Kokopelli, Batteries & Computers

Who is Kokopelli? Kokopelli is an interesting and popular mythical character of the Southwest. The image of this humpbacked dancing flute player with wild feathers sprouting from his head appeared as early as 750 A.D. on early Puebloan pottery. The Hopi people believed that Kokopelli was a fertility god who carried unborn children on his back and distributed them to women. For that reason, young single girls feared him. But he was later a part of their marriage rituals.

Kokopelli also presides over the reproduction of game animals and is often depicted in rock art (mostly petroglyphs) with animal companions such as rams, deer, snakes, lizards and insects. The Zuni believe that Kokopelli’s flute chases away the winter and brings about spring and rain.


Whatever the case, the modern version of Kokopelli has been adopted as a sort of broad symbol of the Southwest, particularly the Four Corners region, and his image is everywhere. It adorns T-shirts, ball caps, keychains, pottery and all kinds of souvenirs. Even a bicycle trail from Colorado to Moab has been named the Kokopelli Trail. With all that attention, we couldn’t pass up buying a small metal sculpture of the little character to take home with us.


Battery Problem: We noticed that our RV battery was too weak to start the engine after camping for a couple days and we had to use the auxiliary batteries to get us going. Before we left home in April, we had the main battery checked. We were told it was bad and should be replaced. Later, we got a second estimate and were told it was fine. Ron liked the second estimate better, so we continued on our way. By the time we got to Moab, the battery wouldn’t start the engine after we camped for a couple days. We took it to an RV repair place in Moab but they didn’t do batteries. They referred us to an auto parts store which sold batteries but didn’t install them, which seemed odd. Ron didn’t want to spend time and get dirty replacing batteries, so we continued down the highway to Cortez, Colorado where we got excellent immediate service and a new battery.

Computer Problem: We pulled into our Cortez campground on Friday, May 21. The next morning, Ron began to check our email and discovered that our laptop computer wouldn’t turn on. It was panic time! We tried everything we could think of and, after everything failed, we went downtown in search of a computer shop, only to find that Cortez has very few such shops and they’re all closed on weekends. So, we decided to take a little side trip over to Durango (45 mi.) where we found an Office Depot store offering a free computer problem diagnosis. The “geek” diagnosed our problem to be a worn out power/charger cord. We were delighted to leave with our brand new $100 power cord and eager to try it out. When we got back to Cortez and Ron tried to plug in the new cord he discovered that it was not compatible with our Toshiba laptop and none of the eight different jacks would fit. Fortunately, the computer decided to start when he pushed the button, its battery was fully charged, and the old cord now seems to be working fine. Go figure. We’ll be in Durango again tomorrow and are looking forward to another chat with the geek at Office Depot.