This is not America

The Navajo own a slice of Arizona almost as big as Scotland, where history and culture predate Columbus - and John Wayne. Chris Moss reports
Monument Valley, Navajo Tribal Park, US
Soak up the silence ... Monument Valley belongs to the Navajo Nation. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Lescourret/Corbis

They say Americans don't walk. Well, they do in the Navajo Nation - because even if northern Arizona has gigabytes of photogenic vistas, getting out of the car is the only way to get your boots covered in desert dust and soak up the silence. I'd already taken a short walk on the drive up from Phoenix - in the lush woodland of the Coconino national forest - but once you get north of Flagstaff, the light and landscape change dramatically. At Monument Valley I took a dusk walk across a vast plain of extinct volcanoes and cinder flow, surrounded by towering mesas splashed with purples, greens, pinks and reds that turned to black as the shadows of the rocky spires and buttes got longer.

Hiking the mesas and canyons also provides a chance to observe at close hand a mode of life that predates asphalt and gasoline, to see the sensually shaped female hogans (traditional dwellings) still used for rituals and to study the petroglyphs and rock art left by generations of Indians. Given the ferocity of cowboys and colonial governments, it is incredible that the Navajos and Hopis have this land at all. For visitors, the self-governed 27,000-square-mile reservation, created in 1923, is an opportunity to re-imagine America in all its mysteriousness.

I stopped to eat and sleep at Cameron, site of one of the old trading posts where natives and settlers would exchange goods and services and the occasional gunshot. Now it was a lonely old motel on the main highway with a homey restaurant attached that did a peppery lamb stew. I was in a "dry state" - the Navajo autonomous government has banned alcohol since the foundation of the Nation - and expected to get fit and lose weight as I weaned myself off booze. But the stews were big and came with enormous slabs of fried bread. And it was cold. I got fatter with each day.

In the morning I left my room at 6am. I wanted to see the sun rise on the eastern tip of the Grand Canyon - on the western border of the Navajo Nation - so took the meandering Highway 64 to the lookout at Desert View. The road followed the Little Colorado river into more national forest territory, but in the dim light I might have come here straight from my dream state of a few hours earlier.

It was the pinkish hues of the rocks all over again, but now with a faint mist hanging over the gorges. The radio service was limited, and I opted for the Navajo/Hopi station FM 88.1 over country and western.

The exotic, unfathomable drone of pow-wow music added to the unearthly quality of the dawn here. The canyon proper is hidden from the road and I walked in the cold morning air to a spot just beneath an old brick lookout tower. It was eerie to see the sun unveil itself with not another human soul in sight. The canyon is deeper and more cosmic than any coffee table print could ever suggest. Afterwards I drove to one of the main entrances at Grand Canyon Village, had a huge breakfast, and then bolted as coaches began to draw up packed with noisy sightseers.

After the highlights of Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, it would be easy to become blasé about the Navajo Nation's less famous natural attractions. But the 24-mile-long Canyon de Chelly, near the town of Chinle, is beautiful and tranquil. Not only is the canyon lined with Anasazi (ancient Puebloan) dwellings, but from the top of the canyon I could see that the flat bottom was carpeted by soft green pastures.

Peer over the edge and you'd think these grasslands on the valley floor were inaccessible, but there is a good self-guided hike from the White House Ruin overlook. I walked down, using a trail that squeezes between jutting ledges of sandstone, meandering precariously - and steeply - to impressive adobe and stone ruins lying at the base of a vast wall of sheer rock. Nearby were the homes and farms of working Navajo families. Squash, corn and beans were growing nicely around the smallholdings. There were fruit trees and sheep and ponies penned in by makeshift wooden fences.

The Chelly links up with the 25-mile-long Canyon del Muerto, and the rims of both can be driven in a couple of hours. I met hardly any other drivers along the way. Largely forgotten by the hordes that congregate at the Grand Canyon, the Chelly and Muerto canyons are impressive in their own way. It's their low profile on the national tourist radar that accounts for the fact the Navajo have remained here in large numbers, and have been able to preserve their traditional way of life as smallholders and artisans.

The Navajo are proud of their un-American way of life, their history and that they have, against all odds, survived where other, often more ancient, tribes have perished. An artist scratching away on a rock at the edge of the Canyon de Chelly told me that it was "the women who were the warriors. My grandma told me she knew a woman who took out an officer right there." He pointed across the curve of the canyon. "And she hit him right there." He placed his forefinger between his eyes. His work echoed the graffiti of the Puebloans who had colonised the canyon a millennium ago, with Klee-like antelopes and dancers lost in a whirl of abstractions and enigmatic motifs.

That evening, when I visited the powerful permanent exhibition of 19th century photographs in the main Navajo Nation museum at Window Rock, I was struck how all the captions had emotional and political content. Beside images of hungry, enslaved Navajos were comments such as "This boy has seen enough for one life" and rhetorical questions: "Can you imagine what this was like?" The victors are able to tone down their passions in scholarly tomes and Discovery Channel documentaries, but for the Navajo history is alive and affecting.

On my penultimate day in the Navajo Nation, two of my most deep-seated prejudices about modern America were quashed. First, at the Hubbell Trading Post, instead of the usual tacky souvenirs and fossilised "living museum" experience, I came upon a vibrant historic site that manages to combine conservation with old-style commerce. Local Navajos and Hopis still come by to buy, sell and barter - their large rugs cost more than your average car - and the bookshop, jewellery store and arty objects are all of a high quality. There is also a grocer's shop on site stocked with the staples of the Navajo diet - corn meal, corn oil, corn chips, popcorn, and chillis, pinto beans, mutton and wild teas.

Just two hours down the road - a road that crossed the old Route 66, a painted desert, a petrified forest and the Santa Fe railroad - an equally negative stereotype was exploded.

I'd had my fill of bad pizzas and tacos, and grimy motels en route through the Navajo badlands; I'm all for slumming it and acting out scenes from movies, but there's a stage in anyone's development when a Quality Inn ceases to be an interestingly ironic experience. At La Posada, in Winslow - just outside the Navajo Nation proper but located in Navajo County - was a 20-room architect-designed urban ranch that immediately became one of my favourite hotels on the planet. Was it the gorgeous old rooms, the epic cargo trains that passed every few minutes, the lavish restaurant, the antiques and artworks and perfect martinis? The bar is a magnet for locals, and after four dry days living by the Nation's strict laws, I enjoyed a couple of drinks with a man from Phoenix who was in town to build a Taco Bell (but he was quite a nice bloke), a Navajo who drank premium lagers and an Apache whose tipple of choice was Newcastle Brown. As the ancient Geordie tribal saying goes: you couldn't make it up, man.

Way to go

Getting there

British Airways (0870 850 9850, flies Heathrow-Phoenix; until August 20 seats for winter travel start at £438.70 rtn inc tax

Where to stay

Cameron Trading Post (001 800 338 7385, camerontrading doubles from $69 plus tax. La Posada, Winslow (+928 289 4366, doubles from $99

Further information;
Navajo Nation Museum: +928 871 7941, Hubbell Trading Post: +928 755 3475,

Country code: 001

£1 = 1.91 dollars

Today's best video

Today in pictures

Readers’ tips
