Off Grid Living in a Hogan
An Incredibly Rare Glimpse of Life Within the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Upon my arrival to Monument Valley, my friend Verna who lives within the park told me to meet her at Rain God Mesa just around the corner from John Ford’s Point past the turn off for Camel Butte. I quickly glanced at my map with all the different buttes and flats to get my bearings. The tribal police looked over my paperwork, confirmed I had permission to enter and let me pass.
For a fee, visitors are allowed onto the tribal land but only on the 17-mile loop drive, no going off the road, not even for a photo. However, I was headed to the backcountry, an area where only 10 families live, families of the same lineage who have inhabited this land for generations. Should those families ever choose to move off the sacred land, they would no longer be allowed to move back on it.
I felt a thrill knowing I was visiting a place so few had seen, an area where many were never allowed to wander. It was an honor that I was somehow fortunate enough to know Verna and be given such an incredible opportunity.
As I got to where I thought I was supposed to be, I pulled over to wait. Assuming my navigation skills had not failed me, I knew Verna would spot me from her hogan and be there shortly to show me the rest of the way. Like clockwork, she drove up in her big old suburban, waving excitedly, greeting me with that big beautiful smile and sparkle in her eyes.
She got out for a quick hug then told me to follow her. I got back in my rental as her truck kicked up dust behind it and she quickly veered off the main road. I was now entering the part of the park that tourists like me rarely see. I could actually feel the energy shift and something awaken deep inside my soul as we left behind the trail to enter the heart of the tribal land on a road less traveled.
After a short while, off in the distance, I could see two female hogans coming into sight.
They were built in a distinct round shape which Verna later explained is like a mother’s womb and they sat next to a much smaller triangular shaped male hogan, a wooden summer shade structure behind them and a tool shed.
There was an outhouse off to the side as we continued on to a single hogan in what appeared to be perfect condition with smooth red mud walls and two wooden Adirondack chairs out front, a woven Pendleton blanket hanging in its doorway. This was the hogan Verna lives in and would be serving as my new home away from home.
These hogans had been passed down by Verna’s grandmother to her mother and now to her. Navajo are a matriarchal society in which hogans are passed down the female line, and they would one day belong to Verna’s daughter.
As I got out of my car and walked toward this incredible structure, I could see the crimson colored sandstone buttes in the distance. The sun was low in the afternoon sky and the clouds were drifting past on the breath of the wind, the only sound for miles. It was approaching golden hour and the valley was lit up in the most breathtaking light.
Verna took me inside to show me around her beautiful yet incredibly humble home. The floors were dirt and the smell of fresh sweet iron rich soil filled the air as she had just watered the ground to keep the dust down for my arrival.
Off to the right were shelves with a propane camping stove, dishes and water jugs. Straight ahead was a thick Navajo sheep rug laying on the ground, a weaving loom and a small bed with hand woven pillows and blankets in colorful Navajo design.
A picture hung above the bed – a painting her brother had made of their mother in her younger years weaving at a wooden loom, her black hair pulled neatly back from her face, dressed in multiple thick skirts which Verna explained the Navajo women often wear to help keep cool in the hot afternoon sun while herding sheep, a concept that seemed a little counter intuitive to me yet somehow works.
The walls of the hogan were made of beautiful golden colored wood of nearby Junipers, their powerful scent lingering in the air.
There were nine posts built in a circular pattern that form the sidewall structure of the hogan while nine beams were interwoven to form its ceiling.
Using nine is significant in that each post and each beam represents one month of a woman’s pregnancy. In the middle of the room, stood a cast iron stove for burning wood, a pipe leading up from it to a hole in the ceiling to let out the exhaust. There were no windows, just the single door which always faces east to greet the morning sun.
As we talked, Verna pulled out some cedar and sweet grass, placed it atop the stove top and lit it on fire. A fragrant greeting for my arrival that was truly intoxicating.
We spent the early evening hours talking about what it is like living here, her family and her past. As the sun set, we found ourselves beneath an incredible canopy of stars, the moon not yet on the horizon.
I could clearly see the Milky Way starting in the westerly sky coming up over a butte off in the distance stretching across the top of the hogan as it made its way completely across the night sky. I’ve never seen the Milky Way so clearly.
She pointed out the stars, telling me the Navajo meaning behind the constellations, teaching me how the Navajo feel the sky is a reflection of the earth representing all that has happened and that they pray to the stationary north star as it represents the center of the cosmos and always stays true in position. As the air got cooler before the moon’s rising, we went inside where she lit a fire that warmed the hogan in a matter of minutes.
Verna began to sing for me in her native tongue in the most incredible voice, a moment that will forever be engrained in my memory. She sang four songs before pausing to explain to me that she always sings songs in fours. The number four permeates traditional Navajo or Diné culture and there is a great deal of symbolism associated with this number.
There are four directions (north, east, south, west) from which come the four winds, four seasons and four colors (black, white, red and yellow) associated with four sacred mountains (Hesperus Peak in the North , Blanca Peak in the East, Mt. Taylor in the South, and San Francisco Peak in the West). Medicine Wheels or Sacred Hoops are used for health and healing and they always embody four directions as well as Father Sky, Mother Earth and Spirit Tree. There are even four medicines – tobacco, sage, cedar and sweetgrass.
Verna also told me that night how the first crescent moon of October signifies the Navajo New Year and how my timing could not be more perfect. October is a very important month in her culture that signifies a shift in life and a time for reflection and change which was incredible seeing how this is exactly why I felt I needed to take this journey to see Verna in the first place. It is the end of harvest called “Ghaaji” which means “half” or “back to back” – a time of the separation of seasons when the yellow of warmer months stands back to back with the white of colder winter as if meeting halfway. It is time to start preparing for the winter hibernation when intergenerational families come together and gather inside the hogan for storytelling around a fire. You should have seen how Verna’s eyes sparkled as she told me about her grandmother’s winter stories of old.
As it got later into the night, Verna fixed me a cot and I got inside my sleeping bag, the smell of cedar still lingered in the air. She asked me if I would mind if she played music while we drifted off to sleep. I told her I didn’t and soon the sound of native chanting and rattles filled the room.
At first, I admit I thought I would never fall asleep to the beating of the drum, but it was strangely alluring. Almost mesmerizing. The sound somehow magically lulls you to sleep in a way most unexpected. It’s as if the rhythm prohibits the mind from wandering as you fall into a deeply hypnotic state, the worries of the world fading further and further away with every beat.
In the morning, I was greeted by sun light peering down inside the hogan, lighting up the room as it rose in the distance. Its beams of light cast shadows across the doorway for just a fraction of a moment as if welcoming us to a new day before quickly fading away. Verna got up first and began to make me Navajo tea with fresh honey I had brought her as a gift.
We sat outside in the cool brisk breeze of the warm morning air sipping the sweet warm brew.
Navajo tea is an herbal tea that the Navajo have been making for generations by brewing greenthread. The herbs are plucked by the stem keeping the roots intact. The seeds are then shaken out so they may return to the soil to continue the plant’s lifecycle before drying them.
As we sat sipping our tea in silence, I could hear the faint sound of a bell in the distance. I asked her what it was. She explained to me that most families living in the valley have flocks of sheep and each flock has a single two-horned male that leads the herd, a bell around its neck.
That sound was her sheep heading home. Sure enough, just moments later the flock came meandering by us not bothered in the least by our presence, grazing on shrubs, stopping for a drink. I was thrilled to see them wandering about freely in the wild.
I was even more thrilled when off in the distance, I could see what appeared to be wild horses roaming about as well. Verna explained to me that these were her neighbor’s horses, not wild and I was taken back how they just seem to roam about as if free.
It seems to me that the Navajo sense of ownership is quite different than what I am used to. Yes, the horses “belong” to different families and they do have corrals, but for the most part, they just run free on the land as if truly wild.
At one point during my trip, Verna’s nephew had corralled a few of their horses. I wandered over for a closer look but unlike most horses I was used to, they moved quickly away from me instead of poking their head out wanting to be pet. You could see they were wild in their eyes, not used to people coming so close. I felt blessed when a large white beauty came curiously over toward me allowing me to actually touch her.
It was quite an incredible moment for as I sat with her, a young colt appeared coming toward us. He began to run freely around me outside the corral, prancing about wildly. I knew he was the colt Verna had told me about whose mom had disappeared leaving him wandering around the area alone. He was absolutely beautiful and quite intrigued by me. He kept coming over toward me almost close enough to touch then quickly jerk his head back wildly, run away a few hundred yards and prance about again shaking his head up and down at me. After a bit, a stallion followed by a few mares put an end to the fun and started getting annoyed with me, whisking the little colt away.
That afternoon, I asked Verna more about her life and being raised in traditional Navajo culture. She told me many stories and then pulled out her medicine box to teach me about its contents. Verna is part of the NAC, the Native American Church. She explained that you can tell if a family is a member of NAC because they will usually have a tee pee stand out in front of their home with tee pee poles similar to the one Verna has. The medicine box is something that she takes with her for NAC ceremonies. Ceremonies are not like church where you go every Sunday. Rather, they are held when someone needs prayers, healing or for other occasions. Inside the box are things she uses for these ceremonies. She had a bag of peyote for clearing your mind and visions. During ceremonies you ingest peyote to induce an altered state of consciousness and then sit up all night along the wall of the hogan or the sides of a tee pee from dusk until dawn often participating in singing, drumming and prayer.
Inside the box with the peyote was a beautiful turquoise necklace with red and white coral stone that once belonged to Verna’s grandmother, a sheep herder and herbalist who Verna was extremely close to. This is a necklace she wears during ceremonies. The red symbolizes Mother Earth, the turquoise represents Father Sky.
The box also contained quite a few feathers which signify a connection between the person who owns the feather, the bird it came from and the creator. The waterfowl and Macaw feathers inside the box will be passed on one day to her daughter as they carry female energy while the hawk feathers she has will go to her son. Everything in Navajo culture is balanced between the male and female much like yin and yang.
During my visit, Verna also took me around the back country showing me ancient petroglyphs and extremely interesting geological formations that are typically not seen by tourists like me. We were allowed to wander freely about wherever she felt like taking me.
The ruins and petroglyphs here are believed to be Anasazi, a word that means “ancient ones” in Navajo The Anasazi lived in the Four Corners region and Monument Valley from about 500 to 1,500 AD.
One of the most impressive ruins the Anasazi left behind is Key Hole Ruin, a small cliff dwelling in an alcove on a mesa overlooking the valley that is almost completely intact. It is believed that its unique location may have been chosen to prevent enemies from penetrating its structure.
After a bit, we ended up running back into Verna’s herd of sheep wandering too close to the neighbor. So, I got a very quick lesson on herding them toward home and getting them back on track. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds either.
Those stubborn little guys kept trying to head sideways to find a path around me, but we held strong aided by Verna’s herding dogs who had been snoozing before we arrived on scene. We just kept waving at the sheep, clapping our hands and making noise to usher them the right direction.
I was so blessed for this time with her not only because she gave me such a rare glimpse into her life and the Navajo culture, but also because Verna has been away attending college and just happened to be home for a weekend when she could invite me that worked for my schedule.
Native American college tuition is free for those who can prove their lineage, but students pay for housing, food, student fees and supplies, and there are only three campuses located in Durango, Colorado, Alaska and Kansas.
Verna is currently earning her business degree sleeping in the back of her Suburban in a Walmart parking lot in Durango, Colorado so she can learn how to run a business. Her goal when she graduates is to open her two other female hogans as a retreat to bring in much needed money for her family and to help keep her Navajo traditions alive by teaching them to others. You see, many of the younger generation are not interested in the lifestyle Verna leads, preferring technology and big city life to the simplicity and difficulties of living off grid in a hogan on the tribal land. As a result, her native language and much of her way of life are being lost and forgotten. This is a huge tragedy.
If you are interested in experiencing life in a hogan like I did, Verna is hoping to open her retreat in 2023, doing test runs with close friends to get feed back in 2022. Her goal is to teach others her traditions and let them experience her lifestyle.
You can contact her on Instagram @verna.arizona or by email at moneyvalley@gmail.com. You can also contact me and I can help put you in touch with her.
A huge heartfelt thanks to Verna for being such an incredible, dear friend and sharing her traditions with me. Ya' at' eeh!
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