The mouth of the canyon is wide with a wet, sandy bottom. Tracks from horse hooves mingle with the deep imprints of truck tires and a faint set of ruts from wagon wheels, evidence of the comings and goings of life in the canyon. I can’t resist taking off my shoes and adding my own set of tracks to the others. The cool, wet sand and water squeeze through my toes.

It’s Sunday, December 5th, 1971, a good day to explore the canyon. Since arriving in the Navajo Nation a couple months ago to teach at the boarding school, I’ve been roaming around Canyon de Chelly at every opportunity and at various times of day. Sometimes I explore by myself; other times I’m with my Navajo friends, on foot or on horseback.

A few weeks ago I was invited to the home of Billy Begay, one of my students whose family lives in a hogan next to Spider Rock, home of the mythic Spider Woman who taught the Navajo how to weave. The tall red sandstone spire looms hundreds of feet into the sky from the bottom of the canyon where Canyon del Muerto and Canyon de Chelly merge. We left my 4-wheel Bronco parked at the rim of the canyon and hiked about three miles down a steep, narrow path to get to Billy’s hogan.

Billy’s family welcomed me with shy smiles and a plate of Jiffy peanut butter sandwiches made with Wonder White bread and washed down with warm coke. After a long stretch of awkward silence, I tried out a few phrases of Navajo I had learned from my students. My attempt to speak their language instantly broke the shyness barrier. Everyone in the family smiled with delight and surprise. They began making jokes with me, most of which I didn’t understand but I enjoyed seeing how much they laughed at my efforts.

After lunch, Billy beckoned me to join him outside. Next to the hogan stood a makeshift horse corral. The horses acted jumpy, but we managed to get the rope bridles onto their heads and lead them out of the corral. We spent the rest of the day outside with Billy’s two brothers and a sister, racing our horses bareback, laughing and screeching with pleasure—a world away from the kind of restrained English-style horseback riding I did as a young girl at summer camp in New England.

A sudden cloudburst cut short our exuberance. Within seconds little rivulets of water flowed in braided channels down the canyon at a fast clip, a flash flood in the making. We galloped back to the hogan, jumped off our horses and ran inside soaking wet and shivering.

Before we had a chance to dry our clothes by the woodstove, we heard a piercing scream. Billy said it was Chee, (“Red”) the horse I had ridden. We ran outside toward the screams and saw Chee stuck in quicksand up to his belly. The chestnut horse snorted and flailed his head around. His eyes were wide with a look of terror. Billy grabbed a coiled rope hanging on the outside wall of the hogan, lassoed the panicked horse, and then tied the other end of the rope to the pickup truck. His father drove the truck forward an inch at a time, gently pulling the gelding out of the mud. The exhausted but grateful horse nuzzled Billy and his father and allowed me to throw my arms around his neck for a few seconds before turning and galloping back to the corral.

We ended the day sitting around the woodstove eating fry bread and mutton stew and telling stories, none of which I understood entirely, but was still able to get a general sense of what was going on.

Night came quickly, making a return up the long steep path risky. Billy’s mother insisted I stay the night in their hogan, in one of the two metal army cots they owned. I reluctantly agreed, feeling uncomfortable knowing the children had to sleep bundled up in blankets on the floor.

Today I’m in the canyon all by myself. It’s early morning. The air is clean and delicious with a hint of sage and juniper. The canyon is starting to come alive with shapes and colors as the light of dawn comes flooding over the bottomland. Welling up from within, I feel the excitement of being alive, of being a witness to this timeless landscape of ancient rock formations.

My Navajo friends have taught me everything I know about the canyon, including how it got its name. The Navajo word for canyon is tsegi (TSAY-ih). It literally means “inside the rock.” When Spanish soldiers intruded into this hidden Navajo enclave—the first non-Indians to enter the canyon—they asked the name of the place they had discovered. The foreign sound of the word, tsegi, morphed into “chayee” in the mouths of the Spaniards. The eventual spelling became Canyon de Chelly, which would directly translate as Canyon of Canyon. Indeed, it is the canyon of all canyons.

Over 2000 years ago, this canyon was first inhabited by people who built their homes high in the cliffs, enclosing caves with stacked rocks, and leaving spaces for doorways and windows in the stone walls. The heights provided safety from enemies and predators, and the fertile ground below gave them rich farmland. These people, known to the Navajo as Anasazi–the Ancient Ones–lived for over 13 centuries.

And then they disappeared.

Navajos tell me that drought drove the Anasazi to the Rio Grande where they became the Pueblo people. Years later a few of them drifted back and taught the Navajo people—the new occupants of the canyon—how to farm corn, beans, melons and squash.

My friends told me that Navajo life in the canyon went uninterrupted for generations until a fateful day in 1863. That day began as all others, but ended like none before. The people heard the thundering and pounding of horses splashing through the water, carrying the U.S. Army soldiers led by Kit Carson. The soldiers burned down hogans, destroyed crops and peach orchards, killed the sheep, and left the people without a source of food. The mounted brigade thundered away, taking with them the simple life that had supported the Navajo for generations. Soon after the attack, with food scarce, many were half starved and not prepared for what came next.

The soldiers rounded up every Navajo they could find and marched them to Ft. Sumner, a desolate place in central New Mexico, now known as Bosque Redondo. Hundreds of captives died from cold and starvation on the forced death march. The sick were shot. The women were raped. Some of the younger captives were kidnaped and put into slavery. Navajo refer to this tragedy as the Long Walk, a walk that took them far away from their beloved canyon.

It wasn’t until 1868 that a treaty was signed between the Navajo and the U.S. government which allowed the survivors to return home and rebuild their shattered lives. I was told that at present there are about 100 families living and farming and raising sheep at the bottom of the canyon.

As I wander aimlessly through the canyon, I count over a dozen different flowering plants. The plants with bright yellow flowers catch my eye, their various shades of yellow in stunning contrast to the red earth around them. Shrubby evening primrose plants growing close to the ground have four large petals to greet the new day, soon to close as the sun rises in the sky. The traditional Navajo use this flower as a medicine in some of their ceremonies.

Not far away, the bright yellow petals of the Sego Lily look like a series of wide-opened mouths, singing the song of life at the top of their lungs. These foot-high plants grow from a bulb that the Navajo in former times dug up, peeled, and ate raw.

At the bottom of a towering cliff in front of me, the sharp leaves of a yucca plant cut into the air like two-foot long bayonets. They are apt sentinels, standing guard over the beautiful, white bulbous blossoms that hang from a tall shoot rising above them. On field trips into the canyon, the kids in my class have shown me how soap and shampoo are made from the yucca root and are used for cleansing in the traditional ceremonies.

A grove of cottonwood trees set back a few feet from the water invites me to lie under the shade of their branches. Although it’s early in the morning and I’m not yet in need of shade, I accept the hospitality they offer. Lying on the ground, I feel the calming embrace of the earth. There is such stillness at this early hour; I hear a soft ringing in my head, a vibration, and wonder if it’s the vibration of life itself.

I pull out my diary from my back pack, but then put it down on the ground, not wanting to miss a second of the life around me. I can write about it later.

The soothing sea of almost complete silence ends abruptly when the earth vibrates with the rhythmic thundering of horse hooves and sounds of splashing water. Is this what the people heard when Kit Carson and his soldiers swept through the canyon?

Canyon de Chelly is a favorite hangout for wild horses whose ancestors date back to the Spanish invaders. But these horses are without riders. They’re roaming freely.

The air fills with their smells, their snorts and whinnies. The canyon comes alive with their wild energy and seems to shout out in celebration. They are running in my direction along the edge of the water, coming ever closer.

Lying on the ground, my heart races as I imagine them galloping right over me, trampling me into the sand. The horses stop suddenly a few yards in front of where I am lying on the ground among the young cottonwood trees, my head propped up on my hand, motionless and barely breathing.

Although I am in full view of them, they appear to neither see me nor smell me. As slowly and quietly as I can, I rise to a sitting position and marvel at the primordial scene unfolding in front of me, one that is both terrifying and magnificent. These are certainly feral horses. Their bodies show no evidence of branding. The buckskin stallion with black mane and tail begins to make a ruckus, snorting, stomping his hooves and scraping his right front hoof repeatedly in the dirt while his head bobs up and down. He raises his massive male body into the air, his penis fully outside its sheath, and falls onto the back of one of the mares. The white mare screams out during the mating. Her screams echo, bouncing off the canyon walls. The stallion dismounts the mare, and as quickly they arrived, the herd of horses gallops away, up the river.

Stunned, I replay the scene over in my mind as I sit spellbound on the ground under the cottonwood trees. I look up at the steep walls of this canyon of all canyons, and think of how long it has been a silent witness to the beginnings and endings of life, and how much life has flowed “inside the rock.” And here I am, a tiny speck in this timeless tapestry, a speck full of awe and gratitude.