Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504210001
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: G-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN BERRY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MONUMENT VALLEY, ARIZONA LENGTH: Long
``Anyone who wants to lope come with me,'' said Don Donnelly, the outfitter and leader of the weeklong riding and camping trip on the Utah-Arizona border.
About 10 of us were off, loping our horses toward the horizon. In such open country a lope comes closer to a gallop and, exhilarated, we pulled up after a mile and a half or so to wait for the others to catch up.
We spent the rest of the day exploring the valley, passing giant rock formations with names like Ear of the Wind and Mocassin Arch. We saw Anasazi Indian ruins, petroglyphs of horned animals etched in stone cliffs and shards of black-and-white pottery poking out of the sand.
The Anasazi left Monument Valley in the 1300s and it is now part of the Navajo reservation. About 200-300 Navajo live scattered across the 39,000 acres and we were their guests, sleeping in tents pitched at the foot of Thunderbird Mesa.
Lonnie Yazzie helped cook our hearty meals and his nephew, Ned Black, was our Indian escort on the rides. Black spoke little, but heading back to camp in late afternoon he would sing Navajo riding songs.
Usually the songs, soft and rhythmic, were a special treat for those who hung back from the group to ride next to Black, bringing up the rear on his little mustang. But occasionally the haunting tones would hit the rock cliffs just right and reverberate across the valley.
At night, after the camp's guitar player had finished playing cowboy songs, Yazzie and Black would take out a Navajo drum and teach us Indian dances around the campfire.
Black, 25, sang proudly as he danced to the steady beat and seemed to delight in our laughter as we tried to imitate his steps. Overhead, the Milky Way swept across the black sky.
The 22 people in our group, who ranged in age from mid 30s to mid 60s, included a Canadian geologist, the owner of a New York deli, a teacher from Ohio, a Swiss psychiatrist and an oncologist from Arizona who wore 6-inch spurs.
Some had ridden all their lives, some not, and one man was getting on a horse for the first time. The horses, all well trained, ranged from ``I might trot if you kick me hard enough'' to ``how fast do you want to go?''
Donnelly's wife, Shelly, worked and rode along with him. Another couple, Terry and Tara Grinstead, were part of the crew and sometimes their 5-year-old son, whose real name really is Bronc, joined us on the rides. Seemingly glued to the saddle, he had no trouble staying on his horse; only his tiny cowboy boots were always in danger of slipping off.
Unlike some riding trips where the horses must walk one behind the other, we could spread out across the valley and go somewhat at our own speed. Donnelly had faith in his horses, and perhaps faith in the soft sand to cushion anyone who fell. No one did.
One day we rode out in the morning into wind that gusted 50 mph and brought waves of sand across the desert floor, sandblasting faces and tearing off hats. The horses bravely braced their feet.
By the time we stopped for a picnic lunch the wind had died. The rains came next, but the sun soon broke through and rewarded us for our troubles. The colors of the rocks and sky were even more vivid, and the scent of sagebrush wafted up as the sun warmed the wet plants.
We saw few wild animals on the daylong rides, only an occasional hawk, rattlesnake or lightning-quick rabbit. The Navajo graze small herds of sheep and goats in the valley, leaving dogs with them for protection as they wandered in search of food and water.
On another day we rode to the top of Mitchell Mesa, climbing 1,200 feet along a narrow, rocky path. Along the way we passed the dried-up carcass of a cow and the shaft of an old uranium mine.
The view from the top was grand as we looked out across the states of the Four Corners: Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
The scenery all week was spectacular, and somehow it always seemed even more spectacular from the back of a horse. Perhaps to see Monument Valley on horseback is to feel part of it.
The last day, riding out of camp for the last time, we returned to the home of a Navajo family where we would say goodbye to the horses and pile back into vans for the trip back to Gallup, N.M., the trip's starting and ending point.
On the way up we had stopped at Hubbell's Trading Post, the oldest continuously operating Indian trading post in the country. On the way back we visited the museum in a former trading post built in Monument Valley by the Gouldings in the late 1920s.
It was Harry Goulding and his wife, Mike, who brought movies to the valley. Armed with a stack of photographs, they made a trip to Hollywood that led to the filming in 1938 of ``Stagecoach,'' directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.
``My Darling Clementine,'' ``She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,'' ``Fort Apache,'' ``The Searchers'' and many others would follow. Donnelly's horses were used in the 1990 film ``Back to the Future Part III.''
Monument Valley is one of nature's wonders, and for a week it was ours.
by CNB