We left our campsite at 8:30am to drive to Monument Valley in Utah to take a private tour with a Navajo Guide, Don Mose. We met Don at the Hogan Village, the sun-baked mud covered homes are called Hogan, at 12 noon to begin the valley drive and back country dirt road for our 3 hour tour. Monument Valley holds a special place to the Navajo people, and the tranquility of the land, culture and tradition infuse the valley with a uniquely Navajo flavor. Therefore, Don began by explaining the Navajo language and culture to us. The Navajo tribe, Dineh, meaning “the people”, still adhere to their cultural, social and traditional values, and Don is teaching the young here and tribes as far away as Siberia the complex language and clan system, to keep it alive.
In 1959 Monument Valley was set aside as a Navajo Tribal Park. Our first view was the famous panorama of the East and West Mitten Buttes and Merrick Butte. The Mittens look like hands, yet it signifies spiritual beings watching over the Navajo Nation. The Valley boasts sandstone masterpieces that tower at heights of 100 feet to 1,500 feet tall. We saw the Three Sisters, a formation of a Catholic nun facing her two pupils, and Rain God Mesa that marks the geological center of the Park, where Navajo medicine men pray and give thanks to the Rain God, who stored water for the people. One rock formation that we drove to had a hole on the side called the Suns Eye, and at another one we lay on the rock floor looking up to a hole in the rock and it had the appearance of the head of an eagle with the hole for its eye. Don also showed us some petroglyphs on the walls and explained that the significance of the hand pointing north represented death. He told us stories of his family and ancestors and sang the spiritual Navajo songs.
We saw wild mustangs drinking from an underground aquifer, and a mare nursing her young foal. Don took us to a Navajo sweat lodge, too small for Bob to come inside and a Hogan where the Navajo women make their arts and crafts to sell. On our way back we stopped at Artist Point Overlook to get one last view of the Monument Valley landscape and a first hand look at one of the most tremendous natural structures created by erosion. A place where time stands still and where you can feel the harmony and peace of this Navajo Nation, presented to us by our spiritual Navajo guide, Don Mose; where “the land was their canvas to the great circle of life”. It was truly a spiritual experience for both Bob and myself, one we will never forget, and hopefully some of the pictures will capture the true beauty and significance of this sacred land.