Monuments

This is gonna be a long one- lots to say. So turn off your distractions, open the eyes of your imagination and join me on this trek.
All through Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona we've seen signs announcing our entrance to or departure from various Indian nations. This piqued my curiosity. An Indian reservation is land reserved for a tribe when they relinquished the rest of their land to the Federal government- knew that right? While on that reservation the local governing authority is the tribal government- didn't know that. Still don't know who gives you the ticket if you're caught speeding.
There are 275 reserved lands the largest being 16 million acres for the Navajos. The strong sense of community is evidenced by the many invitations along the way for community activities on these reservations not the very least of which are a bullarama and a Father's Day gourd dance.

Monument Valley, Arizona

There is no way that I can do justice to the vista God has created that is the landscape of Monument Valley. Take a look at the picture taken from our balcony at The View (the only hotel on this Navajo tribal land) and prepare yourself for a little lesson on earth science.

What you are seeing above are some of the buttes- West Mitten, Merrick, and East Mitten. There are several buttes and mesas to be viewed from the balcony of our room. Buttes are mesas that have been worn away by time. The landscape here is so dramatic that it has been borrowed over and over to use as a backdrop for many movies over the years.

Our sight-seeing trail takes us around the base of these buttes. As I look up at the immensity of these monuments sculpted by time and God's hand I am speechless. I feel my insignificance in the shadow of their timelessness.

We are in the desert. The temperature is 75 with virtually no humidity. I know, I know, for us Southerners, imagining this is a bridge to far. There is such a dryness as the breeze flows over my skin.
The air is so light that when I breathe I feel lighter.
It is windy and quiet in a way that only your imagination can sense. If there is a passing sound, it is immediately sucked into the vastness of the expanse.
The view continues on until it sky finally meets land.
I can see why the Navajo hold these monuments sacred. I can feel the oldness of it. It feels like it will always be here, immovable, yet like everything else in life, changes continue to happen in thousands of ways that can't be seen until the big picture is looked at from afar.
It inspires reverence. As we hike around I find that I'm deeply and personally offended to see a crushed beer can lying on the desert floor. I am changed forever by the sights and silences of this valley.

The rock and sand is red. A gorgeous shade of orange-red like the deepest colors of the sunset. Geologists tell us that this area was at one time the floor of Gulf of Mexico. Try to picture in your mind's eye water lapping the sides of the Rocky Mountains.

At some point, uplift from the Earth's mantle caused the ocean floor to crack and the sea to subside west as the Pacific and North American plates shifted. (To simulate this try taking a big cracker and pushing it towards the center from the sides. See if you can create a crack and uplifting of your own to get a sense of what was going on.)
Eventually the mud from the ocean floor, under immense pressure, became sandstone. (Sandstone reminds me of sand mixed with a little Elmer's- try it and see what happens. Don't make it too runny, more like soft dough, and then you might be able to mold it into a "monument" of your own.) Natures "Elmer's glue" comes in the form of time, heat, and pressure that "glued" all this sand together to make rock. The 'monuments" you are seeing in these pictures have been sculpted by the work of wind and rain eroding the surfaces. (Take your sand-glue creation and rub it with an emory board as wind and run water over it as rain. What happens? )
The red sand on the desert floor used to be part of the buttes and mesas of the area. I wonder what it looks like on the rare occasions that it mixes with rain? Does it look like rivers of blood?

I count myself very blessed to have been able to spend the night in this splendor.
At The View, everyone's room opens to "the view" . At night, they show a movie filmed in this area on the side of the building. You can sit on your balcony and watch.
When developing the concept of The View, the decision was made to have no swimming pool . This was done out of respect to the Navajo elders some of who still live on the desert floor and have limited access to running water. To underscore the harshness of living in this area, I see pickup trucks with big plastic tanks of water in their beds traveling into the desert to make water deliveries.

I would strongly urge you to make a trip to this area and stay at The View. It is very hard to get a reservation- we had to build our whole itinerary around this one night, the only one available. It did not disappoint.

The People. The View is staffed by Native Americans. At the dedication of this facility the Navajo nation's president stated that The View provided a much needed opportunity for employment while protecting the culture of the people. That being a plus, I still wonder how they feel about tourists invading their space. I observe a very detached air of politeness as we check in and it gives me pause to ponder.
Fun thing- movie night on the desert floor. All the room balconies are slanted so that you can sit out and enjoy. Tonight's movie of choice, surprisingly, a John Wayne western filmed in the same area we can see from our perch. It of course portrays the "Indians" in the stereotypical role I grew up with. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this, embarrassed by the staff who might be watching until I realize...the Indians doing all the bad things in the movie are Comanches and are in Navajo country.
Just one more day would make this stop complete. One more day to just sit and let the quiet wash over me and wrap around me filtering through all that's on my mind, bringing clarity to my thoughts and feelings. There is something about seeing this vista that, at least for a short while, brings perspective. Is that the trade off that keeps those Navajo elders sacrificing the conveniences of a modern world to live on the desert floor? Is it really a trade off at all?