The personnel at Sedona’s Amara Resort & Spa are no rookies when it comes to dealing with hobbling mule riders. As soon as you limp through the giant doorway, they slap a Menu of Delights on the counter and let you choose your very own reclamation project. Since they had no miraculous healing mud from the Orient, Siobhan opted for The Rain Dance Massage, bringing forth images of Indian squaws circling the weary body while medicine women ceremoniously apply oils of lavender, rosemary and sage to clear and heal. The whole affair is concluded with a warm oil scalp massage and yes, they leave the scalp attached.
I debated my choice, temporarily went with a different treatment and then decided Siobhan’s option was best. “Make it two,” I told the girl behind the desk. Alas, it turned out there were not enough Indians to go around. Lisa, the newest hire at Amara, had not been in house long enough to learn all the intricacies and war whoops of The Rain Dance. If I was willing to wait just a smidge I could be assigned a more experienced therapist. “I’ll take Lisa,” I told them. “New girls have to work, too.”
Lisa was a plain and quiet girl from the nearby metropolis of Cottonwood, where she had operated a massage salon of her own before emigrating to the busier and more economically dependable Sedona. She was a woman of few words, preferring to ply her trade in relative silence which, in all fairness, is what a lot of the customers desire. Not me, though. I am sort of like the oil driller who searches for just the right spot to engage. If you get it correct, BINGO!—the black gold gushes forth.
“Tell me, Lisa—what do you like to do when you’re not working?”
“Well,” she said, a little reluctantly, “I’m a singer.”
Okay, this was exciting news. I have experienced perhaps forty different massage therapists, not yet a single singer. She brightened up with my enthusiasm and before long was chirping like a songbird.
“The main reason I moved here was to sing two nights a week at Vino Di Sedona,” a popular wine bar just down the road. “I may never make a nickel singing but it’s my passion and now I have a venue.”
“Don’t be so sure about the money,” I replied, regaling her with tales of the dead-broke Tom Petty and his early Mudcrutch cohorts and of Janis Joplin’s failure to find a singing gig in 1962 Austin, where she wound up waitressing at a Pancake House. After digesting all this, Lisa almost whispered that she had found a prominent producer and would be recording an album of her own songs at a local studio in the coming weeks. “Don’t worry,” I whispered back. “I won’t tell anybody.” As easy as that, we were now great pals.
Everybody has a story to tell, some of them more interesting than you expect. The guy at the bakery could be a four-star motocross racer in disguise. Your muffler repairman might be an ex-millionaire brought down by divorce, bad luck at the casinos or the complications of beriberi. That character playing banjo in the country band might once have been Murph the Surf. For one reason or another, they’re not talking. Not talking, at least, until you insert the right key into the ignition. Sometimes a little oil drilling brings forth a gusher. Sometimes a little solicitude is worth an extra minute of your time.
Photo #2 (descending) is the enormous Agathla Peak, near the entrance to Monument Valley. It SHOULD be called Stairway to Heaven.
On The Road Again
The disciplined traveller, of course, cannot spend excessive amounts of time swaddled in terry-cloth, relaxing in post-massage lounge chairs and drinking crisply served ceremonial nectars. There are people to see, places to go, questions to be answered. Why, in fact, do they call a place Flagstaff? Do we have trouble right here in Tuba City? What do they do on a rainy night in Kayenta? (answers at the end of this column).
It takes just under 3 1/2 hours to negotiate your way from Sedona to Monument Valley, a little more with the stop at Starbuck’s in Flagstaff. This is not Interstate country, you’ll be driving on two- and four-lane roads all the way. Kayenta, with a population of 5189 invisible people, is the nearest town, 35 miles from the Valley. While anticipation often trounces actuality, there are few disappointments at this destination. The Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is surprisingly large and shockingly beautiful. The entire Navajo reservation covers one third of the 130,000 square mile Colorado Plateau, including almost 30,000 square miles of spectacular geological wonders. If you’re old enough, you’ve seen the place yourself in many of the old western movies of your youth. John Ford made The Searchers (starring John Wayne) there in 1956 and they often screen the movie on the outside patio of MV’s The View Hotel in the early evening. You can see what Natalie Wood looks like dressed up as an Indian (less than fetching).
The reservation, at 5564 feet above sea level, straddles the Utah-Arizona state line about one hundred miles from the famous Four Corners area, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico converge. You will not be going there to ride the giant roller coaster or splash down the monster water slide, nor are the Navajos particularly feathery, so don’t expect the kids to be amused. The photographers in the family, however, will be in heaven. Clusters of them wander The View’s overlooks from morning til night, shooting the daylights out of the rare scenery, while others venture into the interior either solo or with the Indian guides which are required when visiting the backcountry area where many Navajos live. After a month of culling, we are still sitting here with no less than 40 photographs in the must-publish category and we’re just amateurs. You simply point your camera and click—voila!—you’ve got a classic. In the early evening, the sun can break through clouds from the west and provide theatrical lighting for the monuments and/or the land around them, making exceptional photo opportunities available. In our experience, there is no other place like this, nothing remotely similar to the treasure that is Monument Valley.
(Answers: (1) Flagstaff drew its name from a very tall flagpole made from a pine tree to celebrate the nation’s centennial in 1876; (2) only with the occasional Hopi-Navajo dustup in the True Value parking lot . It’s always about a girl; (3) not a damn thing.
All rooms (and balconies) face the Valley at The View Hotel, colored to match its surroundings.
Geology (from the MV information brochure)
Monument Valley was created from nature’s patient sculpturing through timeless erosion. During the paleozoic era—about 570 million years ago—the entire Colorado Plateau was underneath the Gulf of Mexico, which brushed against the young sediments of the Rocky Mountains. This inland sea withdrew further westward. The mountain chains began to rise along faults accompanied by basins. As the sea dried up, minerals were buried by shorelines sands and sediments washed down from the deltas. Materials that eroded from the Rocky Mountains were deposited over earlier layers and cemented into sandstones. An uplift generated by ceaseless lava pressure from below the earth’s crust caused the surface to bulge and crack. The cracks deepened and widened into rocky ravines and canyons.
The uplift of the young Colorado Plateau started to develop about 65 million years ago after the collision of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates off the coast of California, sending shock waves eastward. The natural forces continue to shape the land today. Changes occur slowly through thousands of years unseen by the human eye. Endless erosion by water, wind and ice over millions of years has chiseled rock formations into the unique shapes of Monument Valley. The red-orange sandstone cliffs are of the Cutler Formation from the Permian period approximately 160 million years ago.
Ancient volcanic plugs that formed as igneous rock formations are now evident as one travels through the Navajo Nation. Agathla Peak, also known as El Capitan, located between Kayenta and Monument Valley on U.S. Highway 163 is an example of an ancient volcano plug.
Into The Backcountry
If you’d like to travel deep into the park, you’ll be needing your friendly neighborhood Navajo and a suitable vehicle. The roads, after all, are not paved with anything more than good intentions and can get a little sticky in spots. When it rains, even the Indians can get stuck in the mire. As you check into the Navajo-owned View Hotel, the happy folks at the lobby desk will provide you with a list of “recommended” guides, which includes virtually every Navajo within driving range. I’m not sure what you’d have to do to get disqualified from this list but it would probably have to be something on the order of Custer-worship or failing Archery 101. That said, the highly-respected Tribal Council which administers the reservation keeps a pretty tight rein on things and tourist-adverse shenanigans are not tolerated. If you’ve been to other Indian reservations, and we have, the degree of drunkenness and rowdy behavior can be a concern. Not here. Alcohol is not permitted in the Tribal Park and if visitors wish to imbibe they must keep the activity to their rooms. The Navajos, themselves, are bright, friendly people, eager to please. The View Hotel, the only one on the reservation, is exceptionally clean, attractive and well-run. The tourist trade is the primary livelihood for the tribe and nobody here is particularly anxious to torpedo a good thing.
Monument Valley’s only Walmart.
Siobhan afront a hogan, one time living quarters; Bill at a sweat lodge.
Big Hogan rock formation.
Ear of the Wind.
Bill with Tim Holiday of the Navajo Nation.
Whatever Happened To Little Beaver?
The View is not merely a hotel, with a visitor center, museum and restaurant also on the grounds. The backcountry tours leave from the hotel parking lot and on the lot perimeter there is a small booth where the guides congregate. Upon arrival, we made a deal for a 2 1/2 hour trip the next morning with MV Twin Warriors Tour, operated by a fellow named Leland, of all things. His friend, Charlene, was on hand to help and a young apprentice named Tim Holiday would be our next day’s guide. If you’re wondering what happended to Tonto, Sitting Bull or maybe Princess Summerfallwinterspring, they’ve been overtaken by late 20th-century naming practices. The Holiday clan is everywhere in Monument Valley, with Tim, Nathan, Aaron, Stephen, Dwayne and John Joe in evidence. It’s a little sad that we can’t have any more Crazy Horses or Geronimos but the Navajos remind us of one positive outcome: so far, they haven’t resorted to “Brittany,” “Tiffany” or “LaToya.”
The morning of the tour broke cool and cloudy, a little mist in the air. Leland, Tim and Charlene met us promptly at 9:30, gave us the appropriate instructions and we were on our way, chilly in the open-backed truck. At the first stop, a collection of ramshackle tents where Navajos peddled their jewelry, Tim told us there were but eight Indian families living in all of Monument Valley, although some of the families were expansive. There is no electricity in the backcountry and all the water is hauled in by tanker truck on a regular basis. Most of the Navajos who live there could afford to reside elsewhere but choose to continue a way of life practiced by their ancestors. There are no schools in MV so early on Tim was sent to a boarding school nearby. He admits to deficiencies in math but is a worldly enough fellow. Tim Holiday is aware that there is a Colloseum in Rome and he would like to see it. He has learned a lot from the tourists who visit, more than half of whom are from countries other than the United States. Eventually, we reach the area in which this particular Holiday family spends its days in the company of goats, chickens and a couple of horses, which the Navajos still ride bareback. There is a mobile home and some flimsy fencing. Also, for the tourists, a couple of old hogans and an Indian sweat lodge are provided for inspection and picture-taking. If the living quarters are lacking, the surroundings are incomparable, red-orange cliffs which reach to the sky. The children wave to us. Everyone seems happy.
Famed western author Zane Grey knew this place well. He was on horseback here back in 1913, riding deep into Navajo country, when a great flash of lightning illuminated the desert. That flash, Grey wrote, “revealed a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptured, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely.” Hollywood eventually discovered the place and the movie Stagecoach was filmed there by John Ford in 1939. The director apparently enjoyed the experience—he went back and made nine more films there, including My Darling Clementine in 1946 and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon in 1949, as well as The Searchers. Ford was one of five directors who collaborated on How The West Was Won (1962), one segment of which was filmed in Monument Valley. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper visited the place in Easy Rider, spending the night in the ruins at Wapatke. Forrest Gump finally decided to stop running in Monument Valley and Chevy Chase launched the Family Truckster into oblivion there. Breaking Bad visited the Valley several times. Still, for the most part, Monument Valley exists only in the remote recesses of most Americans’ awareness, if at all. It might be said the place deserves a wider audience. It might also be said the lack of same could be the reason it still exists untrammeled by civilization, pure and pristine, majestic in its solitude.
Day’s End
Tim Holiday delivered us back to The View’s parking lot around noon, the weather having warmed, the skies clearing. We gave him his just rewards and our phone numbers for the day he takes the Megabus to Gainesville. “We don’t have any monuments to show you,” we advised him, “but we do have the Atlantic Ocean. And it’s warm enough to swim in.” He smiled broadly at the notion. From Orlando, it’s a mere 12 hours flight time to the Colosseum, so we’re expecting Tim to show up any day now. If the Megabus is too expensive, he can just jump on one of those horses in the backyard. Is 1976 miles too far to ride bareback?
That’s all, folks….
