‘The Valley Among The Rocks’, in the USA

 

In the winter silence Harry’s van bounces over the ice-encrusted, mud-rutted road like a wayward bobsled. Staring out the window into the gray dawn, I realize that this would be a journey into a place unlike any other that I have seen. All around, colossal shafts and spires and mesas of rock rise out of the gray fog like sleeping warrior giants glazed in mantles of stone. There is a pitiless almost violent hue to the landscape.

Over the next two days in Monument Valley, my mind would drift across interior boundaries, melding what exists with what is believed or imagined to exist. The experience would weave a more personal and liberating vision of nature that helped me forge a kinship with these ancient stone monoliths—something I implicitly felt but still do not fully understand. The lines of recorded history seem to dissolve into a vibrantly alive world rich in oral traditions about the spiritual significance of this special place to the Navajo People, both living and dead.

“The Navajo call the valley Tsé Bií Ndzisgaíí. It means ‘The Valley among the Rocks,'” says Harry Nez, our soft-spoken, middle-aged guide from Navajo Spirit Tours. Directly in front, towering above us, are the Mitten Buttes, surrounded by snow-splattered dunes of red earth and patches of scrub.

“It looks like a place where the dinosaurs once roamed as if still frozen in a time capsule of molten rock,” says my friend Dick, a retired park ranger and amateur geologist.

“Actually, the rocks are much older than the volcanoes,” says Harry. “Geologists say that the rock formations were formed from an ancient sea, but for us they represent the life of the five-fingered people.”

“On the left,” he says, pointing to the massive butte silhouetted black against the horizon, “you can see a woman’s head frozen in stone. The long narrow tower is her hand. On the right is a man’s head and hand. Their bodies are in the earth, representing where the First People, the holy beings, came from. They stand as a reminder that they will someday return.”

Over eons wind, rain, and rivers have carved the sandstone plateaus into a dazzling menagerie of towers and spires, some a thousand or more feet, massive buttes, tottering arches, and bizarre animal and human forms. They offer a sense of permanence and stability, a link to a vanished prehistoric world.

Over the course of the day, we visit Three Sisters, believed to be three holy people from the underworld who turned to stone; Totem Pole, said to be a frozen yë’íí or god held up by lightning, and Yei Bi Chei, the wind-sculpted monolith where fire dancers emerge from a hogan.

The creation stories are an integral part of a living oral tradition passed down from one generation to the next in the form of songs and chants performed at all Navajo social gatherings. The ‘sings,’ as they are known, not only reaffirm the ancient stories and remembered events, but also seek to instill a balance of harmony and beauty in the present world, which is rife with chaos and discord.

This becomes eminently clear to me in the late afternoon when we drive to Ear of the Wind, a tunnel-like vaulted rock arch that opens up to the sky, where echoes from the wind can be heard. In my mind, it resembles a cave where a giant once stayed to watch his kingdom.

A short distance away, Harry motions to Dick and me to sit beneath another arch called Big Hogan. He tells us that giants long ago came here to talk to the coyotes, rabbits, and other animals about what would be best for the world. While listening, I stare up at the vaulted sandstone walls stained with black streams of water called desert varnish. The rim of the narrow vent or hole at the top beams like a lantern of white light casting a golden glow across the walls.

Then, a long sonorous cry pierces the silence. Maybe fifty or sixty feet away, a young Navajo chanter is sitting on a rock ledge. He breathes deeply, then rocks his body back and forth as his high pitched voice echoes off the canyon walls.

I do not know what the chant signifies, except that it is harrowing, full of sadness, perhaps about the current drought, the worst in Navajo history, and then calming, perhaps reflecting the singer’s hope for a more harmonious existence with nature.

Harry follows with a ‘sing’ commemorating the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers and marines at the battle of Iwo Jima. In a calm, modulated voice, his chanting, “…e-wp, e-wal-ah, e-wo, e-wal-ah…” drifts up through the sky hole into the other world.

About the Author: Victor A. Walsh’s travel and feature stories and literary essays have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, San Antonio Express-News, Austin American Statesman, San Jose Mercury News, Arizona Daily Star, Literary Traveler, Rosebud, Coast To Coast, Desert Leaf, Irish America, Sunset, and VIA.

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