Monument Valley, Movie Magic and a Special Navajo Friendship
Dispatch XXIII
A Vagabond’s Adventure
Continent # 1: North America
Day 74-77 December 8-11, 2021
Monument Valley
We left Four Corners behind and looped through a misty winter rain, first northwest and then southwest into Navajo territory. The land here is harsh, flat, unforgiving. Occasionally a faraway mountain or bluff might rear up, but mostly I saw iron-red rock, peppered with sage and prairie grass, and what locals call Mormon or cowboy tea that is still used as a medicinal herb. (You can find it by the bag on Amazon.) Even gnarled pinyon and juniper trees had deserted the land. Our little car rolled along the vast and empty land looking no larger than a matchbox toy.
In time great tables of rock began to emerge. With each mile they gathered stature until we were surrounded by carved formations, gargantuan even in the enormous valley. I saw a sign for The Valley of the Gods and then ahead, iconic Monument Valley, first made famous by John Ford’s epic 1938 cowboy movie Stage Coach, the film that launched John Wayne. I thought maybe Jimmy Stewart, Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas might show up too somewhere on horseback as craggy cowboys or cavalry officers or mascaraed Indian warriors, but not one showed up. Cinematic throwbacks like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, defined the American west for millions of baby boomers like me. I was killer with my six-shooters low on my pajamaed hips. In my child’s mind this was the place where Indians clashed with blue coat cavalry, bugles blaring. The natives never won, and none of the dramas were particularly accurate. It was mostly a white man’s Hollywood version of the past that failed to reflect the true horrors that resulted when European and American miners, migrants, ranchers and farmers swept into native lands and obliterated their cultures.
Famous Route 163 where Forrest Gump said I’m done.
The buttes and mesas and spires that are Monument Valley look as though they could not and never will change, but they come to us worn by time and uncounted, geological wreckage - earthquakes, deluges, the unrepentant forces of wind and rain and sun. Two hundred and seventy million years ago versions of these rocks lay beneath a vast sea until uprooted, tossed and shattered, these sandstone totems were left. I knew this but part of me still hoped they had been heaved up on the shoulders of some raging creature beneath.
On Highway 163 where Forrest Gump said he was done running back and forth across the United States, I stopped the car and grabbed a shot of the place. Then I took more pictures, trying to snare the majesty of the valley. But the icons only looked blankly back, like military sentinels, unblinking, unshakeable and unbearably beautiful. What a place, I thought. And how lucky I am to be here, at last.
Once in the Valley we saw, as if in a tiny diorama, Goulding’s Motel. We turned off and checked in. The winter night came upon us and we walked in the dark through the biting wind to The Stagecoach Inn and had coffee, sliced beef and potatoes. Kale was not on the menu.
Hollywood and Monument Valley
Harry Goulding is the man who made Monument Valley famous. He was a sheep farmer who came to the valley in the 1920s, bought some land and opened an outpost where he did business with the Navajo and the few tourists that dribbled in from time to time. Business in the middle of nowhere was hard to come by, but it worsened as the depression sunk its teeth into the world economy. The Navajo people were hit especially hard. It’s always that way with the poor.
Harry Goulding’s Frontier Post - The Owner Made Monument Valley Famous
Goulding wasn’t doing so well either, but he knew Hollywood ’s movie making business was booming, and that gave him an idea. He was sitting at the crossroads of the Wild West. Nothing could be more enthralling than what he woke up to every day. But how could he get that across to the big wigs in Los Angeles?
Josef Muench was a friend and a young photographer who had migrated from Germany and worked in Detroit until he developed a reputation for great western photography. Goulding asked Muench for help and it was he who took the black and white photos that Harry and his wife “Mike” (Leone) carried to California with their last $60 in their pocket.
It’s not clear how exactly the two of them got the attention of the great western director John Ford, luck and perseverance, probably, but they did. Muench’s photos were laid out in a binder and once Ford saw them, he knew Stagecoach (1938) had to be shot in Monument Valley. The story goes that he stroked a check right there. Soon the unknown valley would wow millions. And Goulding was in business.
Right next to The Stage Coach Restaurant there is the Goulding Museum, and a small movie theatre, but they were both closed by COVID when we visited. Only a replica of John Wayne’s cavalry office from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was open for inspection. We paid a visit and waved to a cardboard version of Wayne before heading to bed.
Exploring The Valley
The next morning ghostly clouds enshrouded the monuments outside our window. I felt we were in a mythic land, an unreal place. The wind soon sheared the mist away revealing buttes hundreds of feet high and pillars that seemed to connect earth and sky. Everywhere the land was red as if drenched by a million sun rises.
A few miles away we found the entrance to the Valley controlled by the Navajo Nation. We each paid the $25 fee at the handsome book shop and museum and drove the dirt road among the monstrous monuments. The spires and mesas have been given mostly whimsical American names inspired by the look of their formations: the two mittens, three sisters, El Capitan, Elephant and Camelback Mesa, each one hundreds of feet high and sizes that would dwarf any New York skyscraper. The day was perfect. High winds had cleared the mist, yet there was not a mote of dust in the air. Furiously I snapped picture after picture, and Cyndy and I marveled. How could anything be so big yet so … embraceable? How could forces as simple as air and water shape such beauty?
Meeting a Shaman
The Navajo people live on the same land where the monuments do. It’s not as though the reservation is thick with homesteads. You might pass a simple trailer that sits among the rock and shrub, 21st century replacements for traditional Hogans that once housed the Navajo for longer than anyone knows. We were completing our loop of the Valley when we passed a corral with 12 or so horses stamping, feeding and gazing at the sights.
Jameson’s mustangs. Loraine walks back to get Jameson’s attention.
I got out of the car and walked to the corral, looking like the lost tourist I was when a woman called out across the prairie half way between a trailer and the corral.
“Can I help you?” She was short and round, pretty with long dark hair so thick it’d be work to pull a rake through it. She seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“I see you have horses,” I said.
She nodded.
“Any chance we can ride a couple through the Valley?”
The woman turned back and walked toward the trailer. “Jameson!” She called out. “Jameson!”
A man emerged from the trailer. He took his time walking up to the corral and smiled a non-committal smile. He wore hiking boots and blue jeans, a t-shirt and a black jeans jacket that was too large for him. (I learned why later.) He was weathered, compact and fit with a fine picket fence of crooked teeth. There was the whisper of a beard and goateee.
The woman explained my question. Jameson turned to me.
“We can do that. I can ride you around for an hour.” He spoke with the same quiet confidence that I remembered Charley, another Navajo, had at Four Corners. The inflections in his voice were slight but unmistakable. There was neither arrogance nor deference. Just a command that I assumed came from having been through a few things.
“How much would that cost?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars each.”
I looked toward Cyndy and then turned and nodded to him.
“Come back tomorrow at noon,” he said, “and we’ll get you set up.”
I shook his strong, rough hand. “Thank you,” I said. It took everything in me to contain my glee. “See you tomorrow.”
We got back in the car. “Damn,” I said, “We’re going to horseback ride through Monument Valley with a Native Navajo! Wow!”
The Ride
Cyn was a little nervous about the idea of getting on a horse. I was hardly a master horseman, but had done some riding through Montana and Yellowstone with my long-time friend Michael Keaton. He and I spent several days horse camping with two cowboys Mike had met after he bought his Montana ranch. Cyn had been on a horse once and didn’t much care for an animal being between her and sold ground. But as usual, she was game and when we arrived the next day, Jameson and Loraine, his wife, had Cochise, Geronimo saddled up for us. “Two great Apache warriors,” Jameson said.
Cochise and Geronimo were a couple of easygoing mustangs. We rode into the Valley, sacred to the Navajo and Jameson brought us out the the Wishing Tree.
Jameson was a believer in mustangs, essentially wild horses that have been tamed. He and his guides had found and had broken every horse they had. They were told at one point they had too many and had to sell off about 15. The mustang variety are shorter and stouter than the standard quarter horse, the kind the U.S. Cavalry used to use, but very strong and tough. They’re cheaper too because they don’t require as much hay, and they need less water. But they can also be a touch ornery. While I was learning all of this, Cochise munched on some leaves of unknown origin. Not one of them was green or leafy.
Jameson and Loraine took some pictures of us and of course Cyndy got everyone smiling and kidding before we loped off along the trail. Lorraine remained behind and waved and smiled as we headed into the valley probably thankful we could at least stay upright in our saddles. Soon we were cantering amongst the giants. All of them have names the white man has given them, Jameson said. Merrick Butte was named for miner named Bill Merrick who said he found a silver mine in the Valley. A Navajo brave named Hoskaninni, “The Angry One,” who had escaped the grasp of Kit Carson and his men, warned Jack Merrick and his partner Ernest Mitchell that if they caught them in the valley again they’d kill him. Later they risked coming back and Hoskaninni was true to his word.
The Navajo agree the lost mine exists. But the story goes the last chief to know the whereabouts died several decades ago. Maybe we were nearby? Merrick died within a mile of where we were riding. Behind us were the three sisters.
“All of these buttes and mesas have Navajo names too,” Jameson said, “but they have completely different meanings.” Why would Navajo have names for the Mittens or Camelback when they had never seen any such thing? I thought maybe the Navajo or Paiutes who once roamed this land might have given them the names of gods or myth, but Jameson said no. “Our names are more practical; more like ‘place where the sheep stay,’ that kind of thing.” He mentioned some names, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask him to write them down later, assuming we could. The Navajo language is complex and difficult to master, and originally had no words. Loraine did manage to teach us how to say hello and good bye. Yá’át’ééh (pronounced as ‘yah-aat-eh’) means hello, and Yá’át’ééh hiiłchi’į’ (pronounced as ‘yah-aat-eh heel-chi’) will do as good-bye. Made Spanish seem dead by comparison.
Jameson led us to the Picture Frame Tree, and dropped from his horse. He explained people call it that because the tree creates a great frame for pictures. “It’s also called the wishing tree. Folks punch coins into crevices in the tree,” he said, “mostly teenagers.” He grinned. “All the quarters are gone, but there’s lots of pennies in there.” And then he took a picture of us.
Vagabond Adventurers framed by the Picture Frame Tree.
We circled on toward Merrick Butte. We talked about Navajo life before the white man had taken control. He explained that Navajos did not traditionally travel in large clans or tribes like some Native Americans. “There would usually be three or four warriors who would hunt, and take care of their families. The clans would move from place to place because the hogans could be portable.
“They were excellent horsemen and very accurate with bows, though they didn’t always kill with bows or spears. They sometimes would wrestle a deer or big horn sheep down and break its neck.”
The last couple of years had been trough on Jameson. He came down with COVID in 2020. He was 55, and the disease hit him hard. “After the sickness, I was so tired, I couldn’t move. I was in bad shape anyhow. I had type 2 diabetes. But I worked to get well. At first I walked around like a drunk man.” He stumbled round to provide examples. “But then I started walking through the Valley, and then exercised. I would bundle sticks and carry them on my back and then over time make them heavier and heavier. I did squats and took a lot of Mormon Tea until finally I got strong again.” And he got rid of the diabetes. “This jacket I’m wearing, it’s too big for me now. But I’m much healthier.”
“Did you lose anyone?” I asked.
“Many many people,” he said. “Loraine lost a sister and brother-in-law. It was very bad, and our people were not helping.” By this he meant the Navajo Nation. “It was finally the federal government who gave us the vaccines we needed and helped us get things under control. We were losing 1000 people a day at the beginning.“ (COVID killed more Native Americans by percentage of population in the United States than it killed any other group in the country.)
How Much Weight Can You Carry In Your Life
We had trotted along for more than an hour and were talking about our children and families Jameson mentioned he was a shaman.
“What does a shaman do,” I asked.
“Says prayers, counsels, listens.”
“So you help people.”
Jameson turned in his saddle. “I try, but some people do not want help and don’t like to come back to me.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I am too truthful with them.”
“And they don’t like that.”
“People lie, cheat on their wives or husbands, get addicted and they want it to be okay, to go away. But I tell them the truth.” He laughs. “And then sometimes they don’t come back.”
“Because if you tell them the truth then they must tell themselves the truth.”
He righted the short cloth cap he wore on his head and nodded. “Yes.”
I thought about this. “It’s a form of confession,” I said, more as a question than a statement. “When you must tell your ‘self’ the truth, you must face it. That can be hard. But you cannot be truthful with anyone else if you can’t tell yourself the truth.”
He turned again and nodded. “I ask them. How much weight can you carry in your life. If you do not face this weight, eventually, you cannot move forward, everything is too heavy.”
I thought this was one of the wisest things I had ever heard. “Yes,” I said, “bad choices are like baggage you keep adding to yourself, and if you can’t stop and unpack it, it will bury you.
“So I try to help them get rid of the heaviness.”
“That is noble,” I said. There was an irony in this realized. Some burdens can help, like the sticks Jameson carried to get well. But adding emotional baggage never helps.
A Romantic Post Script
There’s a great twist to this story. A few weeks after our ride with Jameson, I posted something on Facebook, and a woman named Dorothea Born from Ottersum, Netherlands contacted me.
“I saw your post,” she wrote, “and I’m so happy I did! I used to live in Monument Valley many years ago with Jameson. I went back many times but two years ago he wasn’t there and I never heard from him again. I was so afraid something had happened to him.”
I told her that indeed Jameson had almost died.
“I’m so happy to hear he is still out there, in the Valley with his horses. Thank you for sharing, and giving me such wonderful news. Monument Valley is magical and when I was there almost 30 years ago now, I didn't want to leave.”
Jameson, she said, brought her the Navajo people and opened their way of life to her. “I still love him for that…We were both much younger and our love was very special.”
She told me she was planning to return to Monument Valley in the spring of 2022 to see him now that she knew he was alive so recently I checked in with her and asked if they had re-united.
“Yes,” she said, “I found him!!…It was very special and we talked for a long time! It was like thunder struck when I saw him … goosebumps all over, really amazing … time stood still.”
The pictures below show them during their days together 30 years earlier and now. I thought it was fitting that Jameson was wearing a Pittsburgh Steeler t-shirt! Dorothea has already written a book in Dutch about her experiences with the Navajo and Jameson. She is now working on an English version which she plans to update. She said she’d keep me posted.
Dorothea and Jameson 30 years ago and now. (The Steeler Nation lives everywhere :-).
I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Meanwhile crack on!
Your vagabonds …
C-Squared
This is a series about a Vagabond’s Adventures - author and National Geographic Explorer Chip Walter and his wife Cyndy’s effort to share their experience exploring all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+ countries, never traveling by jet.
As of this Dispatch …
We have travelled 7,048 miles, across four ferries, on six trains, visiting four World Heritage Sites, through 19 states, 10 National Parks and monuments and two countries, in 37 different beds, and run through more hotel keys than a grand piano.