Canyon de Chelly: the beginning

Canyon de Chelly

Date
I began this as notes about Sierra Club trip to Canyon de Chelly, the stories our guides told and the people I met. The stories and myth are an extremely important part of time in the canyon and I will weave them later, but now, in my egocentric way, I want to explore a particularly personal experience and the consequences of those moments.

Moab, UT: a few days after the trip to the canyon.
The creamy white moon is egg shaped; its smooth light waves around and about the red cliffs behind the camper creating a white night. Tomorrow the egg will mature and become a more balanced circle. This night is cool, but gently cool, merely a suggestion of what is to come. The sun crossed the equator today and fall officially began. The rain this morning washed grit and grime from the sky and removed the haze from the air for a while.

The canyon

I’ve appreciated red rock canyons, gigantic mesas, and impressive valley views many times over the years, but the trip to Canyon de Chelly was more, much more than my usual way of knowing something simply by observing. This time, I participated in and with the canyon and it altered me in deeply pervasive ways. Of all the canyon experiences, and there were many, the one I want to explore first is the climb up the Yei’bi’chi trail. Twenty of us went up that trail and most made it with little difficulty or fear. I was not one of those.

Yei’bi’chei: I think it literally translates from Dine’ as “the trail of the gods” and now I know why. It was a trail that challenged me to the very core of my being, a hero’s journey, in the Joseph Campbell sense, and the challenge came as a complete surprise.

When I applied for the trip, I was asked if I could physically make an ascent or descent of several hundred feet in one day. My response was “Sure, no problem. Wonder why they even asked.” I am in pretty good shape, so I had absolutely no qualms about my abilities. The thing I didn’t know was that the changes in elevation described in the trip packet would sometimes be intensely vertical rather that a series of gradual switch backs. As I learned this, I came to understand that, contrary to the old adage, ignorance is not always bliss.

The trip began mid-day on the canyon rim. We met with the owner of the land used as access to the rim. He greeted up at the opening of his sweat lodge that is situated close enough to the edge of the canyon to provide an awe inspiring view of sky and canyon walls. After receiving his blessing, we began the descent to the floor of the canyon. The trail meanders around huge boulders and rock formations, between scrub and through slippery sandstone washes. Layers of red, orange, brown, and cream told the story of the erosions that created the canyon. The floor was in view most of the way down and was splotched with shades of green. What an introduction to the beauty and mystery of Canyon de Chelly!

Day 2
The second morning, we left our beautifully secluded grassy camp site near Bear Trail and Baby Pee, walked past a number of ruins, saw the rock where the people attempted to outlast Kit Carson’s invasion, and walked around the point that divides Canyon del Muerto from Canyon de Chelly. And then, and then, we continued walking. A rusty fence ran along the road and we passed through a place the fence was down, walked near an abandoned hogan, and began to gradually leave the valley floor. The rock wall in front of me was beautiful, a deep orange red. I drank in the color.

The trail wound gently up and through scrub cactus and assorted bushes stubborn enough to survive the cycles of heat and drought, snow and floods. I expected to follow the bottom of the canyon wall and walked easily through the sand and loose rock. When we reached the wall, we began to pick our way across the base.

It was tough going. The sandstone was slippery and, in some places, the only way to make any progress was to plaster my back against the wall and skittle along sideways, but then I felt as if I was going to topple forward. We stopped for water and I slid down the wall to rest. Some of the others pulled out cameras and maneuvered for shots of the valley, which suddenly seemed a long way below. After a while, the line began to move again, and I followed, thinking that we would surely be off the rock and back in the bottom of the valley soon.

We came out of the shady side of the wall as we oonched around a bend and suddenly there was nothing in front or behind me. We were out in the open and the folks in front of me began to go steeply upward, their boots filling narrow ledges that seemed way too small for my boots.

I followed. The valley had been receding, but now the pace was alarming and I was suddenly consciously attempting to breathe deeply to dissipate the panic that was growing proportionally to the distance to the valley floor. Surely, if those others could do this, I could.