This Christmas break, I want to the Monument Valley within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation, a Indian reservation.
It was a cloudy day but the air is still dry. We arrived in the late afternoon right before the park was closed.
After we passed the park gate, there was an unpaved road called 17-miles, where we drove around 17 miles and visit several attractions. When cars drove pass us, there is thick red dust in the air. I feel we were visiting a desert, a brick red desert. Or we were visiting a park on Mars. I can not remember I see any plant or water anywhere in the park. The attractions are just stones, different kinds, different shapes of stones.
Since we wanted to arrive there before closed, we had a very tight schedule with a long driving and without lunch. There was wind and the temperature is low. I was cold and hungry and tired and not in a good mood. I barely have any interest in the site seeing. And I did not put much effort on the site seeing, or trying to feel how it looks like. If I recall hardly, I can only recall smell of dusts, feeling of cold wind. I did not even want to touch the rocks as it should touch just like boring rocks.
I do see houses, the Indian houses. I feel sorry for these Indians. It feels like they were expelled to Mars.
We left without enjoying it, at least I did not enjoy it. But J helped me take some pictures there. And one of them shocked me when I revisit it. It is a picture of me in the park, me and some brick red stones, one of them very large in the background. It gives me the feel of nothing. There is nothing else there, just the red stone, red earth, red dust, and me. Nothing exists and nothing matters.
During the trip of all the national parks, this is the most desolate place. But it is a place that exists there before I was born and it will be there after I die. The huge rocks can last forever. And they do not care about their ugly, wild, lifeless looking. It does not matter to themselves. They do not care. They just exist, not as a park, but as park of the earth, park of the universe.
I hope this post can create an image similar to this picture.