Remembering Paolo Soleri

Detail at Cosanti in Paradise Valley

Last week I was in Flagstaff for a retrospective of Paolo Soleri’s work at Northern Arizona University (“Paolo Soleri: Think. Draw. Build. Sustain,” through April 13). I was moved by Soleri’s beautiful renderings and unusual ideas. Among his models and drawings were a number of bridges, which seemed to be a particular fascination for this visionary architect whose work spanned multiple disciplines. Yesterday, I was sad to learn that he had crossed another bridge, dying at the age of 93 at his home in Paradise Valley, AZ.

Born in 1919 in Turin, Italy, Paolo Soleri continued his architectural studies in the U.S. with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin and Taliesin West. He settled permanently in Arizona in 1956, establishing a home and studio in Paradise Valley, which he named Cosanti, a coined word from the Italian for “against things,” referring to the materialism and commercialism that so often keep us out of harmony with nature. That theme was apparent in the work chosen for NAU’s exhibition, combining organic forms, bold color, and equally bold ideas about how we can find more sustainable ways to live on earth.

Most mornings, I begin by checking in with one of my favorite blogs, Grist. In contrast to typically alarmist news about how we have become disconnected from our environment, Grist often highlights inspiring stories about people who are innovating ways to live in harmony with the planet. Decades ago, Paolo Soleri did that, recognizing that we could turn our backs on materialism to embrace nature’s grand scale and organic forms while still satisfying the human need for beauty and order.

Soleri may not have been the first to imagine this holistic approach (his work has echoes of ancient archaeology and Leonardo da Vinci, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright), but he was unafraid of risk, experimentation, and rejection. He also coined the word arcology, combining ecology and architecture, to promote a very different human interaction with earthly spaces. Think of it: Most of our homes are variations on boxes, and this was a man who truly saw outside the box.

Many of Soleri’s designs remain dreams, never achieving public support or funding. Among his realized works in Arizona we have Cosanti and Arcosanti (his experimental urban community, about 5 percent complete). Both are places where we can stand inside this man’s vision and be embraced by his sensibilities for architecture, nature, and even music, art, mathematics, and history. And a few years back, one of his many bridge designs was completed, essentially a giant solar calendar crossing the Arizona Canal in Scottsdale. On April 20, a movie about Soleri will be screened at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art as part of Modern Phoenix Week.

Paolo Soleri was ahead of his time, but I have a feeling that the rest of us will catch up and catch on, and that one day I’ll be reading Grist to learn that someone has picked up a Soleri concept and adapted it to real-world conditions. A few decades ago, his ideas may have looked like something out of a science fiction film. Someday, Paolo Soleri’s vision could be the view outside our front doors.

The Journey to Keet Seel

Keet Seel Canyon, Navajo National Monument

Not long ago, I read a travel story about Keet Seel, an Ancestral Puebloan site within Navajo National Monument, located about 20 miles south of Kayenta, Arizona. The author’s take on this very special place is that it was an arduous, unpleasant trip and, though the ruin was impressive, it wasn’t worth the effort of getting there. I was astonished.

The facts of the article were absolutely correct. Yes, it is a difficult hike. It’s 8.5 miles (one way) in summer, when it’s hot as blazes and when, after July, afternoon thundershowers can turn a hike from just plain hot to hot, humid, scary, wet, and chilly. (Personal experience speaking here.) The author mentioned such miseries as flies, livestock, sand, lack of water, and a steep exit from the canyon. He neglected to mention the quicksand. (Also personal experience.)

But the reward for the hike to Keet Seel was being able to enter one of the most magical places I have ever visited. This Ancestral Puebloan village, occupied 700 years ago, is tucked into a sheltering alcove, and it looks as though its residents simply picked up walked away. Part of the magic is that Keet Seel can only be visited in the presence of a ranger, and only by five or fewer people at a time. The spacious coolness of the alcove is impressive. The quiet is awesome. These qualities would be lost in a crowd of people. And who knows what else might be lost at this historic site (or along the route) if hundreds of people tramped through daily.

The author’s chief complaint was that Keet Seel is open to hikers only in summer months, and he directed his displeasure toward the Navajo Nation, which administers the monument in partnership with the National Park Service. Personally, I’m thankful that the strenuous nature of this journey keeps the experience rare and special, and grateful that local tribal members have chosen to limit access this way. Keet Seel is not an appropriate “sacrifice site,” a term coined by an archaeologist in reference to cultural sites that are opened and promoted to the general public in order to educate or entertain. Though Mesa Verde’s Cliff Palace is magnificent, it has lost an ineffable something because of the crowds who visit there. The long hike to Keet Seel, on the other hand, is an opportunity to let go and prepare to be transformed. We need both types of places.

At least, that’s my perspective. And as I re-read that article about Keet Seel, I realized how much travelers’ (and writers’) perspectives can differ. One person’s paradise can be another’s ho-hum. A big part of this is the expectations and experiences we carry with us like baggage when we travel. And I think that as a culture, we’ve gotten used to things that are easy and comfortable. When I write travel stories, I think it’s important to report things accurately—the difficulty of a hike, the expense of a popular destination. But I also believe it’s important to look at things with an unjaded eye, to make room for magic. There can be a fine line between being discerning and being dismissive.

Now that summer is here, Keet Seel is open once again to day hikers and backpackers. (Advance permits are required.) If you don’t like flies, or heat, or challenging hikes, you can "settle" for easy canyon-rim trails with great views. But if you’re ready to let modern life fall away as you walk through Navajo land, and then enter an ancient village with fresh eyes, put Keet Seel on your bucket list. 

Sedona's two summers

Prickly pear cactus blooms

At the local chamber of commerce, they boast about Sedona’s four-season climate, something special in this desert state. But by my count, Sedona has five seasons. We experience two summers (something we share with Phoenix, Tucson, and other Sonoran desert cities): a hot and dry foresummer, followed by the monsoon, marked by higher humidity and fierce afternoon thunderstorms. 

April might have been the cruelest month in Chaucer’s world, but here in Arizona, it’s May.

Summer seemed to blow in overnight to central Arizona, dropping the humidity below 15 percent and drying up tender spring wildflowers. Nearly every day is hot and windy, and the scent of smoke is in the air from four wildfires burning in the Prescott and Tonto national forests. The small community of Crown King (near Prescott) was evacuated a couple days ago. The national weather service posts red flag warnings (when conditions are ripe for wildfire) almost daily.

We face a long stretch until monsoon-pattern rain rides in like the cavalry and rescues us from the tinder-dry conditions. Fire restrictions are in place on every national forest in the state.

That’s the big picture. Meanwhile, we have little annoyances as well, and some of the littlest are the most annoying. If you hike in the Four Corners area, you know I’m talking about cedar gnats, nasty little creatures that are hard to see (hence, their alias, no-see-ums) but leave huge welts when they bite. Cedar gnats make hiking in piñon-juniper woodlands an ordeal for about six weeks every spring. They find every patch of exposed skin, leaving red bites at the vee of a collar, the edge of a sleeve, or along the hairline. Searching for moisture, they’ll fly into hikers’ eyes, nostrils, and mouth. The wind keeps them away for the most part, but as soon as it’s calm, they come out in droves.

The dry foresummer also drives forest dwellers into neighborhoods in search of water. A few days ago, a bobcat walked across the yard. Smaller creatures try to escape the heat by sneaking indoors. I found an angry scorpion in the living room Sunday night, brandishing his tail at me. (I scooped him up in a glass and took him outside, where I hope he’ll stay.)

But the months of May and June aren’t all bad. The sun sets late, and the long evenings feel like bonus time. Nights are cool, perfect for sleeping with the windows open to the tangy/spicy scent of the desert. Wildflowers have given way to jewel-bright cactus blooms.

Seasons remind us that change is inevitable, and that most everything has its pluses and minuses. In the world of freelancing, for example, it seems like every contract is balanced by a stack of rejection letters. (I read once that dedicated magazine freelancers sell about 10 percent of their work.) But after years of sweating the dry spells, I’ve learned that the rains eventually return.

The Writer's Craft: Learning From Failure

I’ve always been more intrigued by questions than answers, and I find the fluteplayer image painted or carved on cliff walls throughout the Americas (but most famously here in the Southwest) particularly evocative. Is the fluteplayer a traveling salesman, a supernatural being, or a specific individual? Does he symbolize fertility, rain, seeds, music, or a particular ceremony? 

Fluteplayer pictograph near Sedona, Arizona

I had a lot of time to contemplate these questions while acting as a volunteer docent at Palatki, near Sedona, leading tours of alcoves containing centuries of rock art. One afternoon, a set of possibilities magically shaped themselves into a children’s tale. Thus far, it is the only time in my writing life that I felt visited by a muse. I decided that destiny was playing its hand, and a couple weeks later I sent off the completed manuscript for Kokopelli’s Gift expecting great things: a major publisher, a fat advance, tons of sales, maybe even tie-in products like notecards or refrigerator magnets or, heck, why not a Kokopelli stuffed toy?

The manuscript limped back, rejected.

As the saying goes, this wasn’t my first rodeo, so I knew that I needed to detach, reprint, package, stamp, and send it to the next publisher on the list. And the next. And the next. And the next.

All tolled, I queried and pitched dozens of publishing companies, coming close only once before the book finally found a home at Kiva Publishing, a small company in California that specializes in Southwest-themed books. Owner/publisher Stephen Hill had a talent for matching up writers and illustrators, and he contracted a gifted artist from New Mexico's Santa Clara Pueblo, Michelle Tsosie Sisneros, to illustrate my story about a mysterious stranger who visited a drought-stricken village.

Though I’d expected fireworks from Kokopelli’s Gift, I received instead a small but steady flame that still burns. My articles and guidebooks have been ephemeral—useful to travelers I’m happy to say, but out-of-date in a month, a year, five years, whisked away by rack-jobbers or replaced by new editions. What pleases me most about Kokopelli’s Gift is that it's beautiful (thank you, Stephen and Michelle), and it endures (thank you, muse).

I might have given up on this story after the first round of rejection letters, but I once knew a novelist who sold a Gothic romance twenty years after writing the manuscript, when Gothic fiction resurged in popularity. The obvious moral is “never give up.” In other words, be committed. But there’s an equally important corollary to this moral: Don’t mistake attachment for commitment.

If you’re attached to your story, you may not make necessary revisions, or you may resist tailoring it to a publisher's needs. If you’re attached to a particular outcome—being published, getting a six-figure advance—a sense of failure is likely after a few tries or a few years, and you’ll probably throw in the towel.

But how can you be committed and detached at the same time? 

For most of us, this is one of life’s greatest questions, and there’s no easy answer. Like an archaeologist searching for the past, you may need to dig deep to uncover the origins of your attachment. My attachments, I’ve found, are often responses to feelings of lack or fear. When you’re able to bring up an attachment and look at it in the hard, bright light of day, you can begin to free yourself. Then, with renewed insight, you can commit to your progress as a writer.

Sweet Home Sedona

Sedona, Arizona

On most any given day in Sedona, Arizona, visitors outnumber residents. Each afternoon, scores answer the seductive call of red sandstone to scramble up slickrock slopes in search of a vortex or view. Hundreds more drive up Airport Mesa or down Red Rock Loop Road to snap photos of rocks shaped like castles, critters, and kitchen implements. Shoppers jaywalk through Uptown, mountain bikers bomb down forest trails, and drivers—visitors and locals alike—hit the brakes when something unexpected crosses the road, be it a family of Gambel quail or a hot-air balloon gone astray.

            Life here can get pretty wacky at times. Maybe it’s because Sedona’s red rocks are riddled with vortexes (vortices, if you prefer). Whether they are whorls of energy or inventions to attract tourists, their draw is second only to the landscape itself. But more about the vortex scene another time. First, let’s consider Sedona’s other-worldly landscape, the reason why so many people (1) visit here, (2) move here, or (3) fantasize about moving here.

           The greater Sedona area, home to about 15,000 people, encompasses Uptown, West Sedona, and the Village of Oak Creek. It’s a bit like a suburb without an urb, a commercial/residential island surrounded by a sea of public land, most of it Coconino National Forest. Neither desert nor mountain but somewhere in between, the Sedona area is situated a couple thousand feet below the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. Rugged canyons—splendid for hiking—are carved from the plateau’s Permian rocks. One, the canyon of Oak Creek, cuts through a 2,500-foot geological layer cake on its 12-mile length, revealing an earth shaped by oceans, deserts, swamps and volcanic flows.

           Sedona’s famed buttes and spires are sculpted from a 700-foot thick stack of mudstone, sandstone, and limestone colored dark red, orange, and gray. In some places, limestone forms a hard cap that protects lower, softer layers of rock, leaving water and wind to create shapes that tease the imagination. Taller peaks, like Bear Mountain and Capitol Butte, are topped with a gorgeous golden cross-bedded sandstone formed from ancient dunes. Counterpoint to the red and gold rocks is a patchwork of green (mostly piñon and juniper) and intensely blue skies.

           Living in such a beautiful place can be both blessing and curse. On days when deadlines keep me at my desk and a quick dash to New Frontiers for groceries becomes a protracted battle to find a parking space among hordes of rental cars, I grit my teeth to see the drivers lounging at the tables outside the deli, sipping wheatgrass shakes or lattes. Mildly sunburned and smiling, wearing Tevas and shorts, they consult topos or phone apps to plan their next adventures. As for me, well, I am as jealous as a jilted lover.

           My green-eyed monster may violate Sedona’s New Age vibe, but the sin of envy makes sense if you agree with one of my favorite writers, Pico Iyer, who compares travel to a love affair. He points out that travel is “a heightened state of awareness in which we are mindful, receptive and ready to be transformed.” 

           Travelers--and lovers--fare best when they are open to the unexpected and willing to become lost. This state is familiar to Buddhists and yogis as beginner’s mind. Lovers know it as the discovery stage, when all seems magical and possible. Psychologists might call it infatuation or limerance. Here in Sedona, we've dubbed it Red Rock Fever, and it can make people do foolish things, like trying to hike up Bell Rock in flip-flops or abandoning a steady career to become a yoga teacher or tour guide. (Or travel writer.)

           Being a travel writer, I get to fall in love a lot. And though it may be a bit harder to drum up passion for the familiar, state of mind is quite portable, as easy to pack as a clean pair of socks and ready to go anywhere … even the grocery store.