300 Miles

Fae Sommers reflects on an unforgettable road trip:

You can learn a lot about someone in 300 miles.

Lukas, Jonathan, Micah and I stayed with our host father, pastor Daniel Smiley of Black Mountain Mennonite Church.  On our second day with him, we packed all 5 of us into his pickup truck for a road trip.  We went all over the reservation, starting at Black Mountain Mennonite, driving to Monument Valley (completing what was supposedly a one-and-a-half to two-hour scenic drive in about an hour while stopping at each point), going to a birthday for a 93-year-old, then going from there to Window Rock before heading back to Black Mountain Mennonite.

Throughout the drives between each place, we got to hear more and more about Daniel’s past.  He told us about the horrors of boarding school and how it still affects people who went through it, which was heart-wrenching.  Micah was sitting in the middle at the time, and Daniel said that he could see Micah’s soul pouring out of his eyes through the rear-view mirror.

Though he told us his share of stories which he’s had to work through a lot of trauma to talk about, he also told us traditional Navajo stories.  When Lukas’ nose was bleeding, he told us the Coyote story, about Coyote making his nose bleed to try to bring back his children without heeding the warning that only prairie dogs could do that (this is an incredibly condensed version and there is much more to it, but I couldn’t do it justice).

We saw half of the reservation that day. When he opened up to us, it made me feel like we had always been family and I was listening to a father talk about his childhood.  I enjoyed him treating us as his own children (“his boys,” he called us) because even though emotions were all over the place that day, it still felt like he was a dad taking his four kids out for a road trip, and he mentioned that he felt that way as well.

I think the most important part of that experience for me was him talking about his experiences in boarding school, because that vulnerability taught me a lot about him and made me feel safe with him.  If I had to remove anything, I think that the fact this was a road trip could be removed from the retelling, even though I think it was necessary for the experience.  I definitely see myself as one of Daniel’s children now, sitting in the backseat and learning from a new parent that loves me as his own.