Two tourists, one wise man

A couple from Montezuma County decided on a Christmas trip to an ancient site known as the Montezuma Well, located well over 300 miles away in Arizona, not in their own back yard. The drive there across the Navajo reservation unfolded beautifully and uneventfully until an accident somewhere along Highway 160 near Red Lake blocked traffic for miles in all directions.

The snarl threatened to consume half the day, and to highlight the feeling of helplessness while trying to remain in a Christmas spirit, the woman started singing a chorus of “Oh well, no well, oh well, no well ... .” The driver glanced rather Scrooge-ishly in her direction, which is when a Navajo man approached their driver’s side window.  

Eventually I’ll have to admit to being the driver, so let me say right now that the experience turned out to be so otherworldly I felt like a character in someone else’s Christmas story. 

It was the second time the same Navajo man had stopped to offer a curt native editorial about the impasse. The first time, on his way to talk with a Navajo grandmother in the car behind me, he simply said, “Go around” and he pointed vaguely to the north. The second time after returning from, presumably, the scene of the accident, he urged me more adamantly and with greater detail, “Go back to the wash, then go around.” 

The Navajo man fired up his engine, did a U-turn, and sped off in the direction from which we had come.  We glanced at each other for a fraction of a second to consider how stupid it would be to follow him, then we followed him. 

At the bottom of the hill, we left the pavement, along a sandy track that paralleled a dry wash. Initially I felt relieved, remembering the mention of a wash in his last set of directions. His truck veered suddenly to the right and headed up a steep incline, careening like a madman was at the wheel, or maybe a shaman on a mad quest.  If it hadn’t been for his invitation to follow, I would have sworn he was trying to shake us loose. I put my truck into 4-wheel drive and stepped on the gas. 

Here I should pause to mention that the truck I was driving, a used Toyota, had been a recent purchase. I’d checked to see if the 4-wheel worked when I bought it, but I hadn’t been faced with an opportunity to really test it yet. I couldn’t help feeling a bit excited about the off-road the way things were developing. I even glanced at Pam strapped in beside me who’d stopped singing her makeshift Christmas carol and was smiling. 

Every trip I’ve ever taken across the checkerboard reservation has been on pavement. Well, once when I had to pee badly, I pulled to the shoulder and scrambled down a bank to commune with a wispy clump of sage, but that had been my only off-road excursion. Yet this invisible maze of dirt tracks our shaman sped along served an entire community, one that must be wired like synapses into their brains. After the first 5 minutes, I had no idea which direction was north; we had to trust our guide.

At one point I thought I’d lost him and feared I’d have to turn around, find my way back to the wash on my own. Then we came around a great dune of dirt and saw the Navajo truck parked beside another pickup, the two drivers talking to each other through open windows. We  stopped a respectable distance away and patiently waited.  

I know for a fact that a wave of tension surged through my brain, an unknown fear of not belonging, and the initial giddy rush of excitement and enlightenment was quickly replaced by its polar opposite. Eventually the two trucks started their engines and headed off over another dune. Lucky for us, the newest truck positioned between ours and the lead one drove a bit slower. Our faith in the journey had been restored. 

Zig-zagging through the red dust, feeling a little like we were touring the planet Mars, we started to relax again as this caravan expanded to three sought a route around the scene of a yet to be seen accident. One desperate moment waited ahead, a sandy hill so steep the tire tracks seemed like a launch site off the face of the planet, but an emergency exit materialized as I prepared for liftoff, and I gushed with relief. 

Half an hour later, our tires touched pavement again, and looking to the left we could see in the distance an impatient knot of vehicles still waiting to be untangled. To the right, the road to Tuba City, straight and clear. 

As for the Montezuma Well, a 15-million-gallon watermark on the parchment of the Arizona desert, we finally got there, and it was magnificent, but in a quiet sort of way. Clearly, the desert is still mysterious and water won’t quench every thirst.

– David Feela