Skywalk between mountains
The first rays of the sun turn up towering shadows in red-hot sandstone rocks that rise like needles into the sky. The day is awakened in the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which stretches from Arizona to Utah. Some tourists are already awake and enjoy the morning sunrise in the middle of one of the most famous landscapes of the USA. John Wayne shot and rode here for several Westerners.
Harry Nez wears a cowboy hat on his full gray hair and looks into the rising sun: "I enjoy this miracle almost every morning." Then, with his outstretched left arm, he slowly turns around his own axis and says, "All this belongs to my people." He means not only Monument Valley, but the entire Navajo Nation Reservation.
Information signs on the roadside inform tourists on a round trip that they are in a reserve. More than 300 Indian Reservations are available between California and Florida. They are of course not fenced. All Native Americans, descendants of the Native Americans, have a US passport. They speak English as a matter of course and can live where they want. Not nearly all of the nearly 350,000 Navajo who call themselves Diné live in the reserve, explains Harry Nez.
The vehicles of the tourists turn up this morning in Monument Valley powerful dust. On the marked main route, they can curve through the semi-desert without any guide between rock walls and peaks. The park entrance with one car and up to four people costs 20 US dollars. The most popular photomotiv: West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte and Merrick Butte. At a 90-degree angle, the three table mountains rise spectacularly from the sand. At one point, the Navajo asks to lay down beside him on a stone slab. Looking upwards towards the rocky vault, which looks like an eagle's head. Through a small hole it radiates sky-blue - the eye of the eagle.
Two miles further, sheep graze in front of a steep cliff wall. Between bushes are a few flat, simple houses of wood and stone. A few hundred Indians live in Monument Valley, a few in traditional Hogans. Such a dome is windowless, built of tree trunks and clay, with sand floor, entrance towards the sunrise. Eula, end 20, sells paintings, photos, wall carpets, arrowheads and jewelery. "Tourism helps us, some visitors are empathetic, know what our ancestors did," she says
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