Recent flooding across the Navajo country reminded Scott Thybony of the difficulties faced by people who are cutoff by mud and washouts. And it reminded him of a winter he spent there in a hogan, a traditional Navajo home. Years later, he learned of their significance.
Cold air has spilled down the mountains during the night, settling in a thick lens. A moment before daybreak, the east light strikes the denser air and glances off the surface, the way a rock skips across water. The line of buttes beyond turns fluid, a mirage at dawn far beyond Merriam Crater.
Heading toward Tsaile, I cross the Little Colorado River. In the dim light I pass a Navajo homestead, recognizing it by the flat lines of a trailer roof next to a rounded hogan. Like a mirage, the thought of a hogan glances off the present in a refraction of memory. It brings back the winter I spent living in a traditional Navajo home near Red Lake. The peeled logs notched at each corner formed the walls of the multi-sided dwelling. A stovepipe poked through a smokehole cut through the peak of the roof. And the door faced east to catch the first light from the rising sun.
Reaching Diné College I find museum director Harry Walters sitting in his office next to a shelf of carved Yeibichai figures. Pottery, books and Elvis memorabilia fill the others. I’m here to learn about the significance of the hogan from the head of the traditional studies program. To respond to my questions properly, Walters begins by going back to the origin of the world. Then he explains how everything moves in cycles.
“And these cycles repeat themselves,” the Navajo scholar says. “All living things on earth live in accordance with the changes of these cycles. Their attitude, their behavior – all happen in accordance with them. Navajo culture is based on ceremonies linked to them. We plant according to them, breed livestock. Everything we do is in accordance with these cycles. To live this way is to live in harmony with the world.”
A central fire, he adds, burns within the hogan. It represents the North Star, an unmoving point of reference around which daily life revolves. At birth a mother turns her baby’s head toward the fire to reinforce the primary orientation toward the home and the way of life it embodies. Those who have moved away still recognize the connection. Navajo refer to their homes by saying, “That’s where my fire is.”
The word hooghan, translates as “place-home,” grounding it in the broader landscape. Living in hogans became a way for the Navajo people to identify themselves as a distinct group. Even today, when they have many types of housing, extended families often maintain a hogan for ceremonial purposes. It represents the source of life’s blessings and serves as the setting for births and weddings, for a girl’s initiation into womanhood and for healing ceremonies.
“The hogan is a miniature universe,” Walters continues. “It is a replica of the outer universe, and it has the same power. By having a ceremony in the hogan, everything comes together. We are set in place, in the natural order. The sky is our father. The air we breath comes from the father. Our physical being comes from the same elements found in the earth. This is female, it comes from the mother. In the order of the hogan there is great love, there is healing there. The roof is the sky, the floor is earth. When you are touching earth, there is healing and love from the mother.” He pauses before adding, “This is our home, our universe.”
Evenings at Red Lake would find me inside a hogan stretched out on a goat skin next to a potbelly stove. At the time I knew little about the significance of this place-home. But I remember marking time by looking up through the smokehole to watch Orion cross the nightsky high above.
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio and air on the last Friday of each month.
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