“The Real Valley of the Dolls,” by Tom Robbins, reminded me of my grandfather, who told “unpleasant” jokes while keeping them acceptable for “mixed company.” Robbins and two of his friends, Alexa and Jon, take the reader on a journey to a place somewhere between Winnemucca and Las Vegas "in the middle of the American Wild West" (509) in a tale that flows between humor and spirituality, reverence and lust, distant past and not so distant. “The real valley of the dolls” refers to North Canyon, which Robbins describes as “rather vaginal in shape, ending in a hollow basin. . . whoever was so inclined could read uterus or womb”, decorated with petroglyphs, also known as Canyon of the Vaginas. Robbins explains the different types of petroglyphs in the Western United States, “some of them have ceremonial intentions, some are mnemonic, some totemic (clan symbols), and some, it would seem, just an explosion of pleasant scribbles” (510). Although glyphs depicting vaginas are not limited to Vagina Canyon, “nowhere else are they found in such concentration or profusion” (511). It's not just the petroglyphs that draw people here, but also a spiritual connection to the Earth and a strong connection to the past. Robbins' choice of words is more sophisticated than jargon. At first glance, the essay may appear a little bawdy, Robbin's allusion to "sacred property" and "being superimposed" (510) allow for some interesting wordplay. Much of the essay is filled with polar opposites, different metaphors for west-central Nevada; “the present clashes with the past, development clashes with nature, repression against indulgence, reality against the dream, the masculine against the feminine, the Goddess of Destruction against the... center of the card... why? Why did the Shoshone “adorn the sun gate of Nevada's high desert” with images of what some might call the center of female power? It was, as Robbins suggests, "purely sexual, a violent pecking at individual lust." or some of his other ideas are closer to reality; as a (place for) “a coming of age ritual, a fertility motel, or an homage to the feminine principle of the Earth itself”” (511)? Perhaps the natural formation of the “Queen of the Yoni”. . . the great-grandmother of vaginas” inspired Native Americans to honor her with glyphs. The answers may remain a mystery, as may why the old boys don't take their hats off. We are so far from “nature and those forces our ancestors knew intimately but rarely named,” if we have no place to connect our “hormones to the stars” that we run the risk of becoming psychological paraplegics” (513)?