Back Road Adventure

ack Road Adventure Lurching to Eggshell Arch on the Navajo Indian Reservation– a Land of Immense Mesas, Buttes, and Spires

Deep, craggy canyons, Willa Cather wrote in 1915, “so abrupt that you might walk over the edge of any one of them on a dark night and never know what had happened to you.” Immense mesas and buttes and spires eroded into moody, even sinister, forms that could be opera sets for a race of giants. Sculpted dunes of frozen sandstone, looking as supple and delicate as whipped soufflés. A little Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs etched their footprints in the same red stone 190 million years ago. “What's so neat about this place,” says my companion, photographer David Smith, “is that people will just speed through it on the highway and say, 'Man, there's nothin' out here.' There's everything out here.” I agree. We are on the Navajo Indian Reservation, a place I have visited a dozen times in the last few years and one that I still feel I know little better than I know Latvia, where I've never been. The strangeness of the landscape penetrates to the very soul. I think of the words of another novelist, the Englishman J.B. Priestly, who spent the winter of 1935-36 in Arizona and wrote: “It seemed to me the oldest country I had ever seen, the real antique land, first cousin to the moon.” With only 200,000 people scattered across 26,000 square miles — a land about the size of Ireland — there are spectacles on

The reservation that many of the Navajos themselves know nothing about. We're en route to one: Eggshell Arch. Most Navajos we've talked to have never heard of it. Nor is there a mention of it in any of our usual reference bibles, including Arizona Place Names and Roadside Geology of Arizona.

"Could be because this isn't really by any roadside," Smith says.

The "road" we're on is pretty miserable even by the usual outback standards; it takes us 25 minutes to clatter 3 1/2 miles. We lurch agonizingly up a steep hill, Smith's truck nearly up to its hubs in the fine red sand, and our speed has sunken to maybe one mile an hour when we finally hit the crest. An old Navajo gentleman, the only other human we see during the day, is standing near the road, stoically observing our progress. When we make it, he cracks a faint grin and shouts something we can't understand. I wonder if there's a word in Navajo for "folly."

But the scenery on the way is fantastic even for the Colorado Plateau. We inch over a rise and find a painted desert stretched in front of us, a vast blanket of violet, peach, and magenta with the purple hump of Navajo Mountain looming behind it. We stop and stare down into a badlands canyon with a floor of rounded domes; they look like some kind of primeval creatures huddled under crinkled rustcolored blankets.

Smith says we haven't seen anything yet.

The road peters out on a vast slab of sandstone; the rest of the trip is a half-hour's hike. We finally arrive at Toenleshushe Canyon. It's a stunning spectacle, about 600 feet deep at this end with a jagged arroyo scarring its floor. It has been inhabited since prehistoric times, long before the Navajos came. Inscription House, an Anasazi pueblo, is somewhere in the chasm, out of our sight.

We see the ruins of what appears to be a Navajo corral on the canyon floor, and I wonder aloud how anybody ever got down there. Smith says he's heard of a trail into the canyon. I tell him I know that somebody's done it, but I'll bet it wasn't white guys.

"So where's the arch?" I ask.

"We're standing on it."

I look around and realize that we are indeed, and this white guy is suddenly unnerved. Arches take shape as chunks of weathered rock drop out from their undersides, and they cease being arches whenever enough chunks finally decide to fall. And this one seems to be called “Eggshell Arch” because the span is extremely thin. If one happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong geologic time . . .

We walk on across the arch and creep as close as seems prudent to the rim down canyon — it's rounded and slippery, and it feels like climbing across a giant bowling ball. The eggshell, about 75 feet across, literally spans the canyon. Pieces of failed arches, probably including debris from this one, litter the canyon floor. It is a masterpiece of natural engineering, nonetheless. I'm no geologist, but I think Eggshell Arch just might be around long after St. Louis and its arch are ruined and forgotten.

I find myself being grateful that this unsung geologic miracle is quite a bit of trouble to get to; that means that only the people who deserve to see it will. That is true, in fact, of most of this plateau that has been the Navajo homeland, the Dinetah, for at least the last 500 years.

“Nothin' out here?” The Navajos certainly know differently. To them this is the most profoundly beautiful and spiritual place in the world. I am beginning to see it in the same way.

Author's Note: Visitors are allowed to visit Eggshell Arch only with a backcountry permit from the Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation Department, Box 308, Window Rock, AZ 86515. The permit costs $5 per person, $10 for 2 to 10 people, and $20 for groups of 11 or more, in cash or money order, no checks. Allow at least two weeks for processing. For more information, call (602) 871-6647. The trip out to the arch is a four-wheel-drive proposition.

This area could be extremely hazardous at night, so plan to be out of it by dark. From Tuba City, take U.S. 160 east to State Route 98. Drive north on 98 for 11.5 miles and turn right at Navajo Route 16, a paved road not marked with a sign. Proceed 5.2 miles to the Inscription House Full Gospel Church and turn left onto a dirt road just beyond it. Take a left at the first fork, another left at the second fork, and right at the third fork. If you're on the right road, you'll see a fenced cornfield a few hundred yards past the third fork. After 3.5 miles of dirt-road travel, the road will virtually disappear on a sandstone slab. Park and walk .4 of a mile south, then east another one-quarter mile to Toenleshushe Canyon and the arch.

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

Back-road travel can be hazardous if you are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling in the desert or in the high country, be aware of weather and road conditions, and make sure you and your vehicle are in top shape and you have plenty of water.

Don't travel alone, and let someone at home know where you're going and when you plan to return. Essential to take along an Inscription House Ruin quadrangle map.