Our Favorite Navajo Ghost

Our Western Series: Chapter One

Stepping gently among the spirits at Tsé Bit’í.

I cannot tell you how I first learned of Tsé Bit’í. I suppose I read about it somewhere, and from there on, "the winged rock" haunted my dreams and even woke me up in the middle of the night.

When I began researching it, I was intrigued by the one-star review left on Trip Advisor by a Texas woman.

"There are no signs, museums, information…nothing. It is a beautiful formation and holy to the Navajo who believe. But there is absolutely no reason to come visit this. If you drive by on the way to somewhere else, you can view it from the road and pull over to ponder. That's it."

But who can blame me? Like D.H. Lawrence, I longed to steer clear of our world's somewheres. "That's the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world's somewheres, into our own nowhere."

There was, however, a catch. Outsiders are not welcome since it is sacred land to the Navajo people. I called the Navajo Nation government in Window Rock, Arizona, s…