THE M A G A Z I N E - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

\r w-kite man!"
AUGUST, 1941
Typical summer hogan o\ the Navajo who dwell in the
Redrock country.
in Navajoland! We Navajo call it,
tse gahxvoots'onih, the perforated
rock."
Kabizih valley was not unknown to
me. I had been there the summer before.
Hastin Ts'osih's tip was kept in
mind. When I started writing for
DESERT in 1938, one of my first
planned projects was to locate the arch,
and write the story. Circumstances
made it impossible for me to make
the trip until late in the fall of 1940.
In planning the trip with Elliott
Sawyer, a member of the northern division
of the Sierra Club of California,
we first searched for references pertaining
to the arch. Nothing was located.
Old-timers along the San Juan
river were questioned. A few had heard
of the arch, but none had seen it.
It was a brisk, steel-blue morning
when we crossed the San Juan river at
Shiprock, New Mexico. Cakes of dirty
ice jostled each other and swirled in the
muddy whirlpools that forever twist
and gurgle under the bridge. Heading
south, we traveled seven miles over the
newly-paved surface of Highway 666.
Buff-colored Table mesa was a giant
block against the horizon, and somewhere
in the lighting sky, lay Gallup,
New Mexico.
In the west, Shiprock pinnacle
seemed to sail across the mauve colored
plains like a giant clipper. With her
main massif silhouetted against the
deep-blue sky, her sails were laced with
the gleaming brightness of the early
morning sun.
Beyond, lay the "redrock country,"
a deep crescent in the sky between the
snow-capped heights of the Lukachukai
and Carrizo mountains. Our course
lay that way—over a rutted, but graded
road. Keep off this in wet weather!
After 12 miles was traveled, we
passed through a natural gap in the
great malpais trapdike that extends
south from Shiprock pinnacle. With
its square blocks and straight sides, the
dike looks man-made. But upon closer
inspection, it becomes one of the more
spectacular works of Mother Nature.
Immediately after crossing the New
Mexico-Arizona state line, 21 miles
west of the highway, we made a sharp
dip to cross the running Redrock wash.
Pulling up from the wash bottom to the
flat on the other side, we came to Carlos
Stalworthy's rock and mud trading
post at Redrock, Arizona.
After passing the time of day with
Carlos, we made a deal with a young
Navajo lounging around the store.
Being a native of the region, Ben could
guide us to tse gahivoots'onih. Carrying
a lunch of tinned meat and a loaf
of bread, we started west again.
The twisting road wound through a
rough and broken country. In front of
us we could see a large cove cutting
deeply into an irregular barrier of
deep-red rock. The white men call this
the Cove, but the Navajo call it, Kabizih,
barrel cactus (Bisnaga sp.).
They took the name from a low knoll
in the valley where this species once
flourished.
Just before we reached the Cove
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