I LOVE the Arizona desert and New Mexico mesa country.  I'm so high when I'm there.  I hike for miles up dry river beds or along mesa tops and I always seem to meet interesting people and have wonderful adventures.  The mountain forests aren't dark, dense and buggy like here in Ontario, they're open and bright and you can walk freely.  Huge landscape and sky everywhere you look...  sun and dry heat... cactus, rock formations, dust devils, tarantulas & rattlesnakes...  love it! I return to visit whenever I can (i.e. can afford it).

I lived in Arizona for three years (96-98) and spent a whole summer in New Mexico just down the road from El Morro where the above photo was taken.  So why didn't I stay?  I ask myself often!  Especially given chronic respiratory problems I am prone to here in Canada in the winter that just weren't present there.  Well.  It wasn't home & wasn't meant to be.

OK, out with it: I couldn't stand living in a place where the majority of the population is semi-literate, eats WAY too many Whoppers, is heavily armed and appears to me to be mentally ill.  The desert is full of wackos and marginals who have enough weaponry to fight a war.  The cities are disasters of urban geography. (Hey, in my cosmology, any city you need a car to live in is a crime against nature / I didn't even have a drivers license when I arrived there!) Small towns with vestigial main streets boarded up and a strip of Wendy's and Circle K's full of nachos and fluorescent triple extra large slushies along the highway.  The dominant culture is just TOO offensive.  It's like the end of the world.  It's like this is as far as we can go.  The image that came to mind was of the moneyed classes of Europe of the mid-18th century... the people with the wigs... another culture gone just as far as it can go;  a culture taken on the most surreal and bizarre manifestations of wanton consumption, destruction, behaviour and embellishment; a culture existing at the expense of everyone and everything around it; a culture gone right to the edge.  "Après nous...  "  --great quote, supposedly spoken by Madame De Pompadour to Louis XV.  And, no, I don't hate Americans. Most of my American friends share my opinions in these matters and in fact are a whole lot more vehement about it!

So back to Canada I came.  And speaking of urban geography, Calgary (or any city that grew up post-automobile) ain't no better! And speaking of culture, English Canada is just a few steps behind the U.S.  Always a few steps behind.  But living as a hermit like I do, here at the edges of the empire, my face isn't rubbed in it every day.  And it wasn't meant to be, my living in the Southwest.  I really believe that.  I have responsibilities here.  Like Jonah I was brought back.

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The pictures that follow were taken In August 2000.  I met my friend Darren from Vancouver in Phoenix.  We rented a car and drove up through Showlow to Zuni New Mexico.  Visited the Zuni Mountain Sanctuary gathering briefly and then did the tour of NM, UT, CO and AZ.  The ruins tour it turned out to be.  Darren  loved the ruins that are practically all over and me I do landscape so between the two of us we had it covered.  What a wonderful vacation!
 

 near Concho

Ramh Lake 
Zuni
Zuni
Zuni
Chaco Canyon in New Mexico is the ruins of an Anasazi city. Obviously planned & engineered.
Chaco 
Chaco 
 We passed by this strange red landscape in Utah. It was hot hot hot.
 Mexican Hat 
 Monument Valley is where they make the Road Runner cartoons
Monument Valley 
 Keet Seel is an Anasazi ruin on the Navajo reservation. This photo was taken from atop the cliffs leading down to the canyon where the ruins are situated. It's quite a hike which keeps the casual tourists up at the gift shop where they belong :-) :-) :-)
Keet Seel
Unfortunately the creek that runs through the canyon is full of cow shit. Cow shit canyon. It's private land, owned by a ranching family. No idea how such an important place that should be a world heritage site could be allowed to be overrun by cows. Gotta feed the Burger Kingdom, no?
Keet Seel
 The ruins are under an overhang and receive no precipitation at all. It's quite tiny actually. Probably home to a huge family or small clan. It's made of flat stones stuck together with mud. Unlike Chaco, it's nothing fancy construction-wise.
Keet Seel
I had seen pictures of Keet Seel before and not thought much of it. I didn't realize that everything you see here is as it was left 800 years. It is as if the inhabitants left just a few months ago.
Keet Seel

Keet Seel
Like idiots, we weren't prepared for rain during the monsoons and were racing a storm on the way out. We also had a lot of detours and climbing to avoid enclosed areas for fear of flash floods. People are killed every year caught in canyons like this. If it's storming up-canyon, torrents of water can come rushing down even though it's not raining right where you are.
Keet Seel

Keet Seel

Keet Seel
Keet Seel
Keet Seel		 Tired, dirty & happy! 1000 ft down into the canyon, 10 mile hike in through sand and water, 10 miles out & 1000 ft back up! Next time Keet Seel is an overnight hike. Doing it one day is rushed and too much.