Navajo Nation

by John Keeble

I’m relaxing next to our RV just outside the centre of Sedona, Arizona’s Glastonbury, enjoying the evening after finishing my fifth Tony Hillerman novel about the Navajo cops Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

There’s a temptation to write a Hillerman-style description of our journey through Navajoland but, thankfully, there were no bodies in our version ... as far as we knew at the time.

Hillerman has been writing for more than three decades about the land between the four sacred mountains and each book, as gripping as it is as a crime thriller, has subtle lessons on Navajo culture and spirituality woven into the plot along with descriptions of real locations.

At one place – Sand Island, in the Navajo north not far from Four Corners – we stumbled into our own mystery by the fast-flowing San Juan river in the deserted twilight alive with the sounds of the wilderness.

A slight map mix-up, always a good plot switch and never for the good, left us at a gate with a sign for Sand Island campsite. It was getting late and we had driven a long way. So, rather fatefully, we decided to see if it was okay for us for the night.

We pulled in, round a hairpin bend and down to the camp by the river. One of the Rangers was just leaving and their offices were closed. A dozen or more cars and pickup trucks were parked by the river... but without a soul anywhere in sight.

We parked the RV, got ourselves organised, and went for a stroll along the river. No one would survive a fall into that ... The cars and pickups were still there, abandoned and silent in this strange place scores of miles from anywhere.

The late afternoon slipped into dusk and dusk slipped into night – we cooked a meal, read our books, waited for some sign of the return of the people who owned the vehicles. Nothing stirred in this land rich in the dead of the ancient Anasazi Indians, their chindis (evil ghosts) roaming in the realm of the living.

In the morning, the vehicles were still there as we pulled out, on our way deeper into the Navajos’ territory. It was many days later that Joe Leaphorn, Hillerman’s legendary lieutenant of the Navajo Tribal Police, picked up the mystery for us – but I’ll get back to that and why we have to return next year to follow the trail.

Our journey from white America into the Navajo Nation’s territory started with a visit to the thin slot canyon at Antelope near Page in Utah.

Land belonging to the Navajos is mostly bleak, sunbaked scrub and bare rocks. It was this quality that left the 8,000 surviving Navajo in possession of their homeland when the settlers grabbed the best land in the 19th century. Today, the Navajos have a population of more than 250,000 living on 27,000 square miles, an effective three-tier government along the lines of the US government, and the Navajo Nation is regarded as rich with oil, power stations, tourism and, soon perhaps, its first casino.

At Antelope, as in other places, the population is thinly spread and in the area where we climbed into the lower canyon, there was a small wooden ‘office’ and a few portable lavatories in a large makeshift vehicle park. Beyond that, just flat rocks and scrubland.
Four Navajos were sitting in the shade, talking, when we arrived. One got up to take our money – there is usually an entrance fees to Navajo parks – and, after a chat, he issued us with four-hour photographer passes.

Another walked us down, past the memorial to people who had died in flash floods in the canyon, across the rocks already burning in the June heat – and to the narrow slit where we could slip down into the Slot Canyon.

It is hard to say how far that section of the canyon stretches as it heads for Lake Powell, but every step was wonderful: the architecture of the gods or the elements, whatever you believe, with light seeping in from the top to turn the twisting walls yellow and orange, coral and red, and casting shadows as black as a land grabber’s heart.

We edged our way down, too early for others to be around, squeezing through tight openings, skidding down sharp drops and all the time trying to capture the magic of the place with our digital cameras.

Later we heard voices behind us and, slowly, they caught up. A party of Japanese tourists were politely overtaking us in a gaggle led by a Navajo and after that the silence never returned, as more people inched their way down the canyon to pass us and quickly return to the light above.

On our way back from the bottom, we climbed from one level to another, making our photographs as we went, and headed into a section too dark to see... except there was movement, and a head, its dreadlocks hanging around a good Nikon SLR, eased into the light and peered at us. We pulled back, let him get his shot. He was another on a photographer pass and we stood for some time, in this beautiful place, talking pictures with him and what he described as ‘spiritual photography’, before going our separate ways ...

From Antelope, we drove on to Monument Valley, turning into the park area... for a few dollars we were granted a place on the park’s Primitive RV site. It does not have water, or electricity, or sewer link, it was not flat and the night was wild with gusting wind that rocked the few overnighting vehicles to a degree that brought to mind the 50ft drops round much of the site (especially where we were parked).

But, without question or doubt, it was the most staggeringly beautiful site you can imagine: there, in front of us, were the iconic red rocks towering into the dusk sky and the surrounding desert dropping spectacularly into darkness.
The Navajos welcome the sun as it rises and so did we: 4.45am and the light on the horizon was silhouetting the rocks and, as the sun lifted, giving colour and form to the timeless wilderness so familiar through the lenses of Hollywood.

The other end of the day found us in the company of Richard, a Navajo, who was taking us to all the big sights and a few unusual places in his 4WD. And, once off the tourist trail, we definitely needed the 4WD.

Teardrop Window... the Totem Pole with the Ceremonial Dancers next to it... the petroglyphs... all the big rocks, known through the ages to Navajos but named in recent centuries by white men – Richard took us to them all and, when the sun was almost down, we stopped at a hollowed-out rock known as the Big Hogan and, while we rested, he played his flute and sang a plea to the Great Spirit to watch over us all.

For a few moments it all seemed idyllic in the silence but then I recalled, far overhead, a jet stream flaring white in the sky and, as Richard had pointed out earlier, the pressures on the valley increasing all the time – then, in particular, as some people wanted to authorise low-level tourist flights over the rocks and others fought to stop them.

Early the next day, we fuelled up (at a third of the price of UK fuel) and set off on our odyssey into the heartland of the Navajo people.

The first destination was Mexican Hat – a rock that looks like, you know, a Mexican hat. After the fantastic sights of Monument Valley, where at times you could think you were on another planet, we just went by with a casual ‘oh, yes, that’s interesting’... without realising, then, that it was destined to be part of our own lives and a key element in the mystery to come at Sand Island.

 It was soon afterwards that something strange happened. We were on track for Shiprock when we suddenly came upon a road not shown on our map but going where we wanted to go. We were travelling too fast – 50mph is too fast in a large RV to quickly turn – and we sailed past, managing to slow and stop exactly at the fateful entrance to Sand Island campsite. That’s when we pulled in.

The whole region is covered with sites of the Anasazi, an Indian people who simply vanished – perhaps to become the Hopi tribe – leaving their homes and their dead ... and among the ruins, say Navajos, the chindis roam.

By strange coincidence, it was in just this area that Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn was doggedly pursuing someone or something terrible as I read my way through A Thief of Time. And it was the horror he found that opened our eyes to our mystery of disappearing boats and people – a strange and daunting trail we are determined to follow when we return next year.

From Sand Island, we stopped off at Four Corners, a very popular place where the state boundaries meet for Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico... a novelty set among the splendour of the vast open Navajo lands.

And finally we got to Shiprock, sprawling and welcoming, where we spent an interesting couple of hours in the flea market, buying goods we had not seen anywhere else. But the beauty of the visit was in Ship Rock, the sacred Navajo rock – again, it was named by white men and, from some angles, it does look like a ship. In Navajo legends, it is the Winged Rock, nearly 1,800ft high, that carried the first Navajos from the dangerous north to a safer life.

 By chance and our usual temptation to use minor roads, we stayed on the road that passes closest to Winged Rock and headed towards Canyon de Chelley further south. The road rose steadily and then steeply until, near the summit of the mountain range, it offered glorious views across the long valley to Winged Rock before dropping down towards Canyon de Chelley. It was a spectacularly beautiful drive.

 Long before nightfall, we were in Canyon de Chelley, deciding the bottom campsite was not exciting enough and opting to add an 18-mile climb to a Navajo site near the fabled Spider Rock.

We sorted out the usual campsite formalities and drove even higher - to an elevation of nearly 8,000ft – to photograph down to the colossal natural column named Spider Rock, where the Navajos’ Spider Woman first taught them to weave.

Twelve hours later, we edged our way down from the campsite, stopping at all the sights, and checked into the Rangers’ easy and free campsite before dining at the Thunderbird canteen, a huge Navajo self-service eatery where we seemed to be the only non-locals.

 June ate well with veggie fare and I got a vegan taco: Navajo fry bread the size of a family pizza base, half a tonne of beans and salad on top. Bit of a family joke: as a vegan, wherever we go, I end up having baked beans on toast ...

 We were taking it easy but in our parallel lives, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee were having a terrible time, criss-crossing our route, and the dead Anasazis were drawing them inexorably into our Sand Island mystery.

Next day, we trundled on through small towns and a gas station in the middle of nowhere but frenetic with Navajo traffic ... lots of pickup trucks, one towing the contents of a home, cars, trucks ... women and children emerging from the shop with gallons of soft drinks and piles of fry bread ... it wasn’t the only gas station and store in 30 miles but it was the favourite – one man said he drove 50 miles to use it.

We refuelled and the long straight road out led, eventually, to the Navajo Nation’s capital, Window Rock, named after the great rock with its centre worn out by eons of natural erosion. The modern town - with a very welcoming library and exhibition centre, plus a supermarket offering a deli counter and a big selection of horse feed - has a second area dedicated to running the Navajo Nation.

 The government is modelled on the national system: a President and Administration, a Council of nearly 90 elected delegates and a judiciary, plus of course its various ministries dealing with specific subjects like permissions for Navajos to build and live on the land.

But pride of place, under Window Rock itself, goes to the memorial for the Navajo Code Talkers – the men who, in the Second World War, developed and used combat communications that became the only US system never cracked by the Japanese.

As we walked back from the memorial, past the President’s office, to see and photograph the hogan-shaped council chamber (then being renovated) we met Elmer L Milford, the elected delegate for Fort Defiance and a specialist in education. He was in the middle of his busy day but gave us an hour, explaining the government system, telling us about the people and today’s Navajo life, and inviting us to return some time and spend more time with him.

"We have to change, we have to adapt to the modern world,” he said. “Education used to be about how to survive in this land, how to live, how to defend the people and the land. Now we have to educate to meet the challenges of today. It is also our job to get the jobs here, or we lose our young people to the city businesses.”

Elmer, wearing a beautiful bolo tie clasp that he crafted himself after 9/11, travels widely to bring the benefits of the modern age to the Navajos but he never forgets the tribal roots. “I get a lot of the wisdom from my mother,” he told us. “She knows the traditional ways and sees things that others do not see. I bring her wisdom here [to the council] and people say ‘I hadn’t thought of that’.”

With impeccable timing, that evening Leaphorn and Chee reached the denouement of their mystery in the canyon of the dead Anasazis as we sat between the interstate highway and Santa Fe railroad at a campsite at Gallup on the southern edge of Navajo territory. The solution to our own Sand Island mystery unravelled too, along with the realisation that we must return to venture into the forbidding waters of the San Juan.

If, like Leaphorn and Chee, we survive, we’ll tell you about it next year.

First published in VISA issue 75 (Oct 2007)