#placitas

Storm over Placitas, Sandoval Co, NM. Photo: Seth Betterly (Oct 5, 2022)

[Scott Horton]

* * * *

His luck got better after he made the turn toward the east onto Navajo Route 9. The morning sunlight was glittering off the early snowpack on the high slopes of Soodzil, Mount Taylor on belagaana road maps, or dootl’izhiidziil to traditional Navajo shaman; it was Joe Leaphorn’s favorite view. 

Locally it was called Turquoise Mountain, and known as the sacred mountain of the South, built by First Man of materials brought up from the dark, flooded third world, and pinned to the earth with a magic flint knife by that powerful yei when it tried to float away. 

As Leaphorn had learned in the hogan stories of his childhood winters, it had been magically decorated with turquoise, fog, and female rain, and had been made home of dootl’altsoil ’at’eed and anaa’ji at’eed, whose names translated to Yellow Corn Girl and Turquoise Boy, both friendly yei. 

The holy people had also made the mountain home for all sorts of animals, including the first flocks of wild turkey Leaphorn had seen. But most important in Navajo mythology, it was where Monster Slayer and his thoughtful twin, Born for Water, had confronted Ye’iitsoh, the chief of the enemy gods. They had killed him on the mountain after a terrible battle, thus beginning their campaign to clear this glittering world from the evils of greed and malice, the nasty conduct that had caused God to destroy the third world and which, alas, had followed the Dineh up from below.