TIPS FOR FUTURE TRAVELERS

An exploration into the past

From the Coastal Plain to the High Desert

August 11, 2014

Fig. 1 - Edward Abbey taking notes in Turkey Pen Ruins (Grand Gulch, Utah). Photo by Mark Klett ©

Wilderness is not a luxury

     “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.  A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” 

Abbey, Edward (1968) 

Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

 New York: Random House. 

Ballantine Books edition, 1971, p. 211. 

      My first tip is simple. Leave your electronic devices. Most of the time they will not work anyway. Find a good book. 

Fig. 2 - Abbey's Challenge

      For many years I had read and heard about Edward Abbey, the radical environmentalist.  Finally, I was able to meet him in the surroundings that he was so moved by.  I had completed my 1,600 mile journey from Houston to the “four corners”, stopping at every major archaeological site and natural landmark along the way. A few hours of rest in Durango, Colorado, found me wandering the streets of this old mining town. The mines are long gone, and the town is now the tourist way-station of La Plata Mountains. He had been waiting for me for a long time, patiently, gathering dust in a small corner of the shelf. I needed some good, quiet company for the coming week, and I took him along. It seemed in order, so I could recover some energy and sense after digging all day under the sun, and looking in the dirt for clues about our past in an occasional potsherd. For a week I was going to pretend to be a desert solitaire and lie under the stars.      
    
 Abbey was a controversial writer in controversial times. He was recognized as an advocate of environmental issues, even labeled as an anarchist. Born in 1927 in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, he lived most of his life in the high desert of the four corners.  He worked as a seasonal Park Ranger for the United States National Park Service, as a writer and college professor. In 1956 and 1957, he was assigned by himself custody of Arches National Monument, near Moab, Utah. The area was still not open as a park and was very much in a natural state.  He lived in a tiny house trailer, without water or electricity, and a backyard of 33,000 acres of windswept ancient canyons. Ten years later his experience became “Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness”.

     Desert Solitaire, published in 1968, was Abbey’s fourth book, and first essay. It is a combination of personal introspections, anecdotes about a few people he interacted with, legends and stories of the area, and vivid descriptions of the landscape he explored. The rich narrative of his adventures in the canyons, and especially his rafting down the Colorado River inside the guts of Glen Canyon, are on equal standing as Thoreau’s “Walden; Or Life in the Forest”.

     Desert Solitaire was good company, easy reading, and an invitation to enjoy our natural environment. Take a hike, find a trail and support your local, state and national parks.

Figure 3 -  One of hundreds of natural arches/bridges in the four corners area - Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

       I learned several lessons on this trip to the four corners area. I wish someone had advised me ahead of time of some of the peculiar conditions that the traveler will find.  Flexibility allowed me to make the most of some of them.  Others simply had to be accepted as a fact and live with it.

VISITING THE PUEBLOS
Most of them are actual living communities, where daily lives go through the normal events of any day.  Some are specially designated areas where some may reside permanently, but the site has been elevated to the equivalent of a monument full of restrictions and limitations to the visitor.  Find out as much as you can ahead of time.  Things to look for:  Feast (holiday) days, when the Pueblo may be completely closed to visitors.  Sometimes the Feast may last several consecutive days. Many of the Pueblos allow free movement of visitors, within reason to respect privacy.  Others may be visited only with a guide and following a pre-determined itinerary and route.  There may be scheduled hours during which the Pueblo is open to the public. There may be entrance fees, parking fees, and camera fees. Video is usually not allowed. They even threaten to confiscate your equipment.  Remember: they are in sovereign land. Respect the rules.

HOTELS AND LODGING
If you are planning within a budget, find out if the towns you will be visiting have "high" and "low" season rates.  Some cities seem to have a range of rates that vary 100% between the low season and the high season.  Smaller towns seem unaffected. There is also a very diverse way of adding to the room cost:  city taxes, state taxes, surcharges, fees, parking, and even "donations" that creep into the bills. 20% of these extra charges are not surprising.

THE MONSOON SEASON
A desert is a desert, except when it is not.  It hardly ever rains, but when it does, it comes down with thunderstorms and even hail.  The few inches of rain that fall in the area happen during the monsoon, in August, September and October. Be prepared to be surprised as the weather can change quickly.  Pay attention to the roads.  In the low spots, there are no bridges.  You will see depth markers.  These measure how high the water may get above the road.  If there is water flowing over a road, do not cross it.  What they call a "wash" is a dry river bed that can reach flood state a few minutes after a rain in the vicinity. You do not want to be washed away. If you are hiking in the high mountains, come down below the tree line if a storm approaches. You do not want to be a lightning rod on high ground.

GASOLINE AND SERVICE STATIONS
Check your map.  Do not venture out unless your gas tank is full. On many secondary and rural roads you may go for a hundred miles and not encounter another car. If you are on an unpaved road, be prepared for anything. Make sure your spare tire is inflated properly, that you have some tools, a flashlight, a blanket and lots of water to drink.  If the map says the road is for four wheel drive vehicles, do not venture unless that is what you are driving.

COMMUNICATIONS
Once you are outside the main cities, do not count on any airwave.  Get used to the GPS voice muttering: "lost satellite signal". Your device, Ipad, cell phone and lap top will usually flash "no network available".  This explains the irregularity of this blog while travelling. I could only publish new posts when I landed on a hot spot near civilization.  At a particularly nice and expensive hotel in the mountains that advertised WiFi, the only place where one could have enough signal strength and speed was on a balcony overlooking the plains. Some phone networks seem to work better than others in this area. The most reliable system was Sirius satellite radio.  Bring some quarters.  Your best bet may be an antique pay-phone in a bar.

DEHYDRATION AND HEATSTROKE
To avoid health issues related to the desert climate and the high altitude you must drink about two quarts of water per day.  Carry water with you at all times, and drink small amounts frequently.  Pack your own re-usable containers, chill them, carry them on a small ice-chest.  Avoid bottled water in plastic bottles.  Do not contribute to the pollution. Disposing waste in the communities in the desert is a problem. Do not litter the parks, the ruins, the monuments or the pristine wilderness.  Take a hat, cover your neck, use long sleeves.  Apply sun-blocker with UV protection. Your arm and legs may be getting toasted while you drive.

RADIO
Bring your own music device.  Radio stations are few and far between. Often your only sound will come from a short range Indian reservation station in the local dialect.  At night, when most local radio stations have ended their transmissions, powerful airwaves with "norteno" or "mariachi" music will filter from the southern deserts, alternating with what sounds like evangelical preaching in Spanish. Satellite radio is a good option, or plain silence, which under the stars and in the desert may sound quite different from "city" silence. Listen for the canyons whispering. 

IT IS AN OPPORTUNITY
Your visit to the four corners and all its surrounding natural beauty is an opportunity.  Take it as a cleansing experience, as detox, as a twelve step program to stop "device" dependency.  I had the opportunity to observe a distraught set of parents battle it out with their teenage daughters. The lodging was comfortable, the food delicious, the weather cool and breezy, the view magnificent, elk were roaming by and a few wild horses could be seen in the adjacent fields of mountain hay. Yet the young ones were not happy because their devices did not work. They were completely unaware of their surroundings, opportunities calling them to reconnect to a simpler way of life. 



Key words: Texas 4th-7th grade Social Studies, Native American tribes, habitat and lifezones, cultural adaptation, Anazasi, Ancestral Pueblo, Rio Grande cultures, New Mexico and Colorado tribes, Paleo-Indians, Archaic and Classic Indians of the Southwest, Geography of the Rio Grande, Mesa Verde, Chaco, Taos, Acoma, Indian ruins, archaeological artifacts, teacher resources, Fund for Teachers, Texas.