Stephen Fry in America

by Stephen Fry

  I am shown round an earthship by one of the heroes of the movement, Mike Reynolds. He was the subject of Oliver Hodge’s documentary Garbage Warrior, nominated for three British Independent Film Awards. This made Reynolds an easy man to interview, for he was well used to cameras.

  A trained architect, Reynolds has built dozens of earthships for rich businessmen, musicians and movie stars as well as for ordinary families. He explains to me how the water in an earthship is used three times, how a family of four can live in a place like this and be off the power grid and never have to go shopping. It is certainly impressive. Absolutely nothing in the village of earthships looks finished, however–the bourgeois in me wishes they weren’t so messy, so surrounded by rubble and old cement mixers. For all their new and urgent contemporaneousness the habitations look faintly sad, shambolic and unloved. Skinny dogs lie outside them and growl. Filled with admiration as I am, I will not be ordering an earthship construction kit from Mike’s company. I shall continue to be fuelled by grid electricity and guilt.

  My final view of Taos is that of the great gorge of the Rio Grande that lies between the earthships and the town itself. A dramatic riot of geology glides below us. I am giddy from the added altitude, but I realise I had better get used to it. It will be a long time before I am at sea level again.

  UTAH

  ‘My first exclamation on sighting Monument Valley was “Poor Australia!”’

  Goulding’s Lodge must be a contender for the motel with the best view in the world for it overlooks one of nature’s greatest and most insane achievements, Monument Valley.

  Utah, southern Utah especially, contains some of America’s most dazzling spectacles: Bryce, Moab and Zion national parks and their canyons and gorges are familiar to millions of tourists. If only I had time to visit them all. But Monument Valley will do. It will do very well indeed. I have known it for most of my life without knowing why, as have you in all likelihood: it has been the almost extra-terrestrial background to some of the best films ever made–the westerns of John Ford. The story of how Monument Valley became Ford’s personal movie set is a good one.

  The Gouldings and John Ford

  In the 1920s Harry Goulding and his wife, Leone ‘Mike’, established a trading post with the Navajo, which is now the Lodge where I am staying. By the mid-to late thirties the Depression had bitten and, despairing of the plight of the Navajo and of his business, Harry went to Hollywood. The story goes he couldn’t get anyone interested in coming to Monument Valley. Couldn’t even get a meeting with a young director called John Ford, who was about to start a big new western. Harry resorted to pushing photos of Monument Valley under Ford’s office door. It worked. That year, 1938, Ford came to make the movie Stagecoach with his new young star, John ‘Duke’ Wayne. It was the beginning, as they say, of a beautiful friendship: Ford and Wayne made nine pictures in all at Monument Valley and today Goulding’s Lodge offers tours around John Wayne’s cabin (‘dressing room’ sounds a bit mincey for the Duke).

  Monumental.

  Out in the valley, the location of the attack on an Indian village in Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers is now officially designated John Ford Point. The stone, the red dust and those monumental geological elements are a part of America’s iconography.

  We toyed with all kinds of ideas for a cover for this book, but in the end the epic grandeur of Monument Valley was irresistible; nothing else says ‘America’ in quite so loud and clear a voice. Nowhere else on earth looks anything like this.

  Monument Valley

  Actually, my first exclamation on sighting Monument Valley was ‘Poor Australia!’ The whole landmass of Australia has one big rock which they regard as a great attraction, but which would be rejected from Monument Valley as being too small, feeble and uninteresting. Most dispiriting for a proud people like the Australians, I should imagine.

  But how do the elements of nature come together to create these Gothic cathedrals, Norman keeps, Moghul palaces, Cambodian towers, modernist statues, elegant terraces and alien settlements, all marooned in a parched red desert? The answer, although ultimately convincing, is as mad and unlikely as the features themselves. We are reduced, as ever, to the geologist’s explanation for everything: time and pressure, water and wind.

  The first game you play when confronted with the contortions of rock that make up the major pieces of the Valley is to force them to fit something we know. It is an irresistible part of being human, we can’t help looking for the familiar even in random abstract wind formations. The Indians got there first of course, and then the Christian missionaries and other Europeans. Hence there is the Totem Pole, the Ear of the Wind, the Three Sisters, the Thumb, the Mittens, Elephant Butte, a ‘Saviour’ which looks like Jesus and a great system of rocks in the shape of the letters W and V, the W of which has also been interpreted as Mary, Jesus and Joseph. Now there is a Lisa Simpson formation and a computer keyboard butte.

  * * *

  UTAH

  KEY FACTS

  Abbreviation:

  UT

  Nickname:

  The Beehive State

  Capital:

  Salt Lake City

  Flower:

  Sego lily

  Tree:

  Blue spruce

  Bird:

  California gull

  Snack food:

  Jell-O

  Motto:

  Industry

  Well-known residents and natives: Brigham Young, Warren G. Harding, Brent Scowcroft, Butch Cassidy, John Wesley Powell, Philo Farnsworth, J.W. Marriott, John Gilbert, Loretta Young, Hal Ashby, Robert Redford, James Woods, Roseanne Barr, Gary Coleman, The Osmonds.

  * * *

  The whole site belongs to the Navajo and I feel extremely honoured to be invited to be their guest, right down on the floor of the valley, with the WV behind us.

  A lesson in Navajo Beading with Sally.

  Brunch with Jamieson and his family, in the shadow of the big WV.

  Weaving in the Hogan

  The taxi makes its way down past John Ford Point to a corral where twenty horses skitter and frisk. Tourists can come down and do some riding here: the man who runs the corral is Jamieson, a middle-aged Navajo man of great charm and sweetness of manner. He smiles at the taxi and bids me join him in his hogan, a kind of round, earth-topped hut, warm in winter, cool in summer. He smiles with some amusement at my ravings: What a place to live! Imagine waking up every morning in scenery like this! He loves it of course, but it is all he has known.

  We are joined by his sister Sally, who is an expert weaver, specialising in traditional Navajo basket-ware. When I say expert, I mean expert, her baskets are not just charming and desirable ethnic craftwork, they fetch thousands and thousands of pounds from avid collectors around the world. One of them, she tells me proudly, is in the White House in Washington, DC. A weaver is responsible for everything: she picks the sumac twigs (involving a journey of hundreds of miles, for sumac does not grow locally), slices them, soaks them and dyes them. Sally’s daughter is learning the craft and I buy two delightful tightly coiled little bowls from her. She explains the iconography of the patterns: the centre, like a navel, symbolises the beginning of the world, and is surrounded by the mountains, the rainbow (where dreams and thoughts dwell) and then the clouds and sky. There is a gap between the navel and the edge which is how man is able to mediate the differing zones. Pleasing. But nothing like as pleasing as the smell emanating from a barbecue grill outside the hogan.

  Navajo boys in their tribal homeland.

  Jamieson has invited most of his family to this Sunday morning brunch. I watch as his sister-in-law Lorraine makes frybread, a Navajo speciality, not unlike a fluffy naan. The fluffiness comes from the addition of milk powder, Lorraine tells me. Meanwhile, as with barbecues the world over, the men are scorching the steak, the ribs and the sausages.

  This trip has given me many happy moments, but stuffing down real, freshly made Navajo frybread in the shadow of Monum
ent Valley is high in the top ten.

  Jamieson turns me round to look at the formation behind us and he says to me, and I know this sounds sentimental and made-up and corny, but he says it to me and I can see in his eyes that he means it, he says, ‘See that? WV. It stands for “Welcome, Visitor.”’

  The Silver Ribbon of Time…

  Utah’s Mormon settlers had wanted to call the territory deseret, which in their founder Joseph Smith’s sad, silly madey-uppy language meant ‘honey-bee’, hence the nickname The Beehive State and the motto ‘Industry’. Wiser counsels prevailed: the name Utah is derived from the Ute, a tribe of Shoshone-speaking Indians once resident in the area around the Colorado River. I remember when I was about nine years old a National Geographic film was played to my class. The American commentator spoke in that peculiar way that took off a be-suffix if there was one and added one where there wasn’t: ‘’Neath the be-dappled sagebrush prairie-lands’…that sort of thing. He also came up with this rare jewel: ‘the silver river of time that is the Colorado River…’ My friends and I went round for weeks talking about ‘the emerald blanket of love that is the cricket pitch’ and ‘the golden staff of hate that is this hockey stick’.

  The silver river of time that is the Colorado River, it might be argued, has done more wonders than any other river in the world. It carved out the Grand Canyon, that alone is achievement enough. As a reward it has been staunched and stemmed on a scale like no other. It all began with the Hoover Dam in 1930 and it ended with the completion of Lake Powell in 1980. Poor silver ribbon of time that was the Colorado River, be-dammed and diverted to be-buggery.

  Imagine that someone was so profligate and peculiar as to seal up the ends of the Grand Canyon and then fill it with water. Well, that is more or less what has happened in the case of Lake Powell, a vast artificial reservoir created in 1956. That is to say, the damming started in 1956–it actually took almost a quarter of a century to fill Glen Canyon and create Lake Powell.

  It was considered by many at the time to be a disaster, a wanton act of greedy, brutal destruction. Glen Canyon, though less well known than the Grand Canyon, was held by many to be more beautiful. Never having seen any of it except the parts that rise above the water level, I can believe them. The colourful layered Navajo sandstone on all sides of the lake is exquisite. I cannot deny that the effect of the water is beautiful too. It allows a special kind of tourism–the houseboat holiday. I travel with Rob Bighorse, a Navajo man now employed as a guide by the boat company. I look around the boat. There is a kitchen, the largest plasma screen TV I have ever seen and, above, a jacuzzi.

  Vulgar, yes. Ecologically disgraceful, certainly. Bloated and obscene, no doubt. But the houseboat is damned good fun too, I just cannot deny it. We glide along these clear, tranquil waters with the rays of the dying sun setting on fire the rocks around us before anchoring on a kind of beach. We dine and I fall into bed a very happy Stephen indeed.

  The next day we glide for another few hours. I wonder when we will come to the end, but Rob tells me that we haven’t yet circumnavigated a fiftieth of the lake’s 1,900 miles of shoreline. Another hour of gliding passes, during which I take a jacuzzi, and then we put in to land once more. Rob escorts me off the boat, up a path for a mile or so until we reach the Rainbow Bridge, a natural sandstone arch of surpassing beauty, large enough comfortably to accommodate the Statue of Liberty. They say it is the largest natural bridge in the world. Whether or not that is true, it is certainly sacred to the Navajo and we absolutely cannot walk under it or approach it too near. Rob is annoyed that he forgot to bring corn pollen, with which he could have blessed it. In the legend as told to Rob by his grandfather, a Navajo boy was caught once on the rocks in the wind and rain, with no way to turn. Suddenly a rainbow appeared before him and he crossed it to safety. After he had crossed, the bridge turned to stone.

  ‘Bloated and obscene…’

  With Rob Bighorse at the Rainbow Bridge.

  It seems highly wrong that our return to our land vehicles should be by speedboat, but we have a schedule to keep and so, ripping a great wake in the water and a great roar in the air, we power back to land, the hull slapping down so hard that it jars my arm terribly. I fear that it may open up the fracture, so violent is our passage. From a mood of serenity I am reduced to misery, rage and distress. I make a vow that I shall never travel on a speedboat again. So that’s horses and speedboats. I shall hold myself to both pledges.

  The memory of pain soon goes, the memory of pleasure lingers, that is one of life’s happier truths.

  If there is one state you should visit for physical beauty alone, let that state be Utah.

  ARIZONA

  ‘The saguaro…is the iconic, tall, comically limbed giant beloved of cartoonists.’

  ‘Arizona official state neckwear’ indeed. You think I’m making it up, don’t you? Absolutely not. Arizona’s state bird is the cactus wren, and since 1971 its state neckwear has been the bolo (‘bootlace’, we call it in Britain) tie. Yep, Arizona’s a western state all right. The name derives from the Spanish arida zona–‘arid zone’…or at least so people used to think. But it now seems that this is what etymologists call a false friend, for a Spaniard would always say zona arida. The more likely derivation is from the Basque aritz onac meaning ‘good oaks’. Apparently the first silver camp in the territory was called Arizonac, later shortened to Arizona, which seems to clinch it.

  For once, the state capital here is also the largest city. Arizonans will tell you that the city of Mesa, part of the ‘Phoenix Metropolitan Area’, is the fastest-growing city in America. There is Scottsdale too, the ritzy resort part of Phoenix, and Chandler and Glendale and Peoria–over four million people in an area which is growing too fast for statisticians to keep count. Interestingly, the only state with a comparable rate of growth is also a desert state–Nevada. I suppose the explanation is the huge ageing population…all those baby-boomers hitting retirement age and wanting to end their days somewhere warm and dry.

  As it happens I meet someone much older than a mere baby-boomer in Mesa…

  A USAAF veteran reminisces about East Anglia in the ’40s.

  Sentimental Journey

  The Commemorative Air Force is an organisation dedicated to preserving and exhibiting historical military aircraft. While we have RAF museums in Hendon and Cosford and the Imperial War Museum has its site in Duxford, the CAF can boast, aside from its headquarters in Midland, Texas, seventy affiliated groups in twenty-seven states and four other countries. One of their most popular bases, or ‘wings’, is in Mesa, AZ. I fall into conversation with a splendid old-timer who serves as a docent (guide) here. He was based in East Anglia during the war, in Lincoln and then in Norfolk, which is very much my part of the world, and he was pleased to be able to point out on a map just where he had been and to speak to someone from a place he still remembers fondly. The opportunity to talk with real Second World War combatants is naturally diminishing, so I am deliriously happy to meet him. He served with James Stewart, my favourite Hollywood actor, and still refers to him as Colonel Stewart, for the man was a genuine flyer and a senior officer in the USAAF.

  * * *

  ARIZONA

  KEY FACTS

  Abbreviation:

  AZ

  Nicknames:

  The Grand Canyon State, the Copper State

  Capital:

  Phoenix

  Flower:

  Saguaro blossom

  Tree:

  Blue palo verde

  Bird:

  Cactus wren

  Neckwear:

  Bolo tie

  Motto:

  Ditat deus (‘God enriches’)

  Well-known residents and natives: Doc Holliday, Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Sandra Day O’Connor, Wiliam Rehnquist, Zane Grey, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steven Spielberg, Lynda Carter, Michael ‘Terminator’ Biehn, Ted Danson, Steve Allen, Sandra Bernhard, Gary Shandling, Greg Proops, Charlie Mingus, Wayne Newton, Alice Cooper, S
tevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt.

  * * *

  Since starting work last year on a screenplay for a new film about the Dambusters raid, I have had the opportunity to talk to a small number of survivors of that operation and even to clamber around inside a Lancaster bomber. A Boeing B-17 bomber isn’t quite a Lancaster, it doesn’t have the nape-bristling roar of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines or the elegantly gigantic profile that stirs the soul of every Briton who once glued together a model version, but for all that the Boeing is a beautiful machine. Americans do know how to present an aircraft–all polished metal and rivets. How these machines must have dazzled the German fighter pilots when they began their tour in Europe as daylight bombers. ‘Ten thousand nuts and bolts flying in close formation’, is what the air-crews called the aircraft also known as the ‘Flying Fortress’, the bomber that more than any other became a symbol of the USAAF. The Memphis Belle, the Sally B and the Swoose are some of the best-known individuals, but here at the Arizona Wing of the CAF they have a beauty, a B-17G called Sentimental Journey. For those who care about things she’s something of a hybrid when it comes to power, as two of her engines are Studebakers and the other two are Wright Cyclones. A decal of America’s sweetheart Betty Grable peeps coyly and provocatively over her shoulder, the backs of her million-dollar legs as straight as classical columns.

  Ready to take a sentimental journey.

  I climb up into the front bubble, taking the bombardier’s position. A volunteer crew of enthusiasts in blue uniforms take their places and the engines start. We are flying to Tucson, a journey of 116 miles, to take a look at one of the most bizarre sights in America. The crew have done this many times before but they still can’t resist playing with the guns and making Walter Mitty ‘tapocketa-pocketa-pocketa’ noises.