After leaving Acoma, you drive again long and tediously but without serious hindrance, all the way to Gallup. At Gallup there is a hotel, a small frame, frontier type of building. But by the time we reached it we agreed with Mr. X. that it would be more of an experience to spend the night under the stars. How much the beauty of the stars would have tempted us had the hotel been more inviting I am not very sure. Beyond Gallup you run into the Navajo Indian Reservation, your road having ascended rather steeply through parklike woods of cedars, and the altitude again affects both lungs and carburetor, but even if it makes you gasp a little it is an essence of deliciousness as reviving as an elixir of life. You go past the road that leads to the wonderful Canyon de Chelly, but it is impossible for a motor—any kind of a motor, even the littlest and lightest one—to go over it in the early spring, so you continue on until at last, coming out upon a mesa, you see spread below you the Painted Desert! It can be none other. You would be willing to take oath that a great city of palaces in all the colors of the rainbow lies spread before you. It is inconceivable that rock and sand and twilight alone create these turrets and ramparts and bastions of crimson, gold, blue, azure, indigo, purple, and the whole scene immersed in liquid mauve and gold, as though the atmosphere were made of billions and billions of particles of opalescent fluid. And as you stand in silent contemplation an Indian with scarlet head-band rides by on a piebald pony so that there shall be no color unused.
Across the Real Desert
At last when the vividness of colors begin to soften into vapory purples, deepening again to indigo, you gather a little brushwood and for the mere companionable cheerfulness make a campfire to eat your supper by. You probably heat a can of soup, roast potatoes, and finally, having nothing else to cook or heat for the present, hit upon the brilliant thought of boiling water, while the fire burns, for next morning’s coffee. At least this is what we did, and poured it into a thermos to keep hot. Also we climbed back into the car. Personally I have an abject terror of snakes, though there was very likely none within a hundred miles of us. For nothing on earth would I make myself a bed on the open ground. Also the seats of our car—there was at least one satisfactory thing about it—are only four or five inches from the floor, and sitting in it is like sitting in an upholstered steamer chair with the footrest up—a perfectly comfortable position to go to sleep in. So that bundled up in fur coats with steamer blankets over us we were just as snug as the proverbial bugs in a rug. For my own part, though, the night was too beautiful out under that star-hung sky willingly to shut my eyes and blot it out. My former fears of prowling Indians, strange animals, spooks, spirits—or perhaps just vast empty blackness—had vanished completely, and instead there was merely the consciousness of an experience too beautiful to waste a moment of. I could not bear to go to sleep. The very air was too delicious in its sparkling purity to want to stop consciously breathing it. Overhead was the wide inverted bowl of purple blue made of an immensity of blues overlaid with blues that went through and through forever, studded with its myriad blinking lamps lit suddenly all together, and so close I felt that I could almost reach them with my hand.
I really don’t know whether I slept or not, but the thing I became conscious of was the beginning of the dawn. Overhead the heaven was still that deep unfathomable blue. In the very deepest of its color the crescent moon and single star glowed with a light rayless as it was dazzling. Over near the horizon the blue lightened gradually to pale azure and deepened where it rested on the brown purple rim of the desert to a band of reddish orange, very soft, very melting. Gradually the moon and star grew dim like turned-down lamps against a heaven turning turquoise. Down in the valley hung a mist of orchid against which the black branches of a nearby cedar were etched in Japanese silhouette. Far, far on the north horizon the clouds of day were herded, waiting. Then a single cloud advanced, dipped itself in rose color and edged itself with gold; a streak of red, as from a giant’s paint-brush, swept across the sky. A moment of waiting more and then the great blinding sun peered above the eastern mountains’ rim and the clouds broke and scattered like cotton-wool sheep across their pasture skies. The moon turned into a little curved feather dropped from a bird’s breast and the star a pinprick; yet in their hour, how glorious they were!
Celia and I tried to find a stream in which to wash our faces, but, failing in our search, we shared the water in our African bags with the radiator. The hot water in the thermos bottle poured over George Washington coffee did not delay us a moment in our breakfast-making, and it could not have been later than five o’clock when we were well off on our way.
It was an endlessly long day’s run and difficult in places. I’m sure we lost our way several times, a perfectly dispiriting thing to do, as it was much like being lost in a rowboat out in the middle of the ocean. Except while still in the Reservation where we passed occasional Navajos we saw no living person or thing the rest of the day. Sometimes we went over rolling, stubbled prairie, fringed again with cedars and pines; next through a veritable desert of desolation with nothing but rocks and sand. Sometimes the road wound tranquilly through timbered glades; again came a straight, monotonous stretch of sandy trail. Then suddenly it twisted itself over a path of washed-out rock, or suddenly fell into an arroyo. Over and over these symptoms were repeated in every variety of combination. Finally we reached Holbrook, and we drove without any adventures over a traveled road to Winslow.
For nothing would I have missed the experience. It was wonderful, all of it, yet no hotel ever seemed so enchanting as the Harvey, nor was any supper ever so good as the one they so promptly put before us.
Of course, if we had had a breakdown we would have been marooned out in a wilderness! No living being knew our whereabouts and we might quite easily have been dust before anyone would have passed our way. If we had had different equipment we would certainly have gone further. Fortunately the most interesting (as well as most difficult) part of the desert was all behind us, and as we also wanted to motor through California, we had no choice. The car was in a seriously crippled condition; any more arroyos and there really would be no more motoring for us this trip. So, all things considered, we hailed our freight car resignedly, put the motor on it and sent it ahead of us to Los Angeles, while we ourselves took the train to the Grand Canyon.