The Navajo Country imprinted
me a long time ago. In 1939, without knowing that we were violating
something sacred, three friends and I made the first ascent of
Shiprock. It took months of planning and four days of climbing,
none more enjoyable than the third day. As it ended we bivouacked
not far below the summit and looked out over the desert as the
shadow of the peak reached east and died, to let campfires twinkle
under the stars -- scores of campfires, scattered over the arid
vastness we had thought empty. I found myself feeling an empathy
I had never felt before. Who was around that fire, the other
fires, the farthest one? What had the winds told them that day,
the vast sky, the sacred mountains? What tradition, being understood
and enjoyed around each fire, had kept these people so well in
touch with their land for so long? . . .
I hope you are pleased with what happens when what Willa Cather
saw in a sky is coupled with what Philip Hyde saw; when the mountains
lit with their own inner glow in the Navajo creation myth are
juxtaposed with the terrain the myth was created in . . .
There are now laws in various lands,
including the Navajo Reservation, to protect artifacts from careless
disturbance, from the idle collector of things. We would like
to think that what this book has to say will lead to equal protection
for the land, and for the beauty of things alive on the land,
that gave grace to the lives of the ancient people to whom the
Navajo wildlands were, as they are now, beautiful indeed.
David
Brower
Executive
Director, Sierra Club
New York City, September
28, 1967