NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT

PART OF WHAT makes Navajo National Monument special to lead ranger Curlinda Mitchell is the quiet, pristine canyon that preserves not only the area’s cultural history, but also its natural history, including an ancient forest that’s a relic of the Ice Age. Douglas firs, birches and aspens normally found at much higher elevations grow in the canyon, where temperatures stay in the mid-70s when it’s 90 degrees on the rim. The monument includes three non-contiguous sites on the Navajo Nation, each containing the remains of Ancestral Puebloan villages. “We are unique because we have a whole staff of local Native interpreters,” Mitchell says. “We all feel a connection to the site.” She notes that after the Puebloan people abandoned these sites, the Navajos occupied the area but left the sites undisturbed for hundreds of years. Anglo explorers found storage areas, sandals and tools just as they were left, Mitchell says. The Navajo people became, in that sense, the sites’ first caretakers.