Someone Called It: "The Land of Room Enough and Time Enough"

Someone Called It... “THE LAND OF ROOM ENOUGH

THE country from Cameron to Monument Valley is like the ocean, sweeping along in great currents, uncharted, lonely, limitless. Someone called it: "The Land of Room Enough and Time Enough." Words could not describe it more aptly.

People are few and far between in this land, but they are there. Trading posts along the road, an occasional Navajo hogan, and the road you travel between Cameron and Kayenta bespeaks those who come and go. The road is not a bad road, acting up only when it rains and in this vast country it so seldom rains. It isn't a soft, easy country. It's a hard country, not rich or luxuriant, but full of beauty, vistas, its heavy silence eloquent as a mighty hymnal in stone, sand, sun and wind.

In a great city, shouldering skyscrapers, you feel your bigness and importance. Out here the immensity of the country overwhelms you. You feel small and unimportant. Nothing matters to the country itself. Only time.

AND TIME ENOUGH”

WELCOME TO TUBA CITY

Only time matters in this country, and time is measured by aeons and countless ages. Here there is time enough to think, to ponder the ways of man and his world. The traveler who hurries by heedlessly betrays the very spirit of the land and the people native to it.

The Navajo does not hurry. His inherent dignity, the way he walks, talks, acts are gestures of his respect for his country, the lessons he has learned from it. The white trader must learn the lesson or the country will beat him. Patience is the important thing, because the country is patient. The world isn't going to come to an end this very minute. Today, no. Tomorrow, maybe. The country hasn't changed much in a couple of million years. It'll not change much in the next few weeks. That's why a trader in a trading post will spend all afternoon selling to a Navajo a pound of coffee and a can of beans and neither the trader nor the Navajo will think there is anything unusual about it.

To the Navajo, sheep is wealth, security, salvation.

Every mile of the road from Cameron to Monument Valley holds something of interest, something you would like to store away in your memory. Hubert Richardson's place at Cameron; Moencopi and the Hopi farms in Moencopi Wash; Tuba City; Red Lake, called Tonalea where you leave the Kayenta road to go to Rainbow Bridge and Navajo National Monument; Cow Springs; Marsh Pass; Kayenta, and finally Monument Valley.

It's comparatively level country, changing in personality with each mile you travel. Near Cameron are colored, rolling mounds. Then there are small valleys and washes, sand dunes, buttes, cliffs, mountains. Part of the way the landscape is bare and again you'll find yourself on a mesa covered with scrub juniper and cedar.

The country rolls along easily before you, and it is never, of all things, monotonous.

Even the road signs are interesting, and above all things the people you meet along the road are interesting. First there is the Navajo, who is part of the country. He fits into the landscape as properly as any rock or bent cedar you meet. He has a carriage and an aristocratic attitude, a proud look in his eye. He is graceful in his movements and on a horse he's a thing of beauty and rhythm. And the traders are interesting, too. They fit into the scene as naturally as a Navajo. Most of the folks you meet between Cameron and Monument Valley have lived in the country for years and years. They wouldn't live any place else. You'll understand why if you stay around long enough. The country grows on you and soon becomes part of you.

It's a big country, massive, powerful, fantastically absorbing. It's too big for even man to clutter up. Here man and his works are unobtrusive. The land swallows them up. Stay around Monument Valley for a few days and you'll never be able to erase the image of it from your memory. The scenery is like opium. It drugs you. First the immensity of the place startles you. Then the monuments, overpowering and grotesque, are there to amaze you. Then comes the color, which you notice last and which stays with you the longest. Then the components, which you have tried to absorb singly, blend and become something you may not understand, but you know have classical properties like poetry and music.

Every mile from Cameron to Monument Valley is a mile full of interest and appeal. It would take a place like Monument Valley to top it off properly and Monument Valley does just that... R. C.