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well-traveled: Dispatches from the front lines of travel.

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from: Alexandra Fuller

Round 'Em Up, Head 'Em Out

Posted Friday, Oct. 25, 2002, at 4:05 PM ET

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Today's audio update: Alexandra Fuller contemplates the vastness of the American West.

Our revels now are ended.…
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
—from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Twin traditions of a small town: city government and a bar

There is something philosophically redundant and self-important about traveling 2,682 miles in two weeks and hoping that in that length of time I can write something coherent or meaningful about the places I have visited and the people whom I have met all in daily 700-word dispatches. Two weeks ago, I started in Wyoming—one person with all the prejudice and humor and love and opinions of one island-stranded human—and I have ended (as is probably proper) in Mexico. "Guerrilla tourism" is how my companion on this trip has described what we have done. We have driven down the length of the continental United States and swallowed both ground and people too quickly to digest them. I regurgitate my thoughts and ideas based on my life, my education, and my current state of mind. It is no real reflection of what I see—only a mirror into myself.

It is our last morning together, and Christian is in a thoughtful mood (read: hungover) as he sips his coffee. I am dutifully hunched over my computer trying to make sense of what I wrote last night, which seemed brilliant after a bottle of wine but in the cold light of day has revealed itself to be nothing but drunken gibberish.

"What is the opposite of the 'key to the city'?" asks Christian.

"I don't know," I reply, frowning at my screen. "The 'boot to the city' perhaps?"

"Because that's what we're getting everywhere we've gone."

Christian lists off the towns we've visited on our quest to follow the Outlaw Trail—from Kaycee, Wyo., to Silver City, N.M.—and cites the reasons why we can never again show our faces in any of them. He pauses and then amends our widespread unwelcome ever so slightly. "Well, maybe we'd be welcome in Mogollon," he concedes, referring to the almost-ghost town we visited yesterday, a place currently populated with residents whom society, in general, might kindly refer to as "misfits." Ah, it is the old cliché. Christian and I have become the outlaws who were the subjects of our study.

For my part, I shall blame last night on the waiter. We were, at evening's well-intentioned start, at a very small restaurant/bookshop run by two men, one of whom seemed to do little except slouch in a low armchair at the head of the restaurant and glower at his customers over the top of a bodice-ripper romance novel, while the other squirreled about anxiously in his capacity as waiter. And it was he, the waiter, who wore in his left ear a small chandelier as an earring—a victory of cheerful eccentricity over the constraints of conservative menswear.

Bo prepares to run the table

There was something about the courage of this outlandish fashion gesture that inspired us to abandon caution to the wind and, on the way back to our hotel from the restaurant, Christian and I led each other into the smokiest, dingiest bar on the street. "Let's play pool," I said, forgetting for a moment that I'd never held a cue stick in my life. "Let's," agreed Christian recklessly.

Somehow (and it may have been the inspiration afforded by the wine) I won three rounds of pool, which put me in such a celebratory mood that I danced the two-step, inasmuch as I can dance a two-step, with both a cowboy and a man who claimed to be an Apache chief, although not at the same time.

In my feeble defense, I have been on the Outlaw Trail for two solid weeks—something had to give. Christian and I have driven the length of the continental United States together and, like the men and women whose long-ago lives we have been following, there comes a time when a person has to let their hair down.

well-traveled
entries
123456789
from: Alexandra Fuller

Round 'Em Up, Head 'Em Out

Posted Friday, Oct. 25, 2002, at 4:05 PM ET
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Alexandra Fuller is the author of the best-selling memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood.
Music heard in the map feature: "The Last Steam Engine Train," by John Fahey, The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites (Takoma TAKCD-8909-2) (p) 1999 Fantasy Inc. © 1967 Tortoise Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved.
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Notes From the Fray Editor (Notes From the Bog):

Many residents of the Southwest spoke up for various parts of the contemporary scene there. The usual move was to call Fuller a second-tier cultural prostitute herself (selling her experience to Slate). The two posts below also attack Fuller, but from opposite sides. Gloria Tagai says that Fuller has been misled and is misleading others. The information in the article is wrong. Ernest, who grew up on the Navajo reservation, thinks Fuller has mischaracterized her exchange with Rose Yazzi as "prostitution."

Remarks From The Fray:

I am a Navajo woman. I am wondering where the writer received her information. What is "Teehindeeh" (she says it means "bog hole")? I tried to decipher this word and then asked an elder who had no idea what I was referring to. Who is Chief Hoskinini? Again, I tried to decipher the name and again referred to an elder. We were both puzzled.

This white African of British descent, who attempts to portray herself as worldly sophisticated traveler, has instead been sadly misled by her "guide". She states, "To pay for glimpses into something I can never hope to understand or assimilate in an afternoon can only be degrading and demoralizing to both parties." If she felt as such, why write such a horrific piece of trash?

It has been she who has been degraded and she should feel demoralized for offering such an article without validating the facts. I shudder to think of how many Americans are reading this article and take it for truth. As a closing remark, dream catchers are not native to Navajos, so the belief that it "prevents evil spirits from entering from Mother Earth" is not a Navajo belief. And what was that about the poles and the umbilical cord in a hogan?

-- Gloria Tagai

(To reply, click here.)


So why is being (even briefly) introduced to a new culture a negative? Why is it "cultural prostitution" for age old customs to be shown as they have always been practiced? Travel to Shiprock New Mexico during the festivals and see the Navajo Dancers perform. These people have to fight every day to keep at least the essence of their old cultures and traditions alive...and it is a worthwhile fight. I do not see these attempts as "prostitution". I think the author should stop looking at the world through the myopia of cynicism and instead try looking at it from the perspective of a child...untainted by past experience.

-- Ernest

(To reply, click here.)

(10/25)

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