The End is in Sight

I’m sitting for my last evening in the volunteer room/church room at Zuni school, and with the windows open we hear lots of dogs barking, fireworks, and a turkey gobbling. I can see lightning in the distance, but I don’t think we’ll get the rain here. Earlier we heard drumming because the ceremonial dancing continued today.

We did a lot of driving again today to see Canyon de Chelly National Monument. It’s a fair distance from Zuni, but it’s quite beautiful. Like the Grand Canyon, only smaller, and free. Most visitors take the 2 rim roads and stop at the overlooks. That’s how we did it. We didn’t hit every overlook, but we saw a number of them.

There are two other options. One is a 2.5 mile hike to see a specific portion of the canyon. You are in direct sunlight the entire hike, and today it hit about 92 degrees, so that plan was vetoed by a couple of our passengers. The only other way to go into the canyon, other than the one hiking trail, is to be part of a tour that is officially permitted. While a jeep tour sounded fun, it would also be expensive and time-consuming, so we basically paid half a tank of gas to see the sights.

You drive in a ways to most of the overlooks, and then you walk down paths to see them. You can see small cliff dwellings, fantastic rock formations, and a gorgeous red rock canyon with green farm fields flourishing at the bottom. The fields belong to about 40 families who live in the canyon, since the canyon is actually owned by the Navajo Nation. It is definitely worth visiting if you are in the area. Though parents might like to know that it’s entirely possible to just walk off the edge—sheer drops everywhere. At one point I walked away from an overlook to the sound of my daughter saying “Mom! Can I just crawl up to the edge to look over? Dad would let me. Mom!” I passed an older couple, and I asked them to scrape her off the rocks when they came back up. The man said, “Oh, if you give me quarter I’ll push her off for you.” Then he said “how long have you been on vacation?”

This man knows what he is talking about. Most of our travelers have hit a wall. It is the last touring day of the trip. We have been together for 10 days. As with most travels, when you know you are getting close to the end of the trip, the bedding gets less comfortable, the car starts to feel tighter, and the company is ready for socializing with more people. We are getting ready for the long ride home.

Truly, I could’ve mapped out the way this would go before we left home. First it’s all very exciting. Then after a couple of days, reality sinks in that you have a long time together ahead of you, and maybe that will be claustrophobic. Then you get over that and just really enjoy each other. But when the end draws near, you suddenly begin looking forward to home and more space. That’s how it is on youth group service trips, and that’s about what I expected for this too. These girls have amazed me with their willingness to do whatever’s on the docket and to put up with someone else’s mom setting the schedule. It’s been a treat for me to get to know them in a different way.

Natalie and I took a little walk tonight just to see a bit more of Zuni. We walked past the Catholic K-8 school, which also looks very nice. Apparently a new priest last year dove into making some needed repairs. It also seems, from what I can find online, that he abruptly abandoned his post and went back to his home country of India, and there have been some questions about how he was paying for the remodeling. Very unfortunate for the pueblo, since they can use all the educational help they can get.

Across the street from the Catholic school is the public high school. A web site I found says there are only 68 students enrolled. I can hardly believe that is the case, but I have no way of checking the accuracy at this time. On the other hand, the campus is a mess—lots of boarded up rooms. There is obviously a lack of funding for the physical campus. There’s no way for me to know whether that’s a poverty issue, a U.S. vs. Zuni issue, or what.

The dancers were out again, and they were moving from one location to another, so we watched them walk down the road, a bit like a parade, with people standing outside their homes to watch and a huge line of cars following them. We made sure to keep our distance so that we wouldn’t be intrusive.

It’s been a beautiful opportunity to learn more about New Mexico, more about Native American life, more about what God is doing through both our church and the body of Christ at large, and more about each other.