The Great Snowstorm of 1967

SAGEBRUSH, NAVAJO INDIAN RESERVATION The Great Snowstorm of 1967

I weep when I dream about Sagebrush, a place known to my Navajo family as Tsaa Tah. While the country fought about civil rights and the Vietnam War, my family, the Manygoat and Bitter Water clans, lived in hogans made of stone, canvas tents and a house built by my father at Sagebrush. Our winter sheep camp in the arroyo cradled three flocks of sheep next to a corral made of limestone. Sage grew tall in the deep ravines. Shorter sage covered the mesas and rock outcroppings. Trees were nonexistent, except for a lone piñon or juniper every few miles.

My family held tight to their earth-based faith and strived to live in harmony with the land. But sometimes we had to fight the elements to keep our animals and ourselves alive. In the winter of 1967, a giant snowstorm hit the Navajo Nation and buried Sagebrush and my family. Then-Navajo leader Raymond Nakai called it the "worst weather disaster in modern Navajo history." While my relatives were marooned at Sagebrush, I was a 9-year-old second grader stuck at Tuba City Boarding School, a military-style residential hall and elementary school.

I had barely learned to recognize shapes-what the teachers called numbers-and utter a few words in English. I lived in TC-7, a tan building with an orange belly. When the winter holidays arrived, the entire campus shut down and the Navajo children went home for the break. So on the Friday before the Christmas holiday, I joined friends near the picture window of the TC-7 living room, anxious to spot our parents walking into our dorm.

I longed for home. The faint scent of sage, greasy mohair, wet earth and human sweat screamed "home" to me. I especially missed my father's dusty black felt cowboy hat with the silver band and his slight smile when he teased me about my mudcovered face after I played hard in the wash.

"Asdzá áh Binii' Likizh," he would say affectionately, meaning "The Woman with Grime Splattered on Her Face."

I also missed the feel of my mother's layered velvet shirt pinned together right below her chin with a large safety pin and the three bobby pins she placed at the nap opening of her shirt. And when I needed my nose cleaned, my mother would use the tip of her long calico skirt and called me "Yuhzhee," which meant "A Twig of a Girl" or "Shorty" in Navajo.

But going home meant breaking ties with Tuba City Boarding School and its running water, electricity, warm bunk beds, clean sheets, fleece pajamas and three square meals. It meant leaving ABCs and 1, 2, 3 lessons, and the church lessons-a confusing instruction in religion for me because my own Navajo faith believes in the powers of Mother Earth, Father Sky.

Sagebrush beckoned my little heart, as the parents of my friends trudged into the dorm and signed them out. My little eyes strained to imagine my parents walking up the concrete basketball court.

Snow began to fall. The heavens seemed to explode in giant flakes that swirled and danced and blinded me by the window. Mrs. Green, our residential aide, ordered us to "get into the wings," sit down in rows, knees flush with the straight lines of the square linoleum floors and arms folded across the chest. She ordered us to sing jolly Christmas songs.

We bellowed holiday carols without understanding their significance until our throats hurt. When Mrs. Green took a break, we changed the English lyrics to "Up on the Housetop" to words in Navajo about an amusing imaginary elderly white-haired grandfather falling head-first into a stove pipe, for our hogans and canvas tents lacked chimneys. When Mrs. Green reappeared, we quickly switched back to English.

No one came to pick me up that Friday or the next day or the next as the snowdrifts collected below the large picture window.

I felt abandoned. I conjured explanations. Maybe my father forgot me. Maybe he made a detour to a Yeibichei dance, the nine-day Nightway healing ceremony common in winter. He was a dancer. Maybe no one reminded my aunt or my dad to fill up the gas tank at Gap Trading Post.

My tears fell as I watched snow blanket the playground. No sign of my father.

The days seemed like months. One morning, I quit my vigil at the window and started an assigned chore of buffing the floor with the monster of a pol-isher with its long cord and puffed-up belly bag.

Suddenly, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Was that a glimpse of my father's hat? I flung the buffer aside as the hat moved and the silver band emerged. It was Dad!

An electric shot of happiness raced through me. I ran and collected my jacket and stood by my father, who I thought was tall and handsome. I noticed he wore the black rubber garden boots lined with plastic bags that had held the powdered milk given to my family by the U.S. government. He looked exhausted.

I was going home to Sagebrush. When I reached my aunt's black GMC truck, the cab was full. My cousins were wrapped in layers of quilts and tucked into the truck bed like a can of packed sardines.

We left the paved road 2 miles past The Gap Trading Post. The truck crawled up a ridge and traveled west in the vicinity of My relatives came out of their homes and watched. For too long, they had watched snow fall out of the sky. This time it was hay.