across state lines as I lapsed in and out of waking, foggily admiring the beauty of the chameleon landscape as it changed before me.

We broke through into Santa Fe, greeted by the Sangre de Cristo mountain range and steadily rising temperatures. Skirting the city, we shot past to our campsite, Villanueva. The ambling drive to Villanueva was beautiful but took much longer than expected. We wound by fields, cattle and ranches, sliding to a stop at the campgrounds and taking in the nearby river. After momentary squabbling, the family voted to seek shelter elsewhere—which eventually concluded in my first ever stay at a Kampgrounds Of America (whooo KOA!).

Retracing our route back into Santa Fe, we met up with Eleanor at the Santa Fe Plaza before heading to her home for dinner. Santa Fe, with its prolific adobe-style buildings and impressive scenery, shook itself and showed off for us. Eleanor and her dog, Bonnie, took us on a walk down her neighborhood arroyo, one of the many dry riverbeds cutting across Santa Fe. The mountains in the background teased me, as did Eleanor’s stories of late afternoon hikes up them.

Our day ended at a KOA off the Old Santa Fe Highway. After the necessary flopping about, we all got comfortable and adjusted to each other’s bad breath in the snug confines of our tent. In the warm Santa Fe night, the soft sounds of the KOA lulled me into a gentle New Mexico kind of sleep.

Photos: 1. Sangre de Cristo mountains 2. Eleanor's Santa Fe arroyo

Day 31: It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's...Clare?

Day Thirty-One: It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's...Clare?

7/10/11:

In the bright early morning on July tenth, I looked out over the Grand Canyon. Hiking trails stretched along the plateaus and craters of the canyon like slender threads, while determined plants and shrubs hugged the canyon’s red, brown and white walls. Clouds sailed overhead like great ships, their fat shadows hanging heavily over the rises and falls of the canyon.

Behind me, my folks lingered over one of the Grand Canyon National Park’s prolific warning signs. Their message, somewhat blunted by civility, had a sharp and clear theme: 

DO NOT HIKE UNPREPARED. DO NOT ATTEMPT ANYTHING IDIOTIC. DO NOT DIE.

Little anecdotes of death accompanied the weathered signs—real tales of even the über-fit expiring in the unforgiving heat of the canyon. With the loss of elevation, temperatures soared: a pleasant seventy degrees on the North and South Rims could easily spike to one-hundred-and-five degrees or hotter on the floor of the Grand Canyon. Attempting to hike down to the Colorado River and then back out of the canyon in one shot was ill-advised. According to Grand Canyon officials, it generally took twice as long to ascend as it did to descend. 

For this very reason, I had been prodded from my sleep at an unpleasant hour back at North House. In order to thwart the heat, Mom, Dad and I made the two hour trek to Grand Canyon National Park in the wee hours of the morning, hoping to start and finish our hike before temperatures swelled to unhealthy heights.

Despite my initial ambitious impulse, we decided to descend for only an hour or so before turning around. Mom, Dad and I had chosen Hermits Rest Trail, the most easterly hiking option in Grand Canyon National Park, for its remoteness and other “rugged” and tourist-deterring qualities. As stated by Dad's guidebook, Hermits Rest was a “rocky trip down, with some knee-wrenching switchbacks and long traverses that wend through the Supai cliffs.” Developed in 1912 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, Hermits Rest was an early alternative to the once private and toll-charging Bright Angel Trail.

We took off, packs strapped to our backs as we paced down the narrow trails. I pulled ahead of Mom and Dad and bounded down the switchbacks, pausing frequently to peer across the canyon and accidentally sticking myself with an attack cactus along the way. The plants carving out their lives along the trail were hardy and prickly specimens. Yucca of ungodly proportions brandished their shin-spears at the unwary wanderer, while scrubby trees and bushes clung to clothing.

My aim was the Waldron Basin, a drop of around 1,250 feet from the Hermits Rest trailhead. The last bit before the basin presented itself to me in gnarly switchbacks. Long slabs of stone had been cut and laid along the trail to provide some sort of traction; beneath my feet, they tottered and slid. After a few near falls, I made Waldron Basin. Here Hermits Rest Trail met a junction and, sunning myself like a lizard on the side of the trail, I chowed down on some smushed granola bars. A few minutes later, I turned myself around and pushed back up the trail and out of the Grand Canyon.

My jaunt was just over three miles, and Mom, Dad and I ascended only a few minutes slower than we’d gone down. At mid-afternoon, the heat was already rising considerably, and after popping out at the trailhead, I slouched back in the shade of a tree and watched the gigantic blackbirds swooping up along the walls of the canyon.

Sufficiently sweaty, we took the Grand Canyon shuttle back into the heart of the park. Milling about with the rest of the tourists, we poked around in the Kolb Studio, Bright Angel Lodge, Thunderbird Lodge, Kachina Lodge, and Hopi House, admiring the designs of the talented architect Mary Colter.

On our way out of Grand Canyon National Park, we followed Neil’s insider advice and sought out the secluded Shoshone Point. After passing the unmarked trailhead several times, we ferreted it out and set on down the smooth dirt path. The short hike spilled us out onto a jutting plateau with an extraordinary view of the Grand Canyon’s Zoroaster Temple. A tall and slender rock formation pushed up from near the edge of Shoshone Point, and clambering atop it, I took in the Grand Canyon from high up in the sky—wishing, more than anything, that I could leap and fly.

Photos: 1. Grand Canyon 2. & 3. View from Hermits Rest Trail 4. & 5. Shoshone Point 

Day 30: I'm Going to Blame My Folks

Day Thirty: I'm Going to Blame My Folks

7/9/11:
Five days prior to July ninth, my folks departed from my hometown of Waverly, Iowa. Winding their way west, they stopped at Saint Benedict’s, a Cistercian monastery at Snowmass. From atop Snowmass, they saw the Continental Divide and a string of Colorado’s Fourteeners. 

A few days later, they drove on down Highway 70 West, taking in the jagged up-sweeps of the Rockies and, just beyond the Eisenhower Pass, pausing as they passed the remnants of a car that had rolled down the highway in an explosion of broken little pieces.

In Utah, Dad marveled over the miles of empty expanse, while Mom wondered at the eroded and wind smoothed rock formations and the shocks of color at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. 

In Arizona, they moseyed around up by the North Rim, camping at DeMotte Campground, taking in the view from Point Imperial (the highest point on the Grand Canyon), and hiking the meandering Widforss Trail. Swinging southward, they dipped into the South KNF and, on July ninth, they threw up a tent at Cataract Lake, a campground mere minutes away from the Williams Ranger District, North House, and me.

My parents’ wanderlust never ceases to amaze me. In 1981, my dad studied abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This led to a year-long stay in San José, Costa Rica, and a two-year long stint in Lima, Peru. During these three years, Dad explored Machu Picchu, rode with Peru's Olympic bike team, and poked around in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.

Not to be outdone, my mom, in summer 1985, traversed much of Europe with nothing but a backpack, a Eurail Pass, and her best friend, visiting Portugal, Spain, Morocco, France, England, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Vatican City, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

Three months after getting married in 1986, Mom and Dad moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to teach at an international school. It was in a village north of Addis Ababa that Dad, attending a religious festival, crawled on his hands and knees into a cave to visit hermits, ambled around in the remote countryside (apparently suspiciously), and was arrested, detained and finally escorted back to Addis Ababa by the Ethiopian Army. After two years in Ethiopia and forays into Tanzania (for a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro) and Kenya, my folks got teaching positions in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. Tommy was born a year after the move to Abqaiq, with me following two years later. During this time, they took in Turkey, Jordan, Cyprus, Bahrain, Greece and Egypt, experienced the first Gulf War, and got to scuba dive in the Red and Arabian Seas. All told, Mom and Dad ended up in Saudi Arabia for a total of seven years before returning to the States with Tommy and me in tow.

Now in their fifties and having settled in the Midwest for the last sixteen years (“too long,” according to Mom), my folks still have a lot of adventure left in them. They’re not afraid to live out of our car for weeks on end, clamber around in the Boundary Waters, or bike long stretches of RAGBRAI. We spent three weeks camping, hiking and biking in the White and Green Mountains of New England after I graduated from high school, and two years earlier took a similar trip from San Francisco to Portland for Tommy’s graduation.

My parents, still curious and willing to rough it, are generally up for anything. Five years from now when I have a passport full of stamps but haven’t put down roots anywhere, I’m going to blame my folks.

My wanderlust, like theirs, is here to stay.

* “4, 10, 14, 20” is a short snapshot of some of my travelin’ memories.

Photos: 1. Gettin' hitched in Michigan 2. Mom with her class in Ethiopia 3. Dad at the Nazca Lines in Peru 4. Mom and Dad leaving for Ethiopia 5. Mom at her baby shower for Tommy in Saudi Arabia

Day 29: Running on the Wild Side

Day Twenty-Nine: Running on the Wild Side

7/8/11:

I scared up twenty or so long-necked elk during a rainy night run along the Bill Williams back trails. I jumped a small marshy stream, tore my legs up on a brambly bush, and startled at the elks’ quick flight into the dark. The steady sweeps of rain, the shadowed ponderosas, and the twisting and falling of the unsteady ground took me back into a deeper, wilder KNF. Pushing my way onward over barely-there-trails, I was swallowed up by the trees and the rocks and the soft sounds of animal motion.

Back at North House after my run, Joel was preparing fry bread for dinner. A Native American specialty, fry bread is made from dough that has been deep-fried to deliciousness. Toppings, from powdered sugar to honey to taco fixings to cheese, are generally piled on to complement the fry bread.

Very wet, legs a bit bloodied, and ravenous after my run, I tucked into Joel’s fry bread with gusto. He’d added beans, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese toppings, just the way his mother did for his family back on Second Mesa. Noah joked about opening a fry bread stand at Grinnell for late Saturday night cravings, and Joel let me fry dough to make a few of my own pieces of fry bread.

A few hours later, tired and full and feeling quite content, I curled up in my sleeping bag on my bed and let myself go to the quiet Arizona night.

Photos: 1. View from back trails of Bill Williams 2. Fry bread with toppings (photo credit: Neil)

Day 28: Of Dragons, Lizard Man, and Cornmeal Offerings

Day Twenty-Eight: Of Dragons, Lizard Man, and Cornmeal Offerings

7/7/11:

“A dragon lives there.”

Donald pointed to a plateau breaking up the skyline on the Hopi Reservation. I leaned in closer to the window as we drove, Donald talking about the village that had once rested on the plateau until the dragon had burned it down. Years after the fire, the Hopi still avoided the plateau. Even after multiple visits, the Hopi Reservation and its landscape still managed to pull me in. The sky stretched on, an eternal blue punctuated with the rise and fall of sweeping red rocks and smoothly rising mesas. The various roads cut swathes across the reservation, marking mile after mile of arid, uninhabited land. Joel was behind the wheel, while Donald, a Hopi cultural guide, sat in the seat beside him, flipping indiscriminately between Hopi and English. After two and a half hours of driving and a stop at the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office for an archaeological site permit and Donald, we were nearing Taawa Park. A large sandstone amphitheater, Taawa Park is home to some 5,000 petroglyphs from 1,500 to 2,000 years old.

But let me backtrack a bit.

Believe it or not, Taawa Park wasn’t the beginning of our day. Before bearing off into the dusty rez, we stopped at Lizard Man, an infamous site for any Grinnellian with ANT 104: Introduction to Anthropology under their belt. So, not Yelena or me, but definitely anthro major Noah. Kathryn Kamp and John Whitaker, two anthropology professors at Grinnell, had focused extensively on the Lizard Man site, running a Grinnell Archaeology Field School around excavations of the site. Home to the Sinagua people and abandoned in A.D. 1100, artifacts such as axe-heads, obsidian projectiles, hoes, turquoise beads, mutates, manos and a fire hearth were found at the site.

Not far from the highway and with many a juniper tree, I found Lizard Man to be practically dripping in sherds. After oooooh-ing and awwww-ing over some of the more intricate pieces, we inspected petroglyphs on a stone outcrop and watched as a train rumbled by not a stone’s throw away.

After some further exploration, we made out for the Hopi Reservation and Taawa Park. Alternatively called Dawa Park or Paaqapa in Hopi, the site can only be visited with a permit and a Hopi cultural guide, making it an oft-overlooked archaeological site.

Upon arriving at Taawa Park, Donald made an offering of cornmeal to the Kachina, explaining that in this way he was showing his respect to the many who had died there, giving back and not simply taking. The Hopi believe that after death, the spirit lingers in this world for four days, and many Hopi carry pouches of cornmeal in order to celebrate and honor the dead.

Donald presented his pouch of cornmeal to each of us in turn, and we all made our offerings to the Kachina in Taawa Park.

This site was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. A tall cove cut with thin fissures and marked in complex petroglyphs at incredibly high heights, Taawa Park was a fascinating bit of nature now holding onto history.

As Donald explained it, Taawa Park was a temporary home for many indigenous clans migrating northward. Taawa Park offered an area not only protected from the elements but defensible, the deep fissures in the sandstone providing protection for women and children seeking shelter during battles with rival clans. According to Donald, these clans believed in who they called the Creator and who is often called God. The Creator asked that his people leave footprints on their journey, and for this reason, indigenous clans often left behind petroglyphs, making marks for the Creator and for following clans. A great number of clans passed through Taawa Park, among them the Rattlesnake, Sand, Lizard, Flute, Bearstrap, Eagle and Badger. There are sixty-one clans in the Hopi Tribe, of which many have left their mark on Taawa Park.

Donald pointed out different petroglyphs to us, explaining their significance and the story each clan was telling. Certain spirals spoke to the direction in which a clan had traveled, others marked burial places, while still others told tales of infidelity and bloodshed.

This is a sacred place for many Hopi, untouched by excavations. Yet, younger generations have left their own marks, scrawling names and signs with knifes, obscuring the stories left by their ancestors. Donald pointed out one such engraving and, after a momentary scowl, laughingly made up a story about it.

He brought us to one of the larger fissures, ushered us in while lingering back, warning us not to try and follow an intersecting fissure left; if we got stuck, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I sized it up, waited until Joel, Yelena, Noah, and (most importantly) Donald, were not looking before sliding my way through, promising myself I’d turn back when my hips became pinioned by sandstone. That moment didn't come, and for a mild claustrophobic it was a pretty heart-pounding experience, sinking into the layers of rock, drawn forth by only a thin slip of light. I popped out and scurried off to where the rest of the group was preparing to leave, doing my best to soak in the last of Taawa Park.

On the drive to the Hopi Elementary School where we were presenting another Kaibab Heritage Outreach Program, I learned that Joel is from the Spider Clan, while Donald is from the Water and Corn Clans. Donald talked about years earlier when a delegation of indigenous peoples from Chile visited the Hopi Reservation and discovered an overlap in clans and customs with the Hopi. Tracing his finger down his cheek, Donald explained how Hopis and Chileans alike began to cry at the realization that though their kin had spread so far apart, they could still be traced back to similar roots.

At the school, before making split-twig figurines, playing with the atlatl and throwing the rabbit-stick, each of the students introduced themselves to us with their name and that of their clan.

Later that afternoon, after visiting Joel’s house and his sister’s famous food stand, I thought about what it would be like to grow up so near my ancestors, able to experience the fantastical things they left behind and to speculate on tales of nearby mesa-dwelling dragons.

Frankly, I’d take Taawa Park over a family-tree any day.

Must see: The World Monuments Fund and the Hopi Tribe have launched this site about Taawa Park and Tutuveni--“meaning Newspaper Rock in Hopi, Tutuveni contains 5,000 petroglyphs of Hopi clan symbols and is the largest known collection of clan symbols in the American Southwest. Among Tutuveni’s 150 sandstone boulders are the records of more than 1,000 years of Hopi history and culture.” Thanks for sharing, Neil!

*Inspired by Taawa Park, Hopi lore appears in my short story "Gusanos."

Photos: 1. Mesa on the Hopi Reservation 2. Petroglyphs at Lizard Man 3. Taawa Park 4. Donald explaining various petroglyphs 5. Fissure 6. Taawa Park view 7. Students at the Hopi Elementary School 8. Taawa Park 

Day 27: Backyard Views

Day Twenty-Seven: Backyard Views

7/6/11:

Even on my first full day indoors since starting my internship at the KNF, I still managed to get plenty dirty. Yelena and I were helping Margaret preserve Clover Ruin artifacts at the Supervisors Office in Williams. Somewhat less impressive than it sounds, this “preservation” took the form of transferring artifacts from deteriorating paper bags to nigh indestructible plastic ones.

The Clover Ruin site was what I woke up to every morning. Directly outside my window, the site is a rebuilt Cohonina structure about one-thousand years old. A number of years ago, Neil helped with the reconstruction of Clover Ruin and Travis, at age seven, got his first taste of arch work by volunteering to assist (check out the interpretative sign explaining the project).

The arch crew doesn’t collect artifacts anymore, and sifting through sherds, lithics, refuse, feathers, and soil samples, I’m quite glad of that fact. Instead of removing artifacts from sites, we now practice a strict policy of taking absolutely nothing. Nary a sherd or lithic or anything else wanders off its site with us. As Neil and a lot of archies see it, there’s no real point in removing artifacts from their historic settings in order to store them in back rooms. Traipsing through the KNF, anybody who knows what to look for has the possibility of running across sherds or lithics. Removing artifacts from these sites is prohibited (which is why site locations are not made public), but curious folk stumbling across a site can be fairly certain no archies in recent years have altered it.

Cradling handfuls of dirt, picking over tiny rocks, and resettling wood slivers, it was strangely comforting to feel the KNF was still very much with me even in the ill-light rooms of the Supervisors Office.

After a few hours of re-bagging artifacts, we approached Margaret who, understandingly, let me pull out my laptop and some of the films I'd brought from home. Following algunas películas de Pedro Almodóvar (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios y Hable con ella), Yelena and I zipped closed our last baggies, wiped the dirt from our palms, and trucked on back to the ranger district, North House, and the view of Clover Ruin right outside our window.

Photos: 1. Yelena after a few hours at the Supervisors Office 2. Clover Ruin (with North House)