Tag Archives: Monument valley

Dune Patrol

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Monument Valley is a big place. It stretches across two states and given the type of terrain encompassed within its borders it requires a huge amount of upkeep. It also gets an enormous number of visitors every day who traipse across its surface, leaving footprints, disturbing the details that make up the various dunes located throughout the park, and generally causing the park to get a slightly tired look by the end of the day.

The Navajo people own Monument valley and do their very best to keep the park pristine. You won’t find any litter along the roadways, or plastic bags stuck in the sagebrush here. But as we mentioned before Monument valley is a big place and there aren’t enough Navajo to get out everyday and tidy up all the aspects of the park that need looking after. That’s where the volunteers come in.

Each morning before the park opens residents and docents of the valley get out at the first sign of dawn long before the park opens for business, and check their areas. Perhaps a wind came through and erased some of the picturesque furrows that give the red sand dunes their distinctive look. Or a passing night hunter came along and left their tracks behind.

That’s what occurred last night when  a coyote spent some time on this dune waiting for something unwary to make itself known. Fortunately for them nothing did and the coyote moved on to better hunting grounds leaving just a few of its tracks in the sandy surface. Jack Rabbit, the overseer of this particular dune, is out inspecting the damage. Fortunately this disruption can be repaired by Jack himself with just a few tamping’s of his big flat feet and a quick roll over on the effected area and the dune will look pristine again.

This little repair was easy, but occasionally one of the large herd of sheep and goats that roam through the park will pass directly over the dune Jack is responsible for. That’s when catastrophe strikes. Dozens upon dozens of hooves tramp across the dune breaking down the edges, leaving deep footprints in the soft surface of the dune, even tearing out the occasional foliage, creating damage that is much too much for Jack to take on himself. That’s when he calls out the big guns. The park’s maintenance team.

The maintenance team is a large group of paid workers made up of Jackrabbits, voles, a large hawk too old to hunt any more who uses his strong wings to brush the surface of the sand dune smooth again and in return is allowed to occasionally borrow one of the mice or voles for dinner, are just a few of the members that make up the maintenance team. This crack team of highly trained professionals rush to damaged areas within the park and perform the triage needed to get the park back up and running in no time at all. They are the unsung heroes of the park, along with Jack and the many other volunteers who spend their time making sure the park is in perfect condition each day when it opens.

They are all part of the Dune Patrol, those tireless workers who keep Monument valley ready for us to view its wonders everyday of the year. Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

Thunder In The Valley

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This is Monument valley. The same Monument valley John Wayne road thru in Stagecoach and many other films. Usually when you see pictures of the valley it’s under bright sun and clear skies, with the buttes in stark relief against the sky, hardly a cloud to be seen, the timeless desert shot from countless calendars. But that’s not always the case as can be seen in the image above.

Monument valley averages around 7″ of rain a year and as we drove towards the entrance in this storm it looked like it was getting all 7″ at once. If you ‘re from the Midwest or the northern tier of the our country you are used to seeing rain storms that last all day or longer sometimes. That’s usually not how our western storms go. With few exceptions our storms race in with an unconstrained fury and drop all of its moisture in a hurry. Our storms don’t fool around. The energy builds up over the mountains, the clouds grow into the very upper reaches of the sky then all hell  breaks loose. Rain, hail, sometimes even snow if you’re real lucky, and wind to blow your lawn chairs into New Mexico.

This storm has just about completed its job as you can see by the sun trying to break through the clouds, yet it is still raining hard enough on the highway that the windshield wipers are having trouble handling it. When a storm like this happens you just wait it out. The ground is going to be saturated and you want to stay way clear of any arroyos or small ditches, even low depressions in the highway as all that water has to go somewhere and it all doesn’t soak into the ground. It moves through the area with enough force to wash away cars and trucks as it they were rubber ducks and it happens real fast.

The roads in the valley are unpaved and made up of a combination of clay, decomposed sandstone, some gravel and that combination, when water is added to it, turns into an adhesive mixture that will coat your tires and fill up your wheel wells until you cannot turn your steering wheel. Besides having the adhesive strength of gorilla glue it turns into a cement-like substance that nearly has to be jack hammered out when it sets up. The general rule of thumb is, don’t drive on those roads until they’ve had a chance to dry out some.

This shot was taken during April in the mid-afternoon and the next morning you could drive the roads with no problems, in fact in some areas you could raise dust as you drove. That is if you didn’t make the mistake of parking in some low area where water runs through. If you did you’re probably in Lake Powell right now. Things happen quickly out here and you need to pay strict attention to your surroundings, but that’s just part of the drama of the West. Some folks thrive on it.

Slim Picken’s

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The horse herd in Monument Valley never has it very good even when things are at their best. This is dry country. A desert actually and what grows here, grows fast, does it’s thing, then disappears. There are some plants that hang around longer but they’re slim pickings at best. The horses have to cover a lot of ground to get a little bit of food and even farther to find water.

The mares with colts have a particular difficult time as their milk supply is directly connected to how much they eat. A colts appetite doesn’t care how that all works. There just better be milk there when its hungry. And it’s hungry all the time.

These are full-blooded Navajo ponies and are the product of many years of experience living where there are tough conditions. Fending for themselves is ingrained into their nature. They’ll make out just fine. The late afternoon sun is a welcome respite from the heat of the day. This bunch is headed to the shadows below the butte where they’ll rest up and enjoy the relative coolness here in Monument valley.

Racing Into The Darkness

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Every day, from time immemorial, the earth has slowly turned on its axis as it hurtles around the sun in its quest to use up its allotted time in this universe. As it completes its rotation, the terminator, that line that divides light from dark, moves across the face of our planet bringing day for some and night for others. This celestial clock can not be adjusted or reset and there is no force that we know of that can halt this race to darkness or stop the illumination of the first light of dawn.

Here at Monument Valley we see the last of this day’s battle as the earth continues its steady rotation into that good night. The colors of the buttes and the surrounding earth they rest on change from the deep dark red of bright sunlight into the muted colors of night. Soon they will appear to be black, just a silhouette seen under the light of the stars. But as it does every single day the night passes and the bright light of day will arrive restoring the colors to the land.

Every second of this unending process is precious and holds its own special magic. You may be partial to mid-day or early morning but this moment, the moment of change, as the colors intensifies then slowly fade to black, is one of the most special times to witness.

Spring Rain

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Monument valley is normally a hot, dry, dusty place. A desert. You need to carry water as you trek across it lest they find your poor coyote chewed bones spread across the dunes. But in the Spring things can change dramatically as you see here. Storms come rolling in out of the Baja and dump a huge amount of water on land that is ill-equipped to hold it.

As the rain hits it begins to run off the land filling the arroyos and washes to capacity, picking up sand and small rocks, tearing along in a ferocious torrent until it begins to move the larger boulders and other debris along with it. A short distance away there is a famous slot canyon called Antelope canyon where you can see full-sized tree trunks lodged 50′ up in the crevices of the canyon walls, placed there by water from a storm just like this one raging through it.

This day the storm was one of the milder ones. There was rain but it didn’t last that long. There was runoff but it was manageable. Fog and low-lying clouds obscured the buttes and towers giving the observer a  very different picture of Monument Valley. No stagecoaches tearing along the road in front of the Mittens and Mitchell butte today. And if there was you wouldn’t have been able to see it as the visibility was practically zero down at ground level.

This was a day of looking at the valley from a distance. There was no admittance into the valley as the roads inside are made up of sand and clay and turn into a quagmire as soon as water touches them. Driving on them without four-wheel drive was next to impossible and pretty close to impossible with it, as the muck sticks to your tires and will soon fill up your wheel wells with a solid granite-like mixture you have to dig out with a small spade.

This condition doesn’t last very long because as soon as the sun comes out it dries everything up and the road returns to its near concrete-like state. This is a strangely beautiful time to view the valley, one not seen all that often. The mammoth rock formations appear out of the fog like huge ships passing by in the strange muted light, soundlessly, leaving no wake. Every sound carries across great distances. You can hear the final streams of water falling down the stream beds, rocks striking each other until they come to a new resting place. There seems to be a dearth of bird calls, the ravens quiet until the fog begins to thin and drift away. Then they call out in single note if you can call a ravens call a note, it’s more like a raspy croak, checking on each other to see how they fared through the storm.

The weather is changing despite the denials of some of our leaders and it is uncertain what the future will bring. There is a drought going on out on the west coast and since many of these desert storms begin there the question is will we see rain in the desert in the spring. I believe I’m just going to go and see for myself. Come on along if you want.

Monument Valley

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This is Monument valley at 6 in the morning. It is cold here even though it is late April. You need a heavy coat and gloves and if you have a bald head like some of us you need a hat. Preferably one of those Russian kind made out of polar bear-wolf hybrids with ear flaps you can tie around your belt loops so the wind doesn’t blow it off. We didn’t need the tie downs this day as there was no wind. You also need lots of determination to stand out here waiting for the sun to come up.

It seems twice as cold as it is when you’re waiting. Stamping your feet helps some. Shivering is good. But what really saves the day is a hot thermos of strong black tea. No sugar, no milk, black as my last wife’s heart, as they say around the campfire at divorce school. That’s what gets you through the waiting, that and the thought of how gorgeous it’s going to be in a few minutes.

Everyone has seen pictures of Monument valley’s butte’s and spires, the colossal towers and the long views down the valley from John Ford’s point. They are the reasons many people come here, but there are other smaller views that are just as captivating. This one for instance.

Back behind the Totem pole and Yei Bi Chei is a place that is off-limits to visitors unless you have a guide. My guide whose Navajo name loosely translates to “Looks In My Wallet”, no I’m kidding, it actually means “Reaches Into My Wallet”, no, wait, I’m kidding again, it actually means Ed, brought me to a perfect spot to watch the sun come up behind the Totem pole. Behind where we had set up the camera gear was this dune and overhead our timekeeper the moon moving across the sky, clearing it of any obstacles that may hinder the sun’s passage. Ed said he liked this spot not only for the view of the sunrise, but if the wind was blowing which it does with startling frequency here in the valley, it was a protected place. The way he said it, in that low Indian voice made it sound much wiser than it really was. That’s one of the reasons you need a guide, you’d never figure that out on your own.

Ed was an interesting guy in his own right. He has been a stuntman in the movies, riding horses, falling off of them, “you don’t need much training for that ” he said, an extra in many of them, a guide around the valley and a sought after one at that, as he photographs the valley himself and knows all the good spots. He also tends to have a store of helpful tips for the visiting photographer. “When you fall and roll down the dune try not to get sand up your nose” was one of his favorites. “Don’t touch that it’s poisonous” was another. He said this even if what you were touching was actually poisonous or not. All in all he was a good guide and we weren’t lost for very long anyway. “An Adventure” he said, “to  tell your grandchildren.” I don’t think we were lost, I just think he liked to see me carry 40 lbs. of gear through ankle-deep sand.

But the places we went were worth every moment of Ed’s wit. I remember this one the most because it seemed to be more about the desert than all the daytime shots of the monuments and far-reaching vistas put together. As there was no wind the silence was complete, except maybe for Ed’s wheezing, and the far off calling of a raven waking up, and the colors, the colors were something you had to experience. They began to form out of the darkness and became richer and more intense as the sky lightened. The deep nearly mahogany color of the sand against that impossibly blue sky. The yellow highlights on the Rabbit brush just becoming visible and of course the moon, impossibly white against the background of the heavens. This is why one becomes a photographer. For the image of course but also for the memories. And maybe for the chance of a brief visit with Ed. No, it’s the memories.

High Winds and Misdemeanors

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When most people think of Monument Valley they see it in their mind’s eye as the place where they take those beautiful calendar pictures of the rugged reddish buttes and mesas jutting up into nearly cloudless, cobalt blue skies, or where the shots of the wide vistas often shown in the old John Wayne movies like Stage Coach, The Searchers and Fort Apache, to name just a few, were taken. There is a peace and serenity within these views that makes you feel a quietude so vast and deep, it resonates with its silence, while the distances and depth in the images show the vast panoramas of the Southwest.

But the valley has another face that is rarely shown in those images. That’s when the hot, sand-laden winds come blowing up out of the South to race through the valley blasting their names on the sides of the monoliths that mark the valley floor. This morning the sun has just risen and is shining through the sand cloud as it begins it journey. Soon even the largest of the sandstone formations will be just a pale shadow within the depths of the wind-driven storm as the grains of sand are picked up, to gather and join and rise into a huge moving cloud that obliterates the view of everything in its path.

This is a time when man and beast alike hunker down, staying out of the sandstorm’s blistering winds and the sting of the sand against their exposed skin until the storm runs its course. Today it looks like this could build into a big one. The horses will turn their rear ends into the wind, put their heads down, and wait it out huddled together for protection. The sheep make their way to the sheltered areas at the base of the huge rock formations to be out of the brunt of the wind, and the wild things each have their own ways to stay alive.  People, well people do what ever they feel like doing. The smart ones stay home though.

Even the photographers get it and seeing the magnitude of the storm stay out of weather. But not before they grab a few shots of this different look of Monument valley.