On the Trail of the Wind

along the trail of the Wind Painted Desert trek threads through fossils & fluted fantasy

When I reach Tohachi Wash, I step out of the truck into a dead calm.

Drifts of sand fill the empty canyon floor, enclosed by rock walls as wind-carved as any landscape in North America. Fluted, scoured and sand-blasted, every cliff face shows traces of the wind. But on this October morning, nothing stirs.

Stretching more than 150 miles across northeast Arizona, the Painted Desert connects Petrified Forest National Park with the Grand Canyon to the north. Much of it lies within the Navajo Indian Reservation, including a corner of the desert we have come to explore. Early scientists knew it as the Painted Cliffs.

Leaving my truck where we will end our trek, I climb into Chuck LaRue's truck. He'll shuttle Tony Williams, photographer Larry Lindahl and me to our starting point 30 miles north. We'll spend several days hiking through an incredible landscape best known to a few Navajo sheepherders and a handful of geologists.

An hour out we stop on the edge of anactive dune field. Chuck, a wildlife biologist, scans the sky with the worn pair of binoculars always dangling from his neck. Sage sparrows flitter from bush to bush in the distance. Climbing the graceful curve of a barchan dune, he follows a badger's tracks across the sand where it stalked a kangaroo rat. In a few places pale-green bush mint has managed to gain a roothold. As you come to know the desert, the empty spaces fill in.We continue following a worn track

Thread the Needle Author Scott Thybony and Tony Williams hike across the windscoured landscape of Ward Terrace, a section of the Painted Desert, passing the formation called Tse Diigis (Crazy Rock). The odd-looking Moenave Formation dates from 185 to 195 million years ago.

A rockscape much the same color. Rock islands rise in gothic masses, while the walls behind us have a scaly, reptilian texture. The light builds the way an ember does the moment before bursting into flame, and in an instant the reds ignite. “You could pass this off,” says Tony, “for the cover of a science fiction book.” Our first obstacle this morning is a high sand ridge, but the combination of damp ground and cool weather gives us solid footing. We soon top out and find a sandy basin on the other side studded with more hoodoos. I’ve explored the desert for years, but each rise opens new country. Plunging down the steep sand, I reach the bed of a wash where mud shards curl up like old shoe leather. I stop to empty the sand from my boots, and Tony checks the bearing to our next water cache. When the three of us push on, we intersect the tracks of wild horses. Soon they convergeon a beaten path, and I know we're close to water. We pass through a gap and reach the stock tank where our water is cached. Traversing the dunes, we head to Paiute Trail Point, a long headland half-buried by the sands. A horse standing sentinel watches our approach, ears pricked. As the herd beyond it catches our scent, all heads lift toward us. Alert to danger, they study our movements, suspecting a trap. The fuse is lit, and without warning they spin and flee in an explosive burst. A wash draws us toward a sand slide covering the north side of the point. The Moqui Trail passed through here, once linking the Hopi mesas with the Grand Canyon country. Even the local Navajo rarely use the old trail anymore. We climb 200 feet up the slope and dump our packs on the first landing. Dunes cover most of the surface, and another band of cliffs separates us from the higher pla-teau. We make camp at the foot of a long sand ridge aligned with the direction of the wind. As a storm gathers, Tony and I scramble through a badlands ripped by deep ravines. We reach the outer rim and look back. The ground falls away at our feet, and the sky opens on a country of drift sand and cliffs uncut by fence or road. Clouds approaching from the west filter the light, muting the lavender, orange, and white terrain we crossed. For me, the spare lines of the desert have a stark beauty found nowhere else. Reduced to the elements of rock and sky, the vast spaces draw you outside yourself into a wider light. Back at camp, the rain begins. Without a fire we stand around talking as it pours down. We're tired from a long slog through the sands but want to avoid turning in early. Nights are too long this time of year to spend all the dark hours wrapped inside a bivy sack. As the storm eases, a double rainbow arches over the point, curving below our line of sight. Dark fingers of cloud slowly meld into a single mass overhead, and for a moment, red grains of light hang suspended in midair, catching the last solar pulse from the west.

Where Sands Erode Evening sunrays highlight the Adeii Eechii Cliffs (left) of the Painted Desert. The abandoned hogan (below), built by Frank Goldtooth, gives eerie testimony to the harsh, abraded stonescape of Ward Terrace. The author's expedition found the ancestral Puebloan ladle (right), an artifact from the Pueblo II Period.

Near dawn, a pair of owls alternate calls until the growing light gives us a reason to get up. The air smells of wet sand, and in the clear sky, I can see the Rim of Grand Canyon far to the north. Getting an early start we pass a horse skull with hollow sockets staring blankly across the wide expanse. At the tip of the point, the route funnels through a notch in the cliff rock and down a climbing dune.

To reach Tohachi Wash, we follow bald-rock benches to avoid the sand, walking through a windless morning. Our luck has held. For several days we have traversed an eolian landscape, scarred by the wind, but this time it has let us slip through unscathed, unharmed. In the next draw, we find a waterhole with an ancient ladle lying on the surface nearby. A long handle connects to a broken bowl painted in the Sosi blackon-white style. Around A.D. 1125 someone crossed these sands to reach water and dropped a ladle on the slickrock. In the still air you can almost hear the hollow crunch as the pottery shattered.

Deeper sands force us to swing lower into the Chinle Formation, the rock most characteristic of the Painted Desert. The mudstone hues shift across the spectrum from blues to reds. “It's always one of my favorite formations,” Tony says, “because of the subtle gradations of color.” Reaching Tohachi, we trudge up the dry wash to the truck. As we're driving out, I pull into Jerry Huskon's hogan to say hello. I left a message for the Navajo rancher before we started. Even with a tribal permit, it's customary to let the local families know your plans. He tells me they found the note when they returned from picking piñons, but there's a question in his eyes. He's puzzled by our trek across the sands for no apparent reason.

“Find any treasure?” he asks.

For a moment I think he's joking, but he's not.

“The beauty of this desert,” I tell him, “is why we came.” He simply nods. That's reason enough. Al Scott Thybony of Flagstaff finds himself continually drawn back to the Painted Desert. He recounts more adventures and desert lore in his new book, The Painted Desert, Land of Wind and Stone, University of Arizona Press (www.uapress.arizona.edu).

Walking on the same surface of the Earth as dinosaurs did millions of years ago made the Painted Desert seem otherworldly to Larry Lindahl of Sedona. He is author-photographer of the Arizona Highways book Secret Sedona: Sacred Moments in the Landscape.