Jennifer Mahan ARCH326 January 20, 2020 Professor Michael Lucas Flying Up the Rock with Wings
For the first time, I saw myself as a cultural threat equivalent to the current environmental degradation spurred by corporate greed. I have been engaging in acts as sacrilegious as shooting bullets in ancient native petroglyphs, or ripping apart mountains to retrieve the ore within – and enjoying it. Though I am not a miner, or a calloused businessman with money in his eyes, or a listless & witless tourist whizzing around in a Cruise America tossing my aluminum Diet Coke out the window, I am a climber. And in respect of Native American sacred places, this is a threat to the traditional Diné or Navajo lifeway and culture. To understand my position as a spiritual perpetrator, I look to a 1500’ tall tower deep in the Navajolands of northwestern New Mexico. To a geologist, it stands as a “diatreme” - a basaltic volcanic dike finally exposed under sedimentary strata after 27 million years of erosion1. To the Diné, the tower is Tsé Bit a'í: the “rock with wings,” and the central figure of traditional creation legends. To a western climber, it is a temptation. Standing as one of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America, “Shiprock” and the the entire Navajo Reservation was (& is) closed to climbing following a deadly accident on the rock in 1970.
Until recently, it was unbeknownst to me that the Navajo and the climbing community have a history of dissent. Objections of the latter are plentiful; public discussion boards contain angry comments that the Dine could claim dominion over a previously accessible rock: “Shiprock casino would exist before climbing is allowed,” and that although scaling the tower is illegal - “so what?” The opposite is also true in their digital symposiums, where other climbers instead condone these “cultural ignoramuses” and point out the intense lack of respect of some “poor unintelligent uncultured white folks2.” The ongoing battle between these groups had similarly spurred a schism within me; before partaking in the decades-long issue verging on Tsé Bit a'í, I had to first understand what the rock with wings is to the Navajo, and what climbing means to me. The Dine culture is alive with creation stories that describe humanity’s search for truth. Though these vary in content, each are profoundly moving. One story describes the origin of Tsé Bit a'í, opening with Asdzáán Nádleehé (Changing Woman), who was born of the first man and woman. Jóhonaa'éí (the Sun) helped Changing Woman birth twin war gods who were protected from injury. The younger, Born for Water, guarded prayer sticks, while the older, Monster Slayer, was tasked with destroying the
monsters who were killing the Dine people. Tsé nináhálééh (Rock Monster Eagle) and his mate lived atop Tsé Bit’a’í, and tossed captured humans onto the mountain to feed their young. Monster Slayer journeyed to the tower and faked injury to slay the Rock Monster Eagles. He spared their young and released them as an owl and eagle, then descended Tsé Bit’a’í atop Bat Woman’s head bag3. Tsé Bit’a’í from above. Photo courtesy John Wark.
This creation story has been orally passed forward for generations, and has gifted a certain reverence to Tsé Bit’a’í for centuries. The Navajo believe the tower is the site of many people’s suffering and it is feared that the spirit of the dead would return to land of the living if disturbed, so the rock should be left alone. Though the Navajo do not traditionally speak of the deceased, they are a people who believe in afterlife4. Their oral stories adopt a new significance in every present, and in this present, it means that the sacred nature of Tsé Bit’a’í excludes it from desecration via rock climbing. The Navajo stories are doubtlessly spiritual in nature, though questionably distinct from the act of climbing as a spiritual experience. I have heard some claim that rising among rock is their church – that engaging one’s body with and around bare earth is a holy communion with nature, a physical prayer. While climbing, one must engaged in a vital partnership, trusting their earthly life to the skills and protection of their fellow (wo)man. And one also believe in the rock that their bodies skillfully dance around, trusting that the motley features will not fracture under their weight. A climber must continuously listen to the extruded masses they cling to; any deafness forces one’s physical being to the whims of gravity. This focus allows intense presence of flowing body and mind, offering a soulful human answer to the invitation that a rock may extend. The Dine believe that “man works through nature in establishing relationships… to earth, to spiritual forces, to other people5.” So how is this so different than climbing, as described spiritually? Why is it so unethical to ascend Tsé Bit’a’í, desecrating it with western hands, in the eyes of the Navajo? A fine distinction between a bodily spirituality and a more visceral Dine view was well described in an interview with Michellsey Benally - she is a Navajo woman who was raised on a reservation and holds the double-edged perspective of also being a climber. She “conduct[s] proper prayer and make[s]
offerings before engaging directly with rock formations through climbing” – this is a certain intention towards the land, wherein she asks permission to engage with it. Through prayer, she speaks to the rock: “lend me your back. I am a pitiful five-fingered, two-legged Diné6.” This respect treats the land as an equal – as a living being. The physically communion that I have felt during climbing, though sensuous and sincere, lacks this mutual relationship with the land. While I, among throngs of climbers, may feel like we respect the rocks we scale, I realize my experiences are instead formed from a more ego-centric western view: climbing has been about my body; the rock is protecting me. For many Americans, it stems from a larger westernerized desire to conquer: summiting is proving a feat to the self and to others, attesting to one’s greatness over the earth. Admittedly, I have never treated the rock as another life. But in an increasingly populous and accessible natural world, where availability to the masses lessens the amount of accountability for proper ethics towards the land, the rock should be reciprocally protected, as well as the people who find it so sacred. I located a personal thread where one western climber detailed his experience with Tsé Bit’a’I, and it actually described how one may act with the reciprocity and reverence for both the native people and land that is so scarce today, while still recreationally enjoying the act of climbing. While admiring Shiprock from afar, he wrote that a Navajo man approached him and asked if he wanted to climb the tower. This was a highly respected Navajo politician who owned a “grazing permit” to the land around Shiprock, meaning he could grant them permission to legally climb the monolith - though climbing Shiprock was and still is illegal, the Navajo man explained that parties may scale the faces with permission from local landowners. So after gaining the blessing of the man to climb Tsé Bit’a’í, the climber returned the gesture by volunteering days towards cleaning up graffiti and broken bottles around the base of Shiprock, and gifted the landowner “five cans of beans, a can of motor oil (so he could start his generator and power his television), and $20 to let him drive to Flagstaff, Arizona to pick up his four children who would spend the summer with him7.”
Signs posted on the border of Shiprock discourage desecration of the land. Photo courtesy Steve Lewis/The Daily Times.
Though this westerner’s physical goals were not explained, his actions proved intentions of respecting the Navajo traditions, their land, and the rock itself, despite no background in understanding the Dine customs and lifeways. These reciprocal actions reject the ego-centric and respect-less way of interacting with the world which caused the widespread closure of Tsé Bit’a’í. Consideration for other entities is essential for for the Navajo, for spirits and traditions, and the land to continue their lives together – a shift towards mindfulness and a recognition of being beyond the self. A climber on another popular forum about Shiprock stated it well: “Some people… have suggested showing due respect to the Navajos. Great advice, but shouldn't we show respect everywhere we climb8?” Tsé Bit’a’í is but one of many sacred formations which orient the Dine towards a way of being. And though I feel more peaceful knowing I can distance myself from more intense horrors of environmental disrespect by greeting the earth and the people on it with reciprocal kindness and dignity, I think it best that I waive my impact on Tsé Bit’a’í for now. Considering the deep spiritual intimacy that the Navajo practice with this rock, I can climb up, more intentionally, on a different story that calls more fully to my soul.
Works Cited 1) Share, Dr. Jack B. “Shiprock, NM.” EPOD, Universities Space Research Association, 15 Sept. 2012, epod.usra.edu/blog/2012/09/shiprock-new-mexico.html. 2) Gordon, Todd and Dogtown. “Shiprock Climbing History.” SuperTopo, SuperTopo LLC, 2009, http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/783372/Shiprock-Climbing-History. 3) Wyman, Leland Clifton, and Berard Haile. Blessingway. University of Arizona Press, 2017. 4) Navajo Traditional Teachings. “Traditional Navajo View on Death and Grieving.” Youtube. Brown, Wally. Oct 8, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1muGlca1ibI. 5) MacPherson, Robert S. Sacred Land, Sacred View: Navajo Perceptions of the Four Corners Region. Brigham Young Univ., 1995. 6) Wayfarer, Wild. “The Edge of Value.” Medium, 7 Dec. 2016, https://medium.com/@Wildwayfarer/reverence-for-the-land-4676c753611d. 7) Burns, Cameron M. The American Alpine Club, 1995, http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12199506600/Shiprocks-East-Face. 8) “Shiprock Info?.” Mountain Project, Recreational Equipment, Inc, https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/105806111/shiprock-info.