THE NAVAJO ALPS

Alps is a term most often used for the craggy peaks in Europe: Switlzerand, France and Austria. More correctly, it means the pleasant highland meadows, lakes, woods found below the peaks. In this sense, the range on the Navajo Reservation is truly Alpine. Hidden away in rocky fastnesses, out of sight and almost out of reach, are open forests of pine and spruce, secluded meadow flower gardens. Over a hundred miniature lakes, varying from rock-rimmed basins to shallow, meadowbordered pools, share the heights with aspen groves and rock outcrops. Clear, cold streams begin up here to drop toward the ever-thirsty desert. Flowers cluster on stream banks and mass in bright carpets in lush grass. Bear, deer, fox, beaver, mountain lion live in its wilderness. Overlooks offer magnificent views, camping is sheer delight.Nothing could be more unexpected than this wellwatered retreat, by the traveler who views the Alps, as he must, from desert approaches. The heart of the mountains is not easy to reach, a puzzle even to the map reader before he gets within sight. Cartographers do not agree on what to call the whole range or even its several sections, which are divided by canyons. Name-calling has always been a complicated matter, especially in the Indian Country. Spanish explorers splattered names along their routes, sometimes in their own tongue, but often in weirdly translated Indian words. Missionary, military man, hunter, trapper, trader each put in his two bits' worth. After centuries of this, anyone who wants to locate a place so that he may describe it finds himself in trouble. The result is like a Russian novel in which each character has half a dozen different names used interchangeably.

The Indian names Lukachukai, Tunitcha, Chuska, may appear for the whole range or for any one part of it, with a variety of spellings. Chuska, Navajo for white spruce, is a prime favorite, partly because it is short. Lukachukai seems the winner locally and when speaking of the mountains. The original Navajo spelling of Loka cogai is translated as "place of the slender reeds," "white patches of reeds extending out of the pass," and even more freely as "beautiful." Tunitcha, often with just the first "t," means "large water," or "much water." Since map makers will probably continue to disagree, and all three words are colorful, Indian, and appropriate, why not let them fall where they may and designate the whole range the NAVAJO ALPS for its fine highland meadows, lakes, and fragrant forests?

Man has been curious about the earth ever since he first found himself here, perhaps a million years ago. Not long ago, two of his kind wriggled out of fantastically wrought metal capsules to look at it from outer space. Both the Russian and American pilots seemed tremendously delighted with what they could see. Neither one acted eager to climb back into his little pressured cage. Concerned as he is to try further flights to the moon or Mars, Twentieth Century Man, highly trained in scientific skills and busy with electronic gear, can still thrill to the natural beauties of this ancient globe.

THE NAVAJO ALPS SCENIC MOUNTAINS AND LAKES PLUS ALL YEAR 'ROUND FISHING PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID MUENCH

Before long, pilots will be orbiting solo. If one day a sky-happy astronaut should be lost to radar tracking screens while over our Southwest, NASA might well look for him in the Navajo Alps. Little known to earthbound travelers, this mountain range must be very intriguing from a loftier outlook. It it an especially bright spot on the Colorado Plateau, which geologists rate as the most colorful part of the earth's crust.

The Navajo Alps have other names, none of them familiar to us. Their location can be pinpointed most easily by using the principle of the zoom lens; looking first at a large area and then pulling up smaller sections until we are on target. On a map of the whole country, the Colorado River Basin should be familiar ground. Waters from portions of Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and California, together with most of Arizona and a bit of Old Mexico, tie together a vast region, covering one tenth of continental United States. Inside this great scenic playground, a twist of our lens will pick out the Colorado Plateau. We are now looking at 130,000 square miles of highland in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. At least some of its most famous spots should be shown: the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Bryce and Zion Canyons, and the new Canyonlands National Park. Also indicated should be the Navajo Indian Reservation, spreading from the northeastern corner of Arizona into Utah and New Mexico. It can be seen that rivers form much of the boundary of this twenty-four-thousand square mile inland Indian empire. Most people, when they think of it at all, believe it is largely desert. Now let us sharpen the focus and bring it to bear on the mountain range which runs north-northwest along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

Having discovered the Navajo Alps from above, much as an astronaut might have to chart them, we can come down to earth and find why they have remained so little known. No ordinary mountain mass this, and the very features which are unusual have discouraged travel while the West was first being explored, mapped, and settled. It is fortresslike, with upper reaches lofty and isolated and rock bastions guarding all approaches. Carrizo Mountain, the most northerly portion, is what geologists call a laccolith, a volcano which never erupted. The hot material, which pushes up and explodes to form an ordinary volcano, throwing out lava and creating a crater, has here been held down by massive layers of sandstone. The covering has been bent by the inward pressure and could someday give way, but has so far only shaped a mountain, with 9,420 foot Pastora Peak as its summit. Carrizo, Spanish reed, was given to a group of Apaches, the Arrow Reed People, who lived in the mountain. Navajos call it Dzil naozue, literally "the whirling mountain," or the "mountain surrounded by mountains." This difference in origin is of more concern to the geologist than to the visitor, who finds it much like the rest of the Navajo Alps.

The whole region slopes from east to west, so that the Alps rise from desert highlands averaging six thousand feet, on the east, and from some five thousand on the western side. There are at least three more scattered summits of better than nine thousand feet in the range. View Point tops off at 9,430 feet, Roof Butte at 9,808 feet, and farthest south, Mathews Peak at 9,403 feet. No two maps, even topographical ones, agree on these exact elevations, but they give some idea of heights for comparison. They are well above Mt. Washington in the WhiteMountains of New Hampshire, (6,288 feet) but con-siderably below the bevy of fourteen-thousand-foot giants in the closer Colorado Rockies.

Along U.S. 666, between Gallup and Shiprock, New Mexico, the mountains' eastern flank stands out for more than a hundred miles. Rocky slopes, set in tiers, one above the other, lift from two to three hundred feet in a mile, until they mass to about eight thousand feet in altitude. More steep cliffs above are crowned by a flattop plateau. Benches mark the steps of the giant stair, and on each are countless little streams, fed by springs issuing from the rock. Every few miles another trickles or bubbles out into a tiny meadow, and following it down the slope are piñon trees, junipers, alders, willows, aspen. Oaks and yellow pine grow on benches above seven thousand feet. A cobweb of trails, made first by wild animals and then by Indians, laces the slopes to every water hole. Here and there one has been smoothed and widened into an old wagon road, and hopefully, will take a rugged four-wheel drive vehicle skyward. One usable route climbs through Washington Pass to Crystal, New Mexico and on west toward Fort Defiance, in Arizona. The route of explorers and traders, used earlier by the Indians, is now paved Arizona 264, heading across the Reservation through the Hopi towns to Tuba City, but it passes south of the Navajo Alps. West of the mountains, blacktop heads north from 264, paralleling the Alps to reach Arizona 64, the Navajo Trail. From this side, the escarpment is even more impres-sive. Almost vertical high walls stretch for miles and miles broken only by mouths of canyons which cut deep into the mountain heartland. The rising desert floor is broken by outriders of buttes and columns, once part of a vast plateau nine thousand feet in altitude.

"Summit View - Lukachukai Mountains"

Streams on lofty benches are even more frequent on this escarpment than to the east. Water from springs, melt-ing snow, and rainfall has to travel across the summit, creating perennial streams. Simpson (in Washington Pass), Whiskey, Palisade, Wheatfields, Lukachukai Creeks and Spruce Brook are among these watercourses, an amazing array for this semi-arid country. The main mountain wall, cut by canyons, reaches about eight thousand feet. It is of sandstone, rugged and painted, a dramatic massif burnished by the late sunlight, one of the most striking in all the red rock lands. Still higher, but out of sight, the range goes up more than another thousand feet before spreading out on vast table-lands. Views are spectacular from the level summit, where extensive grass-covered valleys are dotted with still higher mesas and irregular buttes. The pallid name, View Point, for one outlook may have been given because its pano-rama left the viewer wordless. From this 9,430-foot van-tage point, no obstruction mars a full sweep of terrain about the size of New England (minus Maine). Off to the north is Redrock Valley, with Carrizo Mountain and the San Juan River complex beyond. The Sleeping Ute, in Colorado backed by the La Plata Mountains, juts up on the horizon to the northeast. A heel-turn to the north-west in Utah, the Abajos stand up to be counted; farther west the Henry Mountains; and on the border of Arizona, the dark lump of Navajo Mountain, the ten-thousand-foot-high home of the Navajo Wargod. Nearby, the Colo-rado River runs in great canyons and marks the limit of Navajo Country. These are all distant points, ancient signposts telling the seasoned explorer or mountain man where he was on the Colorado Plateau. The middle distance is more crowded. Canyon after canyon adds to its complexity, not all as recognizable as Chinle Wash tracing through its valley. The stark volcanic plug, Agathlan, looks like The Lukachukai Mountains, an extension of the Chuska Range, are located in northeastern Arizona near the ArizonaNew Mexico state line. Most maps do not list the Lukachukais as such, including them under "Chuska." People in the area refer to them as the "Lukachukais" and of them the authoritative Arizona Place Names has this to say: "Navajos use water from Lukachukai Creek. The creek is the dividing line between the Chuscas and Lukachukai Mountains."

In covering the subject for us the photographer visited the range during different seasons of the year. He tells us that during autumn, when the Lukachukai are ablaze with golden color, the mountains are at their very best. Our color coverage was taken with a Linhof IV camera, on Ektachrome E3, Weston Master V meter, with various lens.

FOLLOWING COLOR PORTFOLIO PHOTOGRAPHER DAVID MUENCH TAKES US ON A PICTURE TOUR OF A COLORFUL MOUNTAIN RANGE IN NAVAJOLAND

PAGE FOURTEEN

Arizona Highways

AUGUST 1966

ALPS

A ruined castle, near the minarets of Monument Valley off in the desert on the Arizona-Utah border. Closer at hand, the foreground below is dimpled by some fourteen lakes, set in emerald-green grass sprinkled with flowers. Green-roofed porches of pines and oaks frame the picture of camping spots in the winey mountain air.

Other regions than the Colorado Plateau and these Navajo Alps offer summit views with wide open spaces and snow-capped mountains fringing the horizon, to be seen from forest shelters, but there is a difference. Here, cool green is set off by the most vivid tones in rock walls. The serenity of far-off peaks is balanced against an almost violent harshness of broken canyon. Lush meadows, sparkling streams, green medley of trees all mingle in harmony but never quite blot out the uncompromising line of plateau and mesa, strong vertical lines cut by horizontals. Only briefly are the bare bones of the region completely covered by vegetation to soften their starkness. Every flattop or less massive butte depicts its origin, recalling the long-lost era when unthinkable sheets of sandstone were laid down with almost mathematical precision, to be later carved and cut to fit the modern landscape. Rainbows are no more varied in hues than this rock architecture, repainted by rain and snow, the perspective shifted by sunlight or cloud shadow. Nothing man has ever built attains the wonderful free sweep, the scale of this giant scenery. To the uninitiated, the effect may be overpowering, but even he must glimpse the impulse of the people who chose, many years ago, to fight for this homeland.

Almost without exception, history books begin the American story with New England, having disposed quickly of Columbus. Pre-history means pre-Columbian even in our Southwest. Written history does begin then, unless Lief's claim changes it someday to pre-Erickson. But the Americas, North and South, were populated much longer ago than that. Asia, not western Europe, sent the first explorers and settlers, just how long ago, we do not yet know precisely. Perhaps we will give the country back to the Indians, when anthropologists have done more homework. We are sure now that by the beginning of the Christian era, man in the Southwest was tilling fields, building storage rooms for crops, houses to shelter himself in bad weather. Probably all of the so-called Indians on both continents came down from the north. They came in waves of migration and could have crossed over the Berring Strait on a now-vanished landbridge from Asia. An ice bridge would have served as well.

Early European history was quite similar, as barbarians swept down from the colder north. Their reasons for coming may have been the same: following game, running from ice and snow, or pushed by increasing numbers. The cliff dwellers and Pueblo people were plainly here when the Apaches and Navajos arrived, about a thousand years ago. Their route is unmarked and not even tribal myths and legends suggest why the well-watered grasslands, prime hunting grounds, the rich forests of the northwest were passed up in favor of the rigorous plateau country. Even before Erickson, Navajos lived in what is now Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico. The beautiful mountains, the Navajo Alps, must have been from the start a favorite part of their empire. Trees and shrubs provided nuts and berries, wild grass yielded grains, game was there for the hunter who had brought at least his spear and stone knife from far-off Asia.

There may have been more rainfall throughout the Southwest in past centuries. Our weather records can measure, as yet, only the brief cycles. They have been pushed back some by studying the rings indicating annual growth in a tree, living or dead. From timbers found in cliff dwellings and earlier pit houses we know of a twentyyear drought at the close of the thirteenth century, as weGone are the signs which a few years ago greeted the motorist to Navajoland: “Un-improved roads, carry gas and water, inquire about roads before proceeding.” Today the Indians are rolling out the (not red, but black) carpet and inviting people to come and see, to enjoy, to stay for a while in their great scenic homeland. Recreation in a colorful region awaits the guest. Pavement, accommodations, car service make the country safe and comfortable for travel.

In addition to the famous old holsteries at Goulding's in Monument Valley, Thunderbird Ranch at Chinle, Kayenta, Mexican Hat, and Shiprock, there are new ones. Ganado, Page, Tuba City, Window Rock, Teec Nos Pas Trading Post, Sheep Springs are now night stops or headquarters for “exploration.” In the towns around the perimeter of Navajoland, another 8,000 rooms are readied.

Tribal Parks have been set up, with more under way or planned, and numerous picnic areas are scattered over the whole area, though water is still not usually available. You can strike camp in such varied scenery as along the shores of the new Lake Powell, on the rim of the Little Colorado River Canyon where it joins its big brother, or among thepines of summit roads, and higher still in mountain wilderness. A stream may lull you to sleep, fish plopping out of a miniature or larger lake disturb your slumber, and the great quiet of open spaciousness add a new dimension to the sun-filled day.

WELCOME!

Against the king-sized scenery backdrop of canyon and cliff or desert spread, the Indians themselves are good to know. Their camps and flocks, skillfully made hogans and hand looms are photogenic. The camera will come into action at every turn. When people are photographed, permission should be obtained first, and some gratuity is usual.

The wise traveler in any big, open country, where Nature is still boss, will have a little food, some water (for man and machine), and some extra gas in the car. Unless he knows the area, the good driver will keep to main roads, and inquire about conditions of local weather and road surfaces when he does venture off. There is not a road marker at every choice of routes some call them Navajoland freeways choose your own way.

Mountain travel has here, as everywhere, its separate set of rules. The traveler in the Lukachukai-Chuska Mountains, as anywhere else, will observe them or else! Vacation clothes are indicated for cool nights, days varyingly warm in accordance with the season.

The perennial question, when should we go, is not easily answered in a few words. Fall is, however, particularly fine. Autumn colors flare, from aspens up high to cottonwoods glimpsed on canyon floors. The air is tangy, rains are infrequent. Snow usually comes in November or December, but can be earlier or later. By April or May, even those roads closed by winter snow are open again, with June as a late date. Spring has its annual flower show, all the prizes going to the cameraman. Showers in the mountains, runoffs below are a safe guess for July and August. Then come the great puffy cloud castles in a deep-blue sky. After another sparkling autumn, winter gives the mountains back to deer and bear, mountain lion and bobcat.

As yet, trailer folk should leave their rolling house behind when they start up the mountain roads. They can, of course, settle them at some roadside lake and make day-long forays into the upper regions.

Starvation and disease, caused by drought, forced the cliff dwellers to move to the Hopi towns and the Valley of the Rio Grande. The effect on Navajos and Apaches, less settled, is harder to guess.

More than the weather changed for the Indians in the middle of the sixteenth century. Spaniards, having subdued the tribes in Mexico, began to push northward. They were looking, of course, for gold and silver. The Navajo Alps held no interest, and maps of early routes of both soldier and priest circled the region. Cardenas and Tovar came as close as the Hopi towns in 1540. More than two hundred years later, Escalante again skirted the area, in 1775 and 1776. It was in 1626 that we find the first mention by the white man of the Navajos, in a document written by the Spanish Father Geranimo de Barate Salmeron. Apaches and Navajos were classed together, but, though their languages both came from the same family, the Navajo word for Apache also means enemy, cousins or no. The Spaniards, in effect, mounted both Apache and Navajo when they introduced the horse. Soon the Indians were fine horsemen, and more effective in their raids on the Pueblos. The Navajos took more than horses, however. They learned to weave with wool from sheep the newcomers also provided. Some became fine silversmiths as well. These crafts were transmitted by way of the Pueblo people and were, of course, more gradually acquired than a single sentence might imply.Without a written language, those Navajos who sought refuge in the fortress of the mountains have left no accounts of the years between Spanish explorer and the grim days of 1863 when Arizona became a territory and the Navajo tribe was herded east into New Mexico, held captive as their numbers dwindled, finally released in 1868 to return to a small reservation. Perhaps the high meadows and rugged canyon walls might tell wilder tales than any the television screen portrays. Seldom are they pictured as fighting to save their land and way of life. Certainly an uncounted number hid away high in the tablelands of the Chuska, Lukachukai, and Tunitcha. A possible 12,000 were captured, and some 8,000 came back from the "Long Walk."

In this capsule history we should note that Arizona was, in part, ceded to the young United States in 1848 and two years later became part of the New Mexico Territory. It was in 1851 that the second fort for Arizona Territory was established at Fort Defiance, west of the Navajo Alps. On a wagon road from the east, it was intended as home base for expeditions against the Navajos and to protect wagon trains coming through the area.Records from Fort Defiance do mention a few encounters with the simplest of entries. November 1, 1859, Bvt. Major Shepherd led several companies against the "Tunicha Navajo." We read that they marched 180 miles, some small skirmishes took place, and two Indians were killed. Two weeks later, Lt. William D. Whipple marched out and captured a large number of livestock. The Navajos sued for peace and a treaty was made,appropriately enough, on December 25th. An entry for the very next month has a second lieutenant going out to escort an important wagon train to the post. The soldiers were attacked several times before meeting the wagon. Some fifty or sixty Indians are mentioned as harrassing the party. In February, five hundred Indians attacked a company seven miles from the post, and in April the fort itself was under fire of a thousand Navajos. A year later Fort Defiance was abandoned and all its soldiers sent east to Civil War duty.

Another century has passed, with more changes, this time for the better, among the Navajos. Their reservation has grown. If the entire tribe were gathered into one city, it would be slightly larger than Roanoke, Virginia, Abiline, Texas, or Reading, Pennsylvania. But the Navajos have no cities, although communities, centered around the trading post, school, Indian Agency, and perhaps hospital, are growing.

In the Navajo Alps, customs change more slowly than at Window Rock, the Indian capital. Pickup trucks begin to brave the mountain roads, but there are still wagons drawn by sturdy little Indian ponies. Hogans, strikingly like pictures one sees of mongol shepherd huts, are part of the scenery. They blend with the rock walls, since the framework, skillfully woven of logs and chinked to keep out heat or cold, are plastered over with the red mud. Warm-weather shelters of leafy branches shield the weaver from sun and catch the breeze for children, puppies, kittens, playing around the handmade loom.

Sometimes almost a village of hogans is clustered together in some valley, near spring or running creek, and the cliffs play back the blended voices of a ceremonial sing or the high, lone song of a rider. With a plume of smoke rising from the earth-covered houses, and sheep herded by dogs and perhaps a small boy coming home of a late afternoon, the scene may be quite like a European Alpine village on a postcard.

By late May corn must be planted. A little shepherd takes charge of sheep from several families while the adults are out in the still nippy air, setting out hills of corn. When rains give promise of a good harvest, fields are to be seen everywhere, with quaint scarecrows to keep off birds, slight wire fences to protect against grazing horses. The snow is often still lying in sheltered spots, and patches of it give the Indian a chance to offer thanks for the moisture snow provides. The simple ceremony may include merely wiping surface dirt off with a blanket, rolling in the clean white stuff, praising it for its service to their family and flocks.

The Shiink' eh, or summer place, will be up where sheep and horses can find good feed with streams for their watering, firewood for the small cooking fires, and beauty all around. The Navajo believes that health and happiness come from living in harmony with the forces of nature. All his ceremonies strive to reach that ideal, with the help of the gods. Many of these, some with the powerfor good, some for evil, are embodied in birds and ani-mals. Atsa dine are the Eagle People, and their home is heaven, Yaghahoka. Nasja, the owl, is a spy. Shash, the bear, is a descendant of mythical monsters. Of the evil powers, "wind and night," the sandstorm, is the most dreaded, sent by the Wind People to dry up the earth.

Modern science would agree with the Navajo concept of man's closeness to earth forces. A student of climate and weather has put it in these words: "we are resonators of environment cosmic sounding boards." People in cities are shielded somewhat from weather, but in the Southwest it seems part of the very landscape. Through long eons of time, it has created what we see, but even every day the abrupt changes are dramatic. The region has its own climate. Only two of the twenty-seven cyclone tracks across the United States cross Arizona and New Mexico, placing it out of the path of storms which lash the rest of the country. Storms here are usually local, and can often be watched as though from a box in a theatre. Summer thunderstorms in July and August are equatorial, sweeping up from the Gulfs of California and Mexico. Dazzling and immense clouds may tower several thousand feet high, dropping their moisture only when they meet mountains. Without its mountains, the entire Southwest would be one vast desert. It is mountains, then, that give the desert and highlands rain, and winds, blowing inland, sucked across this region by low pressures inland, which give the dry, clear air. It is one of the finest, most healthful climates in the world.

An increasing network of roads with blacktop is making travel easier on the Reservation, and the tourist is just beginning to discover what a wonderful place this widespread area is. The Navajos themselves, busy building modern community centers, increasing educational chances for their children, and upgrading life for their some hundred thousand members, welcome visitors. In the Navajo Alps are camping sites, and more will be established and developed. It is hard to keep up with road improvements, so that inquiries should be made locally before delving into the beautiful heartland. Trading posts are frequent enough to insure gas, water, and supplies being available. The mountains themselves provide wil-derness, unspoiled and inviting.

Round Rock, oldest post on the Reservation, can be the starting point west to Lukachukai, takeoff for canyon highland. Much of the route is along Lukachukai Creek. The lift in elevation brings changes in plant life. Sage follows up, as do some of the cacti, and once in a while, the yucca. Navajo hogans are here and there in choice locations, but never, you will notice, so close to stream or spring as to keep wild animals from using it. After reaching a summit of some eighty-four hundred feet, the road begins to drop to reach Red Rock on the eastern side, but still in Arizona. A road (rugged) takes off to Roof Butte. A lookout is here, a little below the highest point, but offering a tremendous desert and mountain-scape. Up here are spruce, blackjack, oak, willow, poplar, berry bushes, flats of sagebrush, and spreads of fine grass. No money-back guarantee is offered that you will find flowers, but if the season is right consider the record of one man who gathered ninety varieties of blooms in a twenty-four hour period.

The Indians call this spot 'adaa' dik'a," "roof-shaped mountain on the run." From it are, as well as the grand far views, glimpses down into canyons where cottonwoods are vivid green, even when the aspens turn to gold. The red rock ridges drop off, north and northeast to Red Rock Valley, showing a mosaic of orange and green patchwork. Colors run, too, from the black of lava peaks into rose tints on the desert. Autumn has vivid contrast; clouds against the deep blue sky and paisley-shawl patterns of brown fern, yellow oak or maroon, and grass, undecided what color it should really be. By winter, and snow may come in October, the higher reaches disappear. Roads, as yet, are not passable, but lower lands take on new delights. The red sand turns to white, and the great slopes are peppered with it, bring-ing out the red even more brightly. Clouds often cover the upper sections of the range, the sun playing hide and seek. It may shine while the snowflakes fall or send shafts of light to spot some great rock figure. Now the people bundle into warm clothes, and even the sheep must be grateful for their coats. They have no warm hogans for the cold night, or cozy little fire with the coffeepot bubbling cheerfully. To the Navajos, their country is beautiful even when the wind bites and the mountains hide. The heavier the snow now, the better for their corn fields next planting time, the taller the grass in the high pastures. There will be a bigger crop of piñon nuts and berries. Fish will take the hook and game will be waiting when another spring comes to the Navajo Alps.

The folding map in your glove compartment probably does not show 892 miles of paved roads in Navajoland. That latest printed figure is already an understatement. Today the great east-west and north-south U. S. numbered highways connect smoothly with the increasing web of all-weather roads into a region as colorful and exciting as some foreign country. You can dip, for example, from Denver down to the ancient cities of Mesa Verde and then drive clear across Navajoland to Grand Canyon, or roll south from Salt Lake City to enter the region among the desert skyscrapers of Monument Valley, or from the west coast, leave the noisy, plunging surf in Southern California to catch the dazzling tints of the Painted Desert on your way to the Luka-chukai-Chuska Mountains.

Roads in this highland, some through broad valleys, others climbing up into the heart of the mountains, vary considerably. Once off the main, paved ones, it is well to ask advice on the best route. Indian traders, Navajo rangers, and others who know the locale can be helpful. Your car, the season, the current weather conditions are factors to consider. Routes shown on most tourist maps are colored to give some general advice. Those in black are all-weather blacktop. Tribal Route 12, from Mexican Water on the north to Round Rock and Lukachukai, passes Red Lake and below Window Rock reaches Arizona 264, the east-west thoroughfare from Gallup, New Mexico, to Cameron or Flagstaff, Arizona, on U. S. 89.

WHERE HO!

Green indicates a road which may be usable all year, but sometimes calls for a four-wheel drive vehicle. These include the road heading west from U. S. 666 in New Mexico to Red Rock and Cove, deep in the mountain valleys; a horseshoe bend from State 264 to Sawmill and south again to Fort Defiance. When you go that way, the conditions may be fine, but inquire to be sure.

Red-marked roads are usually fine for a two-wheel drive in late spring and early fall. In early spring and late fall, snow or runoff may require the extra power and low gear of a four-wheel drive.

The old adage: "One man's meat is another man's poison," holds true for roads too. A "good road" for one driver may be a "terrible road" to someone else, less acquainted with mountain canyons, hills, and sudden changes of direction. Knowing how rewarding some of the high drives can be, those in authority advise the visitor not to be afraid of a route. Inquire about it and then make your decision. When conditions are good, for example, the route from Window Rock to Crystal and Washington Pass is a memorable experience.

Tribal Route 64 from No. 12 to Chinle gives hints of the canyon complex to Canyon de Chelly National Monument as just one of its charms. Tribal No. 13 from Lukachukai to Shiprock goes up and over the mountains, with a detour to Roof Butte's great panorama The high forest, chuckling little streams, coveys of miniature lakes, wonderful rockscapes show off a cross-section of this unusual mountain range. It is wilderness road as well as country rugged. Officially, a pickup or fourwheel drive vehicle is recommended, but local inquiry may prove you can make it without trouble.

Some 3,450 acres of Navajoland is covered by water. Most of this is in lakes, and about 2500 of those acres are in the area of the Lukachukai-Chuska Mountains. A few are large enough for motorboats (not over ten horsepower). Many have been enlarged or stabilized with dams, and there are new ones in the making. Ranging from Many Farms Lake, with 1,000 acres, down to mountain ponds of only several acres, they offer a surprising array in a desert region over 5,000 feet above sea level up to the 9,000 foot level. Rainbow and bass, cutthroat, bluegill, channel catfish, bullheads are in these waters. The season is all year. In winter sixteen to twenty-inch trout are pulled up through the ice, the limit of eight in an hour.

Of course licenses are needed, and not one but two state and tribal. Arizona asks $3, the Navajo Tribe, $3.25. The fisherman has a twenty-four-hour day and limits on bag but not on length. It is all for hook and line, with no minnows or fish for bait. There are 54 places in the state where tribal licenses are sold, and even more for Arizona permits.

BIG SPORT

Up in our mountains there are more lakes than just fishing waters, some mere blue (or even red-brown) dimples which fade away in the dry season. Others hide among the trees. They are all fed by the short streams coming from springs gushing out of rock walls. No map shows them all, some are without name. Among the larger ones, the fishermen's lakes, usually lower and accessible by main roads are: Twin and Bass, Asayi, Berland, Wheatfield, Pinnacle, Red Lake, Fluted Rock, Captain Tom, Big Gap and Little White Cone, to give a sampling of names.

These same highlands offer the prime hunt-ing grounds of Navajoland. One of the avowed purposes of the Tribe is to restock their country with wild game as it was in the days of their grandfathers and great grandfathers. Last year a special bear hunt, with 100 licenses on sale at $6.00 for one bear, was open to Navajos and non-Indians alike. A state license It was also required. The special deer hunt and a turkey shoot were open only to Navajos. A small game license for $3.25 is necessary to legally carry firearms in Navajoland. It carries with it the privilege of shooting at coyote, wolf, bobcat, mountain lion and the smaller rodents, even to feral house cats and wild dogs. There are seasons on the migratory ducks, geese, and doves with a need for tribal and state license, as well as a federal bird stamp. No licenses or equipment (unless you count a camera) are needed for visitors who like to see their game alive, in waters, the air, or in the mountain fastness. For them, forest, lake and stream may be part of a Japanese print arrangement, or a slice of Colorado Rockies sitting on a desert plateau. Level reaches of the Lukachukais often have the air of being a separate world, divorced from the yawning canyons below. Nature shows an economy of line and movement. Little streams run gently, in no hurry to get down to the business of erosion. The trees protect their beds, encourage the water to hesitate in cameocut lake hollows, all for the loan of moisture.