Mondays are for dreaming: Visiting the Navajo Nation

Every now and then I like to turn over my Monday Dream to another blogger who has been somewhere I haven’t. This week I’m very pleased to share a post by Vera Marie Badertscher who writes about detailed reviews about books and movies that inspire travel at A Traveler’s Library (see my guest posts there about visiting Monet’s garden and reading history with kids before going to England). She’s also  co-authored a book about Navajo artist Quincy Tahoma. Today she shares a fabulous (and dreamy) route that anyone could take through the Navajo Nation, which stretches across the northern part of Arizona and New Mexico. I appreciate that she’s taken the time to think of things I know my boys would love (thanks to our recent visit to the National Museum of the American Indian, we’re very interested in all things native American). This road trip follows a rough circle route starting and ending in Flagstaff Arizona. Thanks so much Vera!

You might want to kick off your tour of Diné Bikeyah (Navajo land) in Flagstaff, at the Museum of Northern Arizona, for some background information on the Navajo and other American Indian people. After a visit to the museum in the tall pines, it is time to fill up the car with gas, stock up on some water and snacks for the trip and take off!

Collect some rocks. As you head east out of Flagstaff on I-40, the trees and mountains disappear, replaced by colorful rocks and flat land. The rocks get more and more interesting as you enter the Painted Desert with its bands of rainbow colors on cliff faces. Make a stop at Petrified Forest National Park where a forest stood 225 million years ago. Walk on trails that lead you through a strange empty landscape and see pieces of plant fossils on the ground and embedded in cliffs. Please do not collect your petrified wood off the ground – leave it there for other people. Instead, buy a few pieces at one of the gift shops.

Learn a secret language. If you tune the car radio to a Navajo radio station, you’ll hear an announcer speaking in a different language – the language of the Diné (Navajo). Every once in a while, an English word pops up, and it sounds very funny to hear the way tee-shirt or county fair mix with the soft, bewildering sounds of Navajo. You can learn some words like Diné Bikeyah, ya’at’eeh, hózhó, hogan, and tsegie. The Navajo language is so tough to learn that it was used as a code during World War II. The Navajo Code Talkers converted military messages to Navajo and completely confused the enemy in the Pacific battles.

Turn back the clock. At Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site at Ganado, Arizona, see how a trading post owner lived in 1880, and maybe draw some pictures of the Navajo rugs. They have a different design depending on where the weaver comes from. If you’re lucky, there may be an artist there making Navajo silver jewelry or weaving a rug when you visit. Listen to the ancient wooden floors squeak as you walk through searching for clues to complete the treasure hunt that you can print out on the National Park Service web site.

Take some pictures. Keep your eyes open for surprises like Navajos dressed up in their traditional costumes or a herd of sheep crossing the road in front of your car.

Take a ride in a truck bed. At Canyon de Chelly you must have a Navajo guide. Although this park is run by the National Park Service, it occupies private Navajo land. On a tour with a Navajo guide, you’ll sit on bench seats in the open back of a truck, and can choose between a half- or whole-day trip which includes a sack lunch. Either way you’ll be splashing through the stream bed that runs at the bottom of the towering red rock walls of a tsegie. Since tsegie is the Navajo word for canyon, and Chelly was just a poor attempt to say the word in Spanish, you might think of the name as Canyon Canyon!

You’ll see sheep pens and horses running free. You can duck in through the east-facing door of a real Navajo hogan. There you will see how traditional Navajo families in the old days lived very close and had very little storage space. It worked well for them, since they traveled between winter and summer homes, and rebuilt hogans wherever they needed them. Outside the hogan, a woman who lives in the canyon sits weaving a rug and if you want to take her picture, it is polite to offer her a couple of dollars. You can surprise her by saying Ya’at’eeh(Yah-ah-tay) when you first meet her. (This means hello.)

Make your own Western movie. Bring a video camera and make your own Western movies in front of the rock formations of Monument Valley, a Navajo Nation park. You’ll recognize the landscape from many movies and advertisements because Hollywood filmmakers love to use this southwestern background. In Monument Valley you can drive a short trail or take a longer jeep trip into the back country. There you can get up close to rock formations called Bear and Rabbit, Three Sisters or The Mittens. And on the jeep tour, hidden away from the highway, you’ll see an ancient pueblo that you can climb up to – if heights don’t scare you.

Sleep in a hogan. See Discover Navajo for information about staying in a hogan at Canyon de Chelly or at Monument Valley. Just be aware that you’ll need to bring your own water and sleeping bags. This is really like camping out.(If you want a regular motel, the Navajo nation runs many very nice motels on the reservation.)

Eat a Navajo taco. After exploring the eastern part of the Arizona Navajo reservation, head west to Tuba City, whose name has absolutely nothing to do with a musical instrument. It is simply a mispronunciation by some non-Indians of a Hopi name, Tu’vi. There’s a historic trading post with a small Navajo cultural museum on Mai Street that is very interesting. But what most people remember about Tuba City is the Navajo Taco. You can try that or other traditional food like mutton stew and fry bread at the Hogan Restaurant in front of the Quality Inn near the trading post.

Visit a Dilophosaurus. Put your hands or feet in the tracks of Dilophosaurus and see how you measure up to the thousand-pound, 10-foot tall dinosaur. At the Tuba City Dinosaur Tracks Site you won’t find any of those phony plaster dinosaurs, or even a re-built skeleton. You’ll just have to use your imagination to conjure up the ancient beast. The movie Jurassic Park showed them spitting poison, but that was a Hollywood version. There’s no proof that they were that nasty. The tracks are on private land, and some Navajo men will be there to guide you, but they are not dinosaur experts. Look closely to spot the small sign along Route 160 on your way into Tuba City.

Take home a Navajo blessing. Navajo culture values harmony. They have a wonderful word of blessing that can mean several things in English – harmony, beauty, peace, balance. The word is hózhó,and it is a great thought to take with you, along with your memories of a beautiful land, when you leave Navajo country.

Vera Marie Badertscher has lived in Arizona more than thirty years and revisited the Navajo reservation with Charnell Havens. Want to learn more about the Navajo? Be sure to check out their book Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist now available at independent book stores, art galleries, museums, and on the Quincy Tahoma blog. The book tells the life story of Quincy Tahoma (1917-1956) and includes 260 images.

Photo of Canyon de Chelly courtesy of Charnell Havens via Vera Marie Badertscher

Photo of Monument Valley courtesy of Sam Lowe via Vera Marie Badertscher

Photo of Navajo taco courtesy of pspechtenhauser via Flickr

Photo of dinosaur tracks courtesy of Northsight Images via Flickr

Photo of hogan courtesy of TTVo via Flickr