I didn't leave town until about 5:30 on Wednesday night. Full cup of tea, the slides for my presentation, a change of clothes and my writing materials; I was traveling light, as one should do, when planning a mystical journey. I didn't have my route planned or even know just how far it was, just heading west, heading toward the Center. I passed one hitchiker by because he didn't have his thumb out, but the second one was waiting for me. Cecil was the perfect traveling companion; man of age 72, one glass eye, toothless, penniless, blue backpack and bedroll, and a thick yellow paperback book. There is no better roadside find than a philosophical hitchiker.

Cecil had spent his working years as a project manager for an engineering firm, the kind of firm that contracts to build large structures all over the world. He had been on all continents except Australia building monumental pieces of the the global infrastructure. He had spent three years in Iran trouble shooting problems with microwave towers. Before working for this company, he had been a highway engineer, but the pace of the public sector, wasn't efficient enough for him. The company he had worked for was Fluor. I saw this as meaningful in my own life's story because I had spent the six months that most changed my life as an Eco-Cop (environmental compliance monitor) watching the Fluor-Daniels company build a pipeline across the Mojave desert. I knew Cecils' kind.

I wondered, during my stay on the pipeline, how that lifestyle affected the men who followed it. I studied the 400 men on that pipeline to see what, beside money, drove them to live the nomadic life that entailed sending the paychecks home to the women and children, while they lived a life like roaming warriors, building the modern day equivalents of Egyptian pyramids, and conquering nature through monumental scale construction projects. There is a sense of adventure there that they are positively addicted to. Apparently it must be in their blood, because it still raged in Cecil. He said after he retired, he tried to settle down, but the boredom lead him to the depths of alcoholism. AA meetings helped, but traveling cured.

He held his yellow book for most of our trip. I could tell he wanted badly to open it and read, but I kept him engaged in conversation. The book, a novel by Robert Ludlum entitied "The Road to Omaha", is about the military and an Indian tribe. He kept recommending that I read it. I think that I have to take this as a serious kind of omen and look for that book. Cecil, though a true hobo, is very well read and knows the librarys of this nation almost as well as he knows the truckstops. He recited a poem by Robert Service about "A Man Who Don't Fit In."

Cecil had lived a tough life on a personal level. His dad had died of a heart attack when he was 15, leaving him the eldest of 5 children, to become the man of the family. He tried to work, but he kept getting in trouble for being underage. His mother had finally sent him off to the military and the government sent her a check for $30 a month, while she herself got a job in the ordinance industry. This must have been where he learned to be a civil engineer. He didn't marry until late in life and she was 12 years younger. They had four children and 17 years of marriage suddenly dissolved into meaninglessness when she decided that he was gone too much and she took up with another man. He must have loved her deeply, because he says with some bitterness that she has been divorced twice since then, leaving out, but implying with sarcasm, that he has been faithful to his original committment. He got custody of the kids, for some reason, right before he went to Iran. They were in their later years of teenage-hood, so they decided to stay states-side and get an apartment in San Diego and to later join Cecil in Bagdad. But the kids didn't make it more than a month before things fell apart and they were street-children. They hitchiked to Mom's place in Texas. The oldest boy, Cecil Jr., later became a world class skier and was killed in a plane crash in the Sierra Nevada Mts. The others are doing just fine. The last time Cecil saw his ex, was at their son's funeral, but he didn't have a word to say to her.

I bought Cecil dinner at the Giant Truckstop. I always like to stop there on my way to Indian country. We waited until the sun got low enough to continue driving west. It got dark as we crossed into Arizona. I was getting really tired by the time we got to Holbrook and so I pulled over at the truckstop and slept for 40 minutes. I should have turned and headed up HWY 77 there, but I took Cecil on into Winslow, depositing him under a bridge for the night and then headed north on HWY 87.

It was only an hour north of Winslow, and I arrived at the Hopi Cultural Center (Lodge and Restaurant) at about 1 pm local time. It is an rundown building that looks like it emerged into its present form in about 1950. The business cards proclaim it to be "The Center of the Universe". I was suprised that the deskclerk had no Native American accent. The Hopis sound as white American as the 6 o'clock news. He gave me a room for the handicapped. At $75/night, you might expect special treatment, but all I got was handlebars on the toilet.

I know that there is a saying in the Hopi set of values, that you should not make the sun have to wake you, because he is already busy. So I woke up before it got very light, but I made myself go back to sleep. The Navajo Nation keeps New Mexico time, mountain daylight. The Hopis keep pacific daylight. I slept until an hour before my scheduled presentation, then I had to scramble to get out of my handicapped facilities and down the road to meet the tribal elders.

The land is very dry. It has only rained once this summer. Most people did not plant crops this year. The tribal headquarters is surrounded by new cars and trucks. Lots of people were coming and going; Hopis in black buisness suits as well as levi's. The meeting I was to be at was at the cultural center, a gymnasium sized building across the valley. I walked in to the gym-sized room where a group of older men sat around a long folding table looking at petroglyph drawings on xerox copies. I asked if Leland Dennis was there. They must have misunderstood me, they sent me away, but I found out that that was indeed where I was supposed to be so I returned. Leland turned out not to be a woman at all, but a somewhat effeminant, but strikingly handsome, young man. He was out rounding up a projector for me. An anglo woman headed the meeting where she was showing the men slides and drawings of petroglyphs, to see if they had any interpretations or comments. She was trying to wring meaning out of the rock art, but they weren't cooperating. It seemed as if this particularly activity must be something that they do every month. It had a defined pace and she never got flustered or seemed disappointed that they had few comments.

An female archaeologist from Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) was there with a male National Park Ranger from the Navajo National Monument. They were scheduled to go after me. The meeting was only running an hour behind schedule at that time, so I had time to sit and wait. The Hopi men in this group are between 45 and 75, I would guess. I don't know what qualifications they have to meet to be on this review board, perhaps special familiarity with cultural myths and art, but it seems there are representatives from each of the clans. The head of the Cultural Resources wing of the tribal government is a young man of about 38, named Lee Jenkins. He wears levi's and sharp-toed boots. His hair is long. He seems like the person with a definite adjenda, a young warrior.

It was finally my turn and I got up and talked about how biosystematic studies are just ways of taking a look at whats out there and trying to find the patterns in nature. I talked about how science is like a religion, with its own particular interpretations of what the world is about and that we use models to explain the patterns we find. Evolution is a particular model, I explained, as I showed them a simple phylogenetic tree, and that basically the model evolutionary science was using was that things are in one species, until at some time groups get separated, and during the separation they change in their different environments, until they are no longer the same things, but now constitute two species. They looked keen at this point, as if it echoed in their emergence myth story, but perhaps it was just my colorful slides. I told them that the people that had studied thistles in the 1970's had never come to the southwest to actually see them and that I was trying to improve the work they had done, because it certainly had some errors in it, especially all the species they had named from the Navajo Nation, which I doubted actually should be treated as different species. I went on for a while, showing them photographic slides of thistles and talking about pollination, but I really tried to keep it simple. I invited them to give me their own views of evolution to which they didn't respond. The permit I was requesting was to be able to collect 5 stems from plants along the highway near Second Mesa and to be able to observe pollinators for one day. In the end they had two questions: What kind of plants are these? Are they cacti? It wasn't enlightening for me, I wonder if it was enlightening for them? Somehow, I doubt it. Lee Jenkins says that my request will be passed along to someone else and they will designate a contact person who will be in charge of me, while I am on the Hopi land. He told me to stay and talk to him during lunch.

The LANL woman and the National Park Service guy gave a good presentation on the Navajo National Monument, which is a series of sites along the Grand Canyon Country to the north, containing cliff dwellings that are believed to be from the original pueblo cultures. The word Anazazi is not politically correct with the pueblo tribes, as they are their special ancestors. To the Hopis they are proto-Hopis, to the Zunis, they are proto-Zuni, but they cannot be both to either one. These sites are not Navajo and so the subject of resentment from the Pueblo Indians. The tribal elders get animated over this. Lee gets up and gives a speech. He is mad about the Park Service brochure's emphasis on the Navajos and he is upset that the Navajo's are economically benefitting from the tourism going to see these sites, while the Hopis are deriving no benefits. He is upset that LANL is doing the research for the preliminary study instead of the Hopi cultural resource group. There is much talk about trying to change the name of the park. Erosion has unearthed human bones. The Hopis are concerned that they be re-buried as soon as possible, but the Navajos are ignoring the situation. The bones are just off the park boundary on Navajo land. Tempers flare, and my hummingbird image of the Hopi Indians is reaffirmed. The NPS and LANL representatives make statements of concern, and everyone agrees that it is important to establish this dialog.

The last presentation of the morning was Lee talking about an access problem to a religious site. It was given in Hopi, so I understood very little, except that someone has moved in a big double wide trailer and put up a locked gate around the property. The LANL lady and NPS guy, relieved to have lived through the controversy, slipped out the back door to talk, I listened to the melody of the Hopi language. It is soft and pleasing. Then finally I slipped out the back also. I started a conversation with these other white people about how complicated life must be for the Hopis with the degree of misinformation about them out in the world, how New Age had burdened them with a deep projection of mysticalness. The conversation went flat, their eyes became restless and they just kind of froze up. I think the archaeologists can deal with long dead people, but they find the living human conditions challenging. I went to my jeep to read my new book on Native America and the Environment.

The meeting adjourned for lunch and we headed up Second Mesa, past my thistles, in a convoy of trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles to the Cultural Center for lunch. I asked Lee if he had noticed the thistles as we passed them. The reply was "They are just weeds to us." Oh. I sat between the tribe historian (she) and a tribal elder (he). She is a white girl from Colorado who has been there 6 months. He is from one of the villages and his sons live in Albuquerque. I ask him if he knew if the drought affected the hummingbirds. He said the only thing he knew about hummingbirds was from when he was a little boy and his familiy hauled their water from a spring. Thistles grew there and there were lots of hummingbirds. He would ride his burro down there and hunt hummingbirds with a slingshot. His uncle would use them in his feather ceremonies. I commended him on his marksmanship. He asked me if my interest in the subject was motivated by a desire to start farming hummingbirds for their feathers.

The Hopi lamb stew with hominy is very good. I heartily recommend it next time you are on Second Mesa. During the course of the meal I asked the Historian about the Hopi web site. She had no idea. Lee did not know either, but suspected it was the work of "Friends of the Hopi". They were a little tight lipped about the whole matter. Voices suddenly dropped to a whisper. Lee, it seems, must be a micromanager kind of boss. All the Cultural Resourse employees are new and they all say they work on "a lot of things", especially what ever needs to be done at the moment. One of the employees, a paralegal, said she wondered if they ever were actually going to finish the things they started.

I turned and went east after lunch, speeding down HWY 264. I found a Navajo hitchiker near the Navajo border. I liked him, he was refreshingly open after the Hopis. He lives with his elderly parents and three children. He used to work for the railroad, but it meant being gone from the kids too much, but they are just about old enough to take care of themselves, and here he is about ready to re-live Cecil's life by putting the kids out a bit young, thinking it will make them strong. I agree with the idea myself. His parents had sent him away to boarding school in Salt Lake with the Mormons. He did not especially regret it, but he was glad he had come home and learned the Navajo ways. He was headed to Window Rock to apply for a homestead permit to build a house.

I didn't find another traveling companion for the rest of the journey. I just rushed back to my waiting dogs and small pile of internet messages. The quiet ride gave me time to think about experience. The Hopis have a complex set of social problems that must play themselves out. From my experience there, I find no reason to think their legendary spirituality is any thing remarkable. Their interests on the cultural resource committee is at least partially motivated by economic considerations, with their myths and prophecies being perhaps only one of their more marketable products. This group I interacted with are very much like hummingbirds. They don't really care about the flower, but they are happy to fight over nectar. I cannot help but think that there is a cultural tradition of psychodrama at the Center of the Universe.

Six hundred and nine miles on this journey, and the part that I find most interesting and spiritual is the hitchikers, who are living out mythic adventures that I can understand and identify with. I like the realness of them. They were not sitting in judgement of me, nor I of them, we simply had something to share with each other. We had no expectations of each other to live up to. In my own sense of spirituality, sharing your heart and your soul is an act of worship of the unity of life. The sanctity I found, was not at the center, but on the roads to it.