Way Out West

by James Allen

A long dusty straight desert highway, hot and deserted, featureless scrub; heading from Ajo in Arizona to Gila Bend in Arizona. Signs appear indicating a stop. The post is manned by quasi-military dressed, armed, men, some with dogs. We are stopped and asked: ‘Citizenship?’

‘American,’ says Mara. ‘English,’ I say.

‘Do you have your passport?’ asks the border guard looking at me.

‘No,’ I protest, ‘I don’t.’

‘Do you have any identification?’

‘I have my Driving Licence.’

As I pass it over I realise that it’s an EU licence and doesn’t really convey my UK or English citizenship. After many long seconds and some discussion which we can’t hear, my licence is returned and we are waved on.

Welcome to America, 2011. The last time I required a passport for internal travel within a country was several years ago in Jordan, but only close to the Syrian and Israeli borders, not long after the second Iraq war. I didn’t expect to need a passport when travelling in the US, land of the free. Looking back on this and a second similar encounter, it’s clear that we could have lied and been waved on and that they weren’t looking for slightly overweight English white men. Had I been Mexican, I suspect each control point I would have been stopped and asked to provide documentation of my right to be in the US. Scary, really, how quickly those perceived rights we believe we have can evaporate...

Travelling through California and Arizona, close to the border (close - as in 100 yards to 100 miles), we went through perhaps eight to ten US Border Patrol checkpoints. I lost count after a while. In all but two we were waved through without stopping (I assume that we didn’t look ‘foreign’ i.e. Mexican enough). However, twice all cars were stopped and we were asked our citizenship. How long before these checks become more widespread? How long before identity cards will be required by all citizens? The second time we were stopped, I got a smile and a ‘have a nice trip’ from the border guard. I guess he wasn’t looking for overweight Englishmen either...

DAY 1. We took a mini-trip from California to Arizona. Our starting point was just south of LA, so we headed down the freeway to San Diego and ‘hung a left’ along the freeway heading East. Our first stop was Yuma. Arriving early afternoon, we had a shock when looking at our watches; they were an hour slow. We had crossed the Colorado River from California into Arizona, into Yuma which is on its banks and into ‘mountain time’. We lost an hour in the space of 100 yards.

Yuma’s not a place most people have heard of and today it’s a snowbird paradise - a human snowbird paradise. Thousands of people head south from Canada and the northern states in winter looking for a warmer winter. In RVs loaded with pets they head for Yuma (amongst other places) due to its fine weather – it’s reputed to be the sunniest place on earth. I can’t compare but it was warm and sunny when we were there and I guess 80,000 extra visitors each winter can’t be wrong! Some resorts and hotels are so confident about the weather that they are thinking of not charging when it rains…

Yuma is not a noted tourist spot, but it has some gems. This was the height of the navigable river from the Sea of Cortez and was therefore the site of the military supply base. It was here that the last piece of the Pacific to Atlantic roadway and railway were laid across the Colorado. The river now is a mere stream following the completion of the Hoover dam, compared to its original strength. The hotel we were in was next to the site of the first bridge and rail station.

So we headed off to the Yuma Territorial State Prison. You may have heard of the movies The 3.10 to Yuma (both versions), the prison most cowboys get sent to. Real life is different. Inside the prison the prisoners had to work, were held in cells 12 feet by 10 feet, six to a cell in bunks three high, were forced into a dark cell for disobedience (a cell 10 feet by 10 feet in a dark room), or forced to carry leg irons or a ball and chain. However, the locals pointed out that the prisoners had a band, a hospital, the first electricity in the area and forced air cooling in the cells.

Today the prison (or what’s left of it) still sits on the bluff overlooking the town. Some cells and the exercise yards still exist (some of the prison was lost when the railway moved its bridge and cut away 30 feet of the old prison in the 1920s). The museum is a good one, telling the story of the prison and some of the inmates that went through it. Interestingly when it closed it become a school, and a place to rest for the hobos riding to California in the 1930s depression. The prison graveyard still remains, mostly filled with those who died from disease in the prison rather than foul play.

From here we headed over to the old Quartermaster Supply Depot. Close to the river, it later moved north for its rail connections, before enlarging during World War II as a training site, before yet again changing into one of the largest army bases in the world and being renamed the Yuma Proving Ground. The old site we visited is a state park and has some of the original buildings built before 1900; including the water tank, the CO’s home, the Quartermaster’s office and old warehouse. The site is a museum designed to give a sense of the time and location which it does perfectly. We found a local independent restaurant serving lots of good, well-prepared American-Italian food.

DAY 2. The next day we left Yuma and headed for Tucson, indirectly. It was 250 miles and we went the ‘long way’. We followed the freeway to Gila (pronounced Hila) Bend, then north through the Sonoran Desert National Park. This was perhaps one of the disappointments as there was no entrance, just the road through the desert. It was pretty, but we were unable to get up close.

Anyway, on through the desert to Casa Grande (the big house). First a little-known fact – most Indian tribes didn’t live in wigwams. We have visited a number of Indian sites before, but Casa Grande is an Indian house (the large remains of one) and was a part of an Indian village. The site was believed to have been inhabited from 700 to 1450 AD by a tribe of Hohokum Indians – at its peak by over 5000. It’s one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, and its purpose remains a mystery. It could have been a four storey house or a temple or an observatory (certain holes line up to allow sun/moon to shine in on equinoxes etc) or all of the above!

Archaeologists have discovered the Casa Grande builders also developed large-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted over a thousand years until about 1450, when it’s believed that a prolonged drought forced the people to abandon such large villages. The site itself is over 400 acres, much of which is untouched and off limits. The Casa Grande ruins are just one compound of many, and other ‘public’ buildings such as irrigation ditches and ball courts are similar to those from Central and South America.

The ruins are made from local clay; when mixed with water it becomes cement-like. The structures are now only a maximum of three storeys, but only 2½ are present since efforts to protect the ruins have lifted the level of the surrounding earth. The walls which only look in some places two feet high are actually some seven feet tall (five of which are underground). The ruins are covered by a War of the Worlds-type structure.
Why the Spanish name? In 1642 the first Spanish expedition passed here and the building was described as a Casa Grande.

DAY 3. Having driven to our Tucson hotel for a two-night stay, we hit the road and our first stop was a few miles away – Saguaro National Park. Think of the American West and desert and the image is of a cactus – tall with two arms pointing up. That’s a Saguaro cactus - and there’s a whole national park dedicated to them. We arrived before the rangers and went around the eight mile loop, stopping to admire the views of Tucson and over the many acres of cactus. In the morning sun they had an added orange glow. Other kinds of cactus included prickly pear and drum.

From here we headed out of the city and on towards Tombstone, the site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. But Tombstone has a much richer history than that. Starting as a mining town, it was actually small compared to other local towns. The railway reached nearby towns by the 1880s, but not Tombstone until 1903. The silver mines ran out in the early 1920s and many other larger local towns started to decline, Tombstone only remaining because it had a courthouse. The Courthouse is today a state park and museum. It feels like it was set up in the 1960s and has not changed. But it was interesting, mentioning the expulsion of over 1200 workers for ‘communist activities’ because they wanted to start a union!

The rest of the town is - well - a theme park. The main street (as was) is pedestrianised and many townsfolk (actors) wonder around in Western gear. There are at least three different gunfight groups, each offering their own interpretation of the famous OK Corral. Nobody really knows what happened, or why, on that day; or even why it became so famous. It’s clear from the museum that the gunfight was news very soon afterwards. It has captured the imagination of writers ever since - I think because of the ambiguities in the evidence, because it was so well written up at the time – and scholars have continued to write about it. Today the site is built over and the gunfight groups stage the shootouts in the streets or in open air theatres. The shops are all devoted to Western gear or food. We despaired over false and fake history being played out daily while far more important history wilts in a 1960s museum case.

Seeking something different, we went a few miles further on to the ghost town of Fairbanks. This was a much larger town than Tombstone was (15,000 people at its peak) and is now a small collection of restored buildings and a walking tour. The town was built by a small river, which provided much needed power for the mills which separated the silver from the ore. These mills (20 at a peak) ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Stretching some three miles up the river valley, they would have been heard miles away. The town was connected to the railway in the 1880s for all that silver and was occupied until the late 1970s.

We walked up to the cemetery. Perched on a hilltop, it overlooked the town, and now only a few graves are discernible. We then headed west and entered Arizona Wine Country. We felt obliged to stop at one and taste. The wines were good. See the website at http://arizonavinesandwines.com/index.html

From here we headed to Patagonia, a small but very pretty relaxed little town that was nestled in a valley and was surprisingly green given some of the countryside around the area was brown and parched. We had decided to go to the nature reserve but it was closed, so we visited the Patton House. The Pattons had spent years encouraging humming birds to their garden with sweet water. While we didn’t see humming birds, we watched falcons and other birds. The property now belongs to the Audubon Society.

DAY 4. We headed back towards Yuma, and our first stop was the Kitt Peak observatories. At the top of a 7,000 foot mountain, the location is home to the largest collection of optical telescopes in the world. The drive up the hill is actually quite easy, but arriving at the top we found snow. Though the temperatures reach 24C (76F) the snow remains in the shadows. We went on the tour to the solar telescope, which extends 300 feet underground and is designed to undertake viewing (spectrometry mainly) of the sun. It was built in the early 1960s and feels old inside, but it functions well, so won’t get changed. We then went to a small solar observatory to view the sun. This was a quiet day for the sun, but we saw sun spots and a small solar flare. Driving down is never as easy as you think, but we made it down and headed through the Indian reservations to Yuma.

We stopped for gas in Ajo (‘Ah oh’). High-grade copper made Ajo the first copper mine in Arizona. Working the rich surface ores, loads were shipped around Cape Horn for smelting in Swansea in the mid-1880s. The mine closed when a ship sank off the coast of Patagonia. With the advent of new recovery methods for low-grade ore, Ajo boomed. For several decades more than 1,000 men worked for Phelps Dodge in the open pit mine, and it’s believed to be one of the largest ‘holes’ in the earth’s crust.

DAY 5. We headed into California. Our first stop was the Imperial dunes, the largest dune field in the USA, 10 miles across. We pulled off the freeway and first stopped at an overlook. The dunes had a mystical golden glow in the morning light, spoiled by all the RVs parked around and the border patrol. The border fence is only a few hundred metres south. We went over to the last remains of the plank road. To cross the dunes by wagon or car was impossible before 1913, when the first road (of moveable sections) made of wooden planks was placed (or built) on the dunes. The road was moved when the dunes started to cover it, so it was constantly shifting. It was only wide enough for one car, with passing points every few hundred metres. Imagine today backing up 300 or 400 hundred yards; then imagine doing it without power steering, good brakes, mirrors... What remains is 300 metres of original planking, heading up a dune which is badly weathered and slowly being covered over by sand.

We headed down to a lower level and walked the few hundred metres over to the fence. The fence stands some three to four metres high and is made from steel uprights; designed to ‘float’ on the dunes, it dominates the surrounding landscape. We approached the fence and the first thing we noticed was that it was making a fast clicking sound which seemed to travel along the fence almost like a power line. Nothing we could see indicated it was electrified; perhaps it was just thermal expansion in the morning heat. It certainly looks menacing, but it’s not difficult to climb over (apparently) and, given the number of border patrols, not very effective!

We left the fence and, as we reached the top of the last range of mountains, we turned off north and headed into the Cleveland National Forest and the town of Julian. Julian sits at 4000 feet above sea level and was a mining town settled in the 1870s. Following the closure of the mines, it turned to agriculture and specifically apples. Prized today for its apples and apple pie, Julian itself is a mix of those two great American obsessions, shopping and food. We people-watched and then headed to Ramona. The Ramona Café sits on the main street and is smaller than expected. But the food was good and plentiful. I tried the signature dish of chicken Cordon bleu, deep fried and then covered with a hot spicy hollandaise sauce. Hmm.

First published in VISA 102 (Apr 2012)

Navajo Nation

by John Keeble

I’m relaxing next to our RV just outside the centre of Sedona, Arizona’s Glastonbury, enjoying the evening after finishing my fifth Tony Hillerman novel about the Navajo cops Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

There’s a temptation to write a Hillerman-style description of our journey through Navajoland but, thankfully, there were no bodies in our version ... as far as we knew at the time.

Hillerman has been writing for more than three decades about the land between the four sacred mountains and each book, as gripping as it is as a crime thriller, has subtle lessons on Navajo culture and spirituality woven into the plot along with descriptions of real locations.

At one place – Sand Island, in the Navajo north not far from Four Corners – we stumbled into our own mystery by the fast-flowing San Juan river in the deserted twilight alive with the sounds of the wilderness.

A slight map mix-up, always a good plot switch and never for the good, left us at a gate with a sign for Sand Island campsite. It was getting late and we had driven a long way. So, rather fatefully, we decided to see if it was okay for us for the night.

We pulled in, round a hairpin bend and down to the camp by the river. One of the Rangers was just leaving and their offices were closed. A dozen or more cars and pickup trucks were parked by the river... but without a soul anywhere in sight.

We parked the RV, got ourselves organised, and went for a stroll along the river. No one would survive a fall into that ... The cars and pickups were still there, abandoned and silent in this strange place scores of miles from anywhere.

The late afternoon slipped into dusk and dusk slipped into night – we cooked a meal, read our books, waited for some sign of the return of the people who owned the vehicles. Nothing stirred in this land rich in the dead of the ancient Anasazi Indians, their chindis (evil ghosts) roaming in the realm of the living.

In the morning, the vehicles were still there as we pulled out, on our way deeper into the Navajos’ territory. It was many days later that Joe Leaphorn, Hillerman’s legendary lieutenant of the Navajo Tribal Police, picked up the mystery for us – but I’ll get back to that and why we have to return next year to follow the trail.

Our journey from white America into the Navajo Nation’s territory started with a visit to the thin slot canyon at Antelope near Page in Utah.

Land belonging to the Navajos is mostly bleak, sunbaked scrub and bare rocks. It was this quality that left the 8,000 surviving Navajo in possession of their homeland when the settlers grabbed the best land in the 19th century. Today, the Navajos have a population of more than 250,000 living on 27,000 square miles, an effective three-tier government along the lines of the US government, and the Navajo Nation is regarded as rich with oil, power stations, tourism and, soon perhaps, its first casino.

At Antelope, as in other places, the population is thinly spread and in the area where we climbed into the lower canyon, there was a small wooden ‘office’ and a few portable lavatories in a large makeshift vehicle park. Beyond that, just flat rocks and scrubland.
Four Navajos were sitting in the shade, talking, when we arrived. One got up to take our money – there is usually an entrance fees to Navajo parks – and, after a chat, he issued us with four-hour photographer passes.

Another walked us down, past the memorial to people who had died in flash floods in the canyon, across the rocks already burning in the June heat – and to the narrow slit where we could slip down into the Slot Canyon.

It is hard to say how far that section of the canyon stretches as it heads for Lake Powell, but every step was wonderful: the architecture of the gods or the elements, whatever you believe, with light seeping in from the top to turn the twisting walls yellow and orange, coral and red, and casting shadows as black as a land grabber’s heart.

We edged our way down, too early for others to be around, squeezing through tight openings, skidding down sharp drops and all the time trying to capture the magic of the place with our digital cameras.

Later we heard voices behind us and, slowly, they caught up. A party of Japanese tourists were politely overtaking us in a gaggle led by a Navajo and after that the silence never returned, as more people inched their way down the canyon to pass us and quickly return to the light above.

On our way back from the bottom, we climbed from one level to another, making our photographs as we went, and headed into a section too dark to see... except there was movement, and a head, its dreadlocks hanging around a good Nikon SLR, eased into the light and peered at us. We pulled back, let him get his shot. He was another on a photographer pass and we stood for some time, in this beautiful place, talking pictures with him and what he described as ‘spiritual photography’, before going our separate ways ...

From Antelope, we drove on to Monument Valley, turning into the park area... for a few dollars we were granted a place on the park’s Primitive RV site. It does not have water, or electricity, or sewer link, it was not flat and the night was wild with gusting wind that rocked the few overnighting vehicles to a degree that brought to mind the 50ft drops round much of the site (especially where we were parked).

But, without question or doubt, it was the most staggeringly beautiful site you can imagine: there, in front of us, were the iconic red rocks towering into the dusk sky and the surrounding desert dropping spectacularly into darkness.
The Navajos welcome the sun as it rises and so did we: 4.45am and the light on the horizon was silhouetting the rocks and, as the sun lifted, giving colour and form to the timeless wilderness so familiar through the lenses of Hollywood.

The other end of the day found us in the company of Richard, a Navajo, who was taking us to all the big sights and a few unusual places in his 4WD. And, once off the tourist trail, we definitely needed the 4WD.

Teardrop Window... the Totem Pole with the Ceremonial Dancers next to it... the petroglyphs... all the big rocks, known through the ages to Navajos but named in recent centuries by white men – Richard took us to them all and, when the sun was almost down, we stopped at a hollowed-out rock known as the Big Hogan and, while we rested, he played his flute and sang a plea to the Great Spirit to watch over us all.

For a few moments it all seemed idyllic in the silence but then I recalled, far overhead, a jet stream flaring white in the sky and, as Richard had pointed out earlier, the pressures on the valley increasing all the time – then, in particular, as some people wanted to authorise low-level tourist flights over the rocks and others fought to stop them.

Early the next day, we fuelled up (at a third of the price of UK fuel) and set off on our odyssey into the heartland of the Navajo people.

The first destination was Mexican Hat – a rock that looks like, you know, a Mexican hat. After the fantastic sights of Monument Valley, where at times you could think you were on another planet, we just went by with a casual ‘oh, yes, that’s interesting’... without realising, then, that it was destined to be part of our own lives and a key element in the mystery to come at Sand Island.

 It was soon afterwards that something strange happened. We were on track for Shiprock when we suddenly came upon a road not shown on our map but going where we wanted to go. We were travelling too fast – 50mph is too fast in a large RV to quickly turn – and we sailed past, managing to slow and stop exactly at the fateful entrance to Sand Island campsite. That’s when we pulled in.

The whole region is covered with sites of the Anasazi, an Indian people who simply vanished – perhaps to become the Hopi tribe – leaving their homes and their dead ... and among the ruins, say Navajos, the chindis roam.

By strange coincidence, it was in just this area that Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn was doggedly pursuing someone or something terrible as I read my way through A Thief of Time. And it was the horror he found that opened our eyes to our mystery of disappearing boats and people – a strange and daunting trail we are determined to follow when we return next year.

From Sand Island, we stopped off at Four Corners, a very popular place where the state boundaries meet for Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico... a novelty set among the splendour of the vast open Navajo lands.

And finally we got to Shiprock, sprawling and welcoming, where we spent an interesting couple of hours in the flea market, buying goods we had not seen anywhere else. But the beauty of the visit was in Ship Rock, the sacred Navajo rock – again, it was named by white men and, from some angles, it does look like a ship. In Navajo legends, it is the Winged Rock, nearly 1,800ft high, that carried the first Navajos from the dangerous north to a safer life.

 By chance and our usual temptation to use minor roads, we stayed on the road that passes closest to Winged Rock and headed towards Canyon de Chelley further south. The road rose steadily and then steeply until, near the summit of the mountain range, it offered glorious views across the long valley to Winged Rock before dropping down towards Canyon de Chelley. It was a spectacularly beautiful drive.

 Long before nightfall, we were in Canyon de Chelley, deciding the bottom campsite was not exciting enough and opting to add an 18-mile climb to a Navajo site near the fabled Spider Rock.

We sorted out the usual campsite formalities and drove even higher - to an elevation of nearly 8,000ft – to photograph down to the colossal natural column named Spider Rock, where the Navajos’ Spider Woman first taught them to weave.

Twelve hours later, we edged our way down from the campsite, stopping at all the sights, and checked into the Rangers’ easy and free campsite before dining at the Thunderbird canteen, a huge Navajo self-service eatery where we seemed to be the only non-locals.

 June ate well with veggie fare and I got a vegan taco: Navajo fry bread the size of a family pizza base, half a tonne of beans and salad on top. Bit of a family joke: as a vegan, wherever we go, I end up having baked beans on toast ...

 We were taking it easy but in our parallel lives, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee were having a terrible time, criss-crossing our route, and the dead Anasazis were drawing them inexorably into our Sand Island mystery.

Next day, we trundled on through small towns and a gas station in the middle of nowhere but frenetic with Navajo traffic ... lots of pickup trucks, one towing the contents of a home, cars, trucks ... women and children emerging from the shop with gallons of soft drinks and piles of fry bread ... it wasn’t the only gas station and store in 30 miles but it was the favourite – one man said he drove 50 miles to use it.

We refuelled and the long straight road out led, eventually, to the Navajo Nation’s capital, Window Rock, named after the great rock with its centre worn out by eons of natural erosion. The modern town - with a very welcoming library and exhibition centre, plus a supermarket offering a deli counter and a big selection of horse feed - has a second area dedicated to running the Navajo Nation.

 The government is modelled on the national system: a President and Administration, a Council of nearly 90 elected delegates and a judiciary, plus of course its various ministries dealing with specific subjects like permissions for Navajos to build and live on the land.

But pride of place, under Window Rock itself, goes to the memorial for the Navajo Code Talkers – the men who, in the Second World War, developed and used combat communications that became the only US system never cracked by the Japanese.

As we walked back from the memorial, past the President’s office, to see and photograph the hogan-shaped council chamber (then being renovated) we met Elmer L Milford, the elected delegate for Fort Defiance and a specialist in education. He was in the middle of his busy day but gave us an hour, explaining the government system, telling us about the people and today’s Navajo life, and inviting us to return some time and spend more time with him.

"We have to change, we have to adapt to the modern world,” he said. “Education used to be about how to survive in this land, how to live, how to defend the people and the land. Now we have to educate to meet the challenges of today. It is also our job to get the jobs here, or we lose our young people to the city businesses.”

Elmer, wearing a beautiful bolo tie clasp that he crafted himself after 9/11, travels widely to bring the benefits of the modern age to the Navajos but he never forgets the tribal roots. “I get a lot of the wisdom from my mother,” he told us. “She knows the traditional ways and sees things that others do not see. I bring her wisdom here [to the council] and people say ‘I hadn’t thought of that’.”

With impeccable timing, that evening Leaphorn and Chee reached the denouement of their mystery in the canyon of the dead Anasazis as we sat between the interstate highway and Santa Fe railroad at a campsite at Gallup on the southern edge of Navajo territory. The solution to our own Sand Island mystery unravelled too, along with the realisation that we must return to venture into the forbidding waters of the San Juan.

If, like Leaphorn and Chee, we survive, we’ll tell you about it next year.

First published in VISA issue 75 (Oct 2007)

Blazing Saddles

by John Keeble 

He was a good horse, my Blazing Saddle, and it was not his fault that we were both thundering out of control towards a hairpin bend with a 750ft drop for those who did not get round it.

It was just one of those things. A bit of a misunderstanding. My wife and I had booked two horses to take us down, dude ranch style, from the top of a canyon to Supai, the home of the Havasupai native American tribe eight miles away on the floor of the canyon. There is no road to Supai: you walk, ride or get a lift in the supply chopper.

Hilltop - a vehicle parking area, loading places for mule trains and a small helipad a few hundred yards away - is about 30 miles south-west of the Grand Canyon tourist area in Arizona. By road, it is nearer 200 miles, the last 60 on a straight run through reservation land and ending where Blazing Saddle had to decide whether to turn into Pegasus or get round the bend.

It has a laid back air of the work place of people who know about life and how to live it. The mule trains come in, the long climb from the canyon floor behind them, and animals and men relax for a while. Then, casually and carefully, the handlers load the mules: sacks of food pellets for the horses, beans and beef for the people, Pepsi for the hikers, boxes optimistically marked 'frozen' for the unwary.

One of the horses was being admired by all the handlers. Its owner had layered its tail. How had he done it? Did he have a special tool? A slow smile crossed his face; he was pleased with the praise. "No, just scissors." It was not until, back in Britain and looking at the scene again on a screen with the knowledge gained by the visit to the tribe, that the significance struck: he had layered the tail to represent a waterfall, the sacred image and sign of the tribe.

A small helicopter took off as we all peered at the tail. It clattered into the canyon but no one looked up except us. It had a load slung beneath it in a net. Loading started again on the mules behind a sign which read: No waiting: Mail deliveries. Mail in and out of Supai goes by mule train, the latter bearing the stamp to prove it.

 Elaine, the shy and laconic Havasupai manager of the site, came out of her little cabin-office. June, my wife, wanddered over and they eased into conversation. And slowly they struck up an interesting exchange about Supai medicine and ways of life.

he Havasupai - which means 'the people of the blue-green waters' - are like that. They are not instant friends but slowly you come to realise what a warm, friendly people they are. A lot of them, anyway.

 Elaine pointed out the man who was going to take us down and we ambled over. He had been there for some time, resting his animals and loading up the mules.

 He was more abrupt than friendly and there lay the mistake that could have killed us. He asked June: "Can you ride?" She started to say: "Yes, but..." And he grunted and gave me one horse and June another.

 It was a fairly big 'but' that he did not hear. She hadn't ridden seriously for 40 years and my equestrian expertise amounted to being led for half a mile at Petra and getting in a hopeless muddle with a horse on a Tunisian beach.

 Anyway, he whistled and the horses took off at a fast trot - with me in the lead, June behind and him heading the mule train at the rear. With that Mensa leap of intellect, I realised this was no dude ranch operation. It was a working mule train. And I hadn't got the faintest idea about what I should be doing.

 Blazing Saddle - I gave him the name: it seemed to fit both my efforts and my medical condition at the end of the ride - suddenly turned left and (gulp!) we were on a steep rocky track with nothing that I could see at the end of it.

 "Turn him right! Turn him right!" shouted the muleteer as we neared the hairpin bend to the next section. I did my best. The rest were crowding behind but the precipice turned out to be a mere 50ft drop.

We got round, onto another steep track to the next hairpin bend, and just when I thought it might be all right, three things happened simultaneously. I realised there was nothing but a 750ft drop ahead and very little on the right, June's horse decided to make a bid for leadership and tried to crash past us on the inside, and my horse bolted in a determined effort to stop it.

 By halfway down the section, Blazing Saddle and I agreed we were fairly uncomfortable with the fact that two of his legs were in mid-air over the precipice (no, not really, but not far off that) and he horsefully leapt ahead, crushing his rival and its impetuous rider against the rocks.

 We all tangled, separated, and crashed into the bend. I don't remember how we got round. But it was down to Blazing Saddle. And we were off again, the chase on for the lead and the next section held a joy beyond anyone's adrenalin fantasies ... the big drop on the left, solid rock on the right, the track narrowing at a point where an overhand was head-crushingly low and there was a sharp bend straight after it.

 I could hear June shouting. Apart from the fun of the chase, she had been bruised in the crushing, lost her stirrup and was trying to keep a shoe from flying into space. But there was no stopping, no slowing, no helping.

We got nearly to the bottom and Blazing Saddle and his rival battled it out in a gallop, the muleteer urging them on ... it was really good fun. Honest.

 Half an hour later, on the canyon floor, we slowed. And walked through some of the most amazingly beautiful country we have ever seen, sometimes with red walls stretching up hundreds of feet, sometimes looking down 50ft into river beds.

 Blazing Saddle and I kept the lead, June and her horse 100 yards behind - the muleteer, fed up with these rookie riders, hanging back to yak to some pals he had met on the way.

 It was a peaceful time, when Blazing Saddle and I got to know each other and went through bonding rituals like pissing in the wilderness (with it hitting the hot stones, I could have done without that but it meant a lot to him) and, when we took a wrong turn, he looked back for guidance and I gave him a pat and a shrug and he jumped four feet down from one rock strata to another.

 We entered Supai village, nearly four hours after leaving Hilltop, with brave smiles that did not fool anyone and, at the lodge, I sat astride Blazing Saddle saying to myself: "It may appear impossible, but I can do it. It will not beat me." I was trying to find the strength to get off.

*****

 Life in Supai village is slow. The canyon has a population of 800 but the people and the homes are thinly spread and in the village itself, maybe 100 people are on the streets, and the village centre has a small general store, tiny post office, cafe, church, medical centre and a sparse visitor's shop. Oh, and an airport. It's like a small sports field with two small helicopters; check in is by the wire fence and, if it is critical, you get weighed before flying out at $70 a time.

The young mums and babies congregate near the airport, the mule trains tie up and unload outside the store and post office and sometimes there is a 'bus' service for those who need help on the dust roads: a small electric vehicle with a trailer for passengers. Everywhere are dogs, friendly and glad to walk a bit with visitors.

 In the cafe, there is nourishment for the mind and soul too: local art depicting Havasupai beliefs: the waterfall for the giving of life, and the completeness of the basket; the seasons and day and night; and the ancestors lingering ghostlike to help the living.

Further down the canyon, a four mile hike along tracks that touched the cool blue-green river, were the sudden and spectacular drops at the Havasupai falls and the Mooney falls with their impossibly blue pools, all the more beautiful against the white of the cascading water.


A long way down, there is a camping section where hikers can pitch their tents in shaded riverside haunts and beyond that the waterfalls that lead the adventurous, eventually, to even greener places

By the time we got back from five hours of hiking and messing about at the waterfalls, we were contemplating the prospect of riding back up to Hilltop the next morning.

 So we chatted to the helicopter controller, stuffed money into his hand, and went for our bags...

 First published in VISA issue 45 (spring 2002)