Code Talkers

Off and on the Rez

It was the middle of winter, January 2009, and we were boondocking behind the Totsoh Trading Post on the Navajo Nation. We had driven up, after more than a month on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona, north through the White Mountains of the Fort Apache Reservation, where it first came to our attention, to our rutted-road, high-altitude switchback dismay, that GPS doesn’t know you’re a 37-foot motorhome with a hydraulic lift and two Yamaha motor scooters tied down on the back. We could have chosen better, broader roads, but I wanted to see Fort Apache.

In San Carlos, we had lived plugged to the grid in the RV park that co-exists in the large parking lot of the Apache Gold Casino. The casino, no great moneymaker, no lives transformed, no Apaches rollin’ in dough and livin’ high on the gambling-privileged hog, sits off the reservation, so we had to drive a bit to do our work each day. And only one person ever saw the motor home.

Before we departed for our year on the road, with …