Along the Way

When the Wily Trickster Laughs, You Know You've Pulled a Boo-boo

Halfway down the narrowing canyon, I peered over the lip of the water-smoothed rock and pondered my next move.

The shadows were lengthening across the rugged Super-stition Mountains, and my legs ached. Finding a flat slab of rock, I sat and weighed the water in my canteen in one hand. Mostly gone. Turning, I glanced back up the ravine down which I'd come this long last hour, then shifted my attention to the valley floor, tan-talizingly near at the bottom of a narrow, sheer-sided canyon. Decisions.

I'd come finally to a rock chute that formed a one-way barrier. The sheer-sided canyon had so narrowed, I couldn't easily visualize slip-sliding down the smooth chute in front of me to the dry streambed below.

But I couldn't picture myself climbing back out. That meant I'd be committed to this canyon once I went over the rock chute. I shouldn't have hiked alone. I should have brought more water. I should have brought a rope.

With a resigned shrug, I eased forward, controlling my descent as long as possible before surrendering to gravity for a final sliding rush down the granite. Then I headed briskly on down.

About five minutes later, I came to the cliff.

Unclimbable granite walls rose on both sides. The rock face must create a striking waterfall after a big rain, but then it presented a deadly 60-foot drop. It offered only one possible escape: a 20-foot traverse following an on-again, off-again crack in the rock, followed by a scramble up a fissured cliff face out of the canyon. I eased onto the first part of the crack, trying to still a sudden trembling in my hands. I inched along for about five feet before the rock crumbled under my leading foot. I clung to the rock face while a wave of fear paralyzed me.

I couldn't move at all for about five minutes. Then I crawled back the way I'd come. Standing back on the cliff edge, my legs shook so violently I had to sit down.

I don't know how long I stayed there before I noticed the coyote.

He sat on the ridge I had been trying to reach, regarding me quizzically, head cocked, ears pricked, lips pulled into a mocking half-smile. He seemed amused by my predicament. The irrepressible, foolish, ever-gullible trickster of a thousand Indian tales was delighted to have encountered a creature more foolish than himself.

Sitting on the cliff edge, watching the coyote, I tried to recall some of the stories from the book Hopi Coyote Tales, by Ekkehart Malotki and Michael Lomatuway'ma.

The story of Coyote Girl and the Bird Girls came to mind.

They say that long ago Coyote Girl came upon the Bird Girls all sitting prettily in a row, grinding corn and singing their corn-grinding song. Then, all together, they flew up into the he sky before returning to the metates and repeating the song.

Coyote, of course, immediately wanted to learn the corn-grinding song.

The Bird Girls agreed readily enough, but secretly they feared Coyote Girl's teeth and her unpredictable appetite.

Coyote Girl listened until she learned the song perfectly. Then she begged the Bird Girls for feathers so that she also could fly into the sky. Sure enough, with the borrowed feathers, Coyote could fly just like the Bird Girls.

Now they grew even more fearful, knowing that the fickle Coyote would soon tire of this game and turn her thoughts to dinner. So the next time they came to the flying part of the song, the Bird Girls soared higher than ever. Coyote Girl followed along, exclaiming at the view. Then the Bird Girls snatched back their feathers. And poor distracted Coyote Girl fell from the sky and died there on the rocks.

This story should have depressed me.

But staring at the grinning coyote, the immobilizing fear somehow released its grip. If I'd been a badger or a porcupine, I might have tricked the coyote into building a ladder and taking my place on the cliff. But I did not know the songs, or the words, or the yips in coyote.

So I merely stood and stepped toward the crack. The coyote vanished with my first movement, melting into the brush. This time I made it, crossing the crack in the rock while keeping my eyes on the slope where he had been.

Moments later I reached the spot where the coyote had been sitting and looked back toward the rock where I had been trapped. No wonder he smiled: From where the coyote sat, it seemed I could not possibly have escaped. I searched carefully all about on the ground, but could not find a single coyote track.

Later, down on the trail, I heard the sound of coyotes.

And, I swear to you, they were laughing.M