Conserving Solitude: Reflections on Sacred Landscapes

By Scott Thompson

The mountains are represented in my hogan through the main poles. In this way, my
home is a reflection of the mountains and the mountains are a reflection of my home.
They complement one another.

�John E. Salaybe, Jr., and Kathleen Manolescu

In June, 2005, Carolyn, a plump gregarious Hualapai woman, drove my wife Gail and I
northwest across the reservation from the tribal headquarters in Peach Springs, Arizona.
Carolyn's hair was short and black and streaked with gray and she spoke with those long,
lake-effect vowels from Chicago or Milwaukee, betraying a childhood off the reservation.

The van bumped through shallow canyons in the intense sunlight, across the baking
fringe of the Mohave Desert stippled with Joshua trees, and up hills quilted with sage�
brush and juniper, to the southern rim of Grand Canyon West. We chatted as the van
jostled along and as she spoke I heard the same tone of reverence and tenderness in her
voice whether she talked about the plants and hills in the desert or her grandchildren and
cousins.

Now I haven't met John Salaybe or Kathleen Manolescu, but I did find their magazine,
Leading the Way: Wisdom of the Navajo People, this past summer in a Mexican restau�
rant in Gallup, New Mexico. What they wrote about the Navajo spiritual paths resonates
with Carolyn: "...the mountains will extend their hand to me for protection, they will ad�
vocate protection for me, they will stand for me. Because of this, the mountains will al�
ways be in charge of my well-being when someone or something tries to harm me." ("Dine
bikeyah," Vol. 7, No. 6, June, 2009, p.2). The idea that the land itself can be a protector,
a guardian, is the way we think of trusted aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Thus the land
is the ancestors. They are the same.

- teaches us that growth economies are not always adaptable or self-correcting. Indeed,
University of New Mexico archeologist David E. Stuart describes a different and far more
troubling process:

"If archeology teaches us anything, it is.. .that the basic evolutionary rhythms of growth,
followed by complexity, come at a cost. Worldwide, the archeological record...is littered
with the consequences of this reality...

"In each of these ages, societies grew rapidly by focusing on hard work, efficiency, and
incremental (and occasionally explosive) innovation. Each and every one of these societ�
ies, perhaps hypnotized by their own power, made similar errors. Growth in numbers
was replaced by the rise of complexity, usually in the form of expensive infrastructure;
roads, bureaucracies, and luxuries...

"Thus, the larger and more complex a society, the less time it survives on earth un-
transformed by catastrophe that is, often as not, self-induced." (The Ancient Southwest:
Chaco Canyon, Bandelier, andMesa Verde, pp. 129-130).

As far as the amenities growth economy - the one that feeds off our national parks
and monuments - is concerned, consider the following passage from Jim Stiles' book
Brave New West: "An increased tax base in small rural communities rarely reduces in�
dividual tax burdens. The exact opposite is more likely to occur...According to the U.S.
Census Bureau, in St. George, Utah, for every $1.00 generated in tax revenue per hous�
ing unit, each house consumes $2.70 in municipal services...It's happening all over the
rural West, and that's because we never confront these changes until it's too late." (pp.
124-125). Yet time and again citizens in Stiles' hometown of Moab bemoaned the demise
of any development opportunity as "a lost opportunity to expand the tax base." (Ibid, p.
124). So when it comes to an economic subculture like the amenities industry Stuart's
comments seem eerily on target: as in past societies, people in small communities near
national parks and monuments often do not see that the light at the end of the tunnel of
growth may well be oncoming complexity and the enormous base costs that come with
it.

But the impact of the go-go amenities economy goes far beyond the various aspects of
complexity.

Note the very first sentence from Nimkin's Foreword: "With expansive natural beauty
and palpable cultural history, southeast Utah's national parks and monuments inspire
awe among more than a million visitors each year." Such an annual horde, however well
intentioned many of them may be, inexorably destroys the spiritual solitude that the wild-
ness of the land has given to us as the heart of our human identity; a solitude that is who
we are. At this level the land is more than an ecological system or a series of geological
features, however awesome or interesting. When we walk far enough into a huge stretch
of wild land, carrying only food, water, and the barest equipment, when we stay silent in
its midst long enough, we realize that the wildness of the land is like a guardian spirit, to
borrow from the Navajo spirituality of Salaybe and Manolescu.

In North America few people outside Native American cultures think in this way. But what anthropology has been discovering about the rise and fall of a host of societies suggests that
the people who make their dwellings and their lifestyles
a reflection of the sacredness of their lands may well be
the ones whose societies survive in the long run.

Here's how a recent anthropology textbook describes such a "worldview:" "...indig�
enous peoples live on a sacred landscape...the tie of kinship is extended to the animal
world and...the living world as well as the physical landscape." (Stein, Rebecca, and Stein,
Philip, The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft, p. 70).

In North America few people outside Native American cultures think in this way. But
what anthropology has been discovering about the rise and fall of a host of societies sug�
gests that the people who make their dwellings and their lifestyles a reflection of the sa�
credness of their lands may well be the ones whose societies survive in the long run.

Such a holistic and frankly loving relationship with the landscape is in jarring contrast
with the go-go economic growth that has swarmed many of our national parks and monu�
ments with for-profit adventure tours, upscale resorts, RVs, hordes of mountains bikes,
off-road vehicles, cars, SUVs, helicopters, and in adjacent towns a plethora of condomini�
ums, oversized luxury homes, motels, restaurants, and new residents with Brontosaurus-
sized carbon footprints.

As a cumulative, escalating phenomenon, all this buzzing, bloating, and crowding is the
opposite of a holistic reflection of the sacredness of the landscape. At best it is a cartoon
version.

There are of course a multitude of short-term (i.e., short-sighted) benefits to oiling the
raw beauty of the land into, let's see, a carnival site for adrenalin rushes, a scenic backdrop
for carbon-greedy luxury homes, and so on: new businesses thrive, jobs emerge, many
with decent pay, the tax base inflates, and local spending from tourism spirals upward.

And business boosters write paeans in praise of growth, as if there is no downside and
as if there will be no long-term consequences. An example is the report, Landscapes of
Opportunity, emitted by the National Parks Conservation Association in April, 2009.
Here is a bromide from the Foreword, written by David Nimkin, the Southwest Regional
Director:

"...times are changing and the parks are part of an emerging picture of greater stability
and slow-but-steady growth...This report offers valuable insight to fuel the ongoing pro�
cess of defining community aspirations and directing the course of growth and develop�
ment."

But does a linear pattern of escalating growth, even on a gross economic level, benefit
such communities over the long run? That so many otherwise insightful and compassion�
ate people believe that it does is evidence of an ideological coup of the first order by the
right wing. In this arena at least, it has driven critical thinking from the field.

Yet the social science of anthropology - to be precise, the sub-discipline of archeology

The land is who we are. Comprehending this while out in a vast landscape is an inef�
fable experience; as such it eludes description. Yet the experience is as real as sagebrush
and Cliff rose, and it is vital to know that such an immense human encounter awaits each
of us if we protect the solitude inherent in the wildness of the land. It is in this sense that
the land protects us from harm, as dutiful elders and ancestral traditions always have; at
least they did in indigenous cultures. The wildness of the land protects us from the ano-
mie and nihilism that hang like dark spider webs all over large, amorphous societies. And
from the cynicism, resentment, passivity, and fundamentalist religious species that crop
up as bleak compensations.

Elsewhere in the Foreword Nimkin refers to these parks as "community assets and
national treasures," and to "a standard of stewardship that maintains the value of this
extraordinary place for our children and grandchildren." But what will this "standard,"
based on continuing growth and development, actually maintain? Consider his own
words: assets, treasures, and value; there is no life in them. However profitable exploiting
such wild lands may be or however lovely the sunsets at the paved overlooks, they will
be dead, faceless places that do nothing to guard the human spirit from immersion in

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