12 October 2017, Thursday

Thunderbird Lodge, North and South Rim Drive, Canyon de Chelly

We breakfast once more at Thunderbird Lodge cafeteria. O tries the Navajo blue corn pancakes. They are good. After breakfast we drive to the last lookout on the North Rim and visit the other lookouts on the way back.

There are three stops: Massacre Cave and Mummy Cave Overlook, Antelope House Overlook, and Ledge Ruin Overlook. Massacre Cave was the site of a Spanish attack on the Navajo people. At Antelope House overlook we encounter a Navajo artist named Kenneth. He has lived in the canyon most of his life and paints watercolors on pieces of canyon stone. His paintings depict his interpretation of some of the pictographs. He has a different story about the Navajo name. He has learned that it comes from a Pueblo word meaning “Pebble People.” He also has a story about the 4 Navajo colors. They represent the cardinal directions: white for east, yellow for west, black for north and blue for south. He interprets the sawtooth line, which Ben thought represented canyon walls, differently as well. Ken believes it represents echoes in the canyon. We suppose both interpretations can be correct. In any case, we purchase one of his rock paintings. It has a bear as a symbol of strength, a Shaman, a spiral line with a trailing end representing how parents pass teachings on to their children, a pictograph representing a Navajo handshake, and another showing Mother Earth and Father Sky. We also buy a necklace made by his 91 year old step-mother. It has juniper berry beads and some small turquoise beads. We thank each other. The best I can represent the Navajo word for thank you is ‘ekhyeh.’ It has a very breathy sound. From this stop we move on to the last North Rim stop which has some beautifully eroded sandstone caves and some extensive Ancient Puebloan dwellings.

After a brief break back at the lodge, we set out to drive the South Rim. Once again we drive all the way to the road’s end, planning to do the overlooks on the way back. At the end of Canyon de Chelly, where it meets Monument Canyon, stands Spider Rock. Here lives Spider Woman who taught the Navajo people to weave. Nearby is Face Rock. Legend has it that Face Rock tells Spider Woman about misbehaving Navajo children. The miscreants are taken to the top of Spider Rock. We peer through our binoculars. No children. I guess they are all well-behaved. In the distance, above the canyon and beyond Spider Rock, stands Black Rock, the remaining hard igneous core of an old volcano, the rest of which has long since eroded away.

Next we stop at Sliding House Overlook. The name says it all. The ancient ones built a retaining wall to keep their dwellings from sliding off the tilted cliff. We skip the next couple of overlooks as we saw several of the sites from the canyon’s bottom yesterday.

Now we arrive at the stop that O has been anticipating. At White House Overlook is a phenomenon described in one of his geology books as a “once in a lifetime exposure, not to be missed by the geologist.” About ¼ mile down the switchbacks to the canyon’s bottom lies this geologic phenomenon. Millions of years ago a slot canyon in the De Chelly sandstone was filled with river deposits of the Shinarump conglomerate of the Chinle Formation. This is apparent as we walk down the trail and spy the sharp vertical line between the two distinctly different formations. As surprising as a conglomerate-filled slot canyon to me is the fact that the coarse rocks of the conglomerate bear identical signatures to rocks of the southeastern Appalachians. Ancient rivers carried these rocks millions of years ago from the ancestral Appalachians to this slot canyon over 1000 miles away!

As we climb out of the canyon we pass yet another Navajo artist selling his rock paintings. He paints in a different style from our last rock art purchase so we add one more memento to our collection before returning to Thunderbird Lodge.