Dazed in the Desert

The rain finally stopped, almost two full days after it started. I sat in my room and watched television, and read, and gleaned Globe, Arizona's claim to fame while eating another calzone. Globe, it seems to the locals anyway, is the site of two of the world's biggest copper mines, and everyone working at the mines is both a) very busy mining for copper to sell to China and India and b) spending their off hours at the American motel, getting blitzed. Globe's other claim to fame is that apparently John Wayne stayed in this very motel once, when it was called the Copper Hills motel (the name some locals still use, including the young woman at the Safeway grocery store, who sold me some potato chips, and some chocolate, and various other snacks - I felt like I hadn't eaten in a week.)

Thankfully, the faucet in the sky was turned off, and I waddled over to my bike and made my way to the next stop, Safford. It really felt strange riding after two days of lounging and loafing and reading "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and eating my weight in junk food:, I was sort of in a fog. But it was a beautiful day: 85 degrees, blue sky, nice breeze, good smooth road. So even though I was in a fog, it was a warm enveloping fog, not the cold fog that makes you wet and shivery.

I saw some interesting things today: a hill with cactus that looked like they were climbing to the top. I rode through the San Carlos Apache Reservation - miles of shrubs, cactus, mesas and mountains occasionally interrupted by a town. The towns were a hodgepodge of trailers and ramshackle shacks with piles of scrap metal in the yard, or the remnants of a car, or just dirt and rocks. I stopped at what turned out to be the reservation's biggest store and bought an apple and a juice, then sat out in front of store's adobe wall on a worn wooden bench and watched the clouds roll over the mountains across the street.

I was joined in a few minutes by a guy who ambled out of the store, sat down a different bench, saw me, said hello while getting up and plunking down on the opposite end of my bench. He was obviously Native American (everyone was, I was the only white man around. No one really seemed to mind, though), so I asked him if he was an Apache. He said no, that he was half Apache and half Cree - he seemed a little sad to me, then he went on to say that his father had been Cree, and a rambler and absent for most of his life. His father had also been an alcoholic and had died just a few years ago; he went to get his father in Kansas and brought him back to the reservation to bury him. He was currently living on the reservation with his mother, working as a brush fire fighter, which he said didn't pay very well but he made enough to get by. He was hoping to get off the reservation someday, like just about everyone else, he said. I finished my snack and said goodbye, and as I rode through the rest of the reservation I wondered where all the money from the casino I passed on the way in went; couldn't it provide a better life than the one my Native American friend was living?

I passed into a strange landscape: the hard, cracked floor of the desert gave way to green fields of grass, and row after row of cabbages and other greens. The land from the outer edge of the reservation to Safford is irrigated, though it seems that most of the land is dedicated to the growing of hay, to feed the herds of cattle that graze in the numerous fields in the area. An oasis; strange to see trees and grass and water in the middle of the desert, but there it was nonetheless.

And so magically there were also a lot of little towns on the way into Safford. I stopped at one of them, Pima, for a drink at the local store only to find the store had closed five minutes earlier. I stood on the wooden slats of the old time front porch drinking my water when the front doors swung open and out stepped the prototypical western cowboy: shock of white hair under a broad rimmed hat, long mustache, western shirt, cowboy boots. "If you want something right quick you can come on in and git it" he drawled. I jumped up and followed him into the darkened room, grabbed a Gatorade and brought it to the old fashioned register. As I paid and we chatted about the crazy weather I couldn't help but notice all of the guns on the wall next to the counter; rifles, shotguns, pistols, you name it it was there. Then I spotted what I was sure was a loaded rifle leaning up against the wall in a corner behind the counter: the wild west. I got my change, thanked the cowboy and went back outside thinking if I ever pursued a life of crime I'd make sure to steer clear of his store. He was right behind me, locking the door, jumping into his truck in the blink of an eye and leaving behind a trail of dust as he headed onto the road, all before I even had the cap off my bottle. I thought he either had a hot date or an NRA meeting to get to, finished my drink and followed his dust trail down the road to Safford.