From my vantage point along the ancient dike, the Sun had dropped below the western horizon, casting long shadows down its backside. Yet, direct sunlight was reflecting from Ship Rock. A slight front was trending southeastward from Utah, up north past Four Corners. Highest cirrus clouds, seeming to consolidate the eye, jaded from Ship Rock's beauty, trailed to the edge of the world.
The basalt dike, Mother Nature's bold brickwork wall, trending from the upper right edge toward distant Ship Rock, acted as an arresting lower frame for our image. Magic Hour's shifting sunset pastel lights, some direct, some reflected, add a softer, evocative upper element.
Ship Rock, that ancient almost Gothic spires lit by the setting Sun's golden hues, assists with the same silent wonder, bears prolonged silent witness to man's wanderings across this dry, semi-arid desert. The distant Roman nose shape of Sleeping Ute Mountain is another famous, dominant Four Corners landmark.
"I love the place," Tony Hillerman wrote of vast tribal lands that span the northeast corner of Arizona and straddle the borders of New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. "I need only drive west from Shiprock into that great emptiness to feel my spirit lift."
Over 10 years ago, Hillerman penned The Fallen Man…
They could see the snowcapped top of Mount Taylor looming over Grants, New Mexico, about 80 miles to the east, perched on one of relatively few outcrops of basalt in what Ship Rock climbers call Rappel Gulley. On the way up, it was the launching point for the final hard climb to the summit, a slightly tilted but flat surface of basalt about the size of a desk-top and 1721 feet above the prairie below. If you were going down, it was where you began a shorter but even harder almost vertical climb to reach the slope that led you downward with a fair chance of not killing yourself.
Whiteside slid along the wall, getting closer. He was moving slowly along the cliff, body almost perfectly vertical, toes holding his way on perhaps an inch of sloping stone, his fingers finding the cracks, crevices, and rough spots that would keep him balanced if the wind gusted. He was doing the traverse perfectly. Beautiful to watch. Even the body was perfect for the purpose. Just bone, skin, and muscle, without an ounce of surplus weight, moving like an insect against the cracked basalt wall.
And 1000 feet below them - no, a quarter of a mile below him lay "the surface of the world." Almost directly below, two Navajos on horseback were riding along the base of the monolith - tiny figures that put the risk of what Whiteside was doing into terrifying perspective. If he slipped, Whiteside would die, but not for a while. It would take time for a body to drop 600 feet, then bounce from an outcrop, and fall again, and bounce and fall, until it finally rested among the boulders at the bottom of this strange old volcanic core.
It was late afternoon, but the autumn sun was far North and the shadow of Ship Rock already stretched southeastward for miles across the tan prairie. Winter would soon end the climbing season. The sun was already so low it reflected only from the very tip of Mount Taylor. Eighty miles away early snows already packed the higher peaks in Colorado's San Juan's. Not a cloud anywhere. The sky was a deep dry-country blue; the air was cool and, a rarity at this altitude, utterly still.
The silence was so absolute one could hear the faint sibilance of Whiteside's soft rubber shoe sole as he shifted a foot along the stone. A couple of hundred feet below them, a red-tailed hawk drifted along, riding an updraft of air along the cliff face.
Whiteside moved, and stopped, and looked down.
"There's more honeycomb breccia under the overhang," he said. "Lots of little erosion cavities. It looks like some pretty good cracking where you can see basalt." He shifted again. "A pretty good shelf down about _"
Silence. Then, Whiteside said, "I think I see a helmet."
"What?"
"My God!" Whiteside said. "There's a skull in it."
Tony Hillerman, 1996
Over the past 20 years, I've read and reread Hillerman's fascinating novels of the Four Corners. I was deeply captivated with Tony's description of Skinwalkers, Navajo tradition, and the land he so deeply loved. At times, cassette tape players spun breathtaking tales of Leaphorn and Chee as I trekked repeatedly into those beloved wilderness lands Hillerman brought to life in his novels.
Tony... your full life, your incredible ability to tell stories, your writing - I'm simply much the better because you took me far beyond just the land, invested me in the spiritual, and deeply intrigued me with Navajo myth, tradition, and mystery.
A week ago, I captured this HDR image of Ship Rock, knowing then it was very simply one of my better efforts. After Hillerman's recent passing, I found a deep, compelling need to complete the image, whose stories so helped invest me in our gorgeous Four Corner myths and legends.
I dedicate this gorgeous Ship Rock image to you!
"I need only drive west from Shiprock into that great emptiness to feel my spirit lift." Tony, I truly understand…
I suspect your spirit may have joined that of other Navajo spirits atop Ship Rock... may you continue in hozhó. May you walk in peace, harmony, and beauty… !
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment