grandfathered by a valley

 

The Trails of the Wind

the Diné know the desert, love the desert,

and Monument Valley, what they call

The Trails of the Wind,

or The Valley of the Rocks,

pulls at their heart and at the heart of anyone

who starts to know it,

for what time, water, wind have created here

with stone and sand,

pulls at any of us who want to walk in beauty,

every step within the valley

can pull at the eyes and open the soul into wonder,

we visit a Navajo woman,

whose mother we visited here 30 years ago,

who still lives the traditional ways,

she shows us of how to take wool

and transform it into yarn,

and then shares example of the yarn woven into rug,

how to color the yarn with native plants,

a green she shows us came from mistletoe,

the natural world providing color and substance,

all her sharing said within a hogan,

roofed by native cedar carefully made into ceiling,

fit together by crafted shape and no metal,

covered by a foot of dirt,

maybe six of the family live here

where risen stone is deafening in the reality of its rightness,

about a hundred feet from her home

ancestral peoples had carved out climbing holes into the smooth rock,

so that the way up and the way down were as one,

their culture, their past, their future, also to be as one,

based on connections with each other,

with the darkness and the seeking light of their past,

our guide is Navajo whose grandfather spoke only Navajo,

never went to any school, but who knew the old songs

and taught them to him,

he who finds his grandfather knew truths

that he only now surprises himself 

with the profundity of their understanding,

truths tradition knew in song and ceremony

and that today's reality seems all too willing to discard,

the shapes, which now thrust toward the sky here, grab us,

I hope they can stay with us long enough

so that we can be as grandchild to grandparents,

and that we learn what can be given

if we will just work to accept it.

by Henry H. Walker

March 11, ‘26