Arizona

desert

Grand Canyon

panoramae

Phoenix

arrival

hotel

the Rez

dust storm

Tempe

Tucson

Much of the life in the Phoenix / Mesa / Tempe / Scottsdale area is spent in the car. It's not a high point of life there, but so it goes. It's a flat, flat, flat area, with a few exceptions. Rose and i spent an afternoon hiking up one of these hills, which is much steeper and higher than it appears. (Of course we probably should have taken some water with us, but we had no idea that we'd be hiking up and down slopes by holding on to handrails.)

Only a few blocks away from the Motorola building in which I did most of my work is a small Native American restaurant. The dishes served here are simple in style and magnificient in flavor. I visited many times over the months I was in the area, and never left unsatisfied. I can't say enough about frybread. Amazingly (to me) the locals seem completely unaware of the restaurant, even though some of them have worked a few blocks away for almost two decades. But that's nothing, as I was to learn.

Just past the frybread place are several large roads, with none of the heavy built-up strip malls or housing developments which are everywhere else.

I asked several people what that spiky monument was, but not one could tell me. I couldn't believe that the locals have such a low threshold of curiosity that nobody ever drove over to see what it was. Some of these folks commute by the thing every day, going right by.

One day, after a long day of work, I did just that.

There is a reservation in the four city area, but if you looked at a map or asked most white people you would never find out about it. It's a blind spot; even longtime residents of the area have never ventured onto "the rez". Between the rez and the rest of the area is a new highway. The agreement to use the land came at an interesting cost: it must be decorated with symbols of the Tohono O'Odam tribe.

The highway is beautiful, the decorations just get better and better the closer you look. I drove up and down the length of the roadway nearest the main entrance to the rez, checking out the different markings. It was so deserted that I was able to get out of the car and stroll around, taking pictures.

Then we drove onto the reservation. The map shows a blank area for the entire area of the rez; can you believe it? We stopped off at the visitor center / museum and enjoyed a great display about the cultural norms of this tribe. (To be truthful, we enjoyed the air conditioning just as much - it was almost 120 F that day.) We chatted with the lady at the cash register and I found out something I'd never much thought about:

As we were discussing what to see and where to go, I noticed that she was giving us directions like "drive until you see the person with the watermelon stand, then go left until you see the big tree, then drive up the hill until you come to the river-bed." I mentioned to her that I could use some more concrete (pardon the pun) help, like a direction, or mention of a fixed, unique, artificial object (since one person's big tree is another's just-normal tree). She replied that Native Americans didn't do travel that way, and in fact, when they lived in the "white person's country" they had a hard time with directions like "go to 8th and Elm Street, turn left and go until you see the Piggly-Wiggly, ..."

I never knew that. Hmmmmm.