Clueless in the Canyon (Lynn)

The mosquitoes are back—early this year, it seems. I acknowledge their role in the ecosystem but I am not an eager advocate of their right to reproduce and am always sorry to see their return. At dusk tonight I tossed some ‘natural’ larvacide pellets into our backyard pond and ran back into the house, but not before suffering a retaliatory attack that left me madly scratching my arms and ankles. While dressing my wounds with lavender lotion, I remembered a spring evening about ten years ago when Marc and I had visited the Four Corners National Park. We had enjoyed our day wandering through pit-house ruins and cliff dwellings on the mesa and we looked forward to an evening tour of some thousand-year-old petrogylphs hidden in the Canyon de Chelly. These walks were held nightly in the spring months and were restricted to those in the company of a Navajo guide.

This night’s escort was a frail-seeming, elderly man who met our small group of tourists (all strangers to Marc and me) at the trailhead as the sun set and a full moon rose. He was dressed in a loose, long-sleeved, high-buttoned shirt he’d tucked into his wrinkled, worn jeans that were in turn tucked into loosely tied sneakers. Our guide leaned on a tall wooden walking stick as he introduced himself as “Norman”, gave us a little background about the petroglyphs we were all anxious to see and then quietly assessed our general fitness for the three-mile walk. Almost everyone had suitable footwear, but since the day had been clear, hot and dry, we were all in shorts and most of the women wore tank tops. He mentioned matter-of-factly that although at this elevation there was only an occasional scrub oak and sage bush, the canyon floor was heavily vegetated and that meant mosquitoes would be plentiful and aggressive. Although we were redolent of coconut sunscreen, no one had any insect repellant.

Norman was too self-contained for any overt exasperation. He offered us what he said (with a sideways smile) was an ancient Indian preventative for insect bites. He clipped a few leafy branches from a sage bush with the blade of a jack-knife he’d taken from his pocket. Since I was standing nearest to him, he handed the first, strongly scented branch to me. I rubbed it furiously over my bare arms and legs, thinking the plant’s efficacy must be in its essential oils. Norman watched me in silence for a very… long… time, and then turned to the next person and handed her a branch. She wafted it elegantly about her face and shoulders. Everyone else followed her example. I drifted to the back of the group as we walked down the hillside, deeply grateful for the increasing darkness.

As it happened, I remained bite-free through the tour--if not from the aromatic sage, then no doubt because any mosquito alighting on me would surely have been incinerated from the heat of my flaming embarrassment.