When I got to the valley about Navajo Mountain, the Navajos were moving back with their flocks of sheep, and there was renewed activity at the Three Springs where the small trading post was. My father and uncle were building a lodge and a corral, together with a bunkhouse and small cabins. A lot of people wanted to see Rainbow Bridge, it seemed. The road? Plenty of optimism there. We'll do a lot more work on it this year. Not only that but we're going to work the trail that leads to Rainbow Natural Bridge, make that better and shorter, too. We already had a guide for the "dudes," Homer Arnn. The March of Progress had reached out and took in Navajo Mountain!
That evening on my return, I climbed up on a slope, of the mountain and looked off across the valley to the east and south. The faint ribbon I could see plainly marked the "road of progress," and for the first time I had a feeling that it had come to stay.
To the east and south lay sixty-five miles of road over sand and hill, canyon and plateau. Far to the south, a wide dirt road meandered, the closest town was one hundred and sixty miles away. Yes, sir, things were looking up for the backcountry.
But the next morning, I woke to the pattering of rain on the roof of my cabin. All that day it rained, and when I ventured out once more, a lot of that road had run away again.
In the next few days I found out an incontrovertible fact about a road like the one we had made. Any part of it that runs away, you don't hunt it up and bring it back. You just go on and look for another place to put the road. It has to go a different way now, over ridge and through canyons. Some might call it changing a road, but by now I knew better.
You couldn't change this road, you just built it someplace else, maybe only a few feet from where the other one had been, and perhaps a mile or more. The road that ran away was gone for
And so the years have gone by, and countless times I have traveled to Navajo Mountain, but I am sure of one thing. Never in all that time have I gone over the same road. There has always been a part of it that was a new road. Some of it was always running away.
Not so very long ago, I made that trip again, in company with some curious people who had never been to Navajo Mountain before. On the way up, I regaled them with a collection of anecdotes about this first road to the mountain. But we had gone only about halfway before I had to stop in some embarrassment.
I didn't say a word, I just got out of the car and walked around here and there in an aimless sort of way. One of the learned gentlemen who was an artist and photographer of some note, came over to me after awhile.
"We must have missed the road back there aways," he said in an apologetic voice, "it doesn't seem to be ahead of us anymore." "I think you've got something there," I admitted, and stared blankly at the other two gentlemen who came up to us from the direction of the car.
"I hope we aren't lost," said one of these tactless gents. "But really, I thought you knew more about this road than anyone!"
"You won't believe me," I answered, "but I was never over this part of the road before in my life!"
"But," spluttered my questioner, "what happened to the road you helped to build up here?"
They began to look a little relieved. "Now, you take that road I helped to build. Shucks, I haven't seen it in years and years. Durn near all of it run plumb off someplace as soon as it got built. I know for sure we aren't in a mile of it anywhere along here - where it was, I mean.
"But don't you worry, we'll get back in the car and drive on around this hill and across that wash down there someplace; and over there up on those rocks along that ridge, we'll find some more road. One nice thing about this road, kind of independent, it is; never all runs off at the same time."
We got back into the car and started on. Sure, we found the road again, not exactly where I said it would be, but I hit it pretty close. My passengers sighed with relief, but I only grinned to myself. I was thinking about that old Navajo who had told us in the beginning what would happen to our road. Dead now these many years, but may he rest in Navajo Heaven. He had known what he was talking about, and I didn't care if he was smiling at me now, up there in his new home. I could grin, too, for I'd learned about the road that ran away!
