CANYON DE CHELLY NATIONAL MONUMENT

“A LOT OF PEOPLE make connections to this place,” says Deputy Superintendent Wilson Hunter, who grew up in Canyon de Chelly and still calls it home. Maybe it’s the layered canyon walls, monumental rocks and prehistoric pueblos, or maybe it’s the place’s spiritual history — many Navajo ceremonies originated at the canyon. “The Holy People are here,” Hunter says. Navajo people still bring offerings and prayers. Some live in the canyon, tending to farms and livestock. But most visitors never see the best the canyon has to offer — primitive areas, beyond the roads, where motorized tours don’t go. Authorized Navajo guides offer walking and horseback tours of these parts. “It’s beautiful back there,” Hunter says. The canyon walls grow taller, there’s more wildlife and it’s quiet. There are unique cultural resources there, too, he says — “some great pictographs and petroglyphs a lot of people don’t see.”