Fourteen
Right at the edge of Navajo Reservation in North-Arizona, the red
mountains rapidly yield and make room for stony dune scenery with a gleaming
sun above and a black line of asphalt right through it. Wooden poles with
electricity wires on the one side, railroad on the other. We’re alone on the
road, as far as we can see. ‘Whooee ieee, ride me high’, The Byrds sing. ‘You
ain’t going nowhere.’
The land is empty, except for a couple of Indian settlements that, from
a distance, resemble a Dutch refugee center for asylum seekers. Uniform houses
set up in straight lines. A scattered little group of children or an occasional
old car. Nothing more. You can live there, but that’s it.
Everything looks dusty, hot and sleepy, the only color accents are the
stop signs for the school bus and suddenly an occasional clump of flowers with
small red or blue little leaves, folded against the sun. Or the Indian market,
unannounced on a dusty piece of land along the road. Chevy has excellent
brakes, so a little later we shuffle along the booths stocked with jeans,
sneakers, cd’s, chains of beads and colorful Indian blankets. The booths are
set wide apart, because most visitors drive by them in their cars, air
conditioning and music at full blast, inspecting glances through the car
window. In an unlikely hot wooden cabin we eat Navajo Taco: deep-fried taco,
with lots of beans, cheese and onion on top of it. What doesn’t fit in our
bellies, the Indian cook wraps in foil. He smiles to Janny and me. For on the
road.
The Divine Light Mission also didn’t know how to handle things when
Stefanie and I arrived married and well in Denver amongst the celibate brothers
and sisters. The Housing department had hurriedly arranged a small apartment
for us, in a neighborhood far away from the ashrams. We got our own living
allowance and had our own living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom,
everything decorated with long pile carpets and dark furniture in Mexican
style. The basement of the building had a washer and a dryer, in the garden was
a pool for the tenants and in our living room sat a television. So during the
weekend we were, like everybody else, doing the laundry in the mornings, at the
pool in the afternoons and in the evening watching the late night movies with
commercial breaks (‘you asked for it, you got it, Toyota’). And on Monday back
to the office. Worrying about sex, because only too soon it became clear that
Stefanie would have much preferred to stay brother and sister.
The next morning we follow Highway 89 from the Navajo Reservation, where
we have spent the night in a school annex hotel full of silent Indians, heading
west for the Grand Canyon. A hand written sign ‘Nice Indians Behind You’ along
the road marks the boundary between Indian reservation and national park.
Accompanied by a sharp transition to green forests and spectacular rising
mountains. The same silver jewelry and blankets that a few miles back were for
sale on shaky booths along the road, you can buy here in a neatly decorated
trading post. They don’t carry the peace pipe that I had set my heart on by now
for the home grown little friends in my own garden, says a lady in a tightly
ironed rangers uniform behind the counter. Must also be ‘behind you’, I realize
too late.
The canyon itself is really beautiful, even if to see it we have to deal
with vast parking lots full of tour busses. It is a red rock sculpture ten
miles wide and almost three hundred miles long. All the way down the Colorado
River flows, a dingy little stream responsible for this enormous temple to
praise the beauty of nature. With a lot of oh’s and ah’s we try to grasp the
view, while beneath us in the canyon a big blackbird of prey takes flight.
‘Californian condor’, someone points out. He now floats right above us. The
bottom of his wings (‘nine feet wide’, the same helpful neighbor says) has a
white drawing with dentate edges, like an Indian blanket. The wings themselves
are Indian style too, supple, black fringes at the edges. He is floating. In
large, easy circles he glides almost without any movement above the canyon. The
light of the sun alternately on his black back and the white Indian drawing at
the bottom of his wings. Small, almost casual movements with the fringes of his
wings are enough to just tilt and fly towards us or away from us with a
graceful curve. Back and forth, back and forth. It lets itself be rocked on a
hand of wind and warm air rising up from the canyon floor. With a little help
from his friends, he draws flowing lines in the air, from black to white to
black to white.
I’m standing there, at the edge of the canyon and watch until the heat
lifts me too and softly carries me above the world. Weightless. Until the
condor slowly floats away.
In the visitors center a bit further up the road I’m looking for
something about the Californian condor. Something to take with me, but all I
can find is a tin plated badge for fifteen dollars. Even so I hesitate. Then
I settle for the picture in my head.
‘Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers’, the Beatles sing, on
the road further west on Interstate 40. ‘Waiting to take you away.’