THE NAVAJO WAY

We were planning to leave at 9:00 pm on Wednesday, so Dean and I got
the car loaded then and were waiting for Pamela to show up.  At 9:15
she called and said, "I decided not to go.  Maybe you guys can come by
and pick up all this food tomorrow."

"You don't understand," I said.  "We were planning to leave about
now."

"You guys are leaving TONIGHT?"  It was difficult to communicate with
Pamela for the next few minutes because she kept stopping in
mid-sentence to say, "I'm really sorry!"  But eventually we worked out
a plan for Dean and me to immediately pick up the food she had
collected at Fuller Seminary and Pasadena Mennonite Church for the Big
Mountain Support Group, and we headed to the rendezvous point
(Stephanie's apartment) about 45 minutes late.

Stephanie's door was answered by someone who wasn't Stephanie (whom I
know) and turned out to not even be her roommate (whom I don't know)
but was instead Lisa from UCLA, who was to be car-pooling with us to
visit a nearby family on the reservation.  Rick, it turns out, had
been doing his laundry in Pomona (sometimes you just gotta wash some
underwear in Pomona) and had rushed out with Stephanie at the last
minute to retrieve a stray garment.  Despite the slipped schedule,
Rick and Stephanie spent a while talking in the parking lot.  This
gave Dean and I about an hour to meet Lisa, who was a winner.  She is
an environmentalist, a grad student in Urban Planning to affect
policy, and who is also taking business courses, for pretty much the
same reason Rick is taking Portuguese: to learn to communicate in a
culture not her own.

When Rick and Stephanie came in we visited a few more minutes, and
then started exchanging cargo between Rick's and my vehicles.
Stephanie we left behind to have Thanksgiving with her relatives in
LA, despite her protests that our trip sounded like more fun.  "What
are you doing Sunday night?" I asked.

"Hopefully having fun with you guys," was her diplomatic reply. We got
gas, added a quart of oil, and were on our way.  Then we made a
U-turn, retrieved the change to Rick's twenty-dollar bill from the gas
station attendant, and were on our way again.  Not bad, just an hour
and 45 minutes behind schedule (11:45 Pomona standard time).

Two hours of stimulating conversation were finally enough to put me to
sleep.  I drifted back to consciousness every five minutes, to find
Rick and Dean discussing a totally different subject each time.

***Loyalty to the employer.  I figure, fuck that.****     -- Rick

At 2:30 we pulled in for gas at Needles, and met Lisa (a friend of
Lisa's who had been sleeping in Pomona).  It turns out Lisa is also a
grad student, at a kind of accredited new age grad school called the
California Institute of Integral Studies in (where else?) San
Francisco.  "Do you have to actually take classes or can you just mail
order your diploma?" I asked.

***Don't you ever call me a hardass after that.  *You* were a
hardass.****                                              -- Dean

Things moved slowly in Needles, with one person at a time visiting the
store, checking oil, washing the windshield; so we all had about 30
minutes to visit.  Lisa was able to withstand my sarcastic onslaught
and we went on to discuss scientific method, reductionism versus
integration, vegetarianism and education-by-doing.

Back on the road with a new set of drivers, Dean had to listen to
Rick's repeated appeals to go faster because the Lisas were probably
way ahead of us.  "If Lisa drives anything like Lisa...."  We were
thus to unwittingly arrive in Flagstaff an hour ahead of them.  When
the stimulating conversation began to die out we pulled out a bizarre
tape of sound bites I had recorded for Rick when he was trying to
build a rice-husk cement factory in the Bolivian rain forest two years
ago.  It was unusual enough to hold our interest for a half hour or
so, but then Rick passed out and when Dean appeared in danger of doing
likewise I took over behind the wheel.

We made Flagstaff at sunup and farted around town for 45 minutes to
see if the Lisas would show up at the designated rendezvous Burger
King.  We concluded they must be way ahead of us and continued the
journey with me driving.  6 miles out of Winslow we exited and
delivered the food to the Big Mountain support group.  It turned out
about 40 people from all over the U.S. were gathered there to share
turkey dinners with Navajos.  It would have been a happening place to
hang, but we had a rendezvous to make so we just dumped the food and
ran.  Rick took us on in to Winslow.  At the designated rendezvous
Burger King in Winslow we met up with Tom and Bob, our co-workers from
Bakersfield.  No Lisas in sight.  We had breakfast, bought groceries,
and took a picture of Dean "standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona,
such a fine sight to see."

***Come on Baby, don't say maybe, I've got to know if your Good Love
is going to save me.****                               -- Jackson Browne

We headed for Teesto.  This is a small village of houses Rick
described as, "Nice by anyone's standards".  Electricity, a good
kitchen, hot and cold running water, and paved roads all the way to
the freeway.  The houses are owned by the tribal council and allocated
to sick and elderly people and their care-givers.  We met our hostess
Katherine, in one of said nice houses, about 11:00 on Thanksgiving
Day.  Katherine is a single woman, about 50, and judging by her wall
decorations a Christian.  She had been living in Teesto taking care of
her mother, who had recently died.  She had a turkey in the oven due
out at 2:00, so we decided to drive out and visit the work site first.

From Teesto it is a 45-minute drive over horrendous dirt roads to the
house where Katherine grew up, and where she must return having lost
her reason for living in Teesto.  Five minutes further on are several
houses belonging to her cousins the Clintons (this is where the Lisas
were to stay) and ten minutes past that are the homes of Roger and his
brother Phillip (where Rick and Tom had stayed and worked in August).
Katherine's home was a wood-framed house, about 1000 square feet with
no services (not even an outhouse!).  The wood of the roof was
completely exposed, allowing the rain to collect inside the ceiling
where it had destroyed several pieces of sheetrock.  Actually, because
construction is forbidden in that area (being disputed territory
between the Navajo and Hopi reservations) we weren't even supposed to
do repair work, but none of us blinked at a little CD.

***I can just see getting hauled before a judge for misdemeanor
roofing.****                                              -- Dean

After an hour of looking, measuring and collecting materials we headed
on up to Clintons.  There we found the whole clan (~25 people) eating
Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's.  The six of us squeezed into the
cabin to be offered pan bread and punch, shake a lot of hands and
visit for a while.  Already I was beginning to notice the sense of
hospitality and of extended family one usually hears about in Third
World countries.  Katherine stayed there while the 5 Californians
piled into Rick's Blazer and headed up to look for Phillip.  He wasn't
there, but while we were visiting with Roger some of his extended
family showed up with the remainders from their Thanksgiving meal.

When we headed back to Grandma's we saw Lisa's car parked at the main
Clinton house.  They had merely gone the speed limit between Needles
and Flagstaff (i.e. Lisa doesn't drive like Lisa) and then taken a
wrong turn that put them in Hopi territory, where they had received a
hospitable welcome before heading back.  Since they had missed the
Clinton meal, we packed them in the car with us and headed back to
Teesto for dinner at Katherine's.

There followed a long afternoon of talking, napping and mostly
cooking.

***I'll just rest my eyelids for a few minutes.**** -- Lisa Mc.

Katherine was a great host, and we had great fun especially cooking
and eating the fry bread.  We discussed Columbus, Christianity and
Navajo traditions, vegetarianism.  Then we ate for a long time.

Back at the worksite, we all got out except for Rick: "I'm just going
to run the women on home, I'll be back in a few minutes."  The rest of
us set up a wood-burning stove and a propane stove and generally
settled.  About 9:00 all of us but Dean headed up (in what appeared to
be the beginning of snow) to Clintons, where they were watching
_Dances With Wolves_ on a battery-driven TV with VCR.  We all sat in
the back of the room and talked with Andy and his wife, the most
political of the Navajos we met.  Lisa Mc was with us, but Rick and
Lisa B had disappeared.  After a couple of hours of discussing issues
we headed home in serious snowfall.  Halfway back I realized that most
of my gear was still in Rick's Blazer, parked back at Clintons.

So I slept on a board instead of an air mattress, in my jeans instead
of my long johns,and without my took.  The bright lantern was still
on, to help Rick find the cabin in the dark.  I lay awake for two
hours, and blamed Rick.  I couldn't get up and read, because my books
were in Rick's Blazer.  I couldn't get up and play the guitar, because
my guitar was in Rick's Blazer (and probably getting ruined from the
cold).  I planned the lecture I would give Rick about consideration.
I regretted things.  I kicked and rolled around trying to keep warm.
But when I finally got to sleep about 1:00 I slept peacefully for
eight hours, although the propane ran out around 5:00.

Rick had driven back to our place and slept in the Blazer.  I kept the
lecture to myself.  After a little breakfast Rick and I headed into
Winslow (an hour and a half away) for supplies while the other three
started scraping off the old tiling.  Good talk, and we listened to
Lyle Lovett.  At the hardware store: "We need some roofing cement."
"204 or 208?"  We looked at each other, and recited in unison, "204,
208, whatever it takes."  We were driving through Teesto at 1:30 and
hoped for leftovers at Katherine's, but the note on her door said she
had gone to Clinton's for lunch.  Back at the worksite it was cloudy
and snowing.  Bob and Dean had joined Katherine at Clinton's for
lunch, and mercifully brought back leftovers.  By dark we had prepared
the roof and laid down a few feet of felt.  Tom was worried about the
snow melting over the wood stove, so we continued to work after dark
getting a layer of felt down over that part of the house.  Kind of a
macho thing, staying up with Tom with flashlights on the slippery roof
although we all thought he was crazy.

***If we were being paid for it, we'd be bitching.****     -- Dean

After we heated up a supper, we drove up hoping to find Phillip.  No
one home, although we did have a bit of an adventure while Rick was
knocking which led to Tom with his legs in the back seat, his stomach
on the back of the driver's seat and his hand on the brake pedal.  We
stopped at Clinton's on the way back, to find a smaller crowd but the
VCR going again.  We sat down in the quietest part of the room, a
well-lit table where the Lisas were ostensibly doing homework
(although with Lisa B giving considerable aid to all the little kids
playing with her portable computer).  Soon all of us white people were
deep in brilliant conversation, seeded mostly by the reading material
the Lisas had piled up on the table -- urban pollution, Jungian
psychology, spirituality.  We all took personality profile tests and
discussed them.  Rick took Tom home soon, and an hour later Dean
walked home.  When Lisa Mc. went to bed, Rick, Lisa B and I headed to
the Blazer for some major talkin'.

It was one of those talks that, when I discovered them as a teenager,
I thought came only once in a lifetime.  We talked easily from the
deepest parts of ourselves about sexuality, spirituality, values,
creativity.  What does it mean that I could experience more intimacy
with one I barely know than with people I have cared about for a long
time?  Does being able to talk deeply about myself indicate depth, or
just self-indulgence?  I found the next day that I could remember
more of the things I said than what they said, because they made more
sense to me.  Rick (who was really tired by now) didn't say much, but
I do remember some things Lisa said -- about being intimate with
yourself; about spirituality, creativity and receptivity being the
same thing; about 'following your bliss'.  By 2:00 we had driven back
to Katherine's and I went in to bed, while Rick and Lisa stayed up
until sunup.

About this time the wind was shifting, which had two effects.  First,
the wood stove backed up the smoke into the cabin periodically for the
next two days.  Second, as Dean was sweeping the snow off the roof
Saturday morning the wind took off a huge chunk of roofing we had
nailed the previous day.  Saturday was a long hard cold day of roofing
in the wind and snow.

***I was going to shoot myself in the foot so I could get sent
home.***                                                       -- Bob

The only highlight was about 2:00 in the afternoon, when a truck
pulled up with firewood, about 12 kids and the Lisas.  A horrendous
snowball fight ensued.

Katherine had invited us for leftovers at Teesto Saturday night, but
she had visited Phoenix for a wedding and got snowed in.  So after
finding her, and later Phillip, not at home and then eating at the
cabin, it was about 9:30 by the time Rick and I went to visit
Clintons.

***Let me tell you my goal for this evening, which is to get at least
seven hours of sleep.****                                  -- Lisa B

Dean's words of advice for me as I left were, "Break out of the white
ghetto tonight."  The television was on again, but I spent the evening
talking to Karen, a young Navajo wife and mother who had married into
the Clintons.  She had drawn a Tarot card from Lisa B's deck that
indicated an ability to combine career and family.  So we talked about
career prospects, which are certainly limited.  She is belatedly
finishing her high school diploma now and has thought about nursing.
But her husband and son would remain in the family house, an hour and
a half from the highway (and they don't own a truck).  She had a job a
few months ago that required her to live in the town of Leupp, but she
moved home when her son got sick.

Rather than face the belching smoke back at our place, I claimed a
prime piece of real estate, the couch next to the stove at Clintons,
when Lisa and Rick vacated it to go out the the Blazer and talk.  I
slept from 11:00 to 6:30, when the Clinton household awakened, watched
Charlie Brown on video, and started cooking breakfast.  I walked back
to Katherine's and we were working by 8:00.  It was warmer, with the
ubiquitous snow alternately sticking and melting.  The Lisas drove by on
their way home about 9:00, and Bob and Tom cleared out at noon.  The
rest of us finished working and hit the road at 3:30.  Katherine was
still not back from Phoenix so no chance to say goodbye to her.

Traffic was backed up on I-40 out of Winslow so it took Rick 6 hours
to drive the first 60 miles of interstate.  Then he slept while Dean
and I took a couple of two hour shifts amid good talk.  Then Rick took
the last two hours and got us back to Pomona at 6:30 am -- a little
late for fun with Stephanie.

One last misadventure: I started my car before sunup in Pomona but it
was daylight by the time we were to our house in Pasadena so I left
the lights on.  By noon, when I got out of bed, the battery was deader
than a door nail.  So I spent Tuesday, in addition to washing the
roofing tar off my good parka with paint thinner and cotton balls,
getting the car jumped and driving to In-n-Out with Dean for a shake
while the battery recharged.
--
"Sometimes, when you're standing on a roof on the Navajo nation,
driving nails in the wind and snow after dark, you just have to say to
yourself, `Life is weird'."  -- Dean Willberg