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Canyons of the Heart
Part 2: An infinite variety of forever vistas
The landscape of the American Southwest is so deceptive and filled with visual
surprises. Long distances between destinations on highways where you rarely see
another vehicle give you hours of highway solitude, and make you glad when you
finally do encounter another. The highways stretch in long straight lines, without
a hill or curve. The open vista goes on seemingly forever, convincing you that
it will be this way no matter how far you travel. But then you do pass over a
hill or around a curve, and the landscape changes, revealing its own remarkable
color palate and shapes. And this one, too, goes on seemingly forever. And then
you cross over another hill, and there is a different one. An infinite variety
of forever vistas.
Not only does
the topography change, but the light changes, though daylight always seems to
be intense. The afternoons linger through most of the day, and in the late afternoon,
horizontal rays coat the rocks and sand and foliage with their own red hues. At
night the infinite landscape seems to open its arms to embrace limitless space
and innumerable stars. After leaving
Acoma Pueblo, we drove through Gallup, New Mexico, up to Ganado, Arizona, stopping
by an old trading post (a store where traders originally bartered supplies for
local products and crafts) that is still in business. The intensely cold wind
hurried us through the weathered door to find warm respite inside the old wooden
building. We first encountered a room with a little of everything, like a general
store, on shelves behind the long counters. Adjoining was a room of Indian crafts,
with beautiful bowl-shaped baskets hanging upside down from the ceiling, cases
with silver and turquoise jewelry, colorful woven rugs hanging on the walls, and
finely detailed pottery on shelves. It
was somehow unexpected when the young Native American women who staffed the art
gallery spoke flawless English. Their ethnic identity visually is so clear, and
we are used to that correlating with language differences. But here, in this part
of the country we think of as ours, we are foreign. And although they speak our
language, they also speak their own, as their ancestors did before ours arrived
here.
Part 3:
Tangled Waters this
travelogue is part of the subside travelzine about
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