Visit to Keet Seel

A city six centuries lost ... Visit to Keet Seel

Charley-Horse and his rider bal-anced momentarily on the lip of space, then toppled into empti-ness. Gone. The mind's eye saw them turning heels over bridle on a swift descent past sheer canyon walls, Paul Charley glued to the saddle, clinging to his sense of humor, shouting, "Whoa, horse! Whoa!"

But it was all an illusion, triggered by a sharp drop and hard-right switchback on the trail to Keet Seel. Paul, our Navajo Indian guide, was still with us. And Charley-Horse, too, Paul's mount-renamed for the day by one unable to resist making a pun: me.

("Your horse's name is Hershey," Paul had told me, then added with a grin, "as in Hershey Bar." Two of his peers fre-quently tried to take a bite out of him.) We traveled the Tsegi Canyon country, the stage for a tale of two cities strangely abandoned and six centuries lost. Here were treasures of stone and clay so valuable that a President decreed they should forever be protected as Navajo National Monument.

One of the found cities is Betatakin, whose Navajo name means "hillside house" or "ledge house"; the other is Keet Seel, meaning "broken pottery." Betata-kin's 135 rooms repose in a 500-foot-high alcove at the bottom of a 700-foot-deep side canyon. Three times I have made the five-mile round-trip (a combination bus ride and hike) to Betatakin, and each time the prehistoric minimetropolis has been a stimulant, stirring a passion to see more and particularly Keet Seel.

So this time the goal is 160-room Keet Seel, mysteriously hiding out there in an up-and-down cinnamon-sandstone wil-derness. It is the largest cliff dwelling in Arizona, and in all the Southwest it is second in size only to Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace.

Keet Seel is a time machine. Once you've sensed its antiquity, it transports you back to the 13th century, to the heyday of the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones. But the National Park Service permits no other machinery to help take you there. You depend on two legs, your own, or four legs, those of a horse.

At 7:45 on a sun-bright summer morning, Virginia Austin-the horse concessionaire at Navajo National Monument-collected my $30 fare, and she and Paul Charley saddled our steeds. The other visitors were a family of four, Dr. Wolfgang Schilcher, his wife, Anneliese, and their daughters, Karin and Marion, 16 and 8 respectively. They had come from Ger-many to focus on the American Southwest, including the comparatively unknown destination Keet Seel.

With everyone aboard, Paul started singing a Navajo song. And with no help from their riders, the horses started off down the trail.

One mile from the corral, the view from Tsegi Point (where Paul appeared to disappear) formed an acrophobia-inducing panorama. A thousand feet below, Laguna Creek shimmered in the morning light. Dark green forests of piñon pines and junipers capped the high mesas, and in cooler and shadier recesses grew an occasional ponderosa pine or Douglas fir. The sky, budding with cotton clouds, was turquoise blue, matching the gemstone so valued by Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni Indian artisans.

Before proceeding, Paul advised us to dismount. The loose-rock trail pitched so steeply that, should a horse stumble, it could better regain its footing sans rider. But Paul stayed on Charley-Horse and pushed the other animals before him for about a third of a mile. Near the canyon's floor, we climbed back into our saddles. Then the Keet Seel trail branched to the left, angled down a 50-foot-high sand dune, crossed Laguna Creek, and entered Dowozhiebito Canyon.

Three-quarters of a mile farther on, we passed through a broad portal into Keet Seel Canyon, a place where pink sand banks and talus slopes form skirts to the vertical walls of Navajo sandstone that rise to Skeleton Mesa. Here summer heat and abundant moisture had germinated patches of monkey flowers, scarlet buglers, columbines, and dozens of others; blueheaded Rocky Mountain bee plants were shoulder-high to our horses. The stream gurgled, waterfalls bassooned, and friendly zephyrs hummed from the shadows of narrow side canyons.

In 1895, when Richard Wetherill turned into this then-unnamed canyon, he had no idea he was on his way to a major dis-covery. Rancher Wetherill, who coined the term "cliff dwellers," helped awaken the nation to the worth of America's lost civilizations. But because he sold artifacts to finance further explorations, some detractors have relegated him to the ranks of pillaging pot-hunters.

His discovery of Keet Seel might be called an act of fate, with special credit going to Nephi, Wetherill's favorite mule. The explorer wrote that no clue suggested anything of importance in the canyon-no potsherd, no arrowhead, nothing. Apparently Wetherill was on the verge of terminating his investigation when, look-ing for greener grass, Nephi broke its hobbles and wandered up the canyon-where Wetherill found the animal and a bag of surprises.

For our group, National Park Service mileposts had eliminated any sense of discovery, but not eager anticipation. We passed a marked turnoff to a campground and rode through a grove of trees along-side a ranger cabin to an oak-shaded

WHEN YOU GO... Navajo National Monument

picnic table where a lady ranger and two hikers waited. We dismounted, and Paul herded our horses into a pasture.

Ranger Gwen Russell said we must divide into two groups, and she would guide them one at a time. This restriction on group size is calculated to reduce the long-range impact on the fragile environment of Keet Seel. The Schilchers chose to be the second party and settled down for an in-the-meantime lunch. The hikers and I followed Ranger Russell a few yards out of the oak grove to a small clearing at the edge of an arroyo. Here the curvature of the canyon's west wall leads the eye to the left and-dollhouses! I did a double-take. Yes, dollhouses. A tiny city of them. Keet Seel.

Blame the immensity of open space between our eyes and the ancient city for the misconception. Blame the softness of the shadow-light. As we moved closer, dimensions began to fit into proper scale.

Keet Seel stands in a huge cavern on a 350-foot shelf 40 feet above the adjacent land level. We entered the ruin via ladders chained across a steep sandstone apron, crawling on hands and knees. Ranger Russell punctuated her monologue of

Keet Seel

facts and figures with blocks of silence, giving us time to absorb the information and to regress to that world of 700 years ago, to smell juniper woodsmoke and baking bread, to hear the Anasazi residents chattering and laughing.

Too soon our voyage in the time machine ended, and we were once more in sunlight in the 20th century.

Paul, our Indian wrangler, had declined Gwen's invitation to accompany us into Keet Seel. Navajo legend says the dwell-ings of the Ancient Ones contain spirits capable of inflicting evil. Paul told Wolf-gang that had he trespassed, he would have had to pay a medicine man "a lot of money for treatment."

Luckily, we were not bothered by evil spirits. But we did experience another kind of spell, created by our reactions of amazement and humility, of heightened perception, even of sadness.

The special magic of Keet Seel can do that to you.

Getting there: By automobile from Flagstaff, take U.S. Route 89 north to U.S. 160, then drive northeast to State Route 564; continue north on Route 564 to monument headquarters. Mileage from Flagstaff, 140.

Admission: The visitor center is open daily (except Christmas) from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., 6:00 P.M. in summer. No fee. Canyon trails to the ruins generally are closed from Labor Day until Memorial Day weekend. The rim trail is open year-round except when the conditions are snowy or icy.

What to see and do: Hiking, camping, picnicking, campfire programs. Museum, interpretive exhibits and trails, crafts shop. Visitor center and rest rooms are wheelchair-accessible. A half-mile trail leads to an overlook with a view of Betatakin. Hiking tours to Betatakin ruin generally are restricted to groups of 24, led three times daily, Memorial Day through Labor Day. The five-mile round-trip is strenuous. Keet Seel, 16 miles round-trip from the visitor center, can be reached only on foot or horseback. Charge for horse rental. The visit to Keet Seel is restricted to 25 people per day, Memorial Day through Labor Day. Registration for a special permit (available at the visitor center) is required. The arduous trip to Keet Seel and back takes all day on horseback; backpackers usually camp overnight near the ruin. Tours of the cliff dwellings are ranger-led and schedules are subject to change. The National Park Service recommends visitors call in advance for reservations.

Accommodations and supplies: The monument maintains two no-fee campgrounds, open from mid-May to mid-October. No food, gasoline, or lodging is available. Food and service facilities can be found in Kayenta on Route 163 and Tsegi on Route 160.

For more information: Superintendent, Navajo National Monument, 8C71 Box 3, Tonalea, AZ 86044-9704; telephone (602) 672-2366. -R.G.S.