Chapter 22: Sad, painted lands of the Indians
The road did not get any sweeter west of Albuquerque as if the planet had ceased to honor life as I remembered it back east, miles and miles of desert stretching out as far as I could see, although now, to the northwest, the dark smudge of mountains grew, the southern elbow of the Rocky Mountains as they twisted west across the edge of New Mexico and into Northeastern Arizona. Along with the gas stations and the roadside cafes, we passed signs of a different sort, images of the fearful past when vehicles struggled to make the trip across the next 700 miles of desert. One sign advertised waterbags, although from the signs of the place, the watering hole hadn't been used in many years, though the image of the sweating skull still showed like a deadly symbol of what the unprotected or unsuspecting traveler could expect.
We had crossed into Indian Country, although only a few hints marked the change, as if in land so undesirable at this, few laid claim to the sage brush or the cactus, where one shack was as pretty or ugly as the next despite the change of nationality.
Near Cubero, New Mexico, we passed as splintered and cracked wooden sign with the letters Kodak Film printed on it, and several people on the bus laughed, thinking the concept of modern cameras alien here, where they might expect a savage attack at any moment, leaving us and the bus driver to shoot it out with the warring tribes just the way we all saw John Wayne do it in the movies.
Mile by mile, the landscape changed, rising into low hills and then into mountains as jagged red rock appeared like gaping jaws on either side of the bus, the places where the new highway had blasted through rather than wormed around the stone. Route 66 had been abandoned here, although the new highway followed most of the same route from Albuquerque to Flagstaff. To the right, the distant pointed peaks of Southern Colorado gleamed like white teeth in the sunlight.
And suddenly, in a small flat of the land, the bus passed a grave yard, with a sagging gate and a faded sign, and a few stone markers whose names had worn off with time. The place had maybe two dozen graves in total and seemed located nowhere near enough a village to justify its existence, and when we passed it, we did not come upon another sign of life for some time.
By San Fidel, we saw the first sign of what the guide book called Mesas, a flat top mountain north of us that looked like something out of a science fiction move, floating on the horizon, so clearly not of his earth, and yet -- if you believed Indian lore -- more solidly founded in the mythology of the land than any white man. At Bluewater, we came upon more shacks the outer walls of which were covered with hubcaps -- these apparently lost by passing vehicles over the years. Nothing indicated whether or not the hub caps were there for sale or decoration. A Thoreau, we rolled passed a wall that had been painted with images of doves and spirits, each floating above a painted landscape. I had seen something similar on the streets of Greenwich Village, and yet these drawings seemed to have a foreign quality that I later came to associate with Indian culture.
Then finally, we reached Gallup, and here, we found ourselves nose to nose with one of the most wondrous places on the planet, where mountains of Colorado crowded against each other, where native American Indians still struggled despite business interest of corporate oil and mineral companies, where every other man or woman we saw walking beside the road, or driving in the back of a beat up truck wore some sign of the native culture, from the pony tails of the local Hopi to the more outwardly Indian-appearance of the Navaho. Signs everywhere warned us that we had entered Indian Country and were now subject to Indian laws, and from time to time I even saw a police car with markings signifying it as reservation police.
It was noon time. We were all fully awake. We all now knew that by night we would be rolling into downtown Los Angeles, and yet, staring out at the world around us, we couldn't believe it, as if this part of the world just didn't correspond to that, and that no mere drive along no mere highway should have been able to connect the two environments so easily.
This became even more evident as we crossed over into Arizona and rolled into the plains, the alien landscape taking full shape before our eyes. To our right, forming the northern horizon, the greatest flat -topped mesa of them all stood like a wall between us and the rest of the nation. The black mesa and its three fingers reaching down into the plain towards us like a giant hand seeking to pluck us out of our seats.
People lived on these three fingers, they part of the sacred ground of the Hopi, who maintained their stone dwellings as their ancestors did, rolled out their flat bread on stone, out of corn they grew from the soil of the desert. Squinting, we made out shapes on the tops or around the foot of these finger mesas but could not truthfully claim we saw anyone or anything.
We had come to a part of the county tour guide called the painted dessert, though from our vantage point we saw little color, just the endless scrub brush and the endless string of isolated shacks, and land stretching from road to the foot of the Black Mesa. So open was the space that I nearly wanted to climb out and walk to see how far I could get, lured by the attraction the way old prospectors might have been or riders of the old west drawn to some spirit they could not explain, more than just gold or promises of green pastures, but something that was part of the land itself, a vibration that let loose something in each of us.
Of course, this part of the country had ceased being Indian land long ago, despite the recent give back of over one million acres by President Nixon. A rusted, barbed wire fence ran along the roadside with frequent signs telling people to keep off.
Unlike the open spaces we had witnessed through Kansas and Oklahoma, this land maintained its integrity. We did not have to count hawks on fence posts to occupy the time, as new points of interest popped up from time to time.
Like parts we had passed in other states, however, a sense of decay floated over this part of the world, a changing of landscape that was mostly too subtle to notice unless you studied the passing structures. Most of these sat on the southern side of the road, strings of what might have been the strip malls of a previous era, now crumbling into splintered gray sawdust, rusted store signs and out-of-date gasoline pumps. In a few places, local Indians had taken over the dilapidated structures, painting them a little without doing much in the way of repair, then sticking up tepees and hand-drawn signs advertising blankets, dolls, and jewelry.
Suddenly, despite my making this far, a great sadness came over me, and I stared out at the Indians, and for some reason -- I still can't explain -- I found myself homesick for my family.
But the bus road on, wheels churning, miles vanishing behind us, in our headlong plunge towards Flagstaff.
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