Modern Hopi claim the builders as their ancestors from around 1400, when the tribe moved out and probably went north. From evidence in the trees and skeletons, it is likely they moved because of drought.
The dwellings had been 3-4 stories high, but unfortunately a lot of damage had been done by treasure hunters as they tried to find artifacts over the last two hundred years. Something like 2-3000 such ruins have been discovered in the Sedona area. (Photos of Ruins)
Rob made a connection with Chris over their mutual interest in Monty Python and they both told jokes on the way back. (Ask Rob about Chris' BIG joke.) (Photos of Sedona Landscapes)
April 2
A day of laying low, cleaning closets, resting and watching movies, as the rain pounded on our roof. Also, I asked one of the women in the office about the Hopi Reservation and she was very enthusiastic.
April 3
Ah, the best laid plans. Robin was up very late working on "5", his novel/screen play and so we arranged one more night by the creek. It was raining on and off. We went to town to get online and handle some business, and to research the Hopi way of life and possible RV accommodations.
I found a basic, though quite lengthy creation story on the Hopi site and read it out loud to Robin, so we could feel we had the very basis of their world view. The highlights: They are now in the fourth world, having left the evil spirits in the third, except for one sorceress, who crept up the ladder through the sky with them. When the tribes were told to split up, the bahanas, the whites, went off with the sorceress (oops!). However, the Hopis, the blue corn people (each tribe had chosen a kind of corn), were told that a bahana would come and bring them great peace. They would know this one because he/she would have the other piece of a broken stone. When put together the two fragments would become one. This telling does not do it justice. To see it in total, go to: http://www.hopi.nsn.us/Pages/Culture/emergence.html
Finally we went to the New Age Center, a place with all those sorts of things: books, crystals, buddhas, etc. Robin went across to a shopping center and after a long wait, I had a reading with Sara, who channeled information from the Archangel Michael. I asked about our journey. Great journey, but we might want to pace ourselves by breezing through New Mexico and Texas. Do up New Orleans. Florida. DC are important. If the doors keep opening, keep going. If not, go home by the shortest route. Go in joy! St. Francis of Asisi is with us on this journey.
The Kid is learning a lot. Is he interested in geology? Stones? Get him a great education, on Vashon if possible. The arts high school in Tacoma-excellent!
The angels said they really like my music. That really delighted me! Got some advice on health, romance and a pastlife connection-very interesting.
We celebrated with a great French meal at Renee's. Meantime, as we were waiting for the food, we brainstormed about a business Rob wants to create: a bar for kids with all sorts of imaginative drinks and maybe other things. Might be a portable item with stools. Back at the RV park, we watched Bowfinger.
April 4
We finally left Sedona and drove back to Flagstaff where we went back to the Starbuck's and their hotspot. Again, I had all sorts of problems until the tMobile guy dug a bit deeper and found some different settings. Everything FINALLY worked! I sent the latest tlog with photos to James.
We rented "Nixon", Oliver Stone's 3+hour rendition of Watergate, and decided to stay at Woody's Mountain RV.
At first blush, Woody's looked a bit down at the heal, but there were two really great sets of RVers. Right next to us was a couple and their extremely cute toddler son and across the drive were Val and Bill Ford, from Florida. We got into a long discussion about our travels and Val offered to give us suggestions about what to see in Texas, Florida and Virginia, where she had grown up. The frigid and drippy weather finally sent us all indoors.
We found it a bit hard to sleep after Nixon, but had quite a discussion on how he had been treated and whether he'd deserved it or not.
April 5
Val made good on her promise. I knocked on their door around 8am and delivered a copy of "Water Calls". There is an outside chance that we might visit them in Florida, if we get there after May 10. I am hoping to be through there before that, so we'll see.
We drove east on I-40 past Winslow and north on 87, through the painted desert (oh so lovely and quite surreal) and to the Second Mesa(of three), the center of the Hopi Reservation. After doing considerable research on the internet before we left on bahana protocol, I took no photos (sorry, folks).
The Hopi Reservation is smack dab in the center of the much larger Navajo Reservation. I did some other online research. Average income, $17k, average family size, just over 2(matrilineal culture). Population: 9,000. One Hopi village is the longest continually inhabited spot on the continent and dates back to 1100AD. Navajos came in after the Spanish and took a lot of the Hopi land for themselves. As late as 1997, the Hopis were still trying to come to an agreement with them to preserve what little they have been able to keep.
The mesas appeared to be sparsely inhabited and spotted with ramshackle buildings. The landscape is like Sedona with its red rocks, but much flatter and chunkier. (To the uninformed, a mesa is a flat-topped mountain.) We finally came to the Hopi Cultural Center, which housed a museum, a shop, a restaurant and an inn. It was an adobe-style cluster of square forms-quite a striking contrast to the surrounding area's broken down trailer houses and other smaller modern-style homes.
I wanted us both to experience some Hopi food, so we went for a late-afternoon meal at the restaurant. Rob opted out for some chicken strips while I tried a lamb and hominy stew. The "stew" was very starchy and practically tasteless. It came with fry bread. I was offered honey by our waitress, Eleanor, and that brightened things up a bit, as did the canned mild green chile(burp!).
On the way there, we had started THE JOURNALS OF ELEANOR DRUZE, a fascinating book on tape, starring a spiritually-connected woman in her 70s, who has to unravel a series of murders in a hospital while being a head-injury patient, herself. Robin is amazingly involved with this and is fine with the woman's spirituality-her crystals, meditating, self-healing, pendulum, and the fact that she sees and hears things most other people don't.
I mention the book, because it is not lost upon me that the native peoples are so well-connected to the "dreamtime" and here we were in their place. Somehow, this book and the movie we watched, "Dreamkeeper", about a native storyteller and his disgruntled grandson and their journey to a pow wow together, seem to be weaving something deep in me and I think, in him too. "Dreamkeeper" was just released on DVD and I would highly recommend it! It was the Navajo woman in the video store near the RV park in Tuba City who recommended it when I asked her what would really be a true an honest film about her people.
We had gotten to the reservation in the late afternoon and only made the stop at the Cultural Center and one shop, which had an interesting mixture of amazing native crafts and junky mass-produced stuff. The top find of the day was a small vase with Crow Mother, the mother of all Kachinas, the spirits which come out to help in December and stay until July. These spirits are real to the Hopis. They pray to the kachinas for rain and crop success, as well as other things.
I asked the young storekeeper how modern and how traditional people on the reservation really are. He answered that his village is the only one left which follows the complete traditional calendar. It is easier to go to the super market, but they still do the dances and other ceremonies. Unfortunately, the dances are normally just on the weekends and it was Monday. He told me what all the different images on the vase meant.
Of all the Kachinas we have read about, it seemd that the Clown would be most appropriate to Rob and me. There is some disagreement between the Hopis as to whether kachinas should be available to sell to non-Hopi people. There is quite a business in collecting them and quite a bogus tourist knockoff trade. The knockoffs really don't have any meaning to the natives. They don't look like the real thing and are just for decoration.
Rob feels uncomfortable here. He wouldn't come into the store. He is not sure we should be here. I assured him that the people were very welcoming, but he still didn't feel comfortable. As I was conversing with the young man in the store about how modern or traditional things were, I made a comment that modern is fine as long as the ancient wisdom isn't lost because we westerners and everyone else are going to need it to counteract our own folly.
The contrast of seeing NIXON and then DREAMKEEPER...is this the same planet???
April 6
The plan was to visit the trading post and maybe a shop or two and then head for Phoenix-which we did-with a new flute in hand-for Rob. With our late start, we didn't stop at Montezuma and got to Arcosanti just as the shop was closing. We spent the night in the parking lot. (Photos of Arcosanti Landscape)
We finished the JOURNALS OF ELEANOR DRUZE, just as we got there. It was amazing! She is really a spiritualist and this who-dun-it with all sorts of metaphysical content was spellbinding! We had quite a debate as to whether this was a real story or fiction-in spite of the legal disclaimer.
April 7
We loved our tour of Arcosanti. We had had a few moments the afternoon before to investigate a Smithsonian traveling exhibit on views of the future over the past 150 years, which we spent a little more time taking in.
Arcosanti is an archology (architecture+ecology), the brainchild of Italian-born architect and sculptor Paolo Soleri, known not only for this project, but for the bronze and clay bells he designs and that are the main source of income. I had visited twice before and known others who came and did the 5-week workshop they offer, which includes opportunities to actually build the structure. Over 5000 volunteers had helped to build what was there so far. Plans were for a much larger "city" which will house 5000 people. It is multifunctional, so that no one has to work, shop or recreate more than a short walk from their home. The major ethic is one of non-materialism and voluntary simplicity. As it is a non-profit, no one "owns" their home here.
A school bus full of visiting Sedona seventh and eighth graders meant we were privy to a more thorough explanation of the Soleri bell casting techniques-both of bronze, which we saw poured, and slip-clay casting (in porous plaster or silt), which we saw at various stages. This method of casting is done with very wet clay put inside a porous mold which pulls the clay into the shape and dries it at the same time. When dry, artisans carve patterns into the outside. Patterns in the bronze bells are made by hand right in the sand after it is compressed around the alumimum "plugs"-no each is unique. (Photos of Arcosanti Artisans)
They harvest the clay once a year from a nearby mountain and the silt comes from the bottom of a river right on the property. Silt plays another important role: as molds for the casting of the huge concrete dome(asp) and arch forms overhead.
There were about 75 people staying there, with about 40 of them full-time residents. We were told that Dr. Soleri was there that day, but we never saw him. There were no schools there yet, but they were hoping for some grant money to build one in the future. The total annual budget for the building and maintenance of Arcosanti is $1,000,000-not a lot for the building of a city.
Even though I am intrigued with the idea of the place and lots of the interesting solutions and artistic ideas, my sense in the past and again now was that the concrete was a bit cold and sterile and that the people seem a bit disillusioned. Something doesn't seem quite copasetic. We ate lunch and looked around at them. Lunch was pretty good-mostly vegetarian and some great turkey. Arcosanti will be celebrating its 35th birthday next year and Dr. Soleri is in his mid-eighties. Robin and I discussed how we both felt about the place. He didn't like it much. I wonder if, indeed, Soleri is such a patriarch and others aren't allowed enough creative autonomy. Will it ever get finished and thrive as a city of 5000? (Photos of Arcosanti Archecture)
We bought a bell, got two free posters about the Smithsonian exhibit and left for Phoenix and the RV Doctor, a no-nonsense fixit guy. This is how the sky looked (Photos of Highway Storms). Oil changed and other little jobs complete, we were out of there in less than two hours!
In the two hours it took to drive there, we started listening to an abridged version of MUTANT MESSAGE DOWNUNDER, read by the author herself. I had started reading my first-run copy to Robin before we left, but books on tape are really much easier underway. It is part of our native studies and a very interesting, firsthand description of life with a small aboriginal tribe of Australia by Marlo Morgan, a white American who was taken on a "walk about".
2004 Tour Home
