In northern Arizona a dry spell can last for weeks, even months, before the monsoon rains kick in. During a severe drought a Navajo medicine man, known as a singer, invited commentator Scott Thybony to join a rain-bringing ceremony below the San Francisco Peaks. He wanted outsiders to know how important the mountains remained to his people.
A Navajo singer begins chanting the Blessingway songs as bands of twilight yellow and blue disperse into the darkness overhead. We have gathered below the San Francisco Peaks, the sacred mountain of the west, to make the necessary offerings. In a dry season the singer has decided it’s time to bring the rain.
A young girl stands inside a circular enclosure of juniper branches. Men sit on the south side and women on the north, singing. Wrapped in a bright Pendleton blanket, she tosses a pinch of finely-ground corn skyward, letting it fall to earth. Her mother tells us to “Pray for the rain.”
Accompanied by her great-grandfather, the girl moves sunwise around the fire as the others continue singing. They whiten the eastern post with corn pollen and do the same with the other posts. The two sprinkle us with water as they pass by, awakening the memory of rain.
Water, carried in a sea shell, passes around the circle for each to sip. The chanting continues led by the singer who sits with eyes nearly closed and a string of turquoise circling his neck in a long elliptic. Above the enclosure, stars emerge and begin revolving around the North Star.
Even a short ceremony has its long hours. From dusk to late at night, from dawn to midday the prayers and the four-fold songs continue. We spend much of our lives avoiding monotony, but in a ceremony it becomes inescapable, woven into the pattern.
Next morning the wind picks up, gusting at dawn. It’s time to “do the stones,” I’m told. The core of the ceremony is an offering of white shell representing dawn in the east, turquoise for the sky blue of the south, abalone for the yellow twilight in the west, and black jet for the darkness of the north.
A line forms, and when it’s my turn I rinse my hands and dry them in corn meal. For me, respect for other traditions means participation. Kneeling before a row of buckskin pouches, I imitate what I’ve seen the others do. First, I take a grain of white shell from the open hand of an apprentice and place it on a small mound of offerings. Then I add a pinch from each of the pouches containing soil from the four sacred mountains. The last bag contains yellow pollen gathered from corn tassels. This is repeated for each offering. As I finish someone tells me to pray for rain.
Once all have participated, we head up the mountain. A caravan of trucks follows the narrow road to Lockett Meadow, and we park at the trailhead. About two dozen of us take the trail toward the Inner Basin. Along the way a man about 90-years old lags behind. At an elevation of 9,000 feet his breathing is labored and his pulse races. The singer doesn’t want to leave him behind, so I offer to carry him on my back. As we head up the trail he laughs at his good luck and calls out to the others.
The singer leads us to a place where the main peaks are visible. He sets prayer sticks upright in the ground. And using a sprig of sweet sage, each person sprinkles the offerings with water, and some dampen a path for the rain to follow. Finally, the singer has everyone hold onto the cloth containing the offerings. He slowly tips it, letting the contents spill to the ground. After a final prayer, the ceremony ends.
Several days later the apprentice tells me the skies opened up and dropped four inches of rain where we had gathered. It’s a reminder of how we live in a land of extremes, praying for rain one day and dodging flash floods the next.
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio.
