The Maze: A Desert Journey - Softcover

Rees, Lucy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816518319 ISBN 13: 9780816518319

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 1997

Synopsis

"Northern Arizona is vast and beautiful. Horizons are huge, for the dry air is so clear you can often see for eighty or a hundred miles. Mountains we would think to walk over in a day may be three days' hard ride away. There is space between each tuft of grass or cactus." With these words, Lucy Rees invites the reader to saddle up and travel with her across the desert to the Hopi Indian mesas. There, she and a companion are searching for an ancient stone carving similar to one in Cornwall, near their native Wales, that has long fascinated them. The intricate design of the stone, spiraling inward and then turning outward again, becomes a purpose for their trek as well as a metaphor for the journey itself. Humorous and wise, this book is both a bold adventure on horseback and a moving account of personal tragedy, courage, and hope.

About this title

Review:

It seems you don't have to be American to dream about cowboys. Lucy Rees, a writer from Wales, and her companion Rick, travel all the way to Arizona in order to exercise a rather loopy dream of traveling through the American Southwest on horseback. It becomes apparent from the opening pages of The Maze that this is no ordinary travelogue. To begin, Lucy and Rick's original destination had been Mongolia. Equally extraordinary is their aversion to "betraying" the horses they will live with for several months by leaving them at the end of the trip. Their solution to this problem is to consciously choose delinquent horses, which they hope to rehabilitate and then resell to good homes. What they get are Rosie and Duchess: one a "spoiled brat," the other suspicious of people, "unpredictable, hysterical, and dangerous." Lesser beings might have been daunted at this point, deciding to trade in the horses for an RV, but not Lucy and Rick.

Lucy and Rick's goal is a Hopi mesa where a sevenfold maze similar to ones found in Cornwall, Spain, India, Scotland, Scandinavia, and Crete is carved in a rock. To get there, they must "cross desert, high plateau and half Navajoland, which itself is bigger than Wales." But as all good travel stories prove, the journey is the destination, and long before Lucy and Rick arrive at Hopi, they have learned some valuable lessons about themselves and each other.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Rees, a horse trainer with a love of travel, offers a rambling account of her adventure in the wilds of the Old West. She and her friend Rick, both Welsh, determine to come to America, buy two horses, and ride through Arizona in search of a particular stone carving of a maze that is found in both Cornwall and Hopi territory. The horses they buy, Rosie and Duchess, had been spoiled and then dumped by former owners, and were literally on the way to the glue factory before Rees found them. The narrative is at its strongest when it focuses on these animals: They gradually accept training, and the mutual trust that develops between rider and horse is fascinating and frequently quite moving. Their journey is much harder than expected, and as the relationship between beast and human is strengthened, that between Rick and the author loses its center. The story becomes unexpectedly painful when Rees recounts past loves now lost. She seems to find herself stuck in an emotional equivalent of the maze she and Rick seek. After an awkward few days, the two travel on to the Hopi reservation where they want to study more closely the stone carving that links their country to America. The reservation, unfortunately, exposes a slightly maudlin edge to Rees's writing, and the history and importance of the carving are lost in a torrent of platitudes ... la Dances with Wolves. The end of the story is a muddled rush that stands in sharp contrast to her earlier clear prose style. While it relies too heavily on a vague, New Age mysticism, this slender book is nonetheless an engaging and unique travelogue. (illustrations) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0816518319
• ISBN 13: 9780816518319
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 198