You could argue until your face is a shade of cinnabar–you’ll never convince me that this place is any less pretty, than your Sedona or your Santa Fe.
In fact it’s prettier, because it hasn’t been overrun (yet and knock wood) with sweating urban human bodies yearning to breathe free. The rich haven’t paved it over yet with bed and breakfasts investment properties. There is no Starbucks.
On the trip before this one, to the Verde, the Vaaiirrdee, we tried to look for a place that hadn’t priced us out already and it didn’t exist. When we settle, and if I settle, that’s no longer an option, not for the working class. The first time I was ever in Sedona there were only 2000 people dwelling in it, little Cottonwood half of that, and the number of tourists was a commensurately tiny fraction of what it is today.
This time we didn’t even look for real estate signs, and it wasn’t out of hopelessness either. If you see the way people are living in the actual settlement of Cliff Dwellers, AZ, you’d know that if you wanted to live that way too, you could afford it.
It wouldn’t be all bad. But the Cultural aspect barely exists at all. In the nominal big city of the region, what scraps of culture exist consist of the folk wisdom of scattered boaters on the artificial lake where they damned the Rio Colorado … and Mormonism. A soul can’t live on tripe like that. Not mine anyway. Not even pumped full of the awesome natural landscape everywhere you look. Edward Abbey christened Page the shithead capital of the Kokonino, noting:
” … any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble.”
The marking feature of the whole region is that not very much has changed. In terrain terms, if you can overlook the dam, that’s wildly good news. But on the social geography side, the vibe of the amenities is just as Abbey said it was, all those years gone by.
So even if I settle for sedentism, even part of the year, it won’t be here, even though I could afford it, in the pocketbook sense. Don’t sleep in Page. This is a terrain to be traveled over and over and through, with thoughtful depth that makes hearts sing and eyes dance. This is the place a true nomad goes, not to die, but to live moving and moved in the long spaces before and after death.
As for settling or half-settling, that’s for another place far off to the south, and higher. Always higher.
I leave you tonight with another Abbey gem. Sweet dreams.
“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”