Weekend Journey across the Navajo Nation (Part 4: Lukachukai to Gallup)

I first came across the the red cliff faces of Lukachukai while sitting in a dark, empty bar in El Paso, while reading "Poem for Jody" by Simon J. Ortiz. I was in a bad situation in my life, removed from home and family, and it so simply and gracefully stated a love for place that afterwards I knew I was going home to rural Utah.  In trying to make it as a writer, I had become something I'm not--urban, cynical, and worst of all, excruciatingly shy. 

Something about Ortiz's poetry in general and "Poem for Jody" in particular were life-changing for me.  What comes clear through his poetry is that for some, culture and self are inseparable. He states this beautifully in the following interview, which for years I had hanging in the entrance to my classroom:

Why do you write?

Because Indians always tell a story.  The only way to continue is to tell a story and that's what Coyote says.  The only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way.  Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them--how they were born, how they came to this certain plaice, how they continued.

I had no intention of becoming a wanna-be Native.  I had my own culture, my own roots, my own stories and hymns of survival.  But, I knew then that whoever I would become, if I ended up having any value to me at all, it was through, not in-spite of my small-town Mormon heritage.  I didn't necessarily know what that would look like (and still don't), and at that point I certainly wasn't interested in becoming an active Mormon again. I just knew I no longer wanted to be internally at war with everything I was.  (Prejudice, in all forms does that--rips a man from his soil in more ways than one.  Half of you fights the stereotypes of the outside world and the other half believes them.  You begin to loath part of who you are.)

And yet, either by chance or by divine intention, I ended up marrying into the Navajo tribe, moving within easy eyesight of Lukachukai Mountains and embracing both my own Mormon Heritage and much of Navajo Culture.  My personal story, and one that I fully believe, is that chance had nothing to do with it.  I also don't believe my journey into Diné Bikéyah is over.  There is one particular overlook on Canyon del Muerto (the north arm of Canyon de Chelly) that every time I visit I have a profound feeling "I've been here before."  I can almost feel, almost see the circumstances, but a veil keeps it hidden, like when you hear a song, know you know it, but the lyrics and title won't surface.  It is that strong.  And it's not the entire view, but an ancient Hogan, crumbling near a farm where the canyon forks again.  I can almost see who is there--not in a vision, but in feeling, a memory--like driving through an old neighborhood from your childhood.

Marci's family has roots in the area, so perhaps in the preexistence I was given the privilege to know of Marci's family history live--perhaps so I would find her after losing my way.  A memory crumb.  

I don't know.  Such talk is crazy in a world of science.  And yet I don't deny it.  I can't.  It is far too real, too living.  I don't know how science and religion merge and probably never will.  I don't deny science can clone a sheep--I'd have to be a fool--but I also know there are deeper currents, and that the physical world doesn't reveal the entire picture.

I had thoughts similar to these as we made our way again through a landscape that is as much a part of me as Dry Creek.

The red cliff faces of the Lukachukai Mountains described in "Poem for Jody" by Simon J. Ortiz

The high pondersa covered Fort Defiance Plateau and the Chuska Mountains.
The grocery-trip to Gallup every other week was simply spectacular.

© Steve Brown 2014