Walker of Time

“This is a good story for young readers. . . . The author has done an excellent job of describing the environs of Walnut Canyon and of communicating Hopi life as an analogue of the ancient Sinagua. . . . Probably the greatest strength of the story is the portrayal of Hopi values.”

Peter J. Pilles, Jr.
Forest Archaeologist
Coconino National Forest
Flagstaff, Arizona

“Children should really enjoy this book. It is a treat for the imagination. . . . I appreciate the attention and sensitivity to cultural and environmental values, the depiction of contrasts as well as similarities between ancient and modern life, and the friendship between the Hopi boy and the archaeologist's son. The message that friendship can span time and cultures is an important one.”

Dr. Connie Stone
Archaeologist
Phoenix, Arizona

“. . . a delightful book, informative and instructive relative to prehistoric cultural history.”

Ginger Johnson
Yavapai Chapter
Arizona Archaeological Society
Prescott, Arizona

“I was intrigued with this story of Walker, a modern-day Hopi caught between two worlds, and his freckle-faced white friend, Tag, ‘speckled like an egg.' Their discoveries and moving personal encounters as they stumble into Walker's ancient past are exciting and believable, thanks to the author's intimate knowledge of the Hopi and their land.”

Linda Lay Shuler
Author
New York, New York

“
Walker of Time
is an exciting adventure which can't fail to stimulate further reading about Arizona's Native American past and present.”

Richard Bergquist
Arizona Archaeological Society
Phoenix, Arizona

Walker of Time

HELEN HUGHES VICK

To Howard and Mary Hughes
for their life-long love and support
.

With special thanks to D. Ryan Carstens,
whose computer wizardry and
friendship made this book possible
.

Taylor Trade
A Roberts Rinehart Book
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham MD 20706

Distributed by National Book Network

© 1998 Helen Hughes Vick

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or any part thereof in any form.
Manufactured in the United States of America

Edited by Stacey Lynn
Designed by Harrison Shaffer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vick, H. H. (Helen Hughes), 1950—
Walker of time/by H.H.Vick.
p.   cm.
Summary: A fifteen-year-old Hopi boy and his freckled companion
travel back 800 years to the world of the Sinagua culture, a group
of people beset by drought and illness and in need of a leader.
ISBN 978-0-943173-80-1
1. Sinagua culture—Juvenile fiction. [1. Sinagua culture—
Fiction. 2. Hopi Indians—Fiction. 3. Indians of North America—
Fiction. 4. Time travel—Fiction. 5. Walnut Canyon National Monument (Ariz.)—Fiction] I.Title
PZ7.V63Wal   1993
[Fic]—dc20   92-46740

Walnut Canyon National Monument, just a few miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, is a canyon shrouded in mystery. Tucked under its Kaibab limestone ledges are more than a hundred cliff ruins. These rooms made of mud and rock were the homes of an ancient culture that lived in the canyon more than nine hundred years ago. These prehistoric people thrived within the canyon walls until
A.D
. 1250, then very suddenly and mysteriously abandoned their comfortable rock homes to wind and time.

Since these ancient cliff dwellers were dry farmers, growing corn, beans, and squash, modern-day archaeologists have named them the “Sinagua.” Sinagua is a Spanish word meaning “without water.”

In 1915, Walnut Canyon was declared a national monument. By this time, unfortunately, many of the Sinagua ruins, artifacts, and burials sites had been looted by pot hunters or destroyed by curiosity seekers. Since 1915, many
archaeological studies have been made at Walnut Canyon to learn more about the ancient ones called the Sinagua. Yet these studies haven't answered the two most important questions concerning the Sinagua: Why did they leave? Where did they go? Walnut Canyon's mysteries are yet to be solved.

Walker's lungs were burning. The muscles in his legs were cramping up in pain with each pounding stride up the steep, narrow trail. His nose and throat felt as if they had been sandpapered raw from the dust that he kicked up in little puffs with each step. The water jug's thick leather strap, hanging over his bare right shoulder, bit deep into his skin with each movement. Water sloshed out of the heavy, old ceramic jug, sending small streams of water trickling down his reddish-brown back. Sweat ran off Walker's high, broad forehead into his dark brown eyes. The sweat mixed with his tears and blurred his vision. Without slowing his pace, Walker reached up and wiped the salty mixture out of his puffy eyes.

The well-used path came to an abrupt turn. Switching back in the other direction, it traversed the steep side of the northern Arizona mesa. Walker's worn jogging shoes slipped from underneath him. He fought to regain his balance. Water gushed out of the jug, down his back, and onto his
faded blue gym shorts. He went down on one knee, hitting the rocky path. Walker felt the skin on his knee and palms scraping off as he skidded to a stop.

Walker's panting turned into a deep sob. His strong shoulders shook. Clenching his fist in anger, he struck the ground where he crouched on one knee. Water spilled over his shoulder and down his muscular chest.

“He can't die! He can't go and leave me totally alone!” Walker cried, hitting the ground again. Even as his ears heard these words, his heart tightened with a deep sorrow that confirmed what his mind knew to be true. Náat, his uncle, the only family Walker had known in his fifteen years of life, was dying.

Walker struggled to his feet. His entire body screamed with pain from running the three miles down the mesa to the spring and jogging back up the steep trail with the full water jug. But the pain his body felt was nothing compared to the agony that tore at his heart.

Wiping his bloody hands on his shorts, then using the back of his hand to clear the tears from his eyes, Walker started up the trail again. His short, muscular legs pumped as hard and fast as they could.

Cresting the mesa's flat, rocky rim, Walker slowed his pace. Wiping his eyes again and straightening his shoulders, he tried to calm his thoughts and feelings. With quick strides, he moved along the rim of the mesa toward his Hopi village. His heart beat against his ribs with such painful fury that he had to stop to fight for his breath.

The sunset painted the Arizona sky blood red as Walker stood on the edge of the mesa. He gazed toward the San Francisco Peaks. Well over ninety miles away, the sacred mountain could be seen clearly from the mesa's rim.

“Each morning with the first rays of your light, I have come here with Náat to pray to you, Taawa, our creator,” whispered Walker in a broken voice. “Each day, I have looked at the sacred peaks where the holy spirits of the Hopi people live. Each day I have found peace and harmony in seeing the three sacred peaks on the horizon. But not now, not today. Náat is dying! Soon his spirit will become a cloud and travel to Maski, the house of the dead, where his spirit will live forever.” Walker beat his clenched fist against his bare leg. “And I—I will be alone!”

Walker looked down over the rocky cliffs of the mesa onto the vast desert floor below. The white man's paved, black roads crisscrossed Hopi like long streaks of lightning. His eyes fell on the white man's school where he had been forced to learn the bahana's language and ways.

What good are the bahana's ways?
Walker thought with anger.
Their ways only destroy the traditional way—the Hopi way. Even their great medical knowledge can't save Náat from the cold fingers of the god of death, Masau'u
.

Walker turned to face his seven hundred-year-old village. It looked like an ancient bahana's motel with its long sections of straight walls containing six or seven individual doors. Much like the bahana's motels, all the long rows of adobe homes were built around a large center area, the plaza. The bahana's heated swimming pool would sit in the middle of the plaza, Walker thought, scrutinizing his village. Yes, the village was like a motel except that it lacked such basic comforts as running water, central heating or air conditioning, and of course, flushing toilets. He had to chuckle at that thought.

The flat roofs of the old, one-story pueblo dwellings mirrored the great flat-top mountains on which they were
built. The homes' thick rock-and-mortar walls blended into the rocky cliffs of the mesa so well that from the desert below the village was all but invisible.

For hundreds of years the Hopi villages on top of three different mesas had remained relatively untouched in their ancient ways. Even when the bahanas did come, the Hopi people had stubbornly clung to their old ways. It had been only in the last ten years that electrical poles had been planted next to some of the ancient dwellings.