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Show THE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2005-JANUARY 2006 POINTBLANK BORDER: TALK BY MICHAEL The drive from Flagstaff north to Bluff passes through the most shocking and beautiful landscape I know. Navajoland. I've crossed the reservation a hundred times during my fifteen years in the West. Always 1am dazzled, but rarely doI stop. I'm a white guy. And, though I count a few Navajo as friends, I have not been invited to the reservation. To me, it seems like the home of a polite but distant neighbor. I step around it en route to other places. But once last spring I stopped. At the end of the day I stepped out of my truck into a short, nameless slot canyon near the northern border of the Rez. The air smelled like clean wet sand and sprouting grass. Birdsong echoed off the canyon walls. WOLEG17 Junior and Everson had grown up less than a mile from where we stood. For the next hour we talked -- about our homes, our work, our families. Junior told me he had just finished high the turnout where I'd parked. "I live in Colorado now," Everson said. uncle and my baby sister -- they're all in father, he's in North Carolina. Where you It had rained. Clear water poured down the usually dry creek bottom, slipping around rusted steel fence posts, beneath strands of barbed wire sagging with clumps of sand-caked grass, sticks and leaves, left by bigger early-season storms. At a bend in the trail I smelled tobacco smoke and heard murmuring voices, then laughter. Upstream, two young men stood under a big bare cottonwood. Navajos. I felt a flash of guilt for trespassing. And I felt fear -- night was falling, the men were drinking, and we live in a violent country with a violent history of racial injustice. The men hadn't seen me. I considered turning around before they did. But lately I'm trying to be more open, to make the first move across the great divide that separates strangers from each other. It's a personal choice, but one with political overtones. After September 11, when my government declared a global -- and by definition endless -- war on terrorism, I decided to live beyond some of my fears. I realized I wanted more than the well-defended security that seems to be the primary goal of mainstream American life. I want peace. And I don't want anybody else to tell ME who the enemy is. So I waved. The two guys waved back. "This rain smells GOOD!" one yelled. Inodded and joined them. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. The younger of the two, a fat kid named Junior, offered me a beer. I declined, in the polite, practiced way of the no-longer-drinking. The older guy, who might have been thirty, gave me an American Spirit, and a light. school, and lived in the trailer opposite "but my folks are here. My mother, my the cemetery down by the church. My from?" oy eda a es (THOUGH | COUNT A FEW NAVAJO AS FRIENDS, | HAVE NOT BEEN INVITED TO THE RESERVATION: SROs eee eae BOs OF A POLITE BUT DISTANT NEIGHBOR. rss WON BRR SN Olegee ane) ~ OTHER PLACES, AND, I said that I had grown up in the East, but that Flagstaff is home now. That's good, he smiled. "Good to know where you belong." "Yeah," I said. "And it's good to know your neighbors. Michael Wolcott lives in Flagstaff. POINTBLANK SUBMISSIONS Submissions to The Zephyr may be on any topic even remotely relevant to its readers. They must be between 500 and 1000 words. Authors of essays printed in this publication receive a five year subscription and our gratitude. { LITTLE WEASEL ADS, INC. PRESENTS THE DESERT RAT COMMANDO , SEASON'S GREETINGS AHOY! From the Desert Rat Commando! Alabaster Navajo Sculptures Rugs ajo Kachinas Hopi & Nav y Pueblo Potter a : Hopi, Navajo ; Jewelry , Paiute Navajo, Ute kets & Papago Bas rae Southern Utah's Finest Selection 100 S. MAINSTREET PAGE4 fa 259.8118 |