ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
For centuries, Navajo weavers have crafted blankets that tell the stories about the places, beliefs and history of their tribe. Often, these weavers also herd the sheep that provide the wool for the blankets. But this tradition is now under threat, as Chris Clements of member station KNAU reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEEP BLEATING)
CHRIS CLEMENTS, BYLINE: This 12-mile journey up the mountain to a summer sheep camp is a yearly celebration.
CASEY TESENY: (Vocalizing).
CLEMENTS: Casey Teseny is an apprentice weaver who says, years ago, herding trips like this used to be as common as the clouds.
TESENY: There was a lot of movement involved. One camp just wouldn't be used, but a concession of a number of camps would be used intermittently.
CLEMENTS: But not these days. Nestled in between old-growth oak trees and wildflowers, Teseny and his flock pass by the gray skeletons of abandoned sheep camps. Tyrrell Tapaha sees them, too, and he notices something else.
TYRRELL TAPAHA: It's the driest I've ever seen.
CLEMENTS: For Tapaha, the empty camps and the drying landscape are connected.
TAPAHA: I just daydream and think about the camps that I walk by - these abandoned camps - and wonder about those family members feeling those emotions that I have about the space, the place and knowing that they're not there anymore.
CLEMENTS: Generations of Navajo families used to move their flocks up to mountains like these in the summer for the vegetation, like the kind the group is stepping over...
(SOUNDBITE OF VEGETATION CRUNCHING)
CLEMENTS: ...And for the springs that dot the landscape.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER BABBLING)
CLEMENTS: In the fall, they would guide their flocks back down when it gets cold. Now weavers like Tapaha say herding Navajo-Churro sheep as a full-time practice is becoming rare.
CRYSTAL TULLEY-CORDOVA: This is the second-driest time that we've been experiencing here on the Navajo Nation, and it's across the region.
CLEMENTS: Crystal Tulley-Cordova is with the tribe's Department of Water Resources. She says less precipitation in these mountains could be contributing to the drier environment that the weavers are witnessing.
TULLEY-CORDOVA: The recharge to those sources - the shallow aquifer as well as the springs - are limited and more vulnerable to drought conditions.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: There. That's funny.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Laughter).
CLEMENTS: Eventually, after navigating up miles of old wagon trails, the group makes it to the sheep camp, where dinner is cooking.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIZZLING)
CLEMENTS: The camp looks lush, but Casey Teseny can tell the ecosystem is stressed.
TESENY: There's a lot of unbalance. There's a lot of, like, loss of water.
CLEMENTS: Tyrrell Tapaha remembers spending his summers here as a kid. So does his grandfather, Roy Kady. He's considered a master weaver.
ROY KADY: I'm pretty sure that my mom brought me up on her back.
CLEMENTS: Families in this community say one reason they don't bring their flocks up anymore is there's not enough water, even at the top.
KADY: It's becoming a scarcity, and this is the only place there's really water that's still trickling.
CLEMENTS: Kady views moving the sheep like this as a celebration he wants to share with the next generation. Tapaha agrees.
TAPAHA: It's a weekend meant to replicate how this lifestyle functioned before modernity.
CLEMENTS: But modernity is here in the form of one of the driest winters on record. That worries Teseny.
TESENY: How long does this continue on? And I'd like to see it continue on, you know, forever 'cause even in the traditional stories, when we take care of our livestock, they take care of us in return.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEEP BLEATING)
CLEMENTS: Drought won't keep weavers like Teseny from their yearly summer sheep journeys. If the springs up here run completely dry, they plan to truck water to this spot.
For NPR News, I'm Chris Clements in Arizona's Carrizo Mountains.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.