Tent stories 5: The reservation

From 30 to 25 years ago, I was the math teacher at a small school on the Navajo reservation. This woman was my aide:

I’ll call her Jean. There’s some uncertainty about her real legal name–apparently she has three different birth certificates, each with a name that’s a slight variation of the other. No one knows how that happened; she only recently discovered it, and no one who knew is still with us. Since her parents spoke only Navajo and were illiterate, and therefore dependent on the accuracy of clerks regarding spelling, it’s entirely possible no one ever knew–they may not have realized it had happened.

Anyway, Iris and I arrived mid-afternoon, and Jean was nowhere to be found. We had expected to call her and let her know what time to expect us, but it turned out that cell phones–ours anyway, both Verizon–didn’t work out in that part of the reservation. So much for Verizon’s vaunted coverage. So Jean had left to run some errands (a 60-mile round trip there). But I managed to find her daughter’s mother-in-law, who I had also known, and she told us where Jean was and let us wait in her house until Jean got back.

Jean has three kids, the last of whom was born just a few months before I left the reservation. That’s her two sons and one of Jean’s grandchildren below; the one I remember as a baby (who I always say was the second-cutest baby ever born–Jean’s sister had a little girl a few months later who was even cuter) is the one in the middle.

Sometimes, when she couldn’t find a baby-sitter, Jean would bring the baby–known then as Smurf, though he’s graduated to an adult name since–to class. One of my fondest memories is that my HS boys were just as enchanted with the baby as the girls were. They used to compete to see who would get to hold him. It was never any trouble having him there–the kids would pass him around and keep him entertained, working on their math between-times.

Here’s a shot of Jean’s oldest, her daughter, with some of the grandkids (I think they’re all three her kids, but frankly I couldn’t keep them all straight):

I’ll tell you more about that puppy in the next post.

Back to the present era: we visited awhile and Jean made supper for everyone. She tends to make generous meals, because she’s never sure just how many she will be feeding–that day, it was six adults and I’m not sure just how many grandkids–3 or 4, I think, but it may have been more. That’s when I snapped that first picture above. She’s now living in the same apartment on campus that I lived in 4 out of the 5 years I spent there, so I felt right at home. Below is the view from the front door, with the elementary school in the mid-range and Black Mesa behind that.

That’s Fred Bia in the foreground, a talented artist who now works at the school’s print shop. He was the art teacher back in my day, and used to entertain us by whipping out a miniature water color landscape in about five minutes or less (no exaggeration.) It was amazing what he could evoke with just a few brush-strokes. Given my total inability to produce anything artistic with my hands, I was totally impressed. Since then he’s gotten into rodeo and discovered the joys of Photoshop, so he does most of his work on the computer these days, and doesn’t do much with landscapes anymore.

After supper, Jean and her oldest son took us out to her family’s land, where they are building some modern hogans (6- or 8-sided buildings styled after traditional hogans but made of modern materials.)

That’s the hogan on the right, with the remnants of a shade house (a structure made of poles with pine, cedar, or juniper (I think) branches providing the shade, used to provide shelter from the sun for many kinds of activities) on the left.

It was dark but still hot (have I mentioned it has been hot everywhere?) and we were tired, so we didn’t mess with the real tents that night. Iris set up her cot outside and I set up the car for sleeping (with the car tent, which is easy). Iris ended up moving into the hogan to sleep because of the wind, which was keeping her awake. But the next morning, we decided to put up the big tent before going back to the school, and that night we put up the Kelty also, so we ended up with this campsite:

That’s not one of my dogs; I’ll tell dog stories in my next post.

The grandkids got all excited about setting up their own tent, so Iris helped one of the older girls to set it up (so she could do it alone later). This picture shows some of the boys playing inside it (cute, huh?)

The kids thought they wanted to sleep out in their tent until it came right down to it, at which point they wanted their familiar homes and beds, so Iris and I continued to have the place to ourselves one more night.

This is part of the view that we woke up to each morning:

A mere photo can’t really do it justice–part of the experience is the stillness and the evolution of the light and shadows as the sun rises into the sky.

The first day we went to Cañon de Chelly, but since I forgot my camera I don’t have pictures to post. You can check it out for yourself here or here. We left the dogs at Jean’s house (a major concession, since Navajos don’t traditionally allow dogs in their houses), put up my back seats, and started out with Iris, me, and three girls in my car and Jean and three boys in her pickup. At some point the girls and boys switched, so we got to be with all six grandkids during the day.

The following day we left the kids behind, and Jean, Iris, and I went up to Monument Valley. I took a lot of pictures, but I’ll only post a few. The first one everyone should recognize, from old Westerns if nothing else. This is a view from the visitor’s center.

The visitor’s center is much expanded since the last time I was there, even since the last time Jean was there. In addition to an impressive gift shop, it has an extensive display on the Navajo Codetalkers, recently made more famous by the movie “Windtalkers”. I remember the Navajo Culture and Language teacher at our school was a codetalker; thats how I first learned about them. One of Jean’s nephews was in the movie, and she has a picture of herself with the nephew and the Native star (whose name escapes me–so much for fame.) As we walked around the display, she commented on various people she knew and where they were from. We found Teddy Draper’s name (the teacher I mentioned) among others she knew. Almost all of them have passed on now, as is happening with the rest of the WWII generation. Some of them were related to Jean.

You can take a loop drive down into Monument Valley. They warn that small vehicles may not make it, but Iris and Jean said they trusted me (and my car) to see us through, so we did it. Here are a few pictures. The first shows a fairly typical scene (if anything can be said to be “typical” in such an amazing landscape.)

A group of horses passed us by as I was taking a picture, so I grabbed a shot of them. I like the way unconfined horses look; there’s something right about seeing horses roaming free.

Jean told us the name of this next formation (all the rocks and formations have names and stories. She could tell us the names but not the stories, because Navajos only tell the traditional stories in the winter.) Unfortunately, my aging brain didn’t retain the information.

The final MV shot I used at the bottom of the previous post :-).

The next morning Iris and I started taking down tents and packing, getting ready to leave. Jean’s daughter and her husband and kids came out to help us (we thought), and she turned out to be really good at getting stubborn tent pegs out of the ground. However, it turned out to be a ploy; they were really there to make sure we didn’t leave until Jean (and more kids) could get there with a birthday cake and hats. It worked.

That’s me, holding the puppy. Iris took several shots, in one of which I was so hideous I deleted the picture, one of which was marginal, and this one, which I deemed not too awful to be seen.

My birthday isn’t until September, but the deal is that I’ve always returned to visit on or just before a decade birthday. I turned 40 there, and was there the summer before 50, and in Sept. I’ll be 60, so Jean didn’t want to let the occasion go unmarked.

My birthday wish was to return before ten (or even five) years have elapsed; I’ll return to that below. I successfully blew out all the candles on the first breath, so even though they used those trick candles on me, I say I get the wish.

Here’s the whole crew (except me, of course–I’m behind the camera where I belong.)

So after cake was consumed, they all left and Iris and I finished packing up, went in and said our goodbyes, and headed (we thought) for Chaco Canyon via the Lukachukais (a lovely word to say.) Black Mesa and the Lukchukai mountains are the two most traditional areas remaining on the reservation (or anyway were back in my day). The road over the Lukachukais has now been paved, and I’m sure that’s having an impact on the families that live up there. Black Mesa is beautiful, but the Lukachukais are outstanding, containing almost the only large-tree forest on the reservation.

About an hour out, we turned up the road through the mountains. Soon I just had to stop to take a picture . . . oops. No camera. Couldn’t face the rest of the summer without the camera, so back we headed. (Once again Verizon failed to produce–we tried to call several times on the way back, but even though Verizon indicates service on Rte. 160, there was none for us.) Once again we had to wait for Jean–she had tried to chase us down to give us the camera, and then decided to run some errands while she was out.

I tend to blame that birthday wish for the whole episode, but returning within two hours wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, so the birthday wish gods are on notice that THIS DIDN’T COUNT!

Eventually, camera in hand, we made it back to the point at which I discovered the camera was missing, and here’s the picture to prove it:

All I can say is, it’s a good thing I wanted that picture, or I might not have discovered the missing camera for days.

Here’s a couple more shots from the Lukachukais. If you look carefully at this first one, I think you’ll see a face (though as Iris and I decided, once you start seeing faces, they’re everywhere)

This next one shows the mix of aspen and pine you can see all over the Western mountains.

I love the mix of light and dark green with the white of the aspen trunks. They’re evenmore beautiful in the fall, when the aspen change color, of course.

The li’l misadventure with the camera delayed us enough that we had to skip Chaco Canyon. We stopped in Farmington at a Comfort Inn (most appreciated), then drove Hwy. 550 to Albuquerque so Iris could catch her plane back home. (I recommend Hwy. 550; it’s a beautiful drive. I just did it again today (Iris left Monday; this is Friday), and it was even more beautiful.)

So now I’m almost caught up. One more post to go tonight (remember that puppy . . .?)