god of yams
It has been one week since I first arrived at Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO to those who know). On friday there was a crazy PEFO party. People told crazy national park stories, one of which involved a poo covered raccoon stuck to an old ladies naked ass. I went home at 10:30 with a terrible headache. The next day Drew and I and a paleontology grad student who works at the park named Laurie went camping near Flagstaff at the base of the San Fransisco Peaks, which are so tall they still have snow on them. I had no sleeping bag so I purchased a slumberjack. It was real cold that night and in Arizona you are rarely aloud to build a fire when you are camping, which sucks to the nth degree. Since it was cold and there was no fire we went to bed pretty early. Since i wasn't tired when I went to bed and it wasn't wall that comfty on the ground, and the tent was pretty small for two dudes I slept none. Tired of the charade I got up at 5:20 and climbed a nearby peak I will call "old trapezoid" It wasn't very tall, but since it was pretty steep and the air was so thin (and I am reaallly out of shape) I had to rest every hundred feet or so and wait for my heart to stop going 8000000 miles an hour. It was worth it when I got to the top though. I saw a lot of land. I slid down mostly on my ass, and this was all before 6:30 AM. Later that day we made out way through the Hope and Navajo nations. In the hopi nation we drove up to the top of this mesa called Walpi where the Hopi have been living for hundreds of years. It was sunday and they were doing their sacred dances. There were a lot of folks there, mostly Hopi i believe (except one other paleface lady wearing a shirt that said "don't worry, be hopi") all gathered to watch the dances. Excitement mounted and lots of children and women ran around with cakes. There were several Hopi males dressed up in the traditional Hopi dancing costumes, similar to Kachina dolls, if ya know what I am talking about. Soon the leader grabbed a megaphone and started talking about how all the kids should stay in school and not do drugs. Then the dancing began. The music was low and it took me a minute to recognize the sacred music of the Hopi, Bob Marley. They hobled around to "could this be love" for a while while one guy whom had painted on his back "skinny bastard" stopped dancing for a minute just long enough to change a pesky lightbuld. This was all happening in a plaza created by tightly packed pueblo type houses almost completely surounding it. There were hundreds watching from chairs on the ground and from the roof tops. After they got done getting down to Marley they through in some hank williams and danced to that Bayou song and the one about the cigar store indian. Many of the dancers had given up by this time though. Needless to say my companions and I were on a higher spiritual plane by this time, so we went to get snowcones. Next came the Navajo res, where I have never seen such vast expanses of beautiful nothing in all my life.