Week 12 US Tour: NM AZ

2006-12-12

Well, we have our prickly moments... but there is never a morning that I wake and think, "I wish we weren't on this tour." We are on the home stretch...

Thursday Nov 23/06 to Albuquerque NM:
The stillness of the morning was exquisite. The sun was slanting gently onto layered purple mountains off in the distance, a rooster had begun crowing before daybreak, birdsong filled the air, but still the land itself seemed to have a peaceful, deeply dreaming quality. We all felt it. Our campground was open and sparse with RVs sitting on the wide open plain, but we visitors only greeted one another with a distant nod rather than the jovial chatter that is the norm in these places. Breakfast ended and Nicole and Isaac drifted off to play together, drawing in the sand in an almost unspoken language of imagination. Patrick and I drew dream houses together for fun, with the door of the camper open to the early morning air.

It sure didn't look like the Thanksgiving I know - with the dry yellow fields dotted with green shrubs, cacti and yuccas resembling miniature pineapple trees. But the day was indeed calling us to Albuquerque, so we drove until early afternoon.

Keri Wehlander and I have been friends for most of the years that I have lived on the west coast, so I actually can't remember when or how we met. We worked together at Ryerson United Church in Vancouver and have remained fast friends - and now collaborators in song. She is a poet, liturgist and mom, and we consider a phonecall to one another a weekly necessity. As she grew up in Albuquerque, we decided to have our families meet up there. Our dear friend Doris, who has our respect because she coordinates youth ministry in BC for the United Church and has our love because she has shared more than a decade and a half of our lives' up and downs.

We drove past the turn-off to the Trinity desert site where the first atomic bomb was tested, but did not stop in to pay our respects. As we drove in to Albuquerque, the mountains rose somewhat higher, and once we drove through an outbreak of broken volcanic rock - a fissure of black against the dry yellow plain.

Somewhere along the long road, I began to feel my head begin to slightly lift off my shoulders, and thought perhaps I was having an extended transcendent moment. Perhaps I was - however, all of us reported the same later, and I realised that it was very likely the effects of altitude disorientation, as we ascended to 5000 feet. (Did anybody ever mention that to Moses..?)

By the time we had managed to get ourselves settled in to a hotel room, our friends arrived, completely laden with food and festivities. It was Thanksgiving, with the long office-style meeting table of our hotel room filled with turkey, dressing, peas, mashed potatoes, lefsa (the obligatory Wehlander soft flatbread) wine and Curtis' now almost-perfect blend of black tea. How grateful we are - for family and friends near and far, reunions in unlikely places - disorienting, high, holy ground.

Friday Nov 24/06 to Chimayo & Taos NM:
We have now become a convoy, with Curtis and Keri bravely taking all the older kids in their vehicle ahead of us, and our Susannah Wesley van following behind with Doris and David chatting away in the front, and Isaac and me playing in the back. Keri has many plans for us, of course. As we stop to talk at an overlook north of Santa Fe, on the foothill edge of the mountains, she says, "I'm just soaking up the land, just soaking it up." This is an healing balm for her - the land and sacred mountains of New Mexico.

The morning started cold, reminding any of us who had forgotten that we were at high altitudes. We pulled on our double layers of coats and cradled tea mugs in our hands, and convoyed off north of Albuquerque to the mountain sanctuary of San Felipe in Chimayo. This sanctuary receives 300,000 visitors a year, despite its small size and modest adobe and wood frame, so I was glad this was the low season for pilgrims. When we alighted from our vans to make our way up the path to the little church, it was clear that it was truly autumn in this part of the country. Aspen leaves littered the parking lot, dry and crisp. Along the nearby riverbank were constructed a number of brick arches spanned by brick crosses - a kind of silent sentinel on the way to this church that is famous for its piety and its healing powers.

The church courtyard is bordered by adobe walls and bare autumn trees. Through the gate and past the central cross where 300,000 photos a year must be taken, a set of large carved wooden doors lead you into the sanctuary where your eyes are immediately drawn to a full wall chancel painting of Jesus and the saints. Each is in a separate square, and a sculpture of Christ is hanging (crucified, of course) in the middle of it all. Red is everywhere, richly framing and illuminating the icons. After Isaac and I had spent a few moments sitting on the wooden pews, smelling the incense and watching worshippers quietly file past the front and into a room to the left, I took the opportunity to go there myself. The transept - whose doorway was low enough to expect you to enter bowing - was filled with the glittering of lighted icons, rosaries hanging from statues and the edges of paintings - and the bright metal of now-unneeded crutches. In a small room off the back is a hole in the floor so that pilgrims could take away some of the healing red soil.

I caught up with Patrick as we walked back down the drive to our vans. He had a plastic bag of the red dust and told me he had brought it to see if he could defy gravity. "They said it was for miracles," he said. Same place Jesus' mind went when he went out for "40 days" into the sacred earth of the desert - just as his own spiritual powers began to be evident to him...

We had lunch at a hilltop New Mexican restaurant, making sure to have the blue corn tortillas in our enchiladas and the green chile sauce that is typical here. We visited a local famous Ortiz family wood-carver's studio, whose art had been shaped through 3 generations. Now, this is a pace I usually don't attempt to follow after 11 weeks on the road, so it was no surprise that I was feeling tired as we wound our way through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Still, I was surprised when we pulled in to a rustic little gas station in Truchas along the way and I had to put the seat back and sleep! In fact, both David and I were feeling carsick and woozy all through the drive. It was the altitude! It was sucking the oxygen right out of us.

The charming little plaza of Taos is all low-roof adobe buildings. The shops in the square were full of traditional and artisan's weaving, pottery, jewelery and gems, cafes, but we defied the chill of the evening by having an ice cream cone and simply wandering. The church of San Francisco was practically around the corner and the sun sinking to its lowest ebb when we reached it, giving its round adobe walls an even deeper shade of earth. A priest with a strong Scottish brogue kindly explained the chancel paintings, even though the church really was closed by this hour.

Saturday, Nov 25 Acoma NM:
From the highway, you can't see the mesa-top pueblo of Acoma at all. It's invisible. A short drive south off the I-40 takes you toward great flat-topped mountains, their mighty sides of stone rising massively to stunning heights. The Acoma tribe have a beautiful new cultural centre, there in the middle of the desert, with an outdoor courtyard for native dances and shuttle mini-buses to take visitors up to the top of the rock.

Here, after repeated warnings about needing a permit for photo-taking, about staying with the group, about not venturing into areas that were private, our guide took us into the towering adobe church that was the centre-piece of the town built upon the mountaintop. The village is only minimally inhabited now; a few families stay in town with no electricity nor water. Our guide said the quiet is only broken occasionally by the sound of loud generators at Monday night football time. The bare floor interior of the church, with its huge, ancient painting of Purgatory on the side wall, its stations of the cross all along the ceiling and confessional was still a place of worship for devout catholics, while native spiritual practices were still observed, as well.

The story is hundreds of years in the making and is typical of this area: First Nations were met by the Spanish, the Roman Catholic church invested itself in their conversion and the tighter the grasp on the land and people, the more brutal the reaction to any forms of resistance. By the time an armed resistance took place, the people were captured and had part of a foot cut off to keep them from escaping again. Many went into servitude.

At this point, the listlessness of my two older children became troublesome, while Isaac was continuing to be completely unable to stay in one place for more than half a minute at a time. It was, I guess, a combination of post-Thanksgiving tiredness and too much tour guide talking and a bit of altitude/dehydration. Whatever - I realised that, although I felt a strong desire to hear the story of people who are reclaiming their history and future, I had to be the one to take all three out of the church so that the others could actually experience it. We stood and stared out over the cemetery, where 3 layers of graves were buried one on top of the other, past the mounds on its adobe walls - sentinels of the spirits buried there - and past the hole in its wall, where the spirits of the exiles could return. I was weary in body and spirit. The Spanish/American story has fired my soul and scarred my spirit for all of my adult life, and I never know how to enter the home of those who have suffered so much and now demand my respect.

So, it was bad luck or kids living out their mother's karma or another butt-kick of the Spirit - I don't know - that both Patrick and Nicole stuck their heads into the small window-hole of the kiva, or sacred meeting space (not allowed), and then Isaac, in a split-second escape from our notice, climbed the ladder toward its entrance. A tour guide who had joined us for a moment spoke to them in turn - and after Isaac's moment, said loudly to us, "If it happens again, we'll have to ask you to leave." Now, I think that I could have weathered this if a tour guide in some Museum of Natural History had spoken sharply to us. But, to have us singled out publicly in the context of what was a sacred visit was too much. I grabbed the kids and dragged the bunch of us out of the group and down toward the entrance road. And there I sat on a rock and cried my eyes out.

I really should know better; years ago, when I first saw the movie "The Mission", I collapsed against the cinema wall on the way out and couldn't leave for crying. The history is so unspeakably brutal and the church so obviously a part of the violence that I am swept away with grief, with an undefined guilt, with a flight sometimes into ungrounded action. The children sat on the rock with me, and David suggested they might ride the shuttle down while I could take the stone stairway if I wished. It was a good choice. I had a few minutes to stand and stare out at the faraway hills and highway from the precipice before descending. It was breathtaking. The stairs were carved straight out of the stone, with handholds the same. Sometimes so steep I had to turn around and take them like a ladder, they reminded me of our climb of "The Steps of Repentance" on Mount Sinai - the last 100 stairs to the summit were wryly named - and they were the most painful.

By the time I had walked the path and reached earth again, I was more clear-headed. But the day was definitely over. We drove home through the forgiving afternoon sun to our little room, and tucked in for the night.

Sunday, Nov 16/06 Albuquerque NM:
For the past few days, I had been asking myself why I had been led to sing at a church of Religious Science this week. I am a Christian and my songs are increasingly bible and Jesus oriented and would I know what to say or sing..?

The circumstances for the plan to come were quite wonderful; Donald Patriquin and his Quebec congregation hosted us in October (is anybody still reading all these Tour Logs? If so, Donald is from week 5 or so!). His daughter was attending the Center for Spiritual Living in Albuquerque and, having also attended when visiting, Donald contacted the music director, Stu McAskie, to encourage him to have us drop in for a musical visit.

Religious Science, they say, is a correlation of the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy, the revelation of religion applied to human need and the aspirations of humankind. The congregations (both of them) were animated and responsive, regularly leaping to their feet to give a standing appreciation (I won't say ovation) to something that moved them especially (And that's saying a lot when you are singing at 9:15 in the morning..!) Rev Patrick spoke about the reality of Love and the illusion of the conditions that stand in the way of our experiencing that love and the perfection of our existence. As the congregation said, "There is only love - And the rest we made up."

With an absolute unwillingness to allow the concepts of "sin" and "confession" to enter their spiritual vista, the religious scientists have a philosophy that is somewhat unfamiliar to a protestant christian, albeit one who argues all the time with her Methodist/Presbyterian/Congregational roots about how dis-empowering these focusses can be. Still, the message found a strong home in me, and I looked forward to hearing it again in the second service. The second time round, as Patrick spoke, smiling broadly, I had a genuine transcendent moment, in which I was lifted above the actual words and philosophies and theologies and rituals and songs that I have experienced on this long pilgrimage of churches. I felt in that moment, the resplendent beauty of humans gathering to celebrate the Holy. In the out-loud amen places, the chosen-frozen places, the ones who are activists, the ones who pray without ceasing, the ones who don't go to church, the ones who dance, the ones who earnestly study the old texts, and the ones who try too hard to bring up their children as perfect adventurers and guests - in all these people and places, the Spirit dances merrily, offering whatever grace we are willing and able to receive. Truly, all are One.

Doris had - bless her - taken the children to the Aquarium in downtown Albuquerque, and fed them corndogs for lunch as they waited for us to come down from the spiritual mountain. We scooped them and drove to the old historic plaza of the town. As we drove slowly into the square, to see if there might be a parking space for us to rest and find Keri and Aidan, I scanned the shops and sidewalks, taking in the immediate beauty of the San Felipe de Neri church - glowing yellow in brilliant adobe. In front of a local bookstore stood a woman remarkably resembling my dear friend, Bonnie Giovannetti's mother, Phyllis. SERIOUSLY resembling Bonnie's mother, Phyllis. IT DEFINITELY WAS my friend Bonnie's mother PHYLLIS!!! "Stop the van!" I croaked. "That's Bonnie's mother, Phyllis!" And it was. All the way from Comox on Vancouver Island. She was more shocked than I. You have to understand that I have been to virtually all the family events in the recent life of Phyllis' prodigious extended clan. I have sung at funerals and weddings; I seem to be irrevocably linked to them, even at great long distance. This was merely one more confirmation of this. With hugs and brief conversation, we didn't need to spend time together - only to know that we have crossed paths once again.

Sometimes you go through times which seem to be there to simply teach you All are One. Yes?

Later, after a wander through town (our only real "shopping" trip of the tour), and visiting shops where the artists sits painting at a dining room table with the grandkids, (read: not tourist trinkets) we all gathered to have a final meal. Keri - who is the true Asker of Excellent Questions - asked me if I had a sense, after 12 weeks on this tour, of what this journey was meant to be for. After the weekend's inspiration, I could answer that. First, it has been a family bonding that has filled us and will continue to shape us for all our lives. And secondly, I am having the experiences that I asked for - diverse and challenging - and developing a kind of respect and understanding that I deeply yearn for.

Keri and Aidan hugged us good-bye (Curtis had left on a noon flight). They would take the train to the coast tomorrow. David and I stayed up to watch the DVD movie "Alamo". SO interesting..!

Tomorrow we would follow historic Route 66...

Monday, Nov 27/06 to Arizona:
The air still had a bite to it as we packed the last of our belongings back into the van and trailer. Doris now gets the front seat and the honour of reading maps and deciding the next Adventure. I have the pleasure of sitting in the back with the School. There is almost too much to see and do to even attempt book-learnin', so we are grateful for activity books about New Mexico that Keri left us last night.

A mid-day rest stop proclaims itself Navajo Land, with blankets, gems and jewelery, knives, standing kachina dolls. David cooks us up our now traditional soup, Doris puts together sandwiches. As I return later from the rest stop washroom with clean dishes in our washbasin, the wind suddenly gasps, sending great waves of dead aspen leaves clattering headlong across the asphalt. There is cloud hanging low overhead, and the prediction is for snow. WILL WE MAKE IT TO THE GRAND CANYON..? We decide to carry on in the direction of Flagstaff, somewhat near it, but Doris, who has pulled on all the clothes she brought from Vancouver, is clear that sleeping in a tent in the snow is not her idea of a worthy adventure.

In the last slanting sunlight of the afternoon, we made it to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest - another wonder invisible to the highway. It is a drive through the state park, with stops to gaze out at huge brick-coloured buttes or mountainous hoodoos. If only this hour of the day could last forever! The liquid amber of the sun sends a changing silhouette of shadows across the canyon. And down near the end of the circuitous drive lies an ancient forest where logs frozen in time lie cast in stone for almost ever. I sat down beside one, whose great base showed the circles of years it lived in life. But, what are 100 years of rings when their stone forms are now more than 200 million years old..?!

A visit to Puerco Pueblo showed the base of rectangular stone buildings built 700 years ago. Nearby petroglyphs told stories of cranes catching frogs and people fishing for dinner. They were the ancestors of the Zuni and Hopi tribes of today. Their doors were on the roof; brilliant.

Doris convinced us to stay at the Hostel in Flagstaff instead of attempting sub-zero temperatures with a popped top. The hostel had a delightful European feel, in this odd, neon-retro little historical downtown. Our room had a bunkbed on one side, and a single on the other, a sink at the end by the door. Patrick scored Doris's air mattress so the entire floor was covered. It brought back warm hostelling memories to see clusters of young adults from all over the world, struggling around a common language, and speaking so terribly earnestly late into the night.

Tuesday, Nov 28, Grand Canyon AZ:
MIRACLE THIS MORNING: Nicole and Isaac were snuggling first thing in morning before we all woke up and suddenly Nicole said to us, "Isaac said POCO." So what, we thought; he talks about her Tamagachi characters all the time. "No. He said POCO - with the K in it." So, she asked him to say it again. Sure enough, he pronounced it properly, instead of replacing the C with a T. "Say 'Nicole'," I ask him. "Nicole." "Say COOKIE!" "Cookie." He just woke up and could pronounce the sound K. Just like that. Incredible. I felt euphoric.

Well, it was going to take some doing to top that miracle. The Grand Canyon may have been the only thing that could compete.

Snow was falling in small pellets, dark clouds were looming overhead and fog shrouding our square as we drove out of Flagstaff for the Canyon. It was an hour and a half drive from the town to the state park and although the driving never got actually dangerous, we did wonder what there would be to greet us when we managed to arrive.

In my favourite part of the The Hobbit series, the Ent clan is introduced as having a language, the length of whose words is in proportion to the importance of the thing it represents. I absolutely agree with them. It is too quick and too flippant to simply say, "The Grand Canyon". It should take a cavernous long time to utter the name of this great breach of earth. It should take the length of time an echo from its far end would take to return to the singer. Later, David would say, "It just took my breath away." The precipice that we drove to, parked near, and stared over was completely overwhelming. So large that our eyes could scarcely take in the enormous distances it travelled. The first lookout at Mather Point was a skinny little shard of rock crowned with safety handrails and jutting out into the abyss. I told Patrick and Nicole if they managed to throw clear of the first tree sitting near the edge of our overlook, their snowball might go for a mile. They gave it a very good try.

Shuttles took us from point to point, with the next shuttle coming by within 15 minutes - which was about as much time as we could really be outdoors comfortably. Brave hikers suited up and took up large back-packs to descend a path and possibly tent out overnight. We want to do that next time - or perhaps ride a mule. If you've been following the saga of Isaac on the road, you now consider us the stupidest parents ever.

The drive back to Flagstaff was kind of quiet. We hadn't exerted ourselves physically in any huge way, but our spirits were somehow stretched in an encounter of this size. We returned to our little hostel corner of Europe and cooked supper with vegetables... What a treat.

Doris and I took a small walk around the dark downtown after supper. Neon light filled the sidewalks and people hung about outside cafes, as we passed the Monte Vista Hotel, by the loudest railway I have ever heard, Indian art and jewelry stores, and a funky shop whose front window had for sale a box of "Horrified B-Movie Victim Action Figures". Hilarious. By the time we had been back to the hostel for 15 minutes, Doris was speaking her home dialect to a German guy and helping a young Asian man figure out his computer (...!!!) We are catching on to the earnestness.

Wednesday, Nov 29, Sedona AZ:
I cannot shake the impression that I am in France. Or Canmore, Alberta.

With not far to go today (only an order from Doris that it had to be DOWNHILL and away from the cold..!), we cleared up in a leisurely pace. Back in October, we had given Nicole a box of instant brownie mix for her birthday, and we decided that today was the very day they must be made. Hostel-baked - probably the best brownies of my life.

Sedona is a small tourist town set in a bowl of the richest red mountains I have ever set eyes on. I had no expectations for this town, other than that it would be a place for funky shops. However - the mountains are spectacular. Moreover, the town is described as being at the centre of a series of vortexes, whose magnetic and geologic energy is invigorating and enhancing to the senses. This phenomenon was written about on an ad for body healing, but in such a hippie-groovy way that I dismissed it. Later, we made our way up on the mountaintop near the airport, overlooking the entire valley, "You know," I said, "It feels like I have glasses on! I can see everything with complete clarity." Everything had taken on that extra knife-edge of sunrise. If it hadn't been for small return waves of altitude sickness, I might even have felt invigorated.

Yet, something about the place breathes life, and it felt almost electric in places. We drove to Bell Rock - a brick red butte down the valley. Here the deep colour of the soil and its sparse, spindly shrubs gave a pathway up toward the mountain. We couldn't go far, but only try to log a body memory of the place before state park "closing time" imposed itself on creation.

Nearby, a huge cross seemed to be sitting on the red scoop of mountain side. It was the Chapel of the Holy Cross, designed by Marguerite Brunswig Staude (after a recurring vision of a cross on the Empire State Building). This 250 foot high chapel seems to be embedded in the 1000 foot mountainside, leaning out over the valley, its chancel wall completely of glass and cross, pointing toward earth and sky. Without question it is one of the most beautiful church settings I have ever visited. (Well, how can you compete, when God made the place?) It is Roman Catholic, with the simple beauty of art, prayer candles, silent meditation. I wandered back out, toward the wall of mountain and my spirit soared. There is something here.

The sun was setting and the cold racing into the valley, as we drove Doris to her little hotel room, where she made a magnanimous offer: Patrick and Nicole could have a sleep-over with her, if they wished. Did they! I understand they had pizza, watched 9-year-old tv (gack), and slept with the heater on all night. The temperature dipped to 19 degrees - a record in 3 years - of course. Are you wondering where David, Isaac and Linnea went that night?

Join us for the next installment of... "Canadians brave the cold of the US South! Week 13"

With thanks for your travelling with us,
Linnea

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