Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

laundry in the mornings, at the pool in the afternoons
and in the evening watching the late night movies with
commercial breaks (‘you asked for it, you got it, Toyota’).
And on Monday back to the office. Worrying about sex,
because only too soon it became clear that Stefanie would
have much preferred to stay brother and sister.
The next morning we follow Highway 89 from the
Navajo Reservation, where we have spent the night in a
school annex hotel full of silent Indians, heading west
for the Grand Canyon. A hand written sign ‘Nice Indians
Behind You’ along the road marks the boundary between
Indian reservation and national park. Accompanied by a
sharp transition to green forests and spectacular rising
mountains. The same silver jewelry and blankets that a
few miles back were for sale on shaky booths along the
road, you can buy here in a neatly decorated trading post.
They don’t carry the peace pipe that I had set my heart
on by now for the home grown little friends in my own
garden, says a lady in a tightly ironed rangers uniform
behind the counter. Must also be ‘behind you’, I realize
too late.
The canyon itself is really beautiful, even if to see it we
have to deal with vast parking lots full of tour busses. It
is a red rock sculpture ten miles wide and almost three
hundred miles long. All the way down the Colorado River
flows, a dingy little stream responsible for this enormous
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