Travis –

Thank you very much for the loan of your book on Kit Carson's biography ("Blood and Thunder") and I am returning it herewith. Also enclosing a little book I much enjoyed lately (and which has been greatly praised in many current reviews). Perhaps you might find it interesting...

Also, Naomi sends along a clipping from one of her catalogs that she thought might interest you and Deena – a cabinet of some kind for your wall TV set... (She adds she is also sending later a new recipe for Deena on a Chicken Pot Pie she has made here, etc...)

Re Carson... You know that Canyon de Chelly in the book (pronounce "day shayeee") is a place your mother and I visited on our memorable trip to the Desert SW so many years ago (around 1954-55 or so I would guess). We were all through there and camping out of our car in those days. Got permission from the Park Rangers you see – and some instructions on how to deal with the Navaho. (Best to squat when desiring to converse with them; don't get to point right away; never point at them, or even shake a cigarette out of a pack at them (as it is "pointing"): Pointing is a big no-no in their culture, etc.).

I remember Spider Lady Rock very well and the tale that goes with it (all mentioned in book). Very remote and wild up there then and likely still so today. About like it was just a few decades earlier when Kit and the US Cavalry were rounding up the Navahos for their trail of tears to the Bosque Redondo. My goal at the time was to set foot in the famous "White House Ruins" – a picturesque Anasazi cliff dwelling in the face of a gigantic red-gold sandstone cliff. You had to navigate mostly by maps, but we found it one day (I remember when we back-tracked out on our trail, there were puma tracks crossing over our earlier ones in the sand! LOL!) Anyhow, it had been raining in the Lukachucki's or way to hell and gone off somewhere and the crick was in flood. The Rangers and the maps all warned us of quicksand everywhere. "White House" lay just across this damn crick (maybe 100 ft. wide or so I guess – as I recall now...). But barely ankle-deep in most spots. It was decided (LOL!) that your mother would make the attempt to find a footpath across (on the grounds that she was smaller and lighter by some bit).

So in she plunged – and in no time she had gotten into quicksand! Jeezul! We were both shook up! I told her not to stop and ran along the bank as she zig-zagged downstream. I want to tell you she was actually walking Jesus-style on top it all when she got to edge and I could grab an arm and pull her out! Then we sat and ate a sandwich we had brought with us and drank some water. "White House" in that clear sparkling air and sunlight – you could see every timber-end and brick in the facades) seemed just at arm's reach – but we never made it across. (For years I used to dream the same sight: right to the edge of White House but never made it over...).

Later, on the hike back out, a huge thunderstorm engulfed us. There was a large, dark opening at the edge of the trail right in under a big rock – so we just dove into the dark to get out of the downpour. There was a disconcerted movement of something very big and warm and smelly in the dark under that rock – and the air was suddenly filled with a thousand tinkling bells! LOL! We had pitched headlong down a slope in the cave right into a Navaho sheep herd – which was sheltering in here out of the same storm! The tinkling was all the little bells they wore...

The famous Canyon del Muerto (mentioned many times in the book) – the Canyon of Death – is a branch off the main canyon. It is very famous for so many of the incidents mentioned in the book. We wanted to see it – but the Ranger was cautioning us on going in there alone – as frequently people did not come back out! LOL – and there was quicksand, snakes, lions and all kinds of things in there there to ruin your whole day even!

But he said, if you will get Old Bill here (a grizzled old Navaho with a face like shoe leather and the most beautiful turquoise hatband you ever saw) – to take you up there in his wagon – you will be okay. Then he added, "Not that Bill give's a rat's ass about your white hides – it is his horses he is concerned about – and he absolutely will not put them into any danger! So as long as you stay in Bill's wagon and with him and the horses – you are guaranteed to come back out! So we did, and Bill did and the horses did, and I'm here today to tell you all about it! (You doubtless remember many of these tales when you were growing up – and the many color slides of it all I once had somewhere...).

Never been back to any of the many Anasazi ruins and Indian sites we visited out there that summer. This was before all this "Red Power" stuff you see, and you could move around their reservations freely more or less as long as you didn't 1) make them pray or preach to them – LOL! A Hopi I spent time with was always concerned I might be a Missionary in drag or something... Sheesh! And 2) give them liquor. I have no doubt "Indian Country" as it was then called on all the Triple AAA maps ("Bring own water," "No shade 30 miles" and other such notations along the dotted "road" lines... kinda like those old maps you see of the Great Ages of Exploration with the winds and the dragons and all around the edges...), I say I have no doubt it is all changed now – but your mother and I saw it when the last war hoop of Kit himself might just yet be heard on a clear night on the Canyon's rim...

It remains to add, perhaps, that many, many years later, after your mother was gone and Millie and I were travelling through the Southwest once, we stopped in Taos (where Kit had holed up much of the time – noted in your book). Kit had been a sometime blacksmith you see, and we visited the old restored fort and exhibits there and they had this "restored" smithy such as he might have had. Couple of Mexicans were going through the motions there, but it wasn't too convincing. I got to talking with the lady director there about it all, and when she found I had done some traditional smithing myself, she got all interested and then when I told her I was Paul Calle's model and a mountainman re-enactor into the bargain, she really flipped! Millie and I were at the time looking for a home in the area and thinking seriously of moving there and the lady said if we did that, she would hire me as director for the Kit Carson Blacksmith demos and I could "do my thing!" LOL! Best offer I had that day (and many subsequent, in fact...Grin!). But Mill decided she didn't "like" Taos, or New Mexico itself much and the Indians themselves, and there was too much mud and garish colors, etc so we kept on treking West to look in CA, as you know...). Before I left though, I visited Kit's grave and have stood on same. Yep! It doesn't get much better'n that, Pilgrim, for a romantic and dreamer after the past and all..."

"Powder River and let 'er buck!"

Stay off'n the ridgelines now, and in the mountaings make fire onliest with aspen so the Hostile's won't spy ya! My best to yer Squaw, and Gawd willin' and ta' crick don' rize, see ya at Fall Rendezvous one of these days...

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