Grand Canyon
23 March 2024
As it turns out, I have to stop in Tuba City for fuel and I really dodged one here. I’m accosted while filling up by a member of the indigenous population, wearing mirror shades and with a face covered in scars, asking me questions about my bike, and would I like to come for something to eat? He gets quite shirty when I repeatedly refuse. I only get rid of him when I pretend I’ve just received a phone call on my helmet comms.
This incident, and the online slatings of Tuba City all beg the question: why it is so tragic? After all, it bisects the route between Grand Canyon and Monument Valley so is the perfect Base Camp for visiting one or both for those not in a camper van or don’t want to camp. Around Grand Canyon, hotel beds are wincingly expensive (£200 a night plus) and scarce, so not an option for many.
By way of example; Moab seems to have positioned itself just so. Certainly, it’s in a more attractive location than Tuba City but not a destination in itself. Visitors use it to fan out in all directions, to Bryce and Zion Canyons, the Needles and beyond. On returning at the end of the day for a hot shower and a good meal, the options go all the way from inexpensive Mexican up to $200-a-head New American fayre that would grace any major city.
But Tuba City not serving this need. It’s trying (a bit…) insofar as it has McDonalds, Subway and so on. But I can’t help wondering if it’s the Navajo insistence on keeping it dry that is a major contributory factor. This has the effect of making it a no-no for the mass-market and, by extension, any significant inward investment.
If Tuba City were a perfectly preserved Indian Town, where the folk went about their business in a dignified manner, while children played happily amongst themselves, that would be just great. A resistance to the incursion of the modern world would be understandable. But it isn’t. I cannot conceive of a more desperately sad place. To use a term not often favoured by urban geographers, it’s a dump.
This rant is not just about banning booze but an increasing level of prohibition and restrictions on personal liberty, albeit most insidious when the roots are steeped in religion, tradition or a combination of the two. I’m not having a pop at any particular group as they are all just as bad as each other, albeit in their own not-so-sweet way. Whether it’s avoidance of various foods, based on hygiene standards that passed their sell-by date aeons ago, periodic and pointless self-starvation, a refusal to allow girls and women medical treatment, education or positions of authority, decrying population control of any sort, demonising people based on their sexual preferences, or any other unreasonable, unjustifiable or plain batshit-bonkers stance, it’s always the usual suspects behind it…
A motley collection of zealous, finger-wagging theocrats or clergy, woolly-minded hand-wringing liberals or not-to-be-argued-with, self-appointed ‘community leaders’ cloaking their obduracy with custom and ‘cultural differences’ who are the culprits. Collectively, they can always be relied on to come to precisely the wrong conclusion based on available, empirical evidence while justifying their stance with evermore convoluted arguments.
And it’s always the same people who suffer: the people who live in abject poverty while the opportunity to improve their lot is denied them. I’m not anti-tradition or anti-religion per se but when a strict adherence to any doctrine is detrimental to the very people the appointed leaders profess to serve, this needs to be called out. The stark reality the world around has changed and the Navajo don’t seem to have found a way of co-existing with it. They need to. The world is never going to change back again, and they owe their people the chance of a decent life.
Sermon over. There’s still time to get to the Grand Canyon for late afternoon when the views from the Desert Watchtower Lookout are at their best. Somewhat cryptically, I’ve also heard that no two views of the Grand Canyon are ever the same, given the constantly shifting light. But your first exposure to it will live with you for the rest of your days. I now believe this to be true.
Despite the number of visitors, there is a stillness that borders on the religious. At the entrance, a sign announces you are about to get your first sign of the Grand Canyon and it’s just so stupefying, the usual inane babble of crowds dies down to a murmur.
People queue quietly and patiently for a ticket to ascend the eighty-four steps of the watchtower, a quite beautiful 1930s building with a viewing terrace. When it’s my turn, the light has changed again, and with it, the Grand Canyon has changed again.
That’s all from me for today. Over and out. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, there, are a couple of chapters at least below. Just incredible…
24 March 2024
There’s a light dusting on snow on my bike with more flurries for later, but a promise of eight degrees Celsius. Whoopee.
So I do what I would at home on a miserable Sunday afternoon and go to the pictures. Next to the hotel is an IMAX cinema showing a 37-minute film about the history of the Grand Canyon, from a geological and human perspective. I book a ticket for the 13:30 showing and then camp out in Starbucks for the morning.
As is usually the case, the IMAX film is stunning. The photography is sometimes so dramatic, I grab my seat as my lizard brain thinks the helicopter I am not in is going to fly into a cliff. Informative too, giving a whistlestop guide to how the canyon came about and the various people who’ve colonised it over the last 2,500 years out of the six million it took to form.
The snow has stopped but the temperature remains stubbornly at two-degrees but I venture up to Mather Point. It’s that light again: the canyon glows like it’s absorbed the millions of year of sun it has seen, the subtle hues and shadows look like an Edward Hopper painting when I look at the photos later.
Turning left out of my room just before sunset, I’m at the rim of the Grand Canyon. Literally, living on the edge. Again, the light had changed which means yet more photographs. Sorry…
Later, the El Tovar Hotel is a total delight. Grand yet rustic, log-panelled throughout with subdued lighting accenting the various ochres of the deep carpet and original art on the walls. It feels unchanged over the 120 years it’s been open, but without feeling fusty or old.
Perched at the bar with the signature cocktail involving Bourbon, Red Vermouth and other trickery, I scan a list of former guests and through half-closed eyes, can just make out Ernest Hemingway slugging it out with Albert Einstein at one of the low tables overlooking the canyon. Once seated in the dining room, I’m sure Teddy Roosevelt was holding forth with FDR and Calvin Coolidge while Bill Clinton tried to get a word in edgeways.
Most people of my acquaintance know Sunday evening dinner at my place is always a rich, meat and tomato-based pasta recipe. There are no alternatives and resistance is futile.
So, on this Sunday night, I’m delighted to find that the El Tovar Dining Room has listed exactly such a dish. A bolognese featuring tomatoes and ‘ground Elk’ which is bad news for the Elk but excellent for the rest of us.
So I have their signature French Onion Soup followed by Elkie and both are simplistically wonderful. It’s not even that expensive at $80 for two courses and a couple of glasses of good wine. Is it the greatest food ever? No. But it is the best possible end to a stay at Grand Canyon? Yes.
On Monday morning the weather has lifted so I take one of the free shuttle buses to the western edge of the canyon, reachable from the village. Looking into the void through the crystal clear air, I can clearly hear helicopters but not see them. Scanning the sky and canyon with binoculars, I can just pick them out, like fleas buzzing around a magnificent beast.
I started this piece writing about Tuba City and I’ll end with it. Arriving in Tuba, the world seems hopeless, nothing is possible and there is nothing to live for. On leaving Grand Canyon, the world is epic, magnificent and anything is possible.
In 1962, John Steinbeck commented that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Grand Canyon is simply magical and embodies this spirit of All-American optimism and adventure like nowhere else.
