Grand Canyon and Flagstaff, Arizona (Day 7 - 4/1/14)

This photo, as are a great deal of the photos, taken by the Duck. It's an abandoned stall in the Navajo Nation.

Today is our chaperone day, with May and Floyd taking us out to see some of the other local sights we have yet to experience. We start with a big breakfast of pancakes, homemade maple syrup, bacon, and fruit - which Floyd precedes with a prayer in Navajo (followed with an English translation for our benefit).

I am not religious, but I could not help but feel a certain reverence in the presence of this ancient, half-whispered language... words so distant from our own in every way that they carry a heavy presence. It's easy to understand why it's such a famous language. It's at once sibilant, complicated, and beautifully gentle; the words offer a window into Navajo culture itself.

Before we set off, the Duck and I duck out to see the local Navajo museum so Floyd can run some errands. Unfortunately, the cultural centre is closed in winter but we get into the gift shop and a small museum dedicated to the Navajo Code Talkers. The story of these soldiers is quite amazing, though I won't go into detail here as it can be easily looked up if you have a computer/iPhone and know how to spell 'wikipedia' or 'google'.

A picture from the Code Talkers museum at Tuba City

Oh, what the heck, here's a direct link to one of the best websites on the matter - Navajo Code Talkers.

After the museum we go into Tuba City's sole internet cafe to check on how my sister has been doing back home in Australia looking after our house and rabbit. Pretty soon it's time to return to May's place, but the Duck and I have a bit of a snapping session over a clash in our schedules. It's only the second time so far that we've had any kind of disagreement on our trip, and it doesn't last more than five minutes as we both quickly realise that it's best to just forget our arguing and move on. You're only in America once!

May and Floyd find great humour in my fear of heights, and joke about booking a plane ride over the canyon for me. As is usual in these cases, I try to laugh along but secretly worry that there might be some truth to their jokes.

On the way out of Tuba City we take a diversion to some dinosaur tracks. This area is a rocky plain made up of prehistoric clay, red and shale-like, and very much the picture of Mars. Large shelves of rock show the indentation of dinosaur tracks - ranging from little bird-dinosaurs to huge raptor-like footprints twice the size of my feet.

I jump from print to print, imagining the huge dinosaur as it loped across Jurassic Arizona in search of prey. The Duck hisses through clenched teeth for me to get out of the tracks, but there are so many of them around that it's impossible not to walk over them.

The four of us wander off in different directions, exploring the plain in it's eerie quietness. On our way back tot he car we find huge dollops of fossilised poop, and the half-exposed ribcage of an actual dinosaur. It astonishes me that this stuff is just out here for anyone to come see. Floyd tells me stories of vandalism and exploitation from the last few decades, how dinosaur eggs were sold off on the roadside by teenagers looking to make a quick buck. Much of the area has been stripped bare, leaving behind the tracks and a few sorry-looking stalls specialising in jewellery, the operators of which also offer guided tours for $10. Only as recently as a year ago, paleontologists unearthed and removed an entire skeleton.

The Duck inspects some Dino-poop.

An hour later we are almost at the Grand Canyon. I had let it be known that this natural wonder was not really on my radar due to my fear of heights, but May and Floyd could not imagine me leaving without seeing it. I protest many times but they laugh it off. On our way in we stop by the Little Colorado River Gorge, a lesser but nonetheless still impressive canyon that a man recently tightrope-walked over. The apparent appeal of this canyon is that it isn't even remotely touristy and is therefore very easy to access. Too easy if you ask me. I  huddle in the car while Duck, May and Floyd stand at the fenceless edge, each howling gust of wind sending knife wounds of fear into my heart and stomach as the Duck teeters way too close to the edge, snapping away on her iPhone. I am not very happy with her when she comes back, and the guilt is written all over her cheeky face. Floyd then tells us a story about a shepherd firing warning shots at a coyote, scaring the animal off the edge of the cliff. The wind was so strong that it swept the coyote back up onto the cliff top, where it promptly died of a heart attack. This story does little to neutralise my fear and worry.

Duck's picture of the Little Colorado River Gorge

You know, I gnash my teeth a lot over heights, but I'm very glad that May and Floyd took me to the Grand Canyon. I've heard people say that it's nothing more than a big hole in the ground but I actually found it quite a transcendental experience. I'm not spiritual in the slightest but if something was to move me to my inner core in a way that struck awe into the very fibres of my being - and this did - then that's the closest I will ever get to religion. I find religion in natural wonders like the Grand Canyon. The sight of this (and Monument Valley yesterday) live up to the hype and I feel so tiny and enraptured by these gargantuan formations.

Photos don't do it justice

This is as close as my photos of the Grand Canyon got. It was way too high for me to get any closer to that railing!

And then we go from the natural beauty of the canyon to the crassness of the National Park businesses.

I wasn't feeling the best. Don't know if it was dehydration or all the new foods or just exhaustion. I thought I would buy a bottle of water, but neither the gift shop nor restaurant nor general store sold bottles of water. The last of these, the general store, had a huge variety of soft drinks, juices, energy drinks and even alcohol, so I was really baffled. The shop clerk tells me that bottled water is banned inside the National Park and that I can only buy water from them by the gallon.

"Why?" I ask.

"Environmental reasons," she says smugly, looking at me like I was somehow being insensitive.

"But why is bottle water banned and not this?" I hold up my freshly-acquired blue-flavoured Powerade.

She laughs nervously, "Yeah, I know..."

Awkward pause.

"But why?" I'm being serious, I actually do want to know.

"Seventy per cent of the rubbish in the National Park was water bottles".

So, basically, you can't be trusted with water so you don't get any. Here, have an environmentally-friendly soft drink from the trillion dollar Coca Cola company, who we wouldn't dare deny any revenue.

Next stop was Grand Canyon Village, a cluster of tourist buildings with an IMAX theatre. May was determined to give me the most authentic Grand Canyon experience I could get in lieu of my inability to get close to the railing back in the National Park. The movie ran for half an hour and gave a brief dramatised history of the Canyon and its relationship with various peoples over time. It included some breathtaking helicopter and white-water raft perspective shots, and was very informative and spectacular, but tiredness was really starting to push me around and by the end I was absolutely ready to drop.

We then drove to Flagstaff.


As the sun set, the immense and snowcapped sacred mountain of Doc'o'slii rose to our left. The sun cast unearthly red shadows across its face while Floyd told us of Flagstaff's controversial practice of showering the mountain with artificial snow to encourage skiing (from the indigenous perspective, it would be a bit like throwing glitter all over Uluru, or skateboarding on the Australian War Memorial). The Ponderosa pine forest, equally carpeted in snow, shepherds us along the highway, and every half a kilometre or so we see pulled-over cars and families discovering the snow for themselves. Left behind snowmen face the road from the forest like happy sentinels of winter cheer.

The English name for Doc'o'slii: 'The San Francisco Peaks'

Upon arriving in the city of Flagstaff I note its more affluent nature; the large triangular-roofed houses, European-styled store buildings, and assorted successful business form a very obvious disparity with the sparse industry back in the Reservation. We eat more Mexican food and Floyd tells us more about the area's colourful history - tales of Mormon pioneers, conflict with the local tribes (Navajo, Hopi, Utes, Yavapei, Havesu, etc.), and his own family history. Both he and May are such an invaluable source of historical knowledge; they know so much about their land and people that it's impossible to dispute their connection to this country. It's a big contrast to the ignorance of most white people both here and back in Australia when it comes to local histories.

So I saw quite a lot today. My most memorable thing about the day though would be the car ride back to Tuba City from Flagstaff. Yes, I saw dinosaur tracks and the Grand Canyon and the Duck scared the absolute stuffing out of me on that cliff top, but the real highlight was May teaching me a Navajo song that her school children sing each morning. We sing in the car until I memorised it, and I've sung it regularly for the past three years since. Floyd seemed happy that I could sing it, and May said that being able to sing in the Navajo language means that I am blessed.

I don't really know what to say.

"Thanks".

I tell them about my broken collar bone (an ongoing and unhealed break that had been going for six months at this point) and May admonishes me for injuring myself in Australia. She says that she would have used a Navajo remedy on me, wrapping my shoulder in the sinews and tendons of a deer. She clucks and tells me that she should have been there when the break happened. Maybe she should have been. Their generosity to the Duck and myself has been so great that no amount of thanks can do it justice. They've fed us, given us a bed, shown us around, and treated us so warmly despite the fact they'd never met me before (and Duck had only previously met May).
 

Our stay with them has been really special.