Finally Flagstaff

More than a week since my return and I haven't posted a dozen words on Flagstaff. Of course, I haven't posted all that much about anything. I have been stewing over my experience, not to mention the paperwork I have and am waiting for so that I can complete my registration. That is, I have a few things on my plate that I can't seem to get off of it just yet. Instead, I write suspenseful chapters in a horror-detective story and scoop ice cream.

Flagstaff, for those unaware, is a rather delightful town. It is on historic Route 66, with an older, more established north side of town as well as a south side that mostly consists of the University, the Sunny Side neighborhood, and the businesses and other homes that have grown up surrounding as a result. I stayed in the Du Beau Hostel, about a quarter mile from campus and one block from the train track and Route 66--they run parallel--in the other direction. I was happy to find abundant small businesses, my favorites of which were Macy's vegetarian cafe and Diablo Burger with its local, grass-fed meat (though I got their amazing grilled cheese) and familiar no credit card policy. I also enjoyed the jaunt up to Lowell Observatory where its namesake "discovered" Martian ravines as a sign of an advanced civilization and later astronomers first identified the "expanding universe;" it is closed on Thursdays, but I appreciated it all the same.

I met a handful of students (Tamara, Liz, and Nelson) who had plenty of good things to say about the Sustainable Communities Program--which for some reason is abbreviated SUS. It has a very liberal arts feel to it, with its primary classes every semester and plenty of electives to lean on your thesis. Though it is a two-year program, it does not seem to have enormous impetus to complete the program in two years. Rather, the encouragement is in finding internships and community-based involvement for students to implement their work in their community and, I hope, to quickly find work preceding or following graduation. One example is the ARTS lab, which is a sort of service-learning project that students perform throughout to improve one aspect of their community.

The Slugg (or, maybe, SLUGG) Garden is one such project, which was adapted from another student's senior project. I spent my Friday morning--after breakfast, reading, and renting a bike--planting vegetables in the Slugg Garden and chatting it up with Tamara and Liz. (Nelson and I had met the day before and he showed me much of the paperwork and networking on which NAU relies and with which I ought to quickly familiarize myself.) The air stays cool at six thousand feet and it was remarked that a week or two previous, they had had a frost; so gardening is a peculiar feat with only a one hundred day growing season. All the same, the excitement and interest for food systems, urban gardening, locavorism, and seasonality was obvious, and I took great pleasure in being around it.

Flagstaff, it rapidly became clear, is not the norm for Arizona. A friend of mine once stated that Austin, Texas was something like a middle finger to the rest of Texas for its well-advertised "weirdness," which takes the form of music, the arts, curb-side recycling, and general appreciation of hippie-dippy-ness. I quickly came to think of Flagstaff similarly. The region has actual seasons, so discourages the sort of retirement aged immigrants from elsewhere in the country that Phoenix and Tuscon attract; meanwhile, the University and plentiful small businesses support an artsy, quirky, and progressive sociopolitical mindset. That said, I generally stuck with the newer areas, whereas the north side's older families and fancier homes may have a slightly different political leaning. It also has a high Native American presence as it is just about next door neighbors with the Navajo reservation, so knowledge and dialogue with social problems and injustice felt--for lack of a better word--in the air in a way that a sprawling suburban empire like Phoenix simply doesn't support. Finally, the hiking and biking trails, along with its comfortable size and lively downtown encourage a thriving cyclist community, which is indubitably mindful of transportation politics and wilderness stewardship which motorists can often outright ignore.

Maybe the middle finger is the wrong image. It doesn't have an aggressive agenda or set politics. A recent conflict was that the skiing resorts on the nearby mountains (their are about six, but only three that are ski-worthy) wanted to manufacture snow for skiers, only that water is scarce, so that they were told to use reclaimed water; the reclaimed water, though, often has been exposed to dead creatures swept in by stormwater. Now, the problem is that these mountains are sacred for the Navajo--and I believe other Indians, too--who do not touch the dead for spiritual reasons; if you're going to spread "contaminated" water on sacred mountains, that represents a powerful blasphemy to the Navajo and their spirituality. The resorts have been given the okay by the city, much to the chagrin of the Navajo.

What I mean to get at is that I want to say Flagstaff is one thing or another, but it isn't. I look forward to its hiking and biking trails, its coffeeshops and breweries, its live music and art shows. I am also interested in its political discussions and how it engages with other parts of the state with their more stubborn perspectives on immigration and race. In addition, Flagstaff has a delightful novelty, perhaps even a mystique because it is not the Midwest. I have just about always lived in the Midwest, save for less than two infantile years in West Virginia, and though I love it, I need to move out in case I ever come back. I could call it domestic exoticism, my undoubtable interest in this new place, its strong light and altitude, its pine trees and politics. I look forward to it, more than I would have expected, to be honest.