This is Part One of a dramatic GRACK! column dating back over five years to April, 2004. It has to do with a trip to the Navajo Nation that brought me closer to the fear of physical death than I have ever come. Another free giveaway from the ongoing Digital Potlatch, this piece is probably unlike anything most of you have ever read. I’ll have Part Two ready for you in just a day or two, so hang in there for the finish.
This is a long story with lots of photos (if you’re reading this on my home page, you’ll have to click through to read the whole thing). And you definitely need to play the raven call first! It’s absolutely mandatory…
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Journey to the Land of Giants (Part One)
Alone and freezing at 8,000 feet in the Chuska Mountains of the Navajo Nation, I wondered if I’d live to see the dawn.
I was happier yet more frightened than I’d ever been. High on freedom and letting go, I’d allowed myself to be led, one step at a time, to an isolated spot where no one else might come for weeks. It was getting dark and much too cold, and no one knew where I was. As I shivered and contemplated the very real possibility of dying from exposure, snow began to fall. Even with the shelter of my pickup cap, my lightweight clothing was a fool’s response to what the gods might have in store. Panic and hysteria were just a blink away as I considered flight, but the awful mile-long road I’d taken from the pavement was far too dangerous in the dark, and getting stuck could end up worse than staying where I was. If I did drive out and made it, I’d still be hours from anywhere on empty pitch-black highways over unfenced open range. With only two hours sleep the night before, loose livestock and wandering elk would be the least of my troubles. No, something else was happening here, and only by losing all control would I discover what it was.
I’d headed out to Gallup, Window Rock, and Fort Defiance hunting for a job. Taos is like L.A. or Paris compared to that end of the world, but only on a scale that might have no validity, I realized when I saw the opening on a federal jobs list. There were two strange things about the writer-editor position for the Indian Health Service that I noticed right away: one was that I qualified, and the other was that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I certainly wasn’t looking to leave el Norte, though the money would be welcome after months of wrenching worry, so I treated the April 23rd closing date for applications like other deadlines in my life and got serious three days before.
The job announcement, copied from the Internet, was maddeningly thorough in the way most civil service products are. Nothing I couldn’t navigate my way through though, I figured, until I reached the bottom of the second page and saw they wanted college transcripts. Years ago I’d had mine copied, but where were they now? Normally this kind of question would shut the whole procedure down, but when I imagined giving up, I felt like someone had shot my pony. I had to try, in other words, I needed to take it one step at a time and see what this was all about.
Right from the start, I knew the “grandfathers” were involved. More than that I can’t explain, except to say that this was very real and in the nature of a game or test. I’d been open to shifting energy in my life, and here it was: what was I going to do, then, run away from the obvious? The first step was locating my transcripts if I could, then ordering them from the University of Texas (FedEx overnight) if I couldn’t. When I opened the door of the storage unit and wondered where to start, my eyes fell upon a box I realized would be the only place to look, and there they were. The next thing I found out was that faxed applications weren’t allowed, so I phoned the post office: “guaranteed next-day delivery” was a fiction, at least here in New Mexico. Finally, when a phone call to Fort Defiance confirmed that April 23rd meant received, not merely postmarked, I knew my only option was to hand-deliver the application, some 300 miles away.
600+ miles in my ’87 Ford pickup would cost me dearly for gas, but it was as if the deadline and the mail delivery were configured solely to goad me into driving, and I knew I had to go. The idea of camping on the reservation was appealing too, so with all the application materials in hand and a cooler full of supplies, I awakened early on the 22nd and headed out. It was a balmy April morning and I was glad to be on the road.
The trip to Albuquerque and Interstate 40 West to Gallup went smoothly enough, and roadside advertising on the way to Window Rock was predictably bizarre: “Navajo Seed & Pawn” and “Fat Sheep, $99 & Up” were standouts. Landing in Fort Defiance was a revelation, however: I was truly on or from another planet, and nothing was as I had imagined.
It wasn’t the desert of my mind’s eye, but a high mountain plateau with grass and trees and stunning rock formations. There were wide four-lane streets, a big brand-new hospital, and school zones people actually slowed down for. And there were Navajos, of course. Nothing but Indians, wherever I looked. When I dropped off the job application, the sophisticated professionalism of the office was notable and sobering: did I even have a chance, I wondered? The people I met spoke better English than my friends, and everywhere I went, I was the only Anglo in sight. Somewhat spooky but enlightening, I thought, realizing it would be an honor and a challenge to work there if that ever came to pass. The job was secondary, perhaps, because I felt so strongly that what counted was being pulled out to the reservation. With that in mind, I shook off the eerie outsider vibe and continued on my way.
Driving north into the unfolding mountain panorama, I soon encountered even more strangeness and mysterious great beauty. The Navajo Nation is very much another entity and has its own highway signage, where there are any signs at all. Mostly there aren’t, and I was lost immediately but didn’t know it (of course). There are also virtually no “tourist” facilities in this part of the rez: no gas, no stores, no lodging, nothing that the natives themselves don’t need. The surroundings were spectacular, though. I had a map that showed a campground in the Chuska Mountains of the Navajo National Forest and wondered briefly why it took so long to get there, but I was roaring along, high with sheer delight at what I was seeing. I screeched to a stop every couple of miles to take pictures. I shuddered at snow falling in a high mountain pass. I laughed at a sign advertising “‘It’s a Gift from God’ Hogan Kits” and drank in another with a Navajo woman captioned simply: “In Beauty I Exercise.” And then there were the trees …
This was cultural difference expressed in landscape. White men would have logged the roadsides clear a hundred years ago, but now I saw what we’ve all missed: Ponderosa pines towered impossibly tall and thick; there were piñons the size of oaks back East, and junipers as big as houses. Miles and miles and miles of this, and not a piece of human handiwork in sight. At one point after taking yet another picture, I looked up across the road and saw a mountain lion. There it was, as plain as day for just a moment, skulking through the grass a hundred yards away. By this time I was so excited, I could hardly drive, and where was that campground, anyway?
The first thing I did when I finally discovered I’d gone over 50 miles in the wrong direction was give thanks that I had. The second was to do a double-take at a sign that read, “Canyon de Chelly, 26 miles.” All right, why not? There was a campground nearby, and the power of the Anasazi ruins were a beacon or another test. I’d never traveled so spontaneously before, open to whatever might happen next, and I didn’t want the day to end. But by now it was late afternoon, and I knew I’d have to find a place to camp.
Despite my growing sense of urgency, I pulled off at one of the overlooks beside the ancient canyon, where I found a busload of senior citizens all taking pictures of the same pile of rocks. The wind was blasting out of the northwest, and I was startled at how cold it felt. Deciding I’d better move along, I bought a piece of petrified wood from a Native vendor and hustled on down the road. The campground in Chinle looked thoroughly unappealing, but I saw a sign for another one just nine miles farther on. The road to Spider Rock took me along the scenic south rim of the canyon, but the facilities were questionable, and once again I knew I wasn’t supposed to stop.
That put me in a real bind, however, as I now found myself at the end of the pavement. Backtracking to my original intended destination, a campground just south of Washington Pass in the Chuska Mountains, would bring me in well after dark, not good. But I’d been looking at the journey as something the grandfathers were leading me through. There had to be another option, in other words, so I took a long hard look at my map, and there it was: a dirt road just dead ahead, 12.8 miles long, that amounted to a perfect short cut if I understood what I was reading. I looked again: yes, absolutely,12.8 miles to a settlement called Sawmill, from which I could jump directly over to the highway I’d intended to take in the first place.
This would be a true leap of faith, and I took it. Within minutes I was well on my way down the “Navajo freeway” through a dense forest in one of the emptiest regions of North America in a 17-year-old truck, still high on adventure and glad I was alone. My sweetie would have shot me on the spot, you see, and she’s from Iowa.
(Somehow I think that says it all … )
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