Monument Valley

Monument Valley.  We all know the images:

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So the two of us wanted to see it, and we did on Saturday, September 30, 2017:

However, there are, in fact, three Monument Valleys.

The first and most popular Monument Valley is the 17-mile drive through all the famous monuments such as the East and West Mittens (that's a photo of us in front of West Mitten above), and some lesser known monuments.

It's a rough dirt road and full of drivers that don't know how to drive in rutty sand.

Call it the "front country" - it has some of the most recognizable Southwest scenery because its dramatic formations have been filmed in countless Hollywood movies.

John Ford Point in the Valley got its name because of the director John Ford's proclivity to use vistas from the point in his films.  Here, a cooperative park worker offered to let us take a photo of him on his horse in front of the classic Western film view:

But even more fun:  he let Kathy mount up for her own closeup, Mr. De Ville:

The second Monument Valley is only witnessed by those who take the 4x4 tour into the backcountry.  Our driver, a native Navajo who lives and ranches in Monument Valley itself, took us on an adventure through parts of the monument we wouldn't otherwise have seen.

The backcountry of Monument Valley is filled with numerous arches, fins and formations that rival Arches or Canyonlands National Parks.  Here is a beautiful pothole arch our tour guide showed us - the sun shining through it onto the sandstone below the arch:

Our guide said that each formation has its own story.  The story of this arch relates to the fact that it looks like a person with long hair and ceremonial dress:

Yet another, Surprise Arch, was breathtaking for its grace and delicate beauty:

This arch is named "Eye of the Sun":

The rock walls in Monument Valley are decorated with petroglyphs (rock carving or pecking) and pictographs (rock painting).  Because the area was first inhabited by the Anasazi (a term perjorative to the Navajo that means "the ancestor others" in Navajo) - or, in more presently acceptable terms, the Ancestral Puebloans, the earliest rock art was created by that early group.  After the Ancestral Puebloans left the area by 1300 or so, the Navajo did not arrive for perhaps 200 or more years.  The Navajo themselves left their own rock art.

The Navajo believe that they are not related to the Ancestral Puebloans.  They believe that the Ancestral Puebloans might have descended from an early migration from China or Japan.  Many ethnologists believe that, when the Ancestral Puebloans left the Four Corners area of Utah/Arizona/Colorado/New Mexico, they moved east and south and became the present day Hopi and other Southwestern tribes.

Instead, the Navajo believe that they and the Apache descended from the Athabascans, a group that still lives in Alaska and northern Canada, and these ancestors, in turn, were the descendants of Mongolians who migrated - perhaps across the land bridge from Siberia and Mongolia to Alaska - in a later wave after the ancestors of the Ancestral Puebloans.

Our driver pointed out that this rock's shadow, during the middle of the day, appears to cast a silhouette of George Washington, who may be laying his blessing on the visitors to this place:

Yet another arch framed a lone, dead tree:

These formations our guide called, "The Totem Poles":

This one he calls, "The Thumb," but David wondered whether some might have given it an alternate name:

The third Monument Valley - and one which very few visitors come to grasp - is a place of The People - Diné - who have lived here for centuries.  Why they live here, who they are, and how they live, are things that can be understood by outsiders only with time and careful attention.

What few outsiders really appreciate is that Monument Valley is an active, living homeland and source of living to Navajo people.  They live their lives here in traditional ways.  They work hard and preserve Navajo traditions.

They welcome visitors to pass through, but they only offer their learning - their wisdom - to those who ask to learn for the right reasons.

We tourists get to see the monuments.  Diné inhabit this world with its spirits and their ancestors, and they know beauties and dimensions of it that we will never experience.