Day Thirteen, in words

The sun rose on Day Thirteen, and I didn’t know I’d experience…

• Sunrise on Muley Point and the Moki Dugway: only the pictures can even begin to capture it, and even they are a faint excuse for the real thing. A little window of a few tens of degrees out into the world is such faint praise for the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama of reality, with the air around you, weather overhead, creatures stirring, plants growing, and world alive. I cannot possibly do it justice.
• The Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation. Not many people realize how huge these are; the Navajo Nation takes up probably a full one-sixth of Arizona, plus nontrivial chunks of New Mexico and Utah, too. It’s the closest thing we have to a soverign nation within the United States; they have their own laws, own police, own regulations, and own government. Given the history here, this is very heartening to see. Unfortunately…
• As I mentioned in an earlier post, this whole area is, to be completely honest, incredibly depressing…absolutely worth seeing, but depressing. My guidebook says the poverty rate and unemployment rates here are both well over 50%, and I can very much believe it: the only jobs there seemed to be were either government jobs or selling native arts and crafts to the occasional tourist out of a lean-to by the side of a dusty highway. It’s almost heartbreaking to see so many people in such dire circumstances, and to feel so helpless. The Hopi Reservation in particular presents such contrasts: the mesas there have villages on top that have been there for nearly a thousand years, but to drive through (no pictures are allowed) is to be stared at by every resident and/or asked to buy something. They make amazingly detailed Kachina dolls there that sell for hundreds of dollars…but it’s still a scene of abject poverty. It really looks like the third world.
• I’ve rarely wished my front seat was clear (as opposed to being filled with camera equipment, travel guides and books, and other miscellaneous supplies for this trip) more than this day. There are people hitchhiking all over the Navajo Nation, and I think picking up one of them and taking them wherever they were going would’ve been an experience more enlightening than almost any other. Perhaps not in a “happy” way, but in a way that’s good for me to be sure. As I drove in a big loop (over 200 miles) around the Navajo Nation, I wished I could sit and talk to someone there for a few hours — it would enlighten me in a way I think little else would. Eventually, though, I had to move on, a certain heaviness in my heart, to…
• The Grand Canyon. Not too long of a drive from the Navajo Nation took me to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. For those who haven’t been there, the South Rim is where all of the action is at: 400,000 people visit there each year, and only a tiny fraction as many go to the North Rim, mostly because it’s even more remote and offers far fewer services. Still, I’d heard it was a good place to visit, and it sure is: unlike the South Rim, which is hot, dusty, and dry, the North Rim is amidst a vast, cool forest, and this gives it a fundamentally different character.
• The Grand Canyon is every bit as indescribable as it always has been; the sheer scale of the thing is just impossible to convey without seeing it. Storms overhead (but just far enough away that I wasn’t really getting rained on) just made it all the more interesting; sometimes rainy weather is exactly what you need to make someplace just that little bit all the more interesting.
• Watching a hawk plunge at full speed into the depths of the canyon to capture some unlucky little creature was astonishing…and over in an instant.
• Even more, the North Rim is home to the Grand Canyon Lodge, which is unlike almost anything else I’ve seen: it was built in 1928, back before we had quite the same ideas of preserving natural beauty that we do today. It’s definitely different from other national parks, and yet it’s so cool: there are a couple of dozen little cabins scattered about that you can rent, a campground, and then the lodge itself, which looks like someplace Teddy Roosevelt or the Great Gatsby would’ve come to hunt bear, moose, and elk. There are enormous panorama windows that look out over the canyon (it’s built right on the edge), a restaurant with oak-beamed 50′ ceilings, and an enormous deck out back with great wooden benches and chairs — you can sit out there, drink your beer, and contemplate the enormity of the canyon just mere feet beyond you.
• Driving back through northwestern Arizona, towards Utah, I felt wistful and sad, something that’d been gathering for me for the past few days. I think it was a combination of realizing my vacation was coming to an end soon, starting to really feel the degree to which I really have been isolated from people for over a week and a half — it’s good to be able to think, and I love the people I’ve met, but there’s truly nothing like being back at home among friends. It’s also a certain amount of wanting to slow down…I think for the first week or so, my desire to see everything, do everything, and be stimulated in every possible way takes over, and I love moving as fast as I do, seeing everything, doing everything. But then, after a while, I want to slow down — to get the chance to go back and see things in more detail, to go hike in Canyonlands, or sit out there at the Grand Canyon Lodge with a beer, or just take things at my own pace, no matter what that is. On this trip, that’s come just as I’ve had to start heading back, in order to make it back in time…and that makes me wistful for sure. It’s times like this that what I really want to do is sit back with beer among friends at the Grand Canyon Lodge and have absolutely nothing to do for days on end — to go hiking, to meander about, take pictures, laugh, and have fun for ages. Maybe someday I’ll have to get on the 23-month-long waiting list (no joke) and see what I can do…
• You know, though, the road has a way of taking the way you’re feeling and changing it at a moment’s notice, often for the better. Just as I was feeling such tristesse and wistfulness, the sun began to set among the Arizona storms…and as I drove to the hotel just across the border in Utah, its rays poked through the clouds, the beauty was spectacular, and pieces of rainbow formed at opposite ends of the sky. I stopped the car a dozen times or more just to get out and take a look. Some days are like that — you can ponder the things you long for in life and be wistful, and then something in the here and now interrupts you and reminds you what’s right there in front of your face. Within twenty minutes I was beaming with happiness, all from the sheer simplicity of a sunset.

Day 13: (Thursday, August 16, 2007) Muley Point (near Mexican Hat, UT) to St. George, UT.
Miles: 4912.7 + 582.9 = 5495.6 total. Current distance from home: 683 miles.
Photos: 2,312 (29.5 GB) + 403 (4.47 GB) = 2,715 (34.2 GB) total.
Next up: meandering through Zion, southwestern Utah, and to Great Basin National Park, just across the Nevada state line…