Beyond the Setting Sun

Curse of the Preacher

My tent was surrounded by stone huts.  The huts were bright orange, green and blue and it looked like a scene from thousands of years ago.  The cars carved out of tree trunks, with round wooden wheels, a huge dinosaur skeleton... and a fifteen foot cut-out of Fred Flintstone gave it away though: I'd reached the town of Bedrock in Arizona.

The place was a small town just south of the Grand Canyon.  Geared up to entertain kids on their way to or from the Canyon, it was closed for winter, but was the best place for me to stop the night.  Some workmen had let me into the place and given me coffee, Danish pastries and chocolate.  With no stores or other towns for the next thirty miles, it was perfect.

Route 64 led me south and onto a section of old Route 66.  The Kaibab Forest, with redwoods, pines, junipers and yuccas gave way to scrubby sage, agaves and smaller plants of the high desert.  Water here was scarce.  It was good that I'd got water at Bedrock, as nothing lay between there and the next small town of Williams.

Dave Karaker had a friend called Lucy in Williams who would put me up for the night.  Lucy owned a Mexican restaurant in the next town, Ash Fork, and had friends in Seligman.  From there it was only two days to Kingman.  In the desert was the land of tortillas and enchiladas, tostados, Tex-Mex and much more.  The South-West bordered with Mexico and had a different feel from Utah and The Rockies.

Native American tribes like the Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai and Hualapai had lived in the area for thousands of years.  When the Spanish arrived, from 1521 onwards, they brought Catholic missionaries, cattle and horses.  A fragile desert ecology was changed with irrigation, but overgrazing by cattle and goats had destroyed much of what had been there before.

This was the land of the foot-long gila monster lizards.  In the mountains short-furred beaver and the lure of gold drew settlers from the East.  Trappers and prospectors flowed in from the cold north in search of an easier life.  The U.S. Cavalry followed.

Not far from where I walked the Apache war-leaders Cochise and Geronimo had made a stand against the incoming Americans.  Fighting a guerrilla war, with hit and run tactics, Cochise held out for eleven years, from 1861 to 1872, but could do little to stop the land being taken over.  Cochise signed a treaty and kept peace for two years, until his death in 1874.  Cochise's son Naiche became leader of the Chokonen Chiricahua Apache and fought alongside Geronimo.  Raids and attacks on the U.S. and Mexican troopers carried on until Geronimo finally surrendered in 1886.  Geronimo ended his life on a reservation at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, far from his desert home.

Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Hualapai, Havasupai, Utes, Piutes, Pueblo and Apache: the different tribes' existence was hard and they asked for little, but flourished.  Art, crafts and cultures varied, with different myths, dances, jewellery and clothing.  It was only in 1912 that Arizona and New Mexico had become part of the Union.

Route 66 took me through this desert land.  The stretch of old Route 66 that went from Ash Fork to Kingman was less than a hundred miles long, but one of the longest stretches that remained of a road that had once wound from Chicago to L.A.  More than two thousand miles, the road had been the way to go from North East to South West.  St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff, Kingman, Barstow and San Bernardino were all places on the road.

The road that I walked on was rough and pockmarked, undulating and twisting, as it took me through the scrubby desert to the south of the Grand Canyon.  I was looking for a way through to Las Vegas and the Nathan Adelson Hospice there.

On the map I saw Grand Canyon Caverns, Peach Springs, Truxton and Valentine.  I planned to get water at these places.  Kingman would be the next sizeable town.

The temperature was much warmer than it had been on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was Tuesday, 31st January and about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  Blue skies, sun and the undulating hills were soothing.  After the cold of Utah it felt heavenly.  Low hazy mountains showed to the north and west.  In gullies off the road scrubby cottonwoods or mesquite would appear every so often, but for the most part there were just tufts of dry grass and spiky little sage bush.