Weekend Journey across the Navajo Nation (Part 2--Kayenta to U.S. 191 + Alice Walker and Tillie Olsen)

By Alice Walker's standards, I'm no writer.   I believe I read an essay where she damns Tillie Olsen for claiming in the preface of I Stand Here Ironing that she (Tillie, herself) was unable to write when younger because she was too busy being a wife and mother.  Alice says that's complete hogwash by a lazy, undediticated (and therefor undeserving) writer.  Alice then goes on to tell how she (Alice, herself, quite the martyr for her art), raised babies all day and then wrote all night.

Now, I'm almost sure what I claim here is true and I'd verify it, if it weren't raining and if the books needed were not in the shed, which is crammed floor to ceiling with junk.  In other words, I could cite sources if I weren't so lazy.  So, even though I once had an enormous crush on Alice Walker and rushed from Dallas to Austin and screamed at my diabetic carmate, "No--damn it!-- I can't stop to get you food right now, you'll just have to die or we'll miss Alice!"--even with that passion, I must side with Tillie here.  Sometimes I'm just too stinking tired to write.

Life crowds in, takes over.  And unlike Alice, I'm okay with that.  Sexy as those dreadlocks are, it would have never worked out.  It's 9:24 and already I'm up way past my bedtime.  So, I probably won't get this posted before the end of February, which is sad, because I need all the views I can get. (Last Saturday I jumped up thrilled at the number of views I'd received and my son broke into laughter--"Dad, I can get more hits on facebook by posting 'huh, what?")

So, anyway, here's the second post on our trip across the Navajo Nation.

Petrified dunes & red bluffs east of U.S. 160 & Indian Route 59 

Okay, perhaps I'm not quite over Alice yet.  Just now, I was thinking about how to explain that one of my favorite parts of the reservation (U.S. 160 from the turn-off to Indian Route 59 to Red Mesa) is geographically speaking the least eventful area along the route when a poem by Alice Walker came to mind that says it perfectly:

"But think about the time

you saw the moon 

over that small canyon

that you liked much better

than the grand one--and how surprised you were

that the moonlight was green

and you still had

one good eye

to see it with."

And that is what I often find with landscapes--the subtle haunts me more than the grand.  This area is almost a wide valley edged by a low, red mesa to the north and a low, gray mesa to the south.  I say almost because it's not that uniform but broken by small swells and shallow canyon washes.  Still, picture the Mississippi drained dry and that's about what it is.  Low, petrified dunes piled up long, long ago, then frozen by time, march across a wide valley edged by low bluffs.

It has a subtlety to it--a slow unwinding letting go.  "Let It Grow" by Eric Clapton is perhaps the musical equivalent.  These things astound me:  gentle contours, a winding wash, rippled stone, time, distance, God, love.