A very dear friend had a strange complaint – you always write about places you have been to.
Ok. Duh! No?
But here is a location I went to, but did not reach. Hope this little nuance takes care of that trouble ticket.
For two entire nights, I stayed 5 miles from the depths of Canyon de Chelley, and yet, really, did not see it. I was with Fred, and a motley crew on a mission to locate lost forgotten battlefields; an adventure I hope to be able to write about some day.
When nature worked on mother earth, it spent some extra time in Utah. And when it was in Canyon de Chelley, it spent the most time. (Argh! It is pronounced Canyon – the – shay. People, can you not spell? or can you not pronounce?)
Canyon de Chelley competes with Grand Canyon for THE fissure in the earth. From where I stood, two beautiful canyons snaked away, into the distance, each one more inviting than the other.
Two canyons, each with stories to tell.
I stood on the rim and waited. A series of unfortunate events, largely contributed to by bureaucracy between United states of America and the Navajo Nation, that kept me on the rim. I am a citizen of this world with a lost identity. I am a non Caucasian American, who is not a native American Indian,but an Indian Indian.
A thousand feet below me, once, they lived in harmony with nature, a thousand years ago. They built villages using the mud and stone they found around them. Then they painted it white. We promptly called it White House Ruins. In Canyon de Chelley, they lived for a hundred years. Sheltered,
Standing at the rim, I was not a physical landmark. I was on a philosophical border.
In 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed in, did he open a new world, or shut an old one?
