Burntwater
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Overview
In Navajo country, where the land is thick with legends and forgotten histories, a writer sets out to find a place that no longer exists except on a few old maps: Burntwater. The story opens when two friends get stuck in a remote pocket of the desert as a winter storm moves in. They are taking a wandering route across the Four Corners region, curving through Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona on a long arc into the mythic heart of the country. As they travel, the author calls up past experiences in this land where the past flows seamlessly into the present. He remembers a medicine man whose chanting could start the cold engine of a Volkswagen. He describes an act of sabotage against an oil company by two Vietnam vets armed with deer rifles. He recalls how a winter of herding sheep for a Navajo family and a search for a Hopi known as the Sun Chief led him further into a human landscape as strange and compelling as the terrain. This book takes the backroads, crossing the Colorado Plateau from the headwaters of the Virgin River to the mouth of the Dirty Devil, from the badlands below Twin Angels to a remote mesa in Bandelier. As the miles go by and the stories unfold, there is a growing sense of mystery, of words not spoken, of messages carried on the wind. Reaching the Shrine of the Stone Lions, the writer recounts a near-fatal descent into the Grand Canyon where he finds a way to reconnect with the beauty of life. There his journey ends with an emotional punch that goes straight to the mind and the heart.
Synopsis
In Navajo country, where the land is thick with legends and forgotten histories, a writer sets out to find a place that no longer exists except on a few old maps: Burntwater. The story opens when two friends get stuck in a remote pocket of the desert as a winter storm moves in. They are taking a wandering route across the Four Corners region, curving through Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona on a long arc into the mythic heart of the country. As they travel, the author calls up past experiences in this land where the past flows seamlessly into the present. He remembers a medicine man whose chanting could start the cold engine of a Volkswagen. He describes an act of sabotage against an oil company by two Vietnam vets armed with deer rifles. He recalls how a winter of herding sheep for a Navajo family and a search for a Hopi known as the Sun Chief led him further into a human landscape as strange and compelling as the terrain. This book takes the backroads, crossing the Colorado Plateau from the headwaters of the Virgin River to the mouth of the Dirty Devil, from the badlands below Twin Angels to a remote mesa in Bandelier. As the miles go by and the stories unfold, there is a growing sense of mystery, of words not spoken, of messages carried on the wind. Reaching the Shrine of the Stone Lions, the writer recounts a near-fatal descent into the Grand Canyon where he finds a way to reconnect with the beauty of life. There his journey ends with an emotional punch that goes straight to the mind and the heart.
Publishers Weekly
For Thybony (The Rockies), Burntwater is more than the name of a Navajo reservation and trading post preserved only in old maps; it also represents a goal for his journey into himself. The author has traveled extensively in the Four Corners region, and his "search" for the old trading post is little more than a vehicle for framing memories of past trips into the Southwest. Each chapter is a beautiful vignette, a small window into the many, divergent worlds that comprise this area. For example, one chapter concerns a rigorous hike Thybony and his brother took into the Grand Canyon years ago. Another is a chronicle of his walk during Holy Week with the pilgrims to Chimayo. Yet another recounts his search for Hopi elder Don Talayesva. The last chapter, "Under the Rim," is a remembrance of an entirely different trek into the Grand Canyon; and it is this story that gives the book purpose and meaning. It's subjective, more a memoir than travel literature. Unfortunately, there are no great insights here and little depth to explain Thybony's fascination with the area. For those familiar with the Southwest, the book is a pleasant read, but those unaccustomed to the stark and otherworldly grandeur of the Four Corners are likely to find Burntwater making little impression on them. (Apr.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
For Thybony (The Rockies), Burntwater is more than the name of a Navajo reservation and trading post preserved only in old maps; it also represents a goal for his journey into himself. The author has traveled extensively in the Four Corners region, and his "search" for the old trading post is little more than a vehicle for framing memories of past trips into the Southwest. Each chapter is a beautiful vignette, a small window into the many, divergent worlds that comprise this area. For example, one chapter concerns a rigorous hike Thybony and his brother took into the Grand Canyon years ago. Another is a chronicle of his walk during Holy Week with the pilgrims to Chimayo. Yet another recounts his search for Hopi elder Don Talayesva. The last chapter, "Under the Rim," is a remembrance of an entirely different trek into the Grand Canyon; and it is this story that gives the book purpose and meaning. It's subjective, more a memoir than travel literature. Unfortunately, there are no great insights here and little depth to explain Thybony's fascination with the area. For those familiar with the Southwest, the book is a pleasant read, but those unaccustomed to the stark and otherworldly grandeur of the Four Corners are likely to find Burntwater making little impression on them. (Apr.)Kirkus Reviews
A thoughtful journey into little-known spots along the Colorado Plateau.Thybony, a northern Arizonabased writer locally known for a comprehensive guide to hiking the Grand Canyon, has an affinity for places not found on any map. The Burntwater of his title is one, a place whose Navajo name commemorates a shepherd's having melted ice there by building a circle of fire around it; elsewhere he takes us to other poetically named places like Crazy Jug Point, Tsegi, and Oraibi. Thybony is on a quest to understand the traditional Navajo blessing Hózhó naninaadoo ("Go in beauty"), a formula that younger Navajo consider old-fashioned but that stayed with Thybony from the moment he first heard it. "Only later did I learn about the Navajo idea of beauty and how it moves through life like a wind," he writes. "It's not the beauty of surfaces alone, but an indwelling beauty that enfolds and completes, a life-restoring beauty." Informed by a deep knowledge of anthropology, geology, and history, Thybony's quest takes us inside the rock home of the Hopi elder Don Talayesva, author of the classic autobiography Sun Chief, "a man running from angels"; into haunted side-canyons along the Colorado River, where Thybony affectingly recalls his brother's death in an airplane crash over Grand Canyon; and into the backcountry of western New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and of a world "where the dead could no longer be counted, where numbers gave way to sheer mass, where death became nameless." The author's love of the land is evident at every turn, and his essays deepen our understanding of both these mysterious places and of people who seek beauty within and without them.
Gracefully written, this is outstanding reading for armchair travelers and habitués of the Four Corners country alike.