Into the canyon

At Canyon de Chelly, we spent the night at the Thunderbird Lodge, a comfortable old-style motel inside the park, surrounded by huge old cottonwoods. The next morning, we boarded a truck for our journey back to Anasazi times.

As we wound our way back into the canyon, the red rock walls got higher and higher. Then we began to see pictograms and ruins of ancient pueblos. Because the only way for tourists to access the canyon is with a native guide, it feels almost untouched. The presence of tiny working farms with small patches of corn and squash and a few sheep remind you that the canyon has provided subsistence for indigenous people for thousands of years.

The first rock art includes the figure of Kokopelli and many hand prints.

The pueblo ruins are dwarfed by the massive rock walls. They were built in niches high enough to avoid the flash floods that sweep the canyon, always on the south-facing walls to maximize the heat in the winter.

There are actually two main canyons, Canyon de los Muertos, named after the more than 100 Navajo women and children massacred there by Spanish gold hunters, and Canyon de Chelly, so named because the Spanish mistook the Navajo word for "canyon" for the name of the canyon. So Canyon de Chelly really means Canyon Canyon. Oh, those silly, murderous Spaniards.

The canyon also features many strange and beautiful rock formations. The air was full of drifting cottonwood blossoms--incredibly soft and silky.

More rocks.

More rock art.

More ruins.

Combo.

The air here in eastern Arizona and into New Mexico catches the sun in a different way, giving the light a silvery quality. The combination of the silvery blue with the rosy soil gives the landscape a faintly otherworldly look. The canyon feels incredibly tranquil and nurturing, despite its often violent past. We both left convinced that we had been privileged to visit a very special and powerful place.