Blue Highways: A Journey into America

by William Least Heat-Moon

He picked up his tray to go. “I could give you a taste of the old Hopi Way. But maybe you’re too full after that breakfast. You always eat so much?” “The mountain caused that.” I got up. “What do you mean by ‘taste’?” “I’ll show you.” We went to his dormitory room. Other than several Kachina dolls he had carved from cottonwood and a picture of a Sioux warrior, it was just another collegiate dorm room—maybe cleaner than most. He pulled a shoebox from under his bed and opened it carefully. I must have been watching a little wide-eyed because he said, “It isn’t live rattlesnakes.” From the box he took a long cylinder wrapped in waxed paper and held it as if trying not to touch it. “Will you eat this? It’s very special.” He was smiling. “If you won’t, I can’t share the old Hopi Way with you.” “Okay, but if it’s dried scorpions, I’m going to speak with a forked tongue.” “Open your hands.” He unwrapped the cylinder and ever so gently laid across my palms an airy tube the color of a thunderhead. It was about ten inches long and an inch in diameter. “There you go,” he said. “You first.” “I’m not having any right now.” So I bit the end off the blue-gray tube. It was many intricately rolled layers of something with less substance than butterfly wings. The bite crumbled to flakes that stuck to my lips. “Now tell me what I’m eating.” “Do you like it?” “I think so. Except it disappears like cotton candy just as I get ready to chew. But I think I taste corn and maybe ashes.” “Hopis were...