Shiprock, Navajo Nation

One place I had to visit on my trip to the Four Corners was Shiprock in northwest New Mexico. It had resided in my imagination for decades. I’d seen many images. It had been in several books—including the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series by Tony Hillerman. (There’s an excellent adaptation on AMC right now called Dark Winds.)

The ancient volcanic plug is a holy site for the Navajo. I first saw it probably 50 miles away as a ghost on the horizon when I camped in Colorado at Hovenweep National Monument, and wrote about the view that day. When I eventually drove to it, there was a long route that would get me closer, but I chose a shorter, dirt roadway by GPS. I passed many reservation residences and hogans. Eventually, the route came to a wash that I was not willing to try to get across. So I settled for a more distant view.

Shiprock from drone

I first heard of Shiprock through the stories of Murray Bodo, OFM. He was a high school English teacher in Cincinnati of my friend and college roommate. I had the pleasure to meet him several times. As the Navajo find sacredness in the presence of Shiprock, so I found it in his presence. Fr. Bodo follows the tradition of his order’s founder and is an extraordinary poet and writer.

From the Lukachukai Mountains you can see the land. The desert stretches below you on all four sides and to the north Shiprock stands at anchor in the still brown sea. When I was a boy, my father and his fishing buddies and I would speed past Shiprock almost every weekend on our way to the cool Colorado trout streams. I had never seen the ocean or a sailing vessel, so Shiprock became my frigate on the high seas and I would fire a volley past her bow from the back seat of our Chevy while my father and his friends talked of fishing.

When we returned to Gallup every Sunday night, I would wait excitedly for Shiprock to come into view once again. I would adjust my spyglass and scan the emptiness for her. And then she would suddenly emerge like a submarine surfacing on the horizon. I would prepare the men for the attack and caution them to wait until we were as close as possible before we commenced firing. It was great fun always, and Shiprock became my private pirate ship on countless voyages across dry, waveless seas of sand.

Murray Bobo, OFM, Walk in Beauty, 1974

Shiprock, Navajo Nation

Today, as I drive slowly, meditatively on Route 666, looking at Shiprock, I realize my whole life has been a movement away from and, paradoxically, toward this rock that rises out of the desert like the ship that it’s named for. It sails fixed in place and time, the water now turned to desert sand. It endures, anchored where I find it over and again on the interminable voyages I take to and from the mother ship. Our origins are like that. We leave them and travel in ever-widening circles away from them. They continue to hold us in their circumference like the hub of the wheel we spin circles around. We break the circle from time to time and turn, return, to the hub that is there unchanged though we have changed and continue to change.

Murray Bodo, OFM, The Road to Mt. Subasio, 2011

About the time that book was published, Fr. Bodo spoke nearby, and I got to see and hear him again, and simply be in the presence of a holy man. If of interest, you can find his works here: MurrayBodo.com

Murray Bodo, OFM

Wilderness & Factory along the San Rafael Swell

Last week I posted about some features on the northeast area of the San Rafael Swell. The paved road ended by Little Wild Horse Canyon and a very rough road continues along the reef edge of the swell and into the wilderness. In 2019 the Muddy Creek and the Middle Wild Horse Mesa Wilderness areas were created by Congress and are managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Generally, no motorized vehicles are permitted in places designated as wilderness areas. However, exceptions were made for the existing primitive roads that snake through these lands.

Google Timeline - Little Wild Horse Canyon to North Caineville Mesa

The Google Timeline satellite map shows my route from Little Wild Horse Canyon at the top, then paralleling the reef line of the San Rafael Swell, crossing Muddy Creek—the brown river winding across the middle, past Factory Butte, and exiting out near North Caineville Mesa on the bottom. The Wilderness Areas are roughly in the north half of the image.

Ding Dang Dome and San Rafael Swell reef

Near the beginning of the road was a sign for two slot canyon trails that require canyoneering skills to enter. These are named Ding and Dang Canyons and cut into the reef that is seen in the background of this image. Rising off the desert floor is what looks like a pyramid. The feature is named Ding Dang Dome. One of the very few trees seen on the entire route rises out of a wash.

Badlands and Factory Butte

Soon you’re winding into colorful badlands and Bentonite Hills. Dominating the landscape for many miles is Factory Butte. In the Google map you can see it isolated in the lower left corner. Mormon pioneers travelling through the area thought the feature resembled a large cotton mill factory. As the road rose up into the Bentonite Hills, I stopped to get out my new camera and fly it up for a different view.

Bentonite Hills

The Bentonite Hills continue on and off to the west toward Capitol Reef National Park. The colorful Bentonite was formed of mud, silt, sand and volcanic ash deposited in swamps and lakes in the Jurassic Period. The features are fragile and the surface is like popcorn. You don’t want to drive through these hills after a rain when they become an impassible, sticky mess.

Much of the road is relatively smooth and easy to follow, but you can suddenly come across rough rock and gullies and branches that you need to guess which is the right route. A 4WD vehicle with high clearance is necessary in several parts. I got completely confused when the road crossed through Muddy Creek. The car did fine crossing the water, but I kept going in circles. Finally, I realized getting a view from the drone would help me figure out the correct path. It worked! But I forgot to take pictures of the crossings. Later looking at the Google Timeline map helped me see how I was getting turned around by the river crossings.

Soon we were driving out of the wilderness areas and a sign facing the other way identified the area we’d gone through. It was the only one we saw on the drive after the signposts for Ding and Dang. The reef of the San Rafael Swell rises over the scene. The colorful badlands receded behind us while ahead gray and tan, barren sands stretched toward Factory Butte rising to 6,300 feet above the desert floor.

Chance was not in the mood for hiking this day, so when I parked and started hiking through the ridges toward the butte, he found a high point to sit and watch me. I got about a third of a mile away, and could see his silhouette sitting on the point keeping watch.

Time to get the drone back up for a view of the butte and the combs and ridges falling away from it. The expansive area covering much of southeast Utah, southwest Colorado and into northern Arizona and New Mexico is the Colorado Plateau filled with incredibly diverse geologic features.

The combs of Factory Butte and the Henry Mountains behind

This area is outside the wilderness designation, so off-road vehicles are permitted to explore. You might see some of their tracks if you look carefully at this view straight down into the ridges.

We made one last stop for a view of Factory Butte near North Caineville Butte. A trail heads up the other side of North Caineville Butte, and I considered hiking up it a couple days later since it promised a great view. But I decided that hike would have to wait for another trip. As for this day, we next headed into a remote part of Capitol Reef National Park, and camped near a feature called Temple of the Sun where I hoped to get some night sky images. Hopefully, I’ll share those next week.

North Caineville Butte with Factory Butte behind

Sleeping by Sleeping Ute

This may be the first Friday Foto I’m posting from the place I’m writing about. I’m sitting on a rocky ledge overlooking the broad valley of Hovenweep Canyon and other waters that flow into the San Juan River. On the opposite side of the valley reclines the aptly named figure of Sleeping Ute mountain. Far, far away in the haze to the southwest in Arizona the jagged peak of Shiprock Mountain, a volcanic plug, breaks the horizon. Below me to the east, if I shade my eyes from the morning sun is the round tower that’s been here for the last 800-900 years. Below cliff the tower rests on is another adobe structure and one the wall in the back are two painted hands which give this place its current name—Painted Hand. I’m sure family members of the person whose hands are there sat on this ledge looking at Ute Mountain and Shiprock which are holy sites to today’s Natives and were likely also in the days of the Ancestral Puebloans. Two days ago, on a hike to another site that I’ll write about later, I passed and chatted with a group of Paiute elders, descendants of those who built these sites. I also got better images of lots of painted hands from other places that I’ll share.

Chance, who’s been wandering somewhere for the last fifteen minutes, leans against me with pollen and sticks in his fur to go with the red dust that’s become embedded over the last week. Our camp is about fifty feet away, the solar panels gathering morning light to charge my power supply. As I cooked my porridge, I heard what sounded like an engine and looked up to see a hummingbird starring at me from ten feet away before zooming off. Unbelievably, as I typed that sentence—buzz, it was over my head again! Some bird song comes up from the canyon. Yesterday, a falcon soared past, and many ravens sweep the valley.

We are just across the Utah border in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado. I wondered why I had such good cell reception when we got here. The mystery was solved when I got up to pee and stargaze at four in the morning. I walked over to this ledge with my tripod, and there near Sleeping Ute’s head was the glow of Cortez, Colorado and a couple tall towers with blinking lights, likely sending me signals from maybe 20 miles away as the raven flies. Perhaps they are like this tower below me which may have seen and sent signals to others in the valley. Or maybe it was used to observe the skies as I was.

Painted Hands Tower and Sleeping Ute Mountain

As I looked over to Sleeping Ute in the dark, arched over him was the softly glowing Milky Way. To the south beamed Scorpio, the constellation that has greeted me the last four mornings as I got up to look at this marvelous dark sky. Scorpio’s tail was curled, ready to strike.

When we got here last evening, I took the third of a mile hike over to the Tower exploring whether that would be a good place for a night sky image but decided the scramble down the rocks would not be advisable with a tripod in the dark. So, I was satisfied with my rocky ledge view this early morning. Later, I’ll share some of these night images.

Hummingbird just buzzed by again, telling me this is getting too long. On with the day.