AFOOT IN CANYON DE CHELLY

HIKING

"Jump in," the guide said. We bumped along, dodging stunted juniper trees, dust billoving behind us in the crisp dry air of a May morning in far northeastern Arizona. The truck stopped abruptly at Bare Trail. Or so said our guide, Cassandra Begay. I peered over the red rock edge of the north rim of Canyon del Muerto at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, an ancestral home of the Navajos and a geologic maze visited by thousands of people each year. Canyon de Chelly - "dah SHAY," a Spanish corruption of the Navajo tsegi meaning "rock canyon" - is the center of three major canyons that hold the ruins of ancient cliff dwellings and the hogans of a few Navajos living traditionally, Cassandra's family among them. About 700 feet below us in the bottom of Canyon del Muerto, where the Navajos raise corn, Tsaile Wash glittered, a silver snake twining in and out of sun and shadow, ever reworking the canyon floor with its scouring sands. But my attention strayed from the forces of nature. I was seeking Bare Trail. Where was it? A veteran of many a trail, I've followed blazes through snowy forests, cairns over boulder fields, wands across glaciers. Here I did not see a trail. Cassandra tied her sneakers a little tighter. Her drawstring day pack held her lunch: two cans of Coke. "So," she said, "we'll go down Bare Trail and then hike up the canyon about eight miles and come up Twin Trails. Just follow me and use these finger and toe holds." She looked us over. "You're not scared of heights, are you?" My thighs quivered uncontrollably. I took a deep breath. And then I lied.

The finger holds looked about the size of a teaspoon. My husband, David, insisted I exaggerated. “Look,” he said. “I can fit three fingers in one.”

CANYON DE CHELLY

Fortunately we traversed much of Bare Trail by walking. My boot soles gripped the coarse red sandstone as my ankles strained against the 45-degree angle. Loose sand swirled in the wind, abrading the cliffs.

Halfway down the cliff we stopped. Up the middle of the shallow wash lumbered an open excursion truck from Thunderbird Lodge, tourists gripping seats and sides as it lurched along. One of them pointed at us. Then they all looked our way. We waved. We could have ridden the tourist wagon. Or taken a Navajo guide in our own fourwheel drive. Or ridden horseback. But, hey, we came 2,000 miles for this. Why not see it slowly and learn it well?

At the bottom, we stepped off Bare Trail directly into the wash. I thought I had descended into heaven.

We hiked barefoot and ankle-deep in and out of the snaking wash, its quietness broken only by the rustle of the heartshaped cottonwood leaves, new and pale green. Cassandra cautioned us not to go off on our own, and not to take pictures of resident Navajos or their hogans on the flats, where peach trees were setting out fruit, and corn had just been planted.

This is private land, sacred Navajo land. In 1864 the Army drove the Navajos from the canyons, escorting them on “The Long Walk” 300 miles east to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. In the end, the U.S. gave Canyon de Chelly back to the tribe.

Though most Navajos now live “on top,” for centuries the deep canyons have been theirs. When they came to these canyons about 1750, they found the remnants of the Anasazi. The "Ancient Enemy" built their canyon villages beginning about A.D. 500, some at the high-water mark, others nearly at the top of the cliffs.

The settlements had as many as 90 rooms in four stories snuggled into the sandstone. For the people who lived here, it might have been a hundred feet of finger and toe holds to fetch a cup of dry corn. The Anasazi moved on by the end of the 13th century, leaving few clues other than their houses.

We ate our crackers and peanut butter at Antelope House, where the Anasazi had lunched 1,300 years before, while they built its 50 rooms stone by stone, story by story. Some left their handprints in paint on the cliffs.

The Navajos puzzle on the Anasazi. They themselves prefer their houses on the flats formed by the wash, where they live in summer, raising crops and tending bands of goats and sheep. Across the wash from Antelope House,

we watched a Navajo goatherd drive his charges to new pasture. Nearby Tsaile Wash gurgled over a low log dam.

The wash changes constantly, Cassandra told us. So does its sand bottom. "Last year we guided a guy in his own jeep. I told him exactly where to drive through the wash, but he wouldn't listen." She shook her head. By the time he gave up, the jeep had sunk in quicksand up to the windshield.

"A few months later, the water went down, and we winched it out and wrote to him," she said. "He just sent us the title and said, 'Keep it.'" And then she added, "The engine did need some work."

We waded through the wash to get a close look at the Navajo charcoal pictographs of horses, some mounted by nonIndians in tall hats.

"Watch out for the stickers," Cassandra warned. She and my husband examined the details of a drawing. I sat on a log to remove a sticker from my foot.

After lunch we came into view of Navajo Fortress, a massive straight-walled butte the Navajos used as a refuge from both the Spanish and the United States military. Cassandra pointed out the route up. Using binoculars we could see a few log poles, some remaining "ladders" the Navajos pulled up behind them as they climbed. I remembered clinging to the finger holds of Bare Trail and imagined scuttling up Navajo Fortress with bullets zinging at my heels.

On this butte Cassandra learned to be careful of joking. "I'd told a couple of guys the Navajos now run a Burger King at the Fortress," she said. "When we got here, they couldn't believe there wasn't any fast food."

After hours slogging in sand and water, my tired legs felt like sandbags. I knew it would take more than my last cookie or a swig of Cassandra's Coke to force a second wind. We stopped to rest. Sprawled ingloriously next to a prickly pear, I hallucinated about the finger and toe holds that must await us on Twin Trails.

Cassandra sat on a rock. She raised her long black hair off her neck, but she hardly seemed to perspire.

(LEFT) A giant cottonwood tree shelters the summer cabin of a Navajo farmer in Canyon del Muerto. (RIGHT) The towering sandstone redoubt called Navajo Fortress was used by the Indians for a secure retreat during warfare. BOTH BY GEORGE STOCKING "You know," she said, "the only other people I ever guided on an all-day hike have been men. German or French or Australian, the kind who want to go and go fast. You are the first Americans."

An Indian horseman slowed to say something in Navajo to Cassandra. He laughed and patted a spot behind the saddle. Then he gave his mare a kick.

Cassandra laughed, too. "He said we could jump on behind him."

A few minutes later, I saw him in the distance on a series of switchbacks up out of the canyon. Cassandra pointed. "Twin Trails," she said.

Never in my life had I been so glad to see a dry, dusty, rocky, steep trail.

Back on top, Cassandra picked up a tattered cotton work glove run over in a dirt rut. "Anasazi artifact," she joked. Far below, Tsaile Wash twinkled in the last sun. The canyon walls glowed rosy above a patch of green, perhaps a peach orchard or a pasture.

A stiff wind came through the junipers and piñons. I felt sunburned and dehydrat-ed. My shoulders ached from carrying my pack. My thighs and calves were cramped; the soles of my feet sanded. I removed an-other sticker from my ankle.

I knew that in a day or two, the aches would be gone from my body. But Antelope House and the Fortress, handprints and finger holds, and the Anasazi and the Navajos would be with me for a long time to come.

To visit Canyon de Chelly National Monument, contact the visitors center at (520) 674-5500 for current fees, programs, activities, regulations, lodging, visitors services, and canyon tours by foot, horse, or truck. Tourism is restricted at Canyon de Chelly; respect the Navajo residents and follow all visitation rules. For more information on visiting the Navajo reservation, including how to purchase a backcountry permit, contact Navajoland Tourism, P.O. Box 663, Window Rock, AZ 86515; (520) 871-6659 or 871-7371.