Wide Ruin
12" X 9"
Watercolor
We exited I-40, the drab road that shows you the turned
backs of little towns. If you never got off the freeway, you’d never see the pretty
faces, only the stone backs of towns fringed by gas stations and sad
restaurants struggling by on people passing through.
North we went, into the Navaho nation. It felt good to get off the freeway.
“Just a few more miles to the turn-off,” I told Clint after
consulting the map. We weren’t far from the freeway and already the scenery had
improved. The flat dry earth transformed into gentle rolling hills with folds
of green grasses‑-the shrubs and trees just beginning to set energized buds of
brilliant green.
We were going to Wide Ruin: a place where a once well-known
trading post had been. We followed an old truck, plodding along slower than
necessary. The curves and bumps in the road prevented us from passing. We came
upon “The Turn-Off”, a dirt road angling off to the right.
“Maybe there’s a new one now, maybe they rebuilt it; it’s
been years since it burned down,” said Clint.
Wide Ruin is known for a specific style of rug weaving: pieces
with bands of earthy colors, bound by narrow, contrasting rows to delineate the
color shifts. I’d come to know the attributes and appreciate the subtle beauty
of these weavings under Clint’s tutelage.
The road was bumpy, with deep tire ruts squished into
the surface after the last rain. A few side grooves still held water, while the
center was a map of deep cracks. The truck ahead of us had turned off on the same road.
The driver sped up, now more comfortable with the rugged road close to home.
The track curved back around to the north and down into a
dip. Here we found these adobe ruins. Were these the remains of the trading
post? Or, the ugly leftovers of an Indian school? Was this a place where they
force-fed Christianity and took away the People's culture, their language?
I was captivated by the long shadows, the brilliance of the
sun, and the faded-to-a-memory adobe walls.
“Stop! Stop! I have to take a picture!”
Though I’d hoped for a dusty surprise of a trading post,
this was all we found in Wide Ruin. The map showed the road was supposed to
loop back to the highway, but all we found was a school with warning signs that
demanded we register at the office. We turned around, drove back past the ruins
of Wide Ruin, and bumped our way back to the highway.
