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The American West — Riding Horseback With a Navajo Shaman
A Navajo Shaman Guides Us Through Monument Valley, One of America’s Great Treasures
The Valley of the Gods
Monument Valley represents the wild, dramatic side of the American West. Hollywood made it famous, but time and geology created it. I knew I wasn’t alone in thinking that visiting here was a must.
Cyndy and I had been traveling for over two months now by train, ferry and the occasional rent-a-car, most recently from the Viking settlement founded by Leif Ericsson in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, through New England and across the United States to Four Corners, the exact spot where the borders of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah converge. Now our rental car was looping us through a misty winter rain, first northwest and then southwest into Navajo territory.
The land here is harsh, flat, unforgiving. Occasionally a faraway mountain or bluff might rear up, but mostly I saw iron-red rock, peppered with prairie grass and what locals call Mormon or cowboy tea that is still used as a medicinal herb. Even gnarled pinyon and juniper trees had deserted the land. Our little car rolled through the vast and empty spaces looking no larger than a matchbox toy.
