Sedona, Arizona

222 years ago, in 1783, a chicken, a sheep and a rooster made the first ascent in a hot air balloon. King Louis XVI thought it would be a good idea to use condemned criminals as the first human pilots, but Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois d'Arlandes got him to change his mind and let them try it out. They lit up the disgusting mix of burning straw and stinking manure in an attached burning pot and off they went.

They landed in a French vineyard, and while the farmers were debating whether to immediately surrender or first make a half-hearted pitchfork charge, the two pilots had the wit and foresight to produce bottles of champagne, a tradition which continues unabated to the present day.

Nothing much happened of note for the next 222 years. Then, on 30 October, 2005, a chicken named Phred and his courageous Faithful Companion made a dawn ascent for a 90-minute uncontrolled flight over the cold Sedona, Arizona desert and flew a distance of 8.5 miles. I was petrified in terror for the entire flight, but I tried not to show and outward signs of panic for the benefit of the women passengers, who chattered happily during the entire ordeal. The flight was followed with a champagne and strawberry breakfast and an Irish ballooning toast.

The hiking here is good. We're heading on an easy hike six miles up a canyon later this morning and then hitting the Municipal tennis courts in the afternoon before continuing our Halloween journey.

Grand Canyon, Arizona

We did an easy hike yesterday in Sedona six miles up a spectacular canyon called West Fork. We drove the motorbike ten miles up Route 89 to reach the canyon mouth. The tree leaves were about a week past 'peak' because of the altitude and cold. The walk took nearly five hours to cover a round-trip of twelve miles up and back. The spectacular canyon walls rise about seven hundred feet overhead.

The vehicle has a special electrical heating system to keep the tanks in the storage bays from freezing up. There is a freshwater tank, a grey water tank for the shower and sinks and a black water tank. A propane heating system keeps the passenger compartment warm at night. To the north, freezing temperatures are forecast every night, with highs in the 50-60 degree F range.

Our travel choices are north and south from Sedona. Immediately to the north are the Grand Canyon, The Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park and the Arches National Park. There is nothing that looks very interesting to the south.

After 23 days in close quarters, my Faithful Companion has begun to bicker with me at times over the length of the trip, destinations, navigational issues and other matters. She is telling me to head south or back to Florida because of possible cold and snow to the north. An exploration of this type cannot have two commanders, so I explicitly relinquish all control and begin addressing her as 'My Commandant'. It feels better now, not making a move or decision without awaiting proper orders.

At her direction, we make the quick three-hour run north from Sedona to the Grand Canyon, stopping along the way for groceries, propane and gasoline.

We walk several miles along the canyon rim, peering down nearly a mile. My old vertigo is acting up again in a big way. The oldest rocks on the riverbed below are 1.86 billion years old. The capstone layer is a mere 270 million years old. The river, a mile below, is at an altitude of 2,500 feet. It is believed that the canyon was carved in the last 5 or 6 million years, a geologic eye blink.

The North Rim of the canyon is visible ten miles away. It closes October 15 due to weather. There are little snow poles everywhere here on the South Rim to measure the snow depth and the road location. This is a 'World Heritage' site. I hear many languages around me, only rarely English.

We grill chicken and cook wild rice for dinner. Water boils at a low temperature at this altitude so the rice takes more water and time than expected to cook. I explain pressure cookers and the altitude at which blood boils at 98.6 F. to My Commandant.

Hopi Indian crafts are on display here. The famous architect of the Southwest, Mary Coulter, designed the Park's 'Hopi House' in 1905 as a place to make and sell Indian crafts. I'm struck by the Hopi 'dream-catcher'. This small device is hung over the place where one sleeps. It is a circle about three inches in diameter, with feathers hanging down. Material is webbed inside the circle in geometric designs leading to a very small central circle. Sometimes small rock crystals are added to the web to enhance the dream catcher's power. Bad dreams are caught in the center of the small circle and are blown away by sunlight, while good dreams slide down into the feathers and are trapped there for later reuse.

Grand Canyon, Arizona

The overnight temperature predicted is minus four degrees Celsius. We planned to walk the whole length of the Rim trail today. It's 15 or 20 miles. I don't have the courage to ride a mule down the narrow trail to the bottom of the canyon or the stamina to make the ten mile walk down Bright Angel trail to the canyon floor and back.

I prepare a knapsack:

• Water
• Turkey sandwiches
• Mixed nuts
• Power bars
• Paperback books
• Knife
• Digital camera
• Maps

There is a system of propane shuttle buses that run every 15 minutes. We take the bus fifteen miles to the westernmost edge of the park, on a road that bans private vehicles.

The terminus on The Rim is called 'Hermits Rest'. This place has another building designed by architect Mary Coulter. The road we traveled was built by the Union Pacific railroad from their railhead ten miles back. From here wealthy travelers took mules down into the canyon a mile below for an overnight stay. The whole two day package cost $18.25. The 'hermit', Louis Bouchard, lived in the canyon below and was hired to tend the mules by Union Pacific. The railroad built this route to avoid paying the toll on the Bright Angel trail.

We've seen a picture of Mary Coulter preparing to descend into The Canyon by cable in the early part of the last century. During our hike we find the concrete and steel stubs of the top of the cable system that was used to transfer supplies and Mary to the Union Pacific resort a mile below. A student from Bulgaria asks me to take his picture and I ask him about his travels. He's also been to California and Niagara Falls in New York.

We head east along an unpaved trail on The Rim. The trail is built on the very edge of the rim, often becoming a two-foot wide ledge with an abyss on one side and a rock ledge on the other. The trail is full of large rocks and loose gravel. This trail is much more than I expected. It's fairly pointless to try to describe the beauty, grandeur and vastness of The Grand Canyon. Eventually we find a flat rock outcrop and stop eat our lunch. I ask the Commandant for a full hour lunch break and we read our books and try to decide what colours we are seeing. We decide that greens, browns, oranges, blues and purples in combinations predominate. The stillness and quiet is strange to us. A black Raven flies past our rock. We hear the wings beat.

We walk for five hours, counting lunch. The whole trail is an overlook, but we also pass many abandoned developed overlooks from back in the days that private vehicles could travel on this road. The only ones who use these overlooks now are on foot like us. We only meet two other hikers during the day who pass by as we eat lunch. I struggle with my vertigo, approaching the edge but unable to look down, then stepping back again. I remember looking down from the World Trade Center roof and visualize five very small World Trade Centers stacked one on top of the other in the center of the Canyon five miles distant. An old Quicksilver Messenger tune called The Works of Man replays in my head and I think about all the people who decided on the same day to step out of the building and hit the street below. This is a place that lends itself to meditation and daydreams, but I need a daydream-catcher to filter out bad daydreams.

On the 11th of September Tom and Jil lived on the south side of the south tower of the World Trade Center. They built their flat on the seventh floor of an abandoned office building in 1972 and moved from Brooklyn. The office workers, in the tower across the street, would sometimes wave at us when we went to visit them. You could only see the first 30 floors of the tower from the flat's windows due to its proximity. I never missed a chance to go to the South tower roof on our visits.

They were in New Mexico, on vacation, on The Day. Their flat was used by the FBI as an observation post since it was on the same level as the rubble. Someone drank all her wine and left graffiti on the walls. This was no great additional loss since all the windows were blown out and the flat was full of dust and asbestos.

Their dog-sitters took their old dog over the Brooklyn Bridge. She was traumatized and never really recovered.

Tom is an artist and photographer. Some of his photos are on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jil collected and sold African ancient tapestries to decorate Corporate offices. She studied at the Sorborne in Paris and Julliard in New York.

Tom had never driven very much or owned an automobile. They decided that owning things was not all that important. They purchased a diesel pickup truck and a trailer. This is their third year of full-time travel. They work in places like the Indianapolis 500 and Mount Rushmore for a month or two and move on to Alaska, Mexico or Florida.

We spend two days with them later in December and bring them two bags of freshly picked citrus. Tom likes red grapefruit a lot so I load him up with those. I cook them salmon and a salad of spinach leaves, cherry tomatoes, raisins, mandarin orange slices, pine nuts and goat cheese with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.

Page/Lake Powell, Arizona

We make an unplanned stop in the small town of Page, Arizona, near the Utah border and Lake Powell, two hours north of the Grand Canyon.

We meet a big, ugly Harley-Davidson biker with beard, leather clothing and a several nose rings on a scenic overlook for lake Powell. I'm betting there are tattoos under his leathers. He is studying the lake and the colourful canyons and spires rising around it. He walks over to us, carrying a poetry book to examine us and our little motorbike. I step in front of Mrs Phred and bravely greet him. He has moved here from Orange County, California. We tell him that we were planning to go to Bryce Canyon and he tells us that it would be a huge mistake to skip Zion National Park. He described the Zion geology and said that Bryce was also beautiful, sort of like looking down at colourful snow cones. He seemed to be a gentle soul inside. We decide to follow his advice.

The Powell dam was built in the 1960s to control the ravaging floods of the Colorado River. Powell was the explorer who first navigated the Colorado by boat in 1869. We missed the dam tour but will try again. It takes six attempts to get though the metal detector and into the secure area due to the incredible array of junk in my pockets (batteries, keys, foil wrappers, assorted small screws, jump drives, tools).

I get a haircut and we sign up for a trip to see Antelope Canyon, a most unusual 'slot' canyon in Navaho territory. Due to the loss of eleven tourists in a 'flash flood', a guide is required. All the guide operations are run by Navaho Indians. Listening to them talk, in passing; I am reminded of the 'code-talkers' used in the Pacific campaign in WWII.

There is a Powell museum, municipal tennis courts, and a movie theatre in Page. We've also identified a hike near the dam. Powell was a one-armed Civil war veteran who first explored the Colorado river in a three month trip that displayed incredible bravery and leadership.

The National Recreation Area near the Dam offers great campsites overlooking the lake. You can rent houseboats and explore the vast lake and its canyons. One of the things in the canyon is 'Rainbow Bridge', the world's largest natural stone arch. A lot of the rock formations here are 'Navaho sandstone', an orange rock formed from sand dunes which were cemented together by minerals in the ground water. It's a material that wind and water find easy to carve into spectacular sculptures.

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

These pictures were taken today in Antelope Canyon. I think you will find them unusual.

The canyon is a type of canyon called a 'slot canyon'. To visit the canyon, which lies within the Navaho Nation, you must hire a native guide... most of them are very adept at digital photography.

On the ride out to the canyton with our large Navaho guide and another couple from Missouri, we pass signs that prohibit entry to the area without a native guide. These signs cite both US and tribal laws. The young couple we are with joke and say 'What are they going to do? Put us in a sweat lodge?; Our Navaho guide gently reminds them that some things are sacred.

The young Missouri man says that (PC) political correctness has gone too far when the only safe subject for jokes is stupid white men. My neck prickles in embarrassment and I quickly change the subject and ask the guide what impact the big dam has had on the local area.

The guide explains that the dam is in the middle of the huge Navaho nation reservation and that the land was arbitrarily retaken by the government to build the dam. He explains that almost all Navahos live in house trailers because they have no fixed rights to the land they live on and may need to move at any time. He explains that land rights are based on the number of grazing animals owned and may be readjusted.

In the slot canyon the guide stays close to me to point out good shots and helps me set my digital camera to get the best results. A tri-pod would have been great. I had to delete lots of great shots because of blurred pictures caused by limited light, but the good ones are spectacular. The guide says he has learned about digital photography by playing with cameras.

The slot canyon is a catchment for forty miles of rainfall. A small flood deposits several feet of sand on the slot canyon floor and a large one might remove ten feet of sand. It's one of the most unusual and beautiful geological formations I've ever seen. It's like a sandstone swirled cave with the top removed. I'd like to come back, next time when it's not overcast.

The Page/Lake Powell hot air balloon festival begins at dawn.

Journey to the Heart of the American Southwest Archive

Phred

09.02.06 Front Page

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