Skinwalkers

July 30th

The wifi isn’t working properly as we are crossing mountain ranges and national parks so I might post a couple of stories on the same day. I’m also not sure if I can add photos, which is a shame because we’ve seen some amazing things. We spend the night in Monument Valley, in a Navajo reserve, sleeping under the stars. Yesterday afternoon we were picked up by a Navajo guide in an open jeep which resembled the game drive vehicles we used in Africa. He took us on a tour

of the valley, showed us some of the most amazing places and told loads of stories about the Navajo legends and beliefs. A lot of movies are filmed in this region and I can see why, it truly looks like the wild west, we even saw a tumbleweed tumbling by. A couple weeks ago they were filming ‘Valley of the Gods’ out here but we also stopped at a location from Forrest Gump. We saw sand dunes, rock drawings and mountains in all shapes imaginable: elephants, dragons, eagles. After the tour we went to our ‘campsite’ for the night. A place in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. We had a dinner the local people had prepared for us, some sort of round bread with beans and salad, after which they showed us some of the Navajo dances. They asked us all to pair up and join the dancing, it was great fun! After the dancing, the other two tourgroups went to a different campsite where they would sleep in a traditional Navajo house, the Hogun. We saw one of those Hoguns earlier. There are male and female Hoguns, the female one is shaped like a womb and has nine pillars on the inside, symbolizing the nine months of pregnancy. It also faces east to symbolize being re-born every morning. The men and women don’t live seperately in the Hoguns, the structures themselves are just defined as either male or female.

Anyway, we stayed behind, with our two tourguides, and got ready for bed. There were actual portable toilets there so no hole in the ground thankfully. We laid out our sleeping mats and bags and stared at the stars while one of the guides told us stories about the skinwalkers from Navajo legend. Skinwalkers are representations of people’s past demons that are drawn to spiritual gatherings. The skinwalkers look like shadows with clear white orbs for eyes. You can only see them from your peripheral vision, if you look straight at them, they disappear. They can also take the shape of animals. The guide’s voice was really soothing so after the story ended we had no trouble falling asleep. I woke up a couple of times but I slept quite well, especially compared to Jackson, one of our group leaders. Once we got back on our bus the next morning he told us he had the weirdest and scariest night ever. He woke up around 2AM because one of the Navajo guides accidentally stepped on him. He chose a spot a bit removed from the rest of the group to sleep, which the guide didn’t realize. Jackson then heard footsteps all around him but when he looked up, the guide was on the other side of the camp. He managed to fall asleep again but woke up a little while later when the guide was again walking around the camp. Apparantly he was building a wall of rocks around the rest of us. When Jackson asked what the wall was for, the guide said it was to protect us from ‘them’. In addition to the wall, Jackson also saw lights on the rock face next to us that couldn’t have been caused by flashlights (or so he said). The guide was really vague about it and told him not to worry about it, that it was taken care of. None of us noticed anything but he said it was the scariest night of his life..

We got up at 5.30 when it was still dark and drove to a different location to watch the sunrise. It was a truly amazing experience to watch the sun rise over the mountains, something I’ll remember forever. Monument Valley is so beautiful and I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to see it and get to know a bit about the Navajo culture. We even saw wild horses! Our guide told us that he trains horses so if we were to ever come back here we should come and visit him. After breakfast we had to leave this impressive place and head back to our bus, but the day holds more amazing sights as we are now headed for the Grand Canyon!