Journeys Afoot in North America
Part I, Early Walks
In the summer of '67 there was cricket to be played in front of International House with Indians and Pakistanis, and stars to be learned strolling the green Midway at evening. I was in love. But nevertheless by summer's end I had to breathe the pines. Is there any direction but west and up?
My friend flew out to share one of the Colorado camps. Is it sanitary, she said in the pines, in the pines? This taller person who lit fires even spoke differently, it seemed. His temper didn't help. She returned.
I climbed Snowmass in the wilderness of that name and started the road again to California. Near Colonna an elderly stonemason stopped for me in the middle of a bridge. He told of another time he had given a ride:
"There was this Air Force Captain
I picked up out in Nevada
He had a harelip
Right after we started
Sitting about like you
He put his arm around my wife
She scooted over by me quick
I didn't say nothing
Just drove on calm
Till we got to a town
And right by a bank
I pulled up and said
This is far as we go buddy
I wanted to be some place
Where I could put him out
If I had to
Why he warn't no Captain at all
Just impersonating an officer
Not only did he have a harelip
He wasn't even very intelligent
Made sort of mumbling noises
But the world is full of good people
Only one in a thousand is a heel.
You want to drive awhile,
My arms are swelling again."
While I drove, his big hands moved explaining how to choose rocks that fit cleanly into one another, how a fence or wall is made double with a slight inward lean. Termites don't eat this, he could show me how to build in lasting rock. A stonemason is never out of work. But words may rust in rain, he might have added.
In memory Red Mountain Pass that came next was a long slog, but somewhere over it a prospector offered a lift in pouring rain. All the side roads belonged to this man. Many times we stopped to ditch and repair them so they wouldn't wash away. He knew a café that served the world's biggest slice of pie. I had apple!
Noticing the ice axe he asked me to stay with him to Farmington, New Mexico to meet a friend who was organizing an expedition to search Mount Ararat in Turkey for Noah's Ark. They needed both me, as mountaineer, and my friend in Chicago, who could translate the just released documents of Czar Nicholas relating a Russian sighting of remains. It sounded like fun, but too expensive since each expedition member would bear his own costs. I had to say no.
Across Navajo Reservation the only lifts offered were by Indians in their pickup trucks. They drilled me on how to say Yah--teh--hay, how are you, with a rising inflection. I quit walking in Gallup for a train to my children in San Diego. I was in something of a fever to get back to Chicago.