© Ben Avechuco

© Ben Avechuco

© Ben Avechuco

<< previous page

Robinson: They do it in the middle of the day?

Tobias: We did it at noon. You light the lava rocks, some of which came from Supai, down in the Grand Canyon; others which came from their property. Light the lava rocks, they reuse the same rocks for years until they start to crumble. You have a big pylon of cedar faggots atop the lava rocks. You light it, about two hours later come back, and it's ready. You then take a pitchfork and throw them to the right side of the sweat lodge, cover it with three blankets from the opening, like in a hogan's opening, and in a very short period you have a dry sauna. It's not a steam sauna, you don't pour water on the rocks necessarily. It's just a very hot and wonderful dry sauna. And then you throw some cedar seedlings — not seedlings — the tips of the evergreen boughs, just a handful, on the fire. It clears out the sinuses in a big way, opens up the lungs, allegedly purifies smokers of their habit. Your lungs feel so clean afterwards that they have no desire to smoke, according to LeRoy, after that. And it did all those things, it's a fabulous experience. And it's pitch black in there, and four heavy men, in our case, sitting in that sweat lodge, shoulder to shoulder, heads sunk between our knees, inhaling the aromatics of the cedar, talking, silent, joking, and then go to resuming our filming. His family made a wonderful lavish meal for us, twice — a smorgasbord of fruit, vegetables. And they were very sensitive to me as a vegetarian, and were very careful to make sure they had vegetarian cuisine. Mariah, one of LeRoy's two daughters, was with us, who's an amateur photographer, and so they spent a lot of time together taking shots. And he was working very carefully with his daughter, because part of LeRoy DeJolie's whole message, of course, is to perpetuate native culture by imbuing the children with a love of their culture. And for him, it is not an inobvious way to do it, through photography, and his daughter got that. They co-published a photograph in 1993 in Arizona Highways. He set the focus, she clicked the button, and they had a published photograph in a calendar. She's very proud of that. She was only about six years old at the time. She just had her thirteenth birthday this weekend — now a teenager and ready to raise hell, I suppose. She's fabulous. And LeRoy loves his daughter very deeply, and really wants her to become a photographer, like his father was. We all sat out amid the cliffs where we had our jib struggling in the sand to get LeRoy and his daughter walking along the cliff, in the right light. We had them do it nine times to get it right, which is why I suspect we had to do the set up four times. The mother, who suffered a knee injury lately, nonetheless was out there in the wilds with us. The father, who suffered a punctured lung and a cracked C-6 and several broken vertebrae, was out horse wrangling, having had a bypass a year ago in his early seventies. These are rugged people. They are fun-loving people. Dale, his brother-in-law, and LeRoy, got on their horses, way out on the edge, overlooking Navajo Mountain, rode right into the sunset on their horses, uttered a very beautiful Navajo prayer. And the whole day [was] just exquisite. LeRoy cannot stop — his enthusiasm is untiring. He got probably three hours sleep, two or three nights in a row, and it doesn't seem to phase him — although he complained a bit, laughing all the way. "Oh, my God, I gotta get some sleep!" And, you know, he just loves his culture so much. And this is what the art of anything is about — love, actual enthusiasm — and he just has it in spades.

continued >>

     "Behind the
     Scenes" Quick
     Links:

     • Challenges
     • Navajo Sweat
     • Logistics