he other day while I was having coffee, a friendly but complete stranger complimented me on my turquoise ring. He'd just returned from Arizona and had been traveling through Navajo land and had seen a lot of the Native American jewelry.
I've worn the ring since the fourth grade.
Turquoise, I have since learned, was among the first gems to be mined and is found in primarily three areas; Iran, the Sinai Peninsula and the southwest United States. The deposits in California and New Mexico were mined by pre-Columbian Native Americans using stone tools, some local and some from as far away as central Mexico. Bisbee (Arizona) turquoise is considered some of the finest in the world.
When I was just a tike in southern California, I used to go swimming with John, a school friend of mine, at the neighboring town's YMCA, where my buddy's father had a membership. One year, over Easter Break, the "Y" conducted a summer camp-like experience for kids our age that involved busing a group of us off to Arizona and having us stay in a Navajo boarding school during the holiday week.
Little Johnny and I thought that looked really interesting.
My mom, recognizing a chance to get rid of one of her two unruly kids for a week, when both of them would be home from school and begging for entertainment, quickly signed me up and had me down at the YMCA with my suitcase and sleeping bag at the appropriate time.
The way the Navajo education system was organized at the time, all the elementary schools were set up as boarding schools. During Easter, most of the kids went home to their families, thereby freeing up the dormitories.
The day of our departure, we boarded three Greyhound-type buses and began our journey out into the Californian desert. This was in the early 1950s, before freeways, and the ride was down two-lane state highways. We went through "towns" that were little more than gas stations and a bar, towns like Amboy and Cadiz.
Sometime during the night we crossed the Colorado River at Needles and then went on to Tuba City, Ariz., the administrative center of the Navajo education system, if not the entire Reservation. There we were divided into smaller groups of 10 to 15 boys - or a like number of girls, since this was a coed group - and each group was assigned two counselors.
We were then loaded onto the backs of stake-bed trucks and driven an additional 100 to 150 miles, through Monument Valley along dirt and gravel roads to our group's individual schools.
The school my group was assigned to was in northern Arizona, near Navajo Mountain, just west of the Four Corners area. There was no town anywhere near us; the closest commercial building was a gas station/trading post at least 3 miles away.
The two Anglos who helped run the school gave us lectures every day on the Navajo culture and traditions. One evening we went out to a nearby hogan, a native one-room dwelling made of logs and covered with dirt or sod, for a traditional dinner of fry bread and lamb.
We also watched as Navajos tended and herded their sheep. We went on hikes into the desert, and as we walked we learned interesting facts about the flora and fauna we were trudging through.
I admit it: even then, I wasn't much of a trekker.
I was left alone, alongside the trail on one hike because I couldn't keep up, while the group summited some nearby hill. After a while, I thought they'd missed me on their return and struck off, on my own, for where I thought the school was.
Remember, this is early spring, and it started to lightly snow. After wandering lost, I was never so glad to see that warm school again.
I learned that the Navajo language was the only code the Japanese couldn't break during World War II because it is spoken differently, depending on who is speaking.
At the trading post there was an old, gray-haired silversmith who was quite a craftsman. He made available for us a series of identical silver band rings with engraved native symbols, so that each one of us who were at that school could have a matching ring. Besides the silver band, I was also interested in some of the turquoise jewelry he produced.
I bought a simple ring with an oval turquoise stone that has a brown imperfection on its upper edge. I've always thought it looked like the Aleutian Islands jutting into the blue and green of the Pacific. I had a late uncle who served in the Aleutians during WWII.
Each month, many Navajos would bring pieces of their turquoise jewelry collections into the trading post and hock it for some extra money; the trading post also acted as a pawnshop in this way. The jewelry also acted, in a way, as their currency.
I saw some beautiful squash-blossom necklaces and intricate bracelets and rings. Such native art, though, was far beyond my fourth-grade allowance, and my simple $15 ring was all I could afford.
I did get to watch as the Navajo craftsman patiently soldered the silver and then mounted the stone to the oval base he had made. Watching him work personalized the ring so much more than any ring I just found in a store.
Since buying it years ago, I've had to have it stretched and have even had added material soldered to the band to keep up with my ever-fattening finger size. I'm sure I've paid many times the original price to maintain it, but have you still got anything you bought on your own when you were in the fourth grade?
I know I'll never forget that week I spent out on the Reservation.
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