Shirley and I were on one of our Southwest trips into the lands we had come to love.

We drove through the endless desert and came to a fence and a sign. It told us the boundary of the Navajo Nation, a land larger than many states and crossing state lines.

Earlier, we had stayed on the interstate highway I – 40 which would lead us to the off-road from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.

This time we entered the reservation, driving deeper into the heart.

We remembered our love of The People in all their varieties, the indigenous, the Native Americans who were here first and somehow are still here.

That earlier time, driving down the road out of the reservation, after a stop at the rug auction where we visited with the grandmothers and their ancient fingers that held the secrets of weaving, their daughters beside them learning the ways, we celebrated the gifts of the earth in the loving hands.

We were driving down the empty road toward the reservation boundary, and stopped suddenly because there was a sheep in the road.

Shirley jumped out of the car and ran to the sheep and hugged it to her.

A pickup truck with a Navajo family was coming from the opposite direction, pulled over, and laughed at the sight of a white woman hugging a sheep.

We got to talking.

They were a family returning from an outdoor market where they had sold the fruits of their garden. Small cucumbers. Small ears of corn. Tomatoes from the vine. They had boxes in the truck, stacked with what remained unsold.

We bought from them. We talked at length and leisure, no one in any hurry to go anywhere.

When they heard we were from California, they said excitedly, “We’ve been there once! We had gone to a gathering and then came back.”

“How did you like the ocean?”

“We saw it as we drove by. My husband was driving, afraid of the traffic on the California roads, anxious to get back to our empty desert. His hands were clenched tight on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead on the road.”

He laughed sheepishly, “I drove by but never saw it.”

Then there was the time we were coming back to California still in Nevada just before we reached the border and we stopped at the last little reservation. Tourists passed it by. There was a parking lot. A little store with native art had a few shelves of pottery and a bit of silver jewelry, a few rugs, hanging shadow-catchers, and “native snacks” of beef jerky.

There was a little church that looked dusty.

There was a schoolyard with children playing, teachers watching.

We had parked in the lot which served for the store and church and school. We got out, stretched our legs, and strolled over to the open playground.

The young woman watching the children, Navajo, this was a Navajo reservation, welcomed us and we sat beside her.

She was surprised that we had stopped, since most American tourists just drove by, barely noticing.

She was more surprised that we actually sat, in no hurry, were comfortable just talking people to people, neighbor to neighbor, friends.

We talked about school. She was impressed that I was a teacher for many years.

She said, “Our little school is poor because we can’t afford anything. We love the children, but they need everything.”

I said, my enthusiasm engaged, “Books?”

“Yes, everything.”

I had so many thousands of books for the store we had always wanted but never could manage to find a location affordable, large enough, with access to a clientele. I had given books away for years, donated to friends, libraries, schools.

“I may have books I can donate that your children would like to read.”

“Anything,” she said.

We talked about computers and television in the classroom. They had one television, but it was broken, and no one knew how to fix it.

Shirley said, “My Dad owns a TV Store, Sales and Service, AltaPasTV. He has used reconditioned TVs that still work. I think I can get him to donate some, or we can just buy them from him cheap. We could bring them and set them up.”

The afternoon was passing. We sat in the swings on the playground and the children pushed us, and we traded and pushed them.

The teacher invited us to stay for dinner.

We were friends now as if forever.

We regretfully declined because we had to get back home before the night was over, I had to get up early to begin the new semester, and it was still a long drive across California.

Shirley and I always regretted that we never got back. We hadn’t promised, but we hoped.

It remains a treasured memory, how we stopped at the side of the road and found a part of our family.

Then there was this time on the Anthro Trip with PCC. I’ve written about it in my blog. The whole anthropology class car pooled to the reservations, ultimately reaching Santa Fe, then returning home.

Our first stop at a reservation was a night visit to see the dance through the village, lean muscled men nearly naked, some with animal heads, bodies scrubbed and gleaming with the deep scent of cedar that permeated the air, the streets, the house where we stood with the native inhabitants, windows open, as the air flowed through, and the dancers entered, brushed past and we too smelled like cedar, then out the other door, rhythmic chanting, and time stopped, was nowhere in the prolonged present, and we were drawn into the moment, into a world greater than ourselves, into eternity greater than time, and our spirits danced out of our bodies and joined the dancers down the street.

It was a mystical experience.

I’ve had a very few such experiences. When I was a young boy, it was religion. I entered a higher realm, I prayed in a kind of trance for hours. By the eighth grade, I outgrew it.

Then I married Shirley, and my whole life became transcendent. I could live simultaneously on this earth from day to day, and at the same time co-exist in triumphant exaltation for hours and hours for sixty years.

So, in this current little story, years ago we went back to the reservations again to give ourselves up to the Great Mother Earth, shepherded by a tribe that knew the way.

In the interest of honest disclosure, I must note that this new episode never actually happened. It’s a “what if.” It was triggered by the book I’m currently reading, Braided Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A superb writer.

I’ve been reading a number of superb writers lately. Lisa See. Percival Everett, his book James. Kimmerer.

Lisa See has the remarkable ability to internalize and absorb her meticulous research and construct another world complete in itself, foreign or unknown to us but rooted in this our world. She makes us live in that other world with absolute consistency. This judgment of mine, high praise, is absolutely independent from the fact that she’s a close personal friend.

It’s virtuoso writing, and I respond to it and just can’t get enough. Reminds me of when I was a young boy reading a lot of science fiction, as young people tend to do. I liked authors like Van Vogt for the classic space operas, Heinlein for his charted future, Arthur C. Clarke for his science. But I was in awe of the way Jack Vance created completely alien worlds with the absolute consistency that didn’t even need to hint at earth parallels. Like Ursula K. Le Guin’s mastery. Like too few others.

Robin Wall Kimmerer “is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.” The book, Braiding Sweetgrass, has a sub-title, “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” She is “SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.” She says, “I’m a plant scientist and I want to be clear, but I am also a poet and the world speaks to me in metaphor.”

She writes better than I ever will, but we’re soul mates, and I resonate with every page as I learn many things new.

Meg, who loaned the book to me, said, “Have you got to the incredible part with the strawberries?” I said, “That’s where I am now.”

But anyway, as I was saying, before I rudely interrupted myself, Shirley and I were driving deep into the Navajo Nation. It’s a long long drive and we were running low on gas. Then the needle registered “empty” which meant one more gallon left to get us to a gas station or anybody who had gas.

Then we were running on fumes and sputtered to a stop at an encampment or village or house, and people came out to see who it was stopping unexpectedly. Shirley and I got out to show we were friendly. Dogs and children ran up to us and nipped at our heels (the dogs, not the children).

Adults, elders, and the Chief Elder came out and we said, “Hello.”

I refrained from making it a movie and didn’t say, “We come in peace,” because that was already obvious.

We were invited inside. We sat and talked. They don’t get many visitors.

We established our credentials. We said, “We hear you’re celebrating the great birth from the Earth Mother. She is our Mother too. We want to renew our ties with the earth, the universe, and all things living. We bring a gift to show our love, unafraid to use the word.”

I handed over a wrapped box. It was a box of See’s candy, a two-pounder.

The Chief Elder took it, carefully tore away the ribbon and wrapping, lifted the lid and the liner, and surveyed the top layer of chocolates. There were many nuts and chews, my favorites, and I was sure they would be tribal favorites as well.

The Chief Elder took a piece, lifted it out in its dark fluted wrapper, and bit off the end, revealing the plethora of nuts.

“Mmm. Good choice,” he said approvingly and popped the rest, a full bite, into his mouth, sighing in satisfaction.

Obviously there was no See’s franchise on the reservation.

“Good choice,” he said again, and “Good gift,” and passed the box to his left. The box made the rounds, the divider was lifted to give access to the lower level chocolates, and he gestured and said, “Sit.”

We sat.

We talked for hours and they finished the box.

Then singing and chanting began around the fire. I was unsure whether I should join in, or politely abstain unless urged.

I was afraid I might not syncopate with the song, and I remembered an earlier situation.

Shirley was singing soprano in the William Hall Chorale, introduced me, and he said, “Dress in a suit and stand with the baritones. Hold the music and move your mouth, but don’t sing or make a sound. We need bodies on stage to make the choir look larger so it can be taken even more seriously.”

So I stood, mute, while the singing on all sides overwhelmed the air, and I tried to look like an extended member, moving my silent mouth with some semblance of verisimilitude.

We came to a long note. The baritones held the extended tone and I thought, “Maybe I should just join in on that note to augment the resonance.”

I tried to match the note, searched for it, gave up, but not soon enough. The baritone on my right gave me a dirty look.

After the concert, I thought I saw that baritone talking to William Hall and gesturing in my direction.

Thus ended my career with the William Hall Chorale.

I didn’t want a repetition with the Navajos. If memory serves, I did try clapping to support the drums.

Immediately I was reminded of another incident. Jester Hairston, an iconic leader of the black community in song, was leading a concert at the school where I taught. He had the faculty stand in front of the stage facing the audience. We were to clap in syncopation to enhance the sound, whoop the audience, and rock the rafters.

I was nervous, not just because I had met him earlier at a friend’s party in South Central L. A. and he might remember me, but because I wasn’t sure if I was to clap with the beat or in opposition to it as a counter rhythm clap.

I thought of those early years when I played tennis on the team, hit a killer forehand cross court, but then wasn’t sure how to adjust the racket for a backhand if the ball was returned. There was the American grip, the Western grip, the Australian grip, and you had to turn the racket a quarter turn one way or the other, I was never sure which, and while I was turning the racket in my hand, the ball had already whizzed past me. I never quite understood why they made me Captain of the team.

Anyway, when Jester Hairston came down the line to approve the clapping of each of us, I was still trying to figure out when to clap, and made a miserable effort that fit neither the beat nor its opposite.

Shirley could do palmas at the flamenco concerts, but I couldn’t even clap right for a black choir, and Jester Hairston came to me, shook his head, and said, “You white boys really don’t have rhythm.”

Anyway, we were with the Navajos, and I probably clapped.

They had put gas in our car. They had canisters lined up for their own vehicles, but they shared. After all, we had brought them See’s candy. Up north, they would have called it a potlatch.

They said, “Of course you’ll stay the night,” so we curled up in the corner under blankets and animal skins.

The whole event was mystical, and I allowed myself to have a mystical experience as I became one with the universe.

The next morning we drove home on a full tank of gas.

My life has been full of experiences. This was just one of them.

I may go back, but without Shirley, it just won’t be the same.