Arizona

Arizona. a wonderful name. Like some mythical land from a fantasy novel, or some far off place mentioned in the letters of a lost sailor. I had been before, to it’s depths but never through it’s center, and on a Wednesday morning I packed my things (a broken cell phone, cheez-its, granola, digital camera and commercial grade GPS) and joined my boss in the front seat of the company Tacoma. Off we went to Seligman, off we went to Jerome, the Verde valley, the Mogollon rim, the plains of the east.

South of Cortez I thought of the thing I always think of when I drive those flat, hot plains to Kayenta, through Teec-Nos -Pas.  I think about walking for days over broken and scarred land, surrounded on all sides by mountains and rivers, mesas and buttes, the force of nature that is the spires of Shiprock. If there is a purgatory in this world, it is there in the land forever in-between. We stopped to pee in Kayenta. The Speedway Gas station used to be a Giant, but that’s okay. The employees laugh at one another and we share a joke. Walking back to the pump I realize that this was probably the third time I had been the only white person in the Kayenta gas station while wearing an ink stained shirt with the words “here comes trouble” printed in bold across the front. I laugh and wince. We keep driving.

I’m learning things about K. It’s easy to imagine your boss as a distant person, floating above you on some other plane of existence. All that dissolves when there’s no music and 24 hours of driving ahead of you. We speak like equals. We cross the little Colorado river, and I remember that one day I’m supposed to go there, too.

The monsoons are in full swing and we see them off in the distance, towering columns of rain. It’s hot where we are. We follow a two-track through the forest, chasing points on homemade maps. Kathy finds an end-scraper, a beautiful white flake of rock perfectly shaped for it’s purpose. We move on through the suburbs of Prescott and over the pass on 89a, we stop in Jerome because somehow neither of us knew it was there and that is so much better than seeing pictures beforehand. Across the valley, rims of sandstone tower over the Verde river. I can see forever. We drive to the valley floor and back up a dusty track, taking pictures of an abandoned Mormon farm, we finish at sunset and look out to see monsoon rains, purple glow on the spires and great shadows across the mesquites that could almost spell a word, I sound it out like a child. A-ri-zo-na. 

We eat at a Mexican restaurant in Camp Verde and laugh about the drunk people. Kathy hates trump, I hate trump, we bond over it. I am reminded that archaeologists are different from all the other scientists. We’ve always been weird. We’ve always been brash and out there and looked down upon. We are rarely understood. That’s okay, I think. Let people believe that dirt cannot speak. More for me. That night we go to a cheap hotel and pass out of the lumpy beds, the moldy air conditioners fighting a losing battle against the rain-soaked heat. Lightning strikes in the distance.

Kathy knocks on my window to wake me up. I pack my things and dress in ten minutes. The lady at the Starbucks was funny but I could barely tell what she was saying. I drink my coffee as the final episode of our podcast show plays. We’ve been driving for days it seems. The cliffs and red dirt look like spilled paint. The two track has the prints of bike tracks but nothing else, it was washed in rain yesterday. We find a medicine wheel, a cinderblock foundation, a rusted truck from the 60’s and a sweat lodge. The dirt is full to the brim. We’re nearly done when a clap of thunder echoes off the cliffs in the distance, sending us running to the truck as flashes arc across the sky, cliffs in dangerous silhouettes line the east and the smell of rain pours through the mesquite as we drive away in a wash of wind. We go from place to place all day. There’s a dump, an abandoned cabin, an old Corral, then another. The podcasts play in the background as we turn our maps in circles next to one another. We are constantly in a place between columns of rain. Lightning nearly strikes the gas station as we fill up and I share a nervous laugh with the attendants while the storm roars outside. On to Pinedale, then home.

K’s daughter did not get cut from the volleyball team. She says she doesn’t want to be that kind of parent but she’s glowing while looking out the window. The rain had passed though here, we can see it to the north as we drive though the ponderosa forest. We take pictures of old tires, a transmission line, a water heater left in the dust and look in the rocks for stone tools. The wind smells just like the front range, pink granite and vanilla. I am reminded of home. We clean the truck on the side of the road and drive to Gallup, where we go to panda express and talk about which places in the past we would visit if we could. Lake Turkana, Rome, The valley of the dead, the mountain cities of the Inka and the temple of Gobekli tepe. We leave thinking about the layers of dirt under the bright, flashing gas stations. 

Driving home through the night we stop in the plains of New Mexico in a windstorm and I feel the force of the wind coming from the land to the West. I can smell it’s rain, it’s sand, its trees. they are letters that spell a name, I sound it out again. A-ri-zo-na. Arizona.