I first met Marshall Tome when he came to the Chinle Boarding School to interview some of the staff for a story he wanted to write for the Navajo Times, one of the few independent native newspapers in the country.

Marshall spoke English flawlessly, without a trace of the Navajo accent that I had grown accustomed to hearing among my students and my friends—an accent that had crept into my own speech unintentionally.

After the interview, Marshall said that he wanted to get together and talk some more. He asked for my telephone number. He was not shy. Marshall pursued me with a surprising persistence. At 50, he was more than twice my age.

After several engaging telephone conversations, I agreed to meet him for lunch.

Marshall lived in Window Rock, Arizona, capital of the Navajo Nation. He was an official in the tribal government of Chairman Peter MacDonald, while also running the Navajo Times newspaper. He drove all the way from Window Rock to Chinle to have lunch with me. We ate red chili stew and fry bread at Fleming Begay’s Restaurant, the local teacher hangout and the only restaurant in town. At my urging Marshall told me about his life.

Having served in World War II, Marshall took advantage of the GI bill that paid for his college education. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism. Shortly thereafter, he married a white woman. They adopted two native children, Deswood and Desbah. His wife eventually left him and their two children and returned to her home in the Midwest.

After that first encounter, many more lunches followed. I willingly let myself be pulled into Marshall’s orbit, but I made certain that he knew that I was not cut out to be his wife or mother of his children. I was too young and wanted to explore the world. I reminded him that I had already experienced marriage and divorce while in college.

One day Marshall asked me if I would like to meet his parents. In white culture, an invitation to meet the parents usually means that the relationship has become more serious. Since Marshall navigated both cultures with ease, I couldn’t tell if his question had any extra meaning attached to it. My curiosity about his parents overruled any concern about getting too serious.

The next weekend we drove to a vast expanse of stunningly beautiful land called Red Rock—eventually renamed Red Valley—located just inside the Arizona border. The nearest town was Shiprock, New Mexico. Although the town was only 30 miles away, it took over an hour by pickup truck to get to his parents’ house because of the deeply rutted dirt road that stretched for miles after leaving the paved highway.

Marshall’s 87-year-old father, Lee Tome, was tall and slim, with perfect posture, and still handsome. He had been a councilman for the tribe for many years when he was younger. Marshall’s mother, Virginia Tome, was not exactly sure of her age. Marshall guessed that she was in her early eighties. Both of his parents still rode horses and engaged in all the heavy labor demanded of them by their rustic lifestyle.

One of their sons, Morris, lived with them in their log cabin. Morris had no idea how old he was, but I guessed that he was around sixty. Marshall said that he had left home when he was twenty to work in California and Idaho picking potatoes, irrigating farmland, and doing other kinds of migrant work. Over time he developed a drinking problem, got very run down, and then became sick with tuberculosis and had to go to a sanitarium in Albuquerque. He returned home four years later to help his parents with their livestock. Marshall said that Morris had never been to school and only knew a few words of English. He rarely spoke at all.

Virginia and Lee Tome lived in a magnificent part of the Navajo Nation, near the foot of Shiprock, a soaring red rock formation created by volcanic activity. Rows of black boulders, spewed out in ancient times, stretched out for miles, surrounded by an ocean of treeless desert. The Lukachukai and Carrizo Mountains loomed in the near distance, while the snow-covered La Plata Mountains presided majestically far to the northeast in Colorado.

Brilliant blue sky stretched to infinity. The desert air smelled intoxicating with pungent and purifying scents of sagebrush. Smoke from burning piñon pine and cedar in the wood stove smelled like incense.

Only a handful of families lived with their livestock in this pristine and sparsely inhabited land. The remoteness of the area made access difficult on the rutted dirt road that went on for miles.

From what I could see, life in the Red Rock area had probably not changed much from what it must have been like in the late 1800’s—rugged, simple, and in close harmony with the land. During my first visit, I felt such a powerful attraction to that land that I vowed to myself that I would find a way to live there someday.

Marshall was pleased that I took such a liking to his ancestral home. At my request, we returned to Red Rock three or four more times to visit his family. I enjoyed exploring the area. I hiked among the rock formations, drove to the Red Rock Trading Post and talked with the trader about his life serving the Navajo people in the area. I rode horseback with Marshall’s young children, Desbah and Deswood, who joined us on a couple of the visits.

On one of the visits, I counted 597 sheep and goats in the corral. Lee Tome’s livestock also included a herd of cows and a few horses. By traditional Navajo standards, Lee Tome was considered a wealthy man. Marshall said that at one time his father owned well over one thousand sheep and goats, but had to sell half of his herd because of the government’s concerns about over-grazing.

I tried having a conversation with Virginia and Lee Tome in Navajo but I ran out of things to say after about ten minutes of asking basic questions like “What are the names of your dogs? How many children do you have? How many sheep? How many goats? Do you have cows? How far away is the trading post? Where do you get your water from?” I also said that their land was beautiful and I thanked them for the food they gave me to eat. And I said that I liked their horses. They laughed while I struggled to continue the conversation. They spoke only a few words of heavily accented English like “ships” for sheep and “coos” for cows and “wabie” for water. After I ran out of things to say in Navajo, we didn’t speak at all and just sat together in a timeless state of silence.

Seeing my eagerness to learn more about Navajo language and culture, Marshall suggested that I spend time living with his parents to truly immerse myself in traditional life and become more conversant in Navajo. I thought about his suggestion, imagining myself herding sheep. It sounded like a great idea.

Marshall told his family about my desire to herd sheep and get a close up view of traditional Navajo life. His parents sat in silence for a few long moments and then both of them burst out laughing at the same time. When they realized that Marshall spoke in earnest, they began discussing among themselves the unusual request. Marshall told me that they needed time to think about it.

­­Morris was the family’s sheepherder. A few weeks after Marshall talked to his parents about his white schoolteacher friend wanting to herd sheep, Morris decided to retire from sheepherding and agreed to give me his job. His parents offered to pay me $100 a month, along with some old Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry, in exchange for herding their 597 sheep and goats.

By the time the school year ended, I had made up my mind not to return that summer to the University of Northern Arizona to complete my master’s degree in bilingual and bicultural education, as previously planned. Instead, I decided to become a sheepherder in Red Rock, Arizona.

My colleagues at the boarding school thought I must have lost my mind and grilled me with questions. “Why in the world do you want to spend the summer herding sheep in the middle of nowhere? Why don’t you want to complete your master’s degree—especially since the government offered to pay for all your expenses?”

In contrast to the reaction of my colleagues, my Navajo friends, along with the students in my class, found the whole idea humorous and intriguing. I thought it would be a brilliant way to spend the summer while becoming more conversant in Navajo and experiencing traditional Navajo life from the inside—and not just inside a classroom at the University of Northern Arizona.

When school ended the last week in May, I stuffed my backpack with a few belongings and drove off to begin my new life in a place outside of time.