Nahongvita!

“Nahongvita!” which means “Run Strong!” in Hopi, is as cheer of encouragement, much like, “Good work, keep it up!”  During every run on Hopi, whether a community fun run, a competitive race, a ceremonial activity, or a fund-raising event, the spectators and spotters lining the trail always yell, “Nahongvita!” as the runners run by, along with “Askwali!” or “Kwah-kwah!” as a thank-you, congratulations, and affirmation.  That kind of support is one of the most enjoyable things about running here.

Prior to moving here, I did not expect running in races to rank among my top athletic pursuits, but I have discovered that running has been a wonderful way to become a part of the community.  Running events are the times when I most feel the sense of the Hopi community - people seem delighted when I show up to everything from races to fundraisers to fitness classes, and they welcome me as one of their own.  The enthusiasm of people of all ages and abilities to share in the running tradition is contagious - and so I have embraced all these activities as a way of life for me on Hopi. 

Rather than try to explain how significant running is to the Hopi, I will let this excerpt from the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, featured on the website for the local Paatuaqatsi (“Water is Life”) Run, explain in its own words:

http://www.waterisliferun.org/#/hopitradition

Furthermore, the Hopi High School boys’ and girls’ cross-country teams have been dominant, even featured on ESPN for their unprecedented streak of State Championship success:

https://vimeo.com/179251785

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/sports/hopi-high-school-cross-country-running.html

The assistant coach featured in the article above, Juwan, hosts the Hopi 10k in Oraibi every year.  It’s a tough race, descending from the mesa top to the sandy trails and dirt roads below, before ascending the mesa back up to the Village, feet slogging through the deep sand on the long climb.  One really appreciates the unforgiving terrain and vastness of the land while running across it on foot!  The race was this last weekend – and was my inspiration to (finally!) share a little more about life on Hopi.

Below are a few photos from some of the races that I’ve done here.  It has been delightful to connect to this place and this community in this way, but for anyone who asks if I’m a serious runner, I laugh and tell them, no, that would be my ultra-marathon-running brother – the one who is sponsored and featured in magazines (see page 20 of Endurance News!) – but he does give me some pretty nice (and well-researched) gear - look at those hot pink trail shoes!  (And check out his blog https://steeplesandsunglasses.wordpress.com/.)

Hopi 10k in Oraibi, Third Mesa, Hopi Reservation, August 2018, with Jolette.

Accepting the prize for third-place female - a nifty jacket!

100 Mile Club Lunar Run, Hopi Veterans Memorial Center, May 2018 - Jolette decked us out with glow sticks so we could be the coolest runners there!  100 Mile Club is an annual event in which participants log their miles for 12 weeks, aiming for 100 miles (or 200, or 300...), and featuring fun runs in a different Village every week, widely attended by the community!

I even made the front page of the Hopi newspaper at the starting line of one of the 100 Mile Club events this year:

https://www.hopi-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/tutuveni-proof-73_final.pdf

Tuba City Half Marathon, Navajo Nation, AZ, April 2018 - second place female for the inaugural event

Birthday preparation with Aunt Jan for the Phoenix Women's Half (and some help from Mom and USPS), January 2018 - second place finish!  Nahongvita!

Monument Valley Half Marathon, Navajo Nation, AZ, November 2017 - second place for my age group

McDowell Mountain Ragnar Trail Run, with my 8-person team - Together we ran 123 miles in 24 hours, in support of UNite to End Violence - Native Women's Empowerment, a local nonprofit organization on Hopi to spread awareness of and support the victims of domestic violence - Thank you to everyone who supported our fundraiser! - Scottsdale, AZ, November 2017

Course map for the Taawaki Trail Run, Hopi Veterans Memorial Center, October 2017

Hopi 10k, August 2017 - second place in my age group - I improved both my time and my standing in 2018!

Running for Life 10k, Steamboat, Navajo Nation, AZ, June 2017 - I won second place in my age group, and Keith won third place in his, so we both won snazzy shirts!

Unique third place age group prize for the Sacred Mountain Prayer Run in Flagstaff, AZ, June 2017 - My Navajo coworkers explained all the symbolism of the art to me.

My very first half-marathon - the Warrior Run in Kayenta, Navajo Nation, AZ, April 2017.  Sherry and Thelma from the Hopi Health Care Center talked me into this one, and I had no idea what to expect.  First place female!  Should have quit while I was ahead!  Haha.

A Tour of Hopi Land (According to Alex)

As I began my first explorations of Hopi nine months ago, I heard time and again that you cannot really understand this place without being here.  And my experience has taught me so far that I indeed struggle to describe it.

So I will try instead to take you on a virtual tour – to show you some the things that have been significant to me while living here.

I was lucky enough to have my parents come visit last month, so they got to experience the real thing!

Mom, Dad, Kip, and Autumn  taking a walk in the desert with me around the trails at the Hopi Veteran's Memorial Center

Here we go!

Let's start at my apartment:

At my front door

Couldn't help but hang my Panama hammock on my back porch

Every day I walk from my housing complex to the Hopi Health Care Center, across the street, where my office is located.

That guarantees me at least three minutes twice a day to enjoy whatever the weather happens to be. It's usually sunny (Hopi only receives around 6-10" of precipitation annually), but we do experience at least four seasons.

Winter in my neighborhood

Budding trees of spring

Pretty flowers of midsummer

Watching a storm go by during monsoon season (late summer)

Spent corn fields of autumn

I have decorated my office walls with a few important items.

Yes, those are my bib numbers and medals from the races I have run here, and yes, that is my Peace Corps certificate signed by President Obama.

Sometimes at work I get to go into the field.  During my first few months, I was conducting house-to-house sanitation surveys (reminiscent of my information-gathering process as a Peace Corps Volunteer), as part of a wastewater feasibility study for 100-some homes on Second Mesa that still have not been served with indoor plumbing.

Living on top of the mesa comes with some spectacular views (see below), and -- historically -- significant protection and defense advantages, but it also comes with some significant challenges.  For the wastewater project we are developing on Second Mesa, the challenge is to find how to dispose of wastewater for homes built on top of rock, when digging trenches for sewer lines is expensive, and there is insufficient blow sand to accommodate a septic tank's drainfield.

Panorama taken from the back side of Second Mesa - you can see all the storms passing through

A glimpse of the lagoon serving part of Second Mesa

Sometimes my field work takes me to the far western Villages of Hopi, where we are working on drilling a well for an additional water supply and where we are replacing a portion of the sewer system built over 50 years ago.

The hour drive out that way is beautiful, punctuated in the middle by passing alongside Coal Mine Canyon:

Coal Mine Canyon - so many colors!

Look at all the cool rocks, Dad!

As I walk back home at the end of the day, I might run across the Hopi Mobile Library, parked in the middle of the housing complex, and stop to chat with the librarian and check out a book (I have particularly looked into their Hopi collection).

Hopi Mobile Library

After work I usually go straight to the Fitness Center at the Hopi Veteran's Memorial Center, where I run on the trails, lift in the weight room, and participate in the variety of fitness classes offered by the trainers there.  It is fun to be part of that community, and the drive to and from, climbing up and down Second Mesa, is always spectacular.  The sky here is amazing.  Every day.

View of Second Mesa, looking from one of its "fingers" to the other

The sign in front of Hopi Cultural Center, located on Second Mesa, which I pass on my way to the Fitness Center (and where I occasionally have lunch with my coworkers and buy Hopi art greeting cards)

On Friday evenings, the Fitness Center is not open, so if I am not going somewhere else that night, I like to go for a walk down to the wash behind the housing complex.

Full moon rising as the sun is setting in early spring

Check out that Hopi corn growing mid-summer!  The Hopi practice dry farming, which mean no irrigation - they depend on precipitation only.  Pretty impressive!

I have spent my weekends a variety of ways here: I have been invited to attend Hopi ceremonies, I have explored several of the National Parks and Forests within a drive of here (all the way into Utah and Colorado), I have participated in races all over the area, and I have spent some time doing chores at home, too.  I also spent a couple weekends helping a friend build his energy-efficient passive solar home through the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Institute Sustainable Homeownership Program.

My role was primarily to help plaster the walls using a mud mixture.  Pretty impressive for a home made mostly of straw bales and mud!

When I leave the Rez to do grocery shopping or other chores, I sometimes go to Flagstaff, but if I'm not in the mood to travel as far, I'll go to Winslow, just down the road from The Corner.

Take It Easy!

That's the last stop on the Virtual Tour - come visit if you would like to see more!  After all, my photography hardly does justice to the awesome vastness and sweeping landscapes of this place, which has a grandeur and beauty all its own.  

I hope Kip and Autumn enjoyed their tour, too - a challenging climate, but so many interesting smells!

Introduction: Welcome to Hopi

Just over six months ago, I moved across the country to start working as an Environmental Engineer on the Hopi Reservation.  To my family and friends who are interested in following along, and to anyone else curious about life on the Hopi Reservation and about water and sanitation projects, I invite you to join me in learning about and exploring this fascinating corner of the world!

View from atop the mesa behind the Hopi Veteran's Memorial Center

During my first weeks here, I began to understand that depicting life at Hopi can be a sensitive endeavor for an outsider.  As those weeks have passed into months, and in my attempts to answer the questions of interested and curious family and friends, I became overwhelmed with the complexity of trying to share this special place with the thoughtfulness, care, and respect that it deserves.  So now, finally, I will just begin with something simple:

First Mesa, just down the road from where I live and work

Q: Where am I?

A: The Hopi Reservation is located in Northeast Arizona, between the Grand Canyon and the Four Corners, surrounded on all sides by the Navajo Reservation.  I live in Polacca, right next to the Hopi Health Care Center, which also happens to be the location of my office.

It takes about an hour (60 miles) to leave both the Hopi and Navajo Reservations and arrive in Winslow (of The Eagles’ “Take It Easy” fame).  It takes almost 2 hours (100 miles) to travel to Flagstaff, the nearest town of significant size (population 70,000).  It takes 4 hours to reach Phoenix or Albuquerque.

The original Hopi Villages are among the oldest continuously-inhabited villages in the United States.  The Hopi and their ancestors have occupied this part of the world for millennia, and settled in the oldest existing villages around 1100.

Google map - location of the Hopi Reservation in Northeast Arizona

Google map satellite image of the location of the Hopi Health Care Center on the Hopi Reservation

Q: What am I doing?

A: I am a field environmental engineer for the Indian Health Service (IHS) in the Division of Sanitation Facilities Construction (SFC).  I work in the Office of Environmental Health and Engineering (OEHE) with another field environmental engineer and two engineering technicians.  The projects to which I have so far been assigned include: assisting with the drilling of a new well to increase the water supply in a Village located on the west side of the Reservation; conducting a wastewater feasibility study with the intention of serving homes on Second Mesa (in the center of the Reservation) with water and sewer service for the first time; and collaborating with the Hopi Tribe to update its Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan.  (There are, of course, many more details to share, but this is, after all, only the introduction.)

An existing wastewater lagoon serving a Second Mesa Village

Q: Why did I start this blog?

A: When I accepted this position, several friends and family asked whether I would maintain a blog to keep them updated on my activities.  I had done the same, for the same reason, while serving as an Environmental Health Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama for the previous two years.  I am happy to continue to share my activities with those who are interested.

The Peace Corps blog also fulfilled the Third Goal of the Peace Corps: “To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”  Writing about my experience as an IHS engineer, of course, is different.  The IHS mission is to “to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level.”  The SFC program strives to support this through the development and construction of water and sanitation facilities.  However, I still feel compelled to address the many questions of friends and family about life here, especially as I continue to recognize how clueless I was upon my arrival about not only Hopi culture, but also the structure of US government-Tribal interactions.  I do not plan to reveal the secrets of this place, for those secrets belong to the Hopi people.  However, given my own experience and education (which has included shamefully little learning about America's Native Peoples) and given many visible issues in the national discourse (about diversity, privilege, and injustice), I believe that some effort to address the cluelessness about and invisibility of this place and others like it seems warranted.  I can only speak to my experiences and what I have learned here, but I feel compelled to share at least that – and maybe a little about history, infrastructure, diversity, and injustice, too.

The double rainbow that appeared following a thunderstorm outside my house

As a result, this blog will be mostly about my engineering and personal activities here, but I hope to provide some context – because it is the social, cultural, political, and economic context that makes the environmental engineering work here so much more interesting, complex, and different from much of the rest of the country.  The lens through which I see this work will necessarily be that of an outsider – which means that I must respect the privacy of the people here, and understand that my observations are limited.  However, I also cannot help but see this place through the lens of a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, seeking to understand the community and the bigger picture in an effort to make my best contribution as an engineer.

Sunset on the Navajo Reservation, just south of Hopi

Q: What do I expect will come of this experience?

A: I took this position with the hope that serving an under-served rural population, where physical, cultural, technical, political, and economic constraints have continued to prevent all of the residents from having access to adequate water and sanitation services, would be compelling, challenging, and rewarding.  I hope in my time here I will gain both essential engineering experience (technical skills, project planning and design, construction management), and the cultural experiences that will help make my work here – and elsewhere – more successful (through understanding another perspective with respect to life, land, values, resources, social interaction, language, economics, and politics).  I hope to better understand the relationship between the Tribe and the US government, the differences between living on the Reservation and off it, and the challenges that Native People face in America, from their perspectives.  I continue my pursuit to learn what role I can play as an engineer in addressing social and environmental challenges and injustices.

And I humbly hope that maybe you can learn something along with me.  Welcome to Hopi!

Road to climb Second Mesa