The Blessing Way (1970)

Tuba City is located in Coconino County, Arizona on the southern edge of the Kaibito Plateau. This town is one of the largest communities on the Navajo Reservation but it also has a small Hopi population. During the 1870s, Mormons briefly resided in Tuba City. At that time, Mormons named the community after a Hopi headman named Tuvi, who converted to Mormonism. Mormons later sold the town, which they claimed to be their property, to the U.S. Indian Service (in later years known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs). Mormons had been encountering increasing levels of antagonism from the Navajo, the original inhabitants of the area, which may explain why the Mormons sold the town and left the area.

One Navajo word for Tuba City is Tö Naneesdizí, which means “Place of Water Rivulets,” referring to the irrigation ditches used by Mormons during their occupation.

Teec Nos Pos is a small community located six miles southeast of the Four Corners Monument in Apache County, Arizona. Teec Nos Pos has shifted north from its original location, closer to the Junction of U.S. Highway 160 and 64. The community is composed of a trading post, a chapter house, and a school. The Navajo name for this community is T’iis Názbad which means “cottonwoods in a circle.”

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, called Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii in Navajo, is a Tribal Park located within the Navajo Reservation on the Arizona-Utah border near the Four Corners area. The park covers an area of the Colorado Plateau featuring clusters of immense sandstone buttes that tower over the landscape at heights reaching from 400 to 1,000 feet. A sacred area to various indigenous groups, Monument Valley's impressive geological formations, isolated mesas, and sandstone pillars have also been used extensively as scenery in movies, commercials, and music videos since the 1930s, becoming the iconic representation of the Southwest.

A small community on the Navajo Nation Reservation off of US Highway 160 at a steep rocky crossing of Chinle Wash near Dinnehotso. Mexican Water has a trading post and a chapter house. The region is very rocky, and, before the paving of the highways that run nearby, the only location markers were piles of rocks.

Flagstaff is a city in Northern Arizona and is the county seat of Coconino County. The Coconino National Forest just outside the city limits is the largest contiguous Ponderosa pine forest in North America. The presence of Ponderosa pine gave the city its name when a Boston scouting party raised a Ponderosa flagpole in honor of the United States Centennial, and the place where it was raised was called Flagstaff. The settlement originally grew in size due to the establishment of a sawmill by E.E. Ayer and the arrival of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. The Navajo name for Flagstaff is Kin Łání Dook’o’oosłííd Biyaagi or “Many Houses Below San Francisco Mountains.”

Farmington is a town located in northern New Mexico between the San Juan, La Plata, and Animas Rivers in San Juan County. The name for this settlement in Navajo is Tóta, meaning "Between the Waters.” The area of Farmington was originally settled by Ancestral Puebloans, as evidenced by the nearby Salmon Ruins and the Aztec Ruins. After the Ancestral Puebloans abandoned the Farmington area, it was occupied by the Navajo, Utes, and the Jicarilla Apache. The current town was incorporated in 1901, and a narrow gauge railroad to Durango, Colorado was completed in 1905. There was a significant population increase in the 1950’s after the San Juan Basin Natural Gas Pipeline was constructed.

Creosote bush, also known as greasewood, is the common name for a genus of bushes known as Larrea. This evergreen bush can be found in hot and dry regions throughout the U.S. Creosote can live up to 100 years and is known for its astringent odor, especially when wet or burning. For many desert dwellers, the scent of wet creosote bush is a scent associated with the summer monsoons, a welcome perfume that can almost overwhelm the senses on a humid afternoon.

A crevasse is a deep vertical fissure, or a narrow crack, which can form in bedrock or ice. Usually, the term "crevasse" refers to cracks in ice or glaciers, while the term "crevice" refers to those in rocks; Hillerman sometimes uses crevasse to refer to the former. A crevasse is sometimes narrow enough to jump across, but never wide as wide as a ravine or canyon. One of the most overwhelming aspects of a crevasse is its sheer depth, it can appear to be almost bottomless.

The Chuska Mountain Range runs along the Arizona-New Mexico border and lays within Apache County in Arizona and McKinley and San Juan Counties in New Mexico. The Navajo name for the mountain range is Níłtsą́ Dził, meaning Rainy Mountain, and in Navajo mythology, Chuska Peak is believed to be the head of a male figure called Y’odí Dził, or “Goods of Value Mountain.""

When a man’s wife commits adultery, the husband is known as a cuckold.