A Nation within the Nation: Part Two

It rained in the night.  My tent, which is big enough to shelter a German shepherd, sagged under the weight of the water.  My feet got wet, and I woke up before the sunrise to find the roof drooping above my nose.  I ignored the chill in my toes and turned on my side and slept another few hours.  My alarm went off earlier than I wanted it to, but I had made plans to watch the sun rise above the red cliffs of Canyon de Chelly.

From inside my own drenched cocoon, I heard my friend Kendyl rustling the nylon inside her tent.

“Are you awake?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Can you see the sky?  I would look but I’m kind of stuck in here.”

She unzipped her tent.

“Are there a bunch of clouds?  Because if so, I don’t think the sunrise will be worth it.”

“It’s kind of cloudy.”

“I should have expected this.  That’s poor planning on my part,” I said and went back to sleep for another hour.

At a diner in Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation, I ate a plate of eggs and fry bread.  During my breakfast, I heard a weather report about an unexpected heat wave in Seattle and a news report about the dirty water of Flint, Michigan.  It had been a month since I watched TV or saw firsthand the happenings of the world outside of the gossip that spread through my tiny village in southern Utah.  The skies in northern Arizona were blanketed with gray clouds that promised rain.

From the diner, I called a tour company about hiring a guide for the morning, and we settled on a meeting time at the ranger station.  As I was browsing through the books, a tall man with nose hairs sticking out of his nostrils approached me with a scrap of paper with a butchered spelling of my name on it.  He asked if that was me.  That wasn’t quite me, but I could tell he wasn’t looking for anybody else.  He wore a baseball cap and a pair of blue jeans, not the best choice of pants to enter a canyon with a chance of rain.  He introduced himself and asked me where I was looking to go.  He spoke very slowly, and I could tell that he just woke up from a sleep he wasn’t planning to interrupt so soon.  I said I wanted to see the Antelope House Ruins, which I knew was a far hike. 

“That one is kind of far,” he said, “And the trail will be very slippery.”

Due to the rainstorm, the steep slickrock portions would be less than ideal, so I asked him for an alternative.  He proposed we hike to First Ruin and then onto Junction Ruin.  We agreed upon this, and we got in our cars and I followed him to the backcountry permit office.  As he signed us into the registry, a Navajo woman behind the desk told our guide he couldn’t take us into the canyon since he didn’t get his CPR license renewed.  He said he would call his friend, who would take us instead.  Kendyl and I read travel pamphlets about New Mexico while we waited for the new guide.

Although Canyon de Chelly is a National Monument co-run by the National Park Service, you must hire a certified Navajo guide to take you into the canyon.  There is only one trail where this is not deemed necessary.  I assumed that a guide was made mandatory in these lands under the guise of sacred reasons.  The trail, if one can call it that, is not clearly marked, and getting lost is easy to do.  These both seemed plausible justifications, but I suspected they camouflaged the primary motivation behind this rule.

A young Navajo man with long dark hair in a ponytail entered the backcountry office and introduced himself as DJ.  He was already briefed by the other guide and asked us to follow him in his car to the trailhead.  He drove a ten-year-old Ford with a Slayer decorative plate on the front.  At the trailhead, we got out of our cars and passed the sign that prohibited travel beyond this marker without a guide. 

Our hike was estimated to last at least four hours.  I wasn’t sure how this guided tour would go.  Would the guide ask us questions about where we were from?  Would he volunteer information without being prompted?  Was I expected to engage or pretend to be comfortable hiking with a stranger?  And, most importantly, what would I do if I had to pee?

As we descended a metal staircase and then proceeded down switchbacks seemingly carved into the stone, my head was filled with questions, so I started out small by asking DJ about local attractions and nearby Anasazi sites.  I had seen advertisements of these strange rock formations outside out Farmington, New Mexico and wanted to know if they were worth seeing in person.

“You ever go to New Mexico?” I asked.

“I’ve been there before,” he said.

“Is there anything you’d recommend?”

He pondered this for a short while and then said, “There’s Mesa Verde, but I haven’t been there since I was a kid.”

I didn’t bother telling him that Mesa Verde was in Colorado.  Instead, I decided he was not an expert in this realm. 

We reached the canyon floor which was lush with verdant grass poking through a swamp of brown rain water mixed with cow piss.  DJ tried to navigate around these pools of urine through high brush and around spiky tree branches, but I told him to walk where he had to walk.  Eventually we would stop caring about what we stepped in.

The land is divided by fences demarcating the private lots from public spaces.  The Navajo have lived in Canyon de Chelly for over four hundred years, and they still inhabit this land today.  Despite the lack of running water, many ranchers dwell on the canyon floor and keep herds of cattle.

“People actually live down here?” I asked.

DJ said that he has family that lives down here, and this made me wonder how they got groceries. 

“There’s a dirt road that leads out of the canyon and into town,” DJ said.    

Most people that live down here own Jeeps, and the town of Chinle, equipped with gas stations, a grocery store, and a few restaurants, is only a short drive away.

“Why are there signs that say you can’t take pictures of the houses and the people down here?” I asked. 

I had heard something I attributed to myth that certain people believe their souls will be stolen if they are photographed.

“These people live in a touristy area,” DJ said, “And they just want everyone to respect their privacy.”

It was apparent I was carrying assumptions and prejudices with me due to my limited knowledge of the Navajo.  Whatever I didn’t know I filled in with guesswork that could be described as outdated and fantastical.  I was thinking of the Navajo from dramatic historical perspectives:  their migration to the Southwest, their ousting by white settlers, their decimation, and their rebuilding.  Groups that stick together in secluded areas possess a more visible evolution and their history is undoubtedly present at every turn.  However, I wanted to understand a more modern and nuanced perspective of the Navajo way of life.    

There’s a steep wooden staircase that took us over the barbed wire and out of the quagmire and into the creekbed.

  

We crossed the ankle-deep stream and passed a group of hikers led by a pale and scrawny Park Ranger.  I wondered briefly if he felt estranged by his assignment here.  He was explaining the history of lands that did not belong to him.  It was as though he were an outsider claiming expertise in a foreign country.

DJ pointed out a set of petroglyphs high against the red cliff.  They were carved by Anasazi some of them possibly 700 years ago when the drawings were more accessible before the ground eroded.  There was a square etched into the wall accompanied by the usual drawings of antelope.  Closer to the ground were more recent additions of hunters on horseback, signifying the arrival of the Spanish.

   

“Nobody really knows what the drawings mean,” DJ said.  “They could be doodles.”

“Who do you think are the modern descendants of the Anasazi?” I asked.

“If you ask me, I’d say it’s a little bit of us, little bit of the Hopi, and a little bit of the Zuni in New Mexico.”

From my sparse readings I believed that the Hopi were the main descendants, but it didn’t make sense to affirm that the Anasazi were the ancestors of the Navajo.  From an etymological and linguistic standpoint, Anasazi is a Navajo word that means enemies of our ancestors.  This signifies to me that the Navajo and Anasazi were rivals.  I had learned from a man I waited on in the dining room who told me that the Navajo were an Athabaskan clan, and DJ told me this meant his people descended from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska before settling in modern day Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. 

Many Native Americans speak of an ancestral homeland.  Before white explorers crossed the Mississippi River and started clearing the forests to create settlements in the American West, many Native American groups lived peripatetic lives, moving from place to place to follow their food source.  Communities were built and abandoned to settle more favorable environs.  Groups even vacated due to religious or moral reasons.  There is a theory the Anasazi relocated to avoid living in sin, a movement known as the Kachina Phenomenon.   

Although the Navajo claim the Southwest as their spiritual home, DJ believes that Navajo have more in common with Alaskan natives than with other Native American groups in the Southwest.  Both their languages and looks are similar.  Athabaskan groups in Alaska call themselves the Dena, or the people, just as the Navajo deem themselves the Dineh.  The Anasazi settled this area centuries before the Navajos moved south.  How then could these Alaskan descendants share ancestry with the Anasazi?

I did not press him further about the Anasazi, and instead he spoke of his brief experiences as a medicine man at his aunt’s wedding.  He also mentioned a time in which he brewed peyote.  He spoke without elaboration, so these practices seemed nearly as foreign to him as they were to me.  Certainly he practiced traditions that he shared with older generations, but DJ seemed more like an average American to me.  With the exception of my genetic makeup, I share little to nothing in cultural tradition to my ancestors who immigrated to America.  Occasionally I’ll eat at a Greek restaurant, but I’m sure that my family’s old customs have been white-washed in favor of the broad-stroked American lifestyle, where average upbringings and daily habits differ very little from coast to coast.

Ahead lay a dense copses of bushes, which could provide enough coverage in which for me to pee.  I had been holding my bladder for the last hour, trying to muster the courage to ask to be excused.  I thought it would be sacrilegious to pee on land considered sacred.  I felt as though I were considering urinating in a shadowy corner of an ancient church.  When we passed the bushes, I knew I had missed my opportunity.  Soon necessity would override my manners.

 

Another half mile down the trail, we spotted a blue Port-a-Potty left behind from a construction project years ago.  I half-jokingly asked if they were still usable, but DJ said he wouldn’t recommend it.  We took a break on logs chiseled into benches and I casually asked if I could take a piss on one of the trees behind the Port-a-Potty.  DJ shrugged his shoulders and said, “Go ahead.”  I felt slightly embarrassed, like a college student who hasn’t shaken the high-school habit of asking to use the restroom during class. 

When I returned, Kendyl took her turn, and I was alone with DJ and felt pressured to make small talk.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"A few years."

"You like it?"

"It's not a bad job."

"What do you do in the winter?"

"Sit around.  Sometimes there's a mechanic who lets me work part-time, but mostly nothing.  There's not many jobs in Chinle."

Kendyl returned, and we resumed our hike.  The rains came again and then turned to hail that stung my nose.  Dark clouds billowed above the canyon walls.

“Bear Grylls said that if clouds look ominous, they probably are,” I said.

Then the thunder bellowed.  Lightning struck the ground somewhere out of sight miles away from us, but the sound was no less comforting.  I winced each time a bolt crackled.  The tiny creek rose above my ankles.  The cold water, now beginning to rage, numbed my toes.  Although he may have been hiding his fear, DJ seemed unperturbed by the thunderstorm, and his calmness soothed my nerves.  

When I'm on an airplane bouncing through turbulence, I examine the stewardesses' faces.  If they're calm, then I shouldn't worry.  If the professionals are panicking, however, then the passengers have little else to do but follow suit.  From the canyon floor filling up with water, I chose to believe this logic.  Nonetheless, when we reached the junction of Canyon de Chelly with Canyon del Muerto, DJ muttered that now might be a good time to turn around. 

Despite my fear and mild discomfort, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the canyon looked in the rain.  Muddy waterfalls the color of chocolate milkshakes spewed through the grooves in the rock.  Piles of hail collected in pockets of earth and resembled snow from a distance.  Looking out of place in this ancient amphitheater, a Jeep Cherokee sloshed through the powerful creek, the very one that carved its way through this canyon. 

On our way back to the trailhead, we passed an Anasazi cliff dwelling next to a clear waterfall that touched down on a fertile patch of grass.  It was apparent the Anasazi chose their location wisely.  

By this time I had to wiggle my toes to maintain sensation, and my legs were beginning to feel the fatigue of a nine mile hike, but I was grateful for the discomfort and the mild danger of possibly getting struck by lightning or getting washed away in a flash flood.  An hour ago the conversation grew stale, and then all was quiet except the crunch of our boots against the fallen hail.  Before the storm, too, the views from the canyon floor were growing monotonous with no sun to offer a variation of light and color.  The rain, and its accompanying unpleasantness, transformed the place entirely.  

We sloshed again through the swampy fields sodden with cow piss and rainwater.  The climb up the slickrock was slushy, and at times we had to jump across the stream cascading downward and over the precipice.  

Our guide stopped before the metal staircase and bent over and struggled to catch his breath.  I looked at Kendyl with mild surprise and realized we could dash up the stairs and avoid paying our guide, but instead we waited for him in the parking lot. 

In between breaths, he said, “Now all you have to do is pay me, and we’ll be on our ways.”

There are certain practices within a tipping culture that are laid out plainly.  The easiest example is how to properly tip a waiter in a restaurant.  But how much should you tip a tour guide?  Does the same 20% rule apply?  The guide’s rate was thirty dollars an hour, and the hike was four hours long.  I handed him two folded bills.  After deliberating all morning about an appropriate tip, I decided to give him an extra thirty dollars.  

I wondered if the thirty dollars an hour was, in fact, his wage.  Was I overpaying him?  I felt guilty for even considering this, but then again he wasn't exactly leading us.  By the end of the hike, we had to slow down so he could keep up with us.  A person's got to make his money somehow, and DJ gave us the experience I was looking for, even though I may have been able to find it on my own.  How else, then, would the money be allocated?  I couldn’t think of many expenses other than the calories we burned and the fraction of a gallon of gas that powered our cars to the trail head.

DJ thanked me without counting the money, and we parted.  He drove off in his little red car, and I took off my wet boots while a tattooed Navajo man pestered me about buying his drawings.  His drawings of the canyon were colorful and pretty, but his prices were high.  Besides, I had already paid a man to walk with me.  Out here, it seems, the only way to make money is off the land.