One of the things I did on this trip was to go through the Four Corners area.
The Four Corners area is where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet at right angles. It also happens to be where a few Indian reservations’ borders are drawn, with the Navajo and the Ute meeting at the boundary.
There’s a benchmark monument on the spot, for which you pay some money to see and photograph yourself and whatever. The Indians have set it up. But you know what? The actual point of convergence is in the ravine *next to* the monument.
I didn’t visit the monument. I probably should have, since it wouldn’t have been any more out of the way than my aborted plan to visit Valley of the Gods and Moki Dugway and all the cool stuff up on Cedar Mesa. Maybe in the fall, when temperatures are a little less deadly.
But I mention all this to point out that I was in the Navajo reservation for quite a while, and once you enter from Farmington, NM, you don’t find any motels until you get to… Well, somewhere a third of the way up north into Utah.
I left Farmington thinking I’d get dinner and a room in Shiprock, which is within the reservation. No such luck. Beyond Shiprock, a massive lightning storm was making its way across the surface of the world, and I was driving into it, uncertain where I was going to sleep for the night, within a foreign, sovereign nation where I was only a tourist, an outsider. I turned back to the comforts of the white people culture in Farmington.
The Motel 6 was the cheapest again. They only had one room left, and it was sold to me by a friendly, happy woman who happened to also be a burn victim, with thick makeup disguising some of the mysteries. I went to my room just as the cop arrived. The cop couldn’t find a place to park after I got the last space. After he blocked some people in, he wandered the parking lot in uniform, looking for a specific room, his Mag-Light held in that up-on-the-shoulder pose, aiming it to verify the room number on his little card, and then aiming it at the motel room doors, searching.
I was going up to my room. A young woman, maybe a minor but maybe not, beautiful features, dressed like a white schoolgirl despite her obvious Native American heritage. She was talking to someone in a car. A big, black car. The fanciest car in the parking lot. She pointed up to the second floor, right where I was going into my room. “I’m in 224,” she says. I’m in 223. She’s pointing right at me, inadvertently. She turns back, aware she’s making me feel awkward. Later, there were identifiable noises coming from 224.
The pizza guy arrives. I know this because every sound is making me paranoid, and I look out at the parking lot where I can see my van. I know I’m just paranoid. Vandalism would ruin the gig for everybody, even the cop, who didn’t seem to be taking anyone in. Perhaps he’s a client of the guy in the big black car. The pizza guy arrives and I hear his footsteps approach 224, and there’s a transaction, and then nothing. I go back to watching Discovery Channel.
I nod off to Man vs. Wild, and wake a while later to… Well, I don’t remember. I crack the curtains and look around, and it’s all quiet. The silence of the desert has finally seeped into the sleeping world of Farmington. The pimps and hookers are in sleepy dreamland, the cops and pizza guys are nodding off. The lightning storm has even begun to still itself, and is less threatening, more like someone mumbling in their sleep.
The next day is bright and hot and when I go to Denny’s, there’s a line out the door. I wander Main St. looking for two things: A grocery store and a restaurant. Why are there no grocery stores in Farmington? I eventually find Blake’s Lotaburger, which is where Indians cook hamburgers to serve to other Indians, apparently. I’ve never given an order for a burger combo to a happier person. Like, legitimately happy to be taking your order, and utterly glad to bring food your way. it was a pretty good burger, too. I hear Navajo being spoken in the back, all the patrons are a few shades darker than I am (which is not saying much, really), and little Navajo kids are playing over the shared back of adjacent booths.
I wonder if all these Navajo have moved out of the reservation or if they commute. Is there a Navajo bus? A Navajo monorail project? Should I ask them if they prefer it inside or outside? Does the idea of white people in motels hiring their daughters for sex fill them with the kind of rage that would seem obvious, or is there some mysterious mitigating factor I can’t comprehend? Is this why there are no motels in Shiprock? I want to ask these friendly people at the burger joint. I really don’t understand.
I finally get ice and some food at an overpriced convenience store, which is exactly why the grocery is so well hidden. I head west. I’ll spend the day just out of reach of Monument Valley, and I’ll avoid the Four Corners monument. I’ll redirect the oven-like wind over my body in hopes of not getting sick. And I’ll end the day by pushing through the smoke of distant wildfires, to reach a 7,200-foot pass where I laugh as I find that I need to turn on the heater.
