A Room the Size of a Canyon: Canyon Memories (3)

If a room has a floor, walls, and a ceiling, then Canyon de Chelly is a giant outdoor room. From above, you can see the canyon floor with spring-green vegetation, the tall cliff walls all around, and the sky as its ceiling:

In fact, there are probably several large “rooms” in the Canyon, each with its own unique characteristics:

My favorite “room” in the Canyon was right here, where a small group of us got to write, breathe, and play for a week. The green area was our very large living room:

This “shade hogan” was our dining room and kitchen:

Shade hogan

During rainy weather, a traditional hogan was a dry living room warmed by a wood stove. It was very much needed for the first three days; then the sun sent us outside. The hogan is a one-room dwelling built out of wood and earth:

Traditional hogan

Each of us had our own bedroom called a tent:

Tents under cottonwood trees

The shower stalls also were tiny little rooms that required a bag of sun-warmed water to be suspended above to serve as a shower:

Shower stalls

The toilet was an outhouse, one of a few square rooms in the neighborhood.

Now that I have shown you around the various rooms of our Canyon home, let’s take a look at the walls. How about striped wall paper with a horse motif?

Or colorful splashes of lichen serving as abstract art?

Or maybe, you’d prefer shelf walls with living vegetation?

with a bit more paint added?

There was plenty of room for everyone to spread out, either horizontally or vertically:

The floor was quite dusty, sometimes flat and covered with grasses:

sometimes a bit curvy and hard as rock:

The ceiling was the sky, always changing its colors and lighting. Sun and length of shadows were our timepiece.

This house of grasses, rocks, and wind, sky ceiling and cliff walls was full of sounds: the cawing of raven, the hoof beat of horses, the rustling of wind in the cottonwood trees, the chattering of cliff swallows, the call from the rim from someone who let us know they reached safely, a lullaby sung from a rock ledge. The sounds echoed back from the stone walls, reverberating, serenading us and inspired this poem:

Resting in the Peace of Wild Things*

There is a place inside of me
that opens wide
into meadows of grass and flower,
that grows tall to caress
the stony face of Mountain,
that snakes quietly
down the currents of River.

There is a place inside of me
that falls wide awake
with the scratchy cawing of Raven,
the plaintive moan of Cow,
the serenade of Cicada,
and a sudden rush of Wind
through the tree tops.

There is a place inside of me
that sweeps with the Wind
down the valley,
while he tussles butterfly wings,
while he crashes fiercely through the brush,
listening hard for anything
he might fling my way.

*Title borrowed from Wendell Berry

Thank you to Jeff of Jeff Sinon Photography and Seonaid of A Breath of Green Air for inspiring me to weave nature into this week’s Photo challenge: Room.

Advertisements