Drinking from the Well: An Unexpected Detour

At the Canyon overlook

Phil and I recently took a trip to New Mexico and Arizona. It was a vacation trip with no other purpose than to enjoy the scenery and each other’s company. We got out there just as the Covid19 pandemic was beginning to take off, and after our eight days of travel, we made it home safely. We arrived home with a sigh of relief that we didn’t end up quarantined somewhere along the way, and that we made it through the flights and airports before everything got too bad.

I had been to Albuquerque once but nowhere else in the region. Phil had made this trip before with a group of history teachers, but he was happy to take me to see the sights I had missed. I was especially looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. It did not disappoint; sunset on the rim was beautiful.

We had planned a circular route from Albuquerque with stops in Flagstaff, Arizona, and nights in Farmington, Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In addition to the Grand Canyon we planned to see Monument Valley, Four Corners, the Painted Desert and all the arts and crafts Taos and Santa Fe had to offer. But isn’t it always the unplanned parts of the trip that ends up being the most memorable?

We arrived in Flagstaff after dark and knew we had a short trip up to the Grand Canyon the next morning, so I raided the brochure rack in our hotel lobby to see what Flagstaff had to offer. One brochure touted Walnut Canyon National Monument, an ancient Native American cliff dwelling site. Our preliminary plan had been to visit Mesa Verde in Colorado, but it was closed for the winter. Walnut Canyon looked like a suitable substitute, so we decided to add it to our agenda the next morning.

When we first arrived at the visitors’ center, we noticed a steady stream of young park workers wearing special backpacks designed for carrying five-gallon buckets. They were hauling debris, consisting of rocks and concrete, from a section of the trail that led to the ruins. Each worker must have been carrying thirty to forty extra pounds on each trip out of the canyon. I’m sure they were thankful that the morning was cool and crisp, and that the brunt of their labor would end before the worst heat of the day. I heard one girl say that she had made six trips up and down the day before. That would be quite a workout since the trail descended 185 feet.

After a short stop in the visitor’s center, which sat on an overlook at the rim of the canyon, we started down the Island Trail. As you descend the 240 steps, you travel through several different plant life zones, which are miniature versions of the zones spanning the West from Mexico to Canada, according to the official brochure. It is unique to have such a microcosm within the twenty miles the canyon covers and its 400-foot depth. We observed the yucca and prickly pear cactus at the rim, forests of fir, juniper and ponderosa pine as we descended, and we could look down to the canyon’s bottomlands where box elder and the namesake black walnuts grow.

The Island Trail leveled off and took us on a loop around the island (this island is not surrounded by water, but by air) where we could observe the homes built by a primitive people called the Sinagua (Spanish for “people with no water”). They used natural recesses in the canyon walls, formed by flowing water that eroded softer rock layers. Homes had several rooms, and walls built and plastered by the women provided protection from the elements. Different parts of the canyon were inhabited during the changing seasons to provide heat or cooling, depending on what was needed.

It was fascinating to take a step back to ancient times by walking the trail, but Phil and I were also struck by the more recent history that made our time travel possible. During the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed men to live in a camp and construct that trail with its 240 steps. Most of the men in the Mount Elden camp were from Pennsylvania and earned a dollar a day. The pay wasn’t much, but they got three meals a day and gained valuable work skills as they labored in the camp.

Travelling down those steps and then hauling ourselves back up was quite a chore. As we walked along, Phil reminded me of a passage from a book he loves, Boundary Waters,by Paul Gruchow. Gruchow was writing about having the same experience we were having, walking a trail built by the CCC with a friend.

“You know there’s hardly a place in Minnesota that doesn’t still benefit from some Depression-era public works project,” I say. “Dams, roads, sidewalks, picnic shelters, swimming beaches, buildings, rip-rapped lakeshores and river banks—it’s really an incredible legacy.”

“It’s amazing what we could afford when we didn’t have any money,” John said. “This staircase in the middle of a wilderness, for one thing.”

“We’re having the longest economic expansion in our history, and volunteers have to keep this trail open because there’s no public money to do it.”

“And back home we’re laying off teachers and complaining about welfare moms and reducing hours at the public library. It’s hard to be rich, I guess.”

During the height of the Depression, unemployment was twenty-five percent. We’re looking at those kinds of numbers again, coming out of this pandemic. It will take courageous leadership to steer us through the hard days ahead, but we may find some of our finest moments in the wake of these hardships. Maybe the legacy this crisis leaves behind will equal and even exceed the monuments left us by the workers of the CCC.

Our trip to the Southwest took us to some famous sites along well-traveled roads, but it was the unplanned stop at a little known national monument that was the unexpected highlight of the trip.