My Krazy Kat pilgrimage is over.

I checked off Coconino County and Monument Valley from my To Visit list.

However, both places are now on my Revisit list.

*****

It’s been a week of 22-mile hikes through the Grand Canyon. Blisters, sunburns, a bizarre allergy (I am not allergic to anything), heat exhaustion – and near death for Arizona Cheryl! – we had it all. Arizona Cheryl did stop a Havasupai cowboy with the words “Please help me, sir” and got a bottle of Gatorade from her saviour. I lulled her to sleep under a huge red boulder with stories of ancient Havasu vampires with cartilage ribs that nest in cliff crevasses during the day. I later found two femurs (human?) under a rock shelter which a bold lizard shared with me.

The Navajo were wonderful hosts – their frybread is like Romanian gogoÅŸi and the thought of their mutton sandwiches is making me wistful. I missed, numerous times, my chance to try Navajo tacos.

I also did not meet any Hopi – those happy people and the generators of a nifty book called Hopi Sex Tales.

I did meet Mr. Morris, a Navajo septuagenarian and among those who stormed the beaches of Normandy sixty years ago. I also met Eslaim, a Navajo beautician who gave me a manicure the colour of reservation mesas and who introduced me to the music of Navajo-African singer Radmilla Cody.

Bookwise, I am guilty of breaking my promise not to buy any more books. But I found a 1900 account of a female schoolteacher’s life on the Hualapai and Havasupai Reservations and a book on coatimundi and a book on Arizonan First Nations cooking and a book on the weirder aspects of Arizona (I missed my chance to discuss prairie dog language with a Northern Arizona University professor as well as the Amado grill). I also stumbled upon the Flagstaff Value Village (called Savers). From the reservations, I came away with a dalmatian rock necklace (of which I am exceedingly proud) and a black obsidian fish pendant.

The saguaro cactus was charming. The jumping cholla was an adversary I missed this time. I turned over a few rocks looking for scorpions and tarantulas with no luck. I did see elk, cottontails, jackrabbits, a dead, skinned javelina, and a roadrunner.

No one in Arizona seems to have stumbled on Krazy Kat being the perfect marketing ploy for promoting their state.

*****

It seems rather unhealthy to be back home. Here in front of a computer, instead of contemplating some big red rock in the American Southwest. The Vancouver greenery blares at me. I miss the flock of swallows outside my Flagstaff window and the train clamour.

Even though all the militarism angered me (my travelmates warned me to hush up before I got us all arrested), last night, encountering a Marine recruitment centre, I did sign up for more information. I am curious if they will bombard me with Marine junkmail.

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