Spider Rock

On the last morning Polly flew further than she had all week, up to the place where the canyon splits in two and both arms run away into the rock. Standing alone at the junction, out on the open floor and touching nothing, was a single tower of red sandstone with two points at the top. It rises more than seven hundred feet from the sand.

It is called Spider Rock. The Navajo people tell that Spider Woman lives at the top of it, and that she taught the Diné how to weave. Polly had looked at a great deal of rock that week. This was the first piece of it that made her stop flying and simply hover in one place, which is hard work for a parrot and worth doing perhaps twice in a life.

She did not land on it. It seemed to her that some things are better looked at than perched on. So she took a ledge on the rim across from it instead and watched the light move down the tower as the sun went, first gold on the two points, then a long orange band, then a cool grey climbing steadily up from the base.

Somewhere below her a canyon wren sang, that bright falling whistle that runs down the scale and stops. It came back off the walls twice before it faded. Polly sat and thought about a place that had been thirty feet tall on Monday, a thousand feet tall on Wednesday, a river for one hour on Friday, and somebody's home the entire time. Then she pointed herself west and went.