Sanders, Arizona

Dear Readers,

The following is from my journal, from Friday, November 14th, 2008. It has been slightly modified from the way it appears in my journal. I’ve never been to the small Arizona town of Sanders, but I think I must have driven through it at least once in my life. Enjoy.

I saw a teaching job advertised for a really remote part of the state, in Sanders, Arizona. The closest grocery store, I think it said, was in Gallup, New Mexico, and since there's no apartment buildings around Sanders, the school has on-campus housing available- I guess there are a few trailers next to the school for teachers to live in. I'd be willing to try an adventure like that - live out in the middle of nowhere - save a lot of money - read a lot of books - spend a lot of time outside - experience the Wild West.

I’d have crazy small town folk for neighbors and crazy small town folk for friends. Or maybe I wouldn't have friends.

I’d get out in the boondocks, in the sticks, away from civilization - to get a clear head - to escape from the government problems, from the madness that so easily overcomes people in the city.

It'd be good to be out there – out there where people are ugly and they like it that way - out there where people rely on home remedies and folk wisdom for curing medical problems, where people go out to a dumpster in the heat of the day with BB guns and shoot little critters they find scuttling through the trash, or they just shoot the trash - out where people don’t use sunscreen - out where people hold conspiracy theories in their minds, conspiracy theories that make a big difference in they way they talk to outsiders - out where the world is very small, and contained, where only dark mists and monsters and despair live beyond a certain mile marker on the Interstate 40 - out where people are genuinely racist - out where wanted men go to hide - out where there ain’t much law - out where the men of the town administer what city people would call back-alley justice, only in Sanders they operate in wide open desert places, not in alleyways. And the men carry guns, and ropes, and crowbars, and bricks.

Out where Indians can be Indians, where they hold their ancient Indian ceremonies the way the medicine men teach - out where only one female in town uses a curling iron, and she’s got a club foot - out where one kid with bad breath and bad dandruff and bad acne and bad fat knows with all his soul that he is a wizard, and one day he’ll show all the men of Sanders what his wizardry can do, and you avoid the impossibly lucid stare of his eyes, his pure black eyes, when he walks on the roads of Sanders, dust billowing behind his heels, walking in the heat of the day, walking in his power.