Navajo Nation

In many ways Black’s journey back to work as a tour guide embodies that spirit. While the money in Phoenix may have been better, “it wasn’t anything like this,” he says, one hand letting go of the reigns as he makes a wide sweeping motion with his palm lifted toward the sky.

He leads our horses around a large sand dune, and after a few metres we can hear the chortling of the Sand Spring. Soon we are in a patch of lush green, covered by the shade of a single cottonwood, and in the shadows of a series of tall, narrow rock structures known as the Totem Poll and Yei Bi Chei.

Leaving the horses to graze on the wet grass, Black goes straight for the small waterfall. “I can drink it,” he says, gulping big handfuls of it. Then, alluding to the gastrointestinal sensitivities of many visitors, he adds “but I don’t know if you can.”

When we get back on the horses, we point them straight up over the dune and back into the valley. Black leads the way at a steady pace. After a while his white cowboy begins to fade into the horizon and the silence of the valley begins to take over.

Whiskey, the grey mustang I’m riding, has been slowing off the pace for some time now. He knows the land better than I do. Understands its pace. Knows that it must be savoured alone.

Between two large mesas standing some 150 metres apart, a framed picture opens up. A skyline of lonely, wind-formed sandstone architecture stretches across the clear blue canvas. Some of the rock formations are slim, twisting like Giacometti statues into the sky. Others with more girth resemble figures wandering as if on a pilgrimage out to the most desolate part of the desert—beyond the monuments, beyond the mesas, just beyond.

Black is out of sight, but there’s no fear of my getting lost in the valley. The cliffs on either side guide you toward where you came from like tall hedges in a friendly garden maze.

I kick Whiskey and hold on with all my might as we barrel over the land. No sooner does our guide reappear on the horizon than we overtake him. We race toward the stable where two stable hands unload big blocks of hay from the back of a red pickup truck.

As Whiskey comes to a rumbling stop, he rears back around to face the valley and I watch as the sun-touched pinnacles of the rocks seem to bow a farewell.

The next morning we make the two-hour drive west to Page, Ariz. A good base for seeing the slot canyons in the surrounding hills, Page is a modern town that sits just outside of the northwestern edge of the Navajo Nation.

Not that it always did. After some intense bargaining, the Navajo handed over some land in Arizona to the U.S. government in the late 1940s so that the 20-metre-high Glen Canyon damn could be built. In return, Washington offered the Navajo a large area of land on the other side of the Utah border.

The subsequent flooding created Lake Powell. Its deep blue waters seem to clash with the motley dry beiges, purples and whites of the Vermilion Cliffs that close in on its northern shore.

In the 1950s, uranium was found on their newly acquired land, and the Navajo reaped their share of the profits— although not without a price. At the height of the boom, there were as many as 15 uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. This has left many in the community angry over expired mine clean-up and health risk issues.

Today, Page is basically a 50-50 mix of whites and Navajos, many of whom personify the creed of adaptability in their entrepreneurial zeal. One of the best examples is Chief Tsosie.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.