We’ve done a number of Same Place – Different View blogs, so I thought I’d switch gears and do some mini travelogues or musings of some of the places we select for our workshops, starting with Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d’SHAY).

The idea for this came to me as we prepared for an 11-week, workshop tour, secure in the knowledge that MooseCat and Robbie are taking good care of the house, plants, bird feeders, and office with Sara and Jo’s help.  Yesterday, we talked with Robbie who reported that as soon as he walked in the door, MooseCat greeted him, ready for all sorts of pats and scratches. I think MooseCat already has Robbie’s bed marked as the place to sleep whilst we are away. No loyalty. Strictly creature comforts for him!

On this trip, we are returning to some old favorites for our workshops and scouting for a new possibility for 2011.  Much of our route is a tracing of last year’s; some will be newish. Betwixt and between, we’ll get to see our “kids” and their families, scattered in westward directions.

I first was captured by Canyon de Chelly back in the 80s. Our family has long been drawn to Indian culture and history, starting with my great grandmother. Widowed quite young, good friends took her under their wings and invited her to travel with them. This included the Southwest, and I have some beautiful pieces of jewelry I treasure that she bought or that were given to her by a Santo Domingo chief.

My late mother was with me the first time. We both loved it, marveled at the rim views, were awed by the ancient Anasazi ruins, and listened intently to the stories Timothy Halwood, our Navajo guide, told about his family’s history in the inner canyon as he took us to some very special places off the beaten track. We loved his uncle’s hogan set peacefully under some tall Cottonwoods by Chinle Wash. We were taken back in time like an early, sepia photograph.

The next time I passed through New Mexico on my way to Who-knows-where, I looked carefully at my DeLorme atlas and came into Canyon de Chelly the back way, past Ship Rock, stopping at Red Rock, then heading onto red-dirt roads. I went through areas with names familiar to me from Tony Hillerman’s books, and with new roads created by logging, I had to use every ounce of my contour-reading, map skills to make sure I didn’t take a wrong turn and disappear.

It was a great route in, and I arrived at the canyon rim in the dramatic, fading light of late-afternoon, much as it was one afternoon when Arnie and I were doing our final scouting last fall.

I had arranged to go out with Timothy again, and he took me to yet more little-shown places. You can say what you want, but whenever I am in that maze of canyons that make up Canyon de Chelly, I get a special feeling. Perhaps it’s spiritual. At any rate, it always touches me. It’s peaceful, and I enjoy chatting with the Navajo families who come to enjoy a picnic or learning from my guide about the history and culture of the area.

Many people don’t realize what a treasure we have in Canyon de Chelly. Not only is it home to many, familiar, Anasazi sites (see above) with names such as Antelope House and White House Ruin, but to statuesque pillars such as Spider Rock towering more than 800 feet above the canyon floor.

Canyon de Chelly is huge. Second in size in the US only to the Grand Canyon, it is also home to many smaller canyons. As we bumped along the Chinle Wash river bed with Adam, our Navajo guide, I was reminded of John McPhee’s Coming into the Country. I never fail to be awed by the scenery and how small we are when we round this knife-edged cliff or that pillar. It holds so many stories, many passed down for countless generations by the Navajo people, others, we must assume, lost forever.

There are other treasures, such as the reflections in Chinle Wash after a recent rain of the afterglow on the rocks. It’s that magical time after sunset on certain days when the glow off the clouds bounces back onto the rocks. Canyon de Chelly has some amazing light, from the dramatic storms such as the one in the blog header at the top, to the early-morning, back-lit haze, to the afterglow. In the middle of the day, it can look washed out.

Most of us choose to photograph at either end of the day when the low light brings out the magnificent colors in the rocks. That said, the sepia image toward the beginning of this article was made in the middle of the day. You just have to pick your locations.

The temptation in a place like this is to look for the grand vistas, the imposing rocks, the ancient sites. There are so many other interesting things to be found.

When Arnie showed me this photograph, I told him it reminded me of a strawberry dropped on the rocks. I love the pictures one can find in grasses and water.

When we went out with Adam one afternoon, we heard snickering and snorting in the Cottonwoods. Adam went into the area and rounded up the wild horses for us so we could see them in the Wash.

Make no mistake, these are wild horses. We stood at the edge of a cliff another afternoon and looked down as some of the Navajo who live on the canyon floor tried to herd one recalcitrant horse back to a paddock to be broken.

He had no intention of going there and would break away and prance proudly back in the direction whence he had come, head held high. The Navajo wranglers had to retrace their route several times until they finally succeeded with this particular steed.

I could go on and on about Canyon de Chelly, but there are times that a photographer should get out from behind the lens and just absorb what lies around him or her, as did one of our alumni here. When one takes the time to just look and not hide behind the camera, one can take in the special feeling one gets in a location. Photography is about passion, and if one does not feel the passion in a location, how can his or her photograph reflect it?

Fore more photographs of Canyon de Chelly, check out the Student and Instructor Galleries on our website.

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