1/19/2024 0 Comments Gouldings lodge monument valleyWe started a campfire, ate a dinner of steak and potatoes and turned in for the night. It was dark by the time we reached the summit, and we were too tired to care about the lack of a view. Out of breath, he added: “This has got to be my last time.” Once every five years or so,” he said with a laugh. Finally, after about an hour, the ascent eased. Lizards gazed at us, then skittered into shadowy cracks. We began picking our way up the rippling sandstone escarpment, now turning red in the afternoon sun. Our campsite for the night loomed above us, a three-hour climb away. Leaving Lorenz’ pickup at the trail head, we slipped through a hole in a wire stock fence and followed a bone-dry riverbed framed by junipers to the mesa’s base. Now, joined by his brother Emmanuel, 29, we were going to camp overnight at Hunt’s Mesa, which, at 1,200 feet, is the tallest monolith on the valley’s southern rim. We had already visited his relatives, who still farm on the valley floor, and some little-known Anasazi ruins. In recent years, he has been guiding adventure travelers around the rez. Holiday, 40, wore cowboy boots, a black Stetson and a handcrafted silver belt buckle he grew up herding sheep on the Navajo reservation and still owns a ranch there. As Lorenz Holiday and I raised a cloud of red dust driving across the valley floor, we passed a wooden sign, “Warning: Trespassing Is Not Allowed.” Holiday, a lean, soft-spoken Navajo, nudged me and said, “Don’t worry, buddy, you’re with the right people now.” Only a Navajo can take an outsider off the 17-mile scenic loop road that runs through Monument Valley Tribal Park, 92,000 acres of majestic buttes, spires and rock arches straddling the Utah-Arizona border.
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