On Sacred Ground
When I owned a home in Park City (I actually owned five different homes in Park City over fifteen years), one of my favorite pieces of artwork was a print I bought by a well-known western artist names Bev Doolittle. One of her favorite techniques is to paint images with a double entendre. I had several of her prints, but the print I especially loved was called On Sacred Ground and it was very chilling in what it depicted. It was a winter scene with a cowboy on horseback leading another pack horse through an aspen thicket covered in snow. That scene alone was beautiful all by itself, but hidden amidst the aspen trees with their mottled bark of dark spots against the predominantly white of the bark was another image only visible with great effort and by standing back about ten feet and concentrating on the print from afar. To begin with, the cowboy and his mount, as well as the pack horse have gotten spooked by something in the aspen thicket and they are rearing back while simultaneously trying to run as fast as they can to get the hell out of that thicket. It is a startling depiction of a seemingly peaceful and bucolic place that has much more going on beneath the surface. The blending of peacefulness and sheer panic is quite unique in the painting. What one sees in the aspen trees if one is both perceptive enough and patient enough, is the face of an angry Native American and the head of an angry eagle, that symbol of American freedom and dominance. The two are screaming at the intruders to their lands and in effect telling them ever so dramatically to get away from their sacred ground.
Yesterday was day 2 of our Utah ride and the day when we gathered in Moab, famous for its red rimrock trails and overhanging canyons. We started the day in Page, Arizona on the banks of the drying Lake Powell that has for years been the summer water playground of Utahans who have houseboated their way into peaceful pleasure and not a little bit of controversy with the likes of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson’s sexual video tape taken aboard just such a houseboat. Three of us set out on our BMWs (Steve Larsen, Chris Shriver and I) with our spouses in two red Mercedes SUV’s respectively pulling two motorcycle trailers. I should note that Kim was pulling our American Flyers Motorcycle Club white Ironhorse trailer that is covered in AFMC logos and draws a lot of attention from fellow travelers in this part of the country due to its aerodynamic look and handsome white with blue and red pin-stripped paint job. We headed south and east on a less than direct ride to cross the northern Arizona desert in the early morning cool (only 80 degrees at the start) to get to the town of Kayenta. This entire area is spotted with Navajo Indian reservations, of which we see lots of signs. The sale of Navajo fry bread is ubiquitous and a clear contributor of the present day Navajo affliction of obesity. This doughey fried bread is a fried Pillsbury doughboy with equal parts of air and grease throughout and is to be avoided at all costs during a long ride across the desert with only limited bathrooms.
At Kayenta we have already suffered the ignominious rider insult of having been slow-played tens of miles on Rt. 160 behind a line of cars slowed by a huge Jeep-hauling Class A recreational vehicle of massive and lumbering proportions. As we turned north on Rt. 163 we started passing through not just a few signs of Navajo life but a veritable thicket of Navajo roadside souvenir stands that were either occupied by scattered resellers of Indian trinkets or eerily vacant with their sunshades and tables awaiting more Navajo women to bring their commerce to the vacationing passers-by. These stands reminded us that these Native Americans are not only still here after over five hundred years of dominance and persecution by the European white man, but that not all of them have a casino to run and become wealthy off the back of. I heard an admittedly liberal (and black) college professor suggest that anyone including Payton Gendron, the alleged Buffalo shooter, that wants to grouse about replacement theory had better figure out how to deal with the Native American replacement complaint first since they were here long before the European white man.
We head up Rt.163 through the amazing Monument Valley with its red sandstone spires on every side of us. The desolation of this valley and beauty of these natural structures makes for one of the great places in America’s multifaceted landscape from sea to shining sea. When we are on the downslope of the monuments, heading north towards the Utah border, we pass what has become the most famous place in the valley of all the magnificent places. The best way to refer to it is as the Forrest Gump spot because it is the location where Tom Hanks playing Forrest, Forrest Gump stops his back and forth running across America where all kinds of shit happens, and suddenly, and without warning, stops at that spot with Monument Valley in the background. It is at this very vista that he decides to turn around and finally go home to his deceased mother’s house in Greenbow, Alabama. Today, this spot is where thousands of people stop every day and crowd right into the road, on the presumption that they can see oncoming traffic for miles, just so they can record for posterity that they stood where Forrest Gump once stood. America can be a funny place.
While all the Monument Valley visitors are pushing and shoving to get their Forrest Gump photo, the poor Native American women(mostly Navajo I am led to believe) are still out there trying to eek out a living selling wampum, trying to make enough to buy the ingredients for Navajo fry bread to feed their blossoming, likely to become obese children. Is it any wonder the Indian and the eagle are screaming for the cowboy to get the hell out of their sacred forrest and off their sacred ground?
But this is also sacred ground along Rt. 163 to us American Flyers. Our logo has a rondel with UT and VT in the white spaces. The UT stands for our 27 year heritage of coming to southern Utah, and no place carried more spiritual weight with our clan than that around Mexican Hat. It is where we stopped for gas on our first ride in 1996 and then chose to eat on the patio at the Swinging Steak across the road. In the last 26 years we have stopped at the Swinging Steak for lunch many times, but found it open for business only one other time. This time we were again fooled by the neon OPEN sign beckoning us across the road only to find it was, yet again, closed. The spirit of the Navajo, probably the same one that Bev Doolittle saw in the aspen thicket, is telling us that its fine to pass through and buy gas ($4.79 in 2022 versus $1.79 in 1996, a mere 168% increase while national inflation has been only 84% during that time), but no soup for you at the Swinging Steak. So we beat a path to the Twin Rocks Cafe in Bluff, which was apparently not in the Navajo sacred ground arena.
I’m not sure how many more times I will pass through Mexican Hat on my journey through life, but I suspect that just as it is unchanged in the past 27 years, it will remain unchanged then and as peaceful as a snow-covered field of young aspen trees. Just don’t look too closely or think too much about how the white man has treated all men of color over the years, especially the red man who sanctified the ground around the monuments in this magnificent valley.